Hey, Siri: What’s the best way to survive a summer like this?
The cricket ran off the other day. That’s the kind of summer we’re having. The insects are fleeing the house.
Actually, after weeks of chirping from behind the fridge, the cricket just wandered out one morning to see what all the yelling was about. For, as my wife Posh was complaining about the cricket’s constant chirping, the cricket had it way worse. The poor critter had to hear us argue over which size eggs to buy and whether $40 an hour was too much for the little guy’s math tutor. That sort of stuff.
My point was that if we’re going to spend ridiculous amounts of money on extra lessons it should be only for sports, not academics. In this country, nobody gets anywhere on brains anymore. Just look at our leaders. Business, politics, entertainment. Total dolts, most of them.
But if our son can bash a baseball – or maybe model a little – he could have a real career. Algebra? Forget about it. The only reason you learn algebra is so you can help your kid with his algebra 30 years later – and then you can’t.
I mean, how many times in life do you really need to “isolate a variable†anyway?
For me, the only variable in my life is this noisy cricket, and he pretty much isolated himself behind the fridge. For three weeks he suffered.
Round and round my wife and I went on a tutor, plus how many classics a week the little guy should be reading so he can eventually get into his dream school, College of the Ozarks.
Posh is a better arguer than I am, partly because she’s a woman, partly because she’s usually right. By nature, I’m more of a contrarian and will sometimes take the difficult side of an issue – pro bono – just to get her worked up a little, to raise the color in her cheeks, make her eyes glisten in frustration. As I’ve maybe mentioned, we have a mixed marriage: I’m Irish. She’s Italian. You can’t even imagine the cultural differences we deal with.
On the summer tutor issue, I go right for the jugular, suggesting we maybe host a garden party, because by threatening to have a party, I can leverage the argument on the tutor thing later. Posh hates garden parties. “We have insects living in our house,†is her usual stance. “What’s the point in going outside?â€
I realized the other day that I have a wife, two daughters, and two female bosses. That’s five women always trying to shove me around. As the old Nez Perce proverb goes: White men have too many chiefs.
On any given day, the only woman who talks nice to me is Siri, and even she goes off-script with occasional exasperations. “No, I said ‘turn right,’ you idiot,†she said last weekend while I was getting lost in Encino – which, by the way, is no place to get lost. One wrong turn and you can find yourself at the intersection of Indifference and Nonchalance. In Encino, the people vary but the smirks are all the same.
Anyway, the cricket came out from behind the fridge on a Tuesday, maybe around 10 a.m. The little guy yelled, “CRICKET!†which we all agreed would be the code word if we ever came across a dangerous intruder like that.
I came running to the rescue, carrying the Verizon bill, our most dangerous possession. I swear, you read that thing closely, the confounding legalese and the niggling, indecipherable charges, and it could instantly kill you.
Strangely, I decide not to show the cricket our Verizon bill. Compassion takes control, as it often does with me. We’re a dying country, you know, and I firmly believe that a national campaign of uncommon compassion might be the only way to save ourselves.
For the record, I used to be real big on moral rectitude. Now compassion is my default emotion. For that, I credit not living in Encino.
So I grab a tissue and gently lift the little cricket, who I think was French, just judging by his body language. I pick him up with the tissue and release him into the backyard, where he goes crashing into my oversize grill – bonk – then into the copper piping of a small whiskey still I’ve been building since the kids were little.
After 25 years, that’s what a Californian I’ve become. I don’t even kill pests anymore. I engage them emotionally. I mentor them.
I save another life.
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