No Means No!

In the library Ladies’ room, in the next stall, a mother and her little girl come bustling in. The child sounds about four or five years old, smart and verbal and confident and energetic. She orders her mother “DON’T flush this toilet. Do NOT.” Her mother pleads with her, using ration and reason. Please Sweetheart! Please listen to Mommy! But the girl is having none of it. As the cycle of pleading + demands + pleading + demands goes on, it appears to me that the child is not suffering from severe plumbing phobia, not stimming in overwhelm from fluorescent lights or anything of the kind. This sounds like testing the bounds of assertiveness, which is pretty much the job of younguns as they wait to see how the grownups will react.

The girl shouts “I said NO! And No means NO!”

I clear my throat gently and call out a cordial greeting. “Why hello, Ladies! Just to let you know, this toilet in here is about to flush.” And in my 1950s mind, it’s a little playful invitation to the world of Women Who Tidy Up after themselves. Maybe the mom will play too, and say “Aha, see that? Say, I know — let’s race. We’re gonna flush first!”

The mother gasps. She rushes to gather her things again, grabs her child, slams open the stall door, and gallops her out of the bathroom. No means no.

Hot Planet, Cold Planet

It’s 4:00, in full sun, on a truly hot day. At the bus stop by the sports fields, a large older man comes panting to the bus bench, mopping sweat off his brow. He looks so overheated that I’m concerned for him. I draw him out a bit in conversation in case he needs help. He returns my greeting, and we commiserate about the weather and this hot spell. “I’m seeing a lot of ads for those metal roofs,” I volunteer. “And wonder, Doesn’t that heat up the house? With our increasing climate temperatures, is that wise?”

He waves away my concern. “No, those people buying new roofs — they’ve got money. Probably have a heat pump, air conditioning. And as for this talk of climate change — you know what changed the climate? Here’s what nobody is saying. It’s all these immigrants pouring in over our borders.”

Uh?

“Yes,” he continues, and now he’s heating up for real. “They cause all that overcrowding. THAT is what heats up this country. The habits they bring with them. They form crowds together, mill around, bunch up in packed housing projects, throw garbage on the street to rot, use up our air and water…”

This sounds like a skit on Saturday Night Live. But lest any passerby conclude that I am in this man’s cahoots, I give him a philosophical nod or two and sidle away, pretending to study the posted bus schedule.

Meanwhile, on the sports fields, summer youth events are ending. Kids and their parents are streaming toward the bus stop. My companion is still warning me about immigrants and their heat-generating ways. (By his logic, as displaced persons flock to The States, their countries of origin should be experiencing record cold temperatures.) We are now surrounded by families speaking Spanish, Somali, Vietnamese, Cantonese. Like a “We Are the World” music video, except for the voice of Prophet Malthus, running on like an emergency ticker tape at the bottom of a TV screen.

The bus pulls up. I watch to see which door he chooses. He takes the front. I take the back.

A Game of Telephone

In a house nearby there is an extremely polite proper young couple from [overseas culture known for extreme politeness; not to promote stereotypes or anything.] The wife is friendly but shy, so in their division of labor he is the designated talker. On Sunday he left me voicemail on behalf of both. That’s a sign that he is waiting with patience at my door to formally hand over some delicious bounty gathered or prepared by Mrs. Oura — in this case, a basket of perfectly ripe plums. I recognized his number, but the call and message were cut off before I could answer. Meanwhile, some helpful app or bot transcribed his voice to text:

Mr.’s voice, Original: “Mary! Oura asked, when you get home….”

Mr., Transcribed: “Mary! Oh, your ass when you get home….”

When I reached the front door and saw Mr. standing there in sweet innocence, I was laughing too hard to talk. He was mystified until I showed  him my phone. Then the comedy of error look on his face had me laughing harder. “A.I., A.I.!” he lamented, gripping his head.

Nature Appreciation

Cashier Elson has been regaling us customers with appealing pictures of the clutch of Glaucous-Winged Seagull chicks who hatched on the ledge just outside his apartment window. My own opinion of seagulls is that Captain Rickenbacker on that life raft didn’t eat nearly enough of them. But it’s quite nice to join the other customers as we ooh and aah at those rapidly growing fledglings and their precocious grabby ways. Elson really has an eye for his nature photo journaling. “As long as I’m not like that guy with the binoculars in ‘Rear Window,'” he confided to me. I assure him “Not to worry, you aren’t. Besides, the one to watch for is the other guy in ‘Rear Window.'”

Object Permanence

At the medical center for my routine checkup I’m pacing slowly in circles at the edge of the crowded waiting room, memorizing some prayer verses in Greek.

Nearby a very patient gentle young woman seems to have been waiting for a long time for a relative in the back room. Meanwhile, her adorable baby in his carriage has an amazing trick to play on his gullible naive parent. It fools her every time! He pulls up his flannel blankie, and with a great flourish flings it over his head and holds still. His mother responds with soft cries of surprise: “Where did he go? Where is…?” Her boy pops out with a triumphant smile and giggle. She clasps her hands in rapture. “There he is!”

After about a hundred rounds of this, God bless her, of course I drift closer and give her a smile. She smiles back at me. “Say,” I ask her. “Wasn’t there a boy here a minute ago? Did he leave and go home, or — Oh my gosh look! Look right there. He’s back. He came back so fast I didn’t even see it!” The baby looks back and forth at the two of us, comparing our amazed and pleased reactions. Now he’s fooled us both! TWO adults! He claps his hands, crowing with delight. He enthralls us with one more round. I’d like to stay and play with him, but I can sense that his patient mother really is weary, and I don’t want to get her baby too excited. So I smile at them and drift on back to the window.

After another hundred rounds of Blanket, Mom finally scrolls her phone to some kind of video and holds it up for her little one to see. A piercing baby-talk electronic voice starts chirping out a jingle.

The baby spots the action on the phone. Now he’s absolutely electrified. His eyes, his facial expression, breathing, hand motions — they’ve been magnetized to the screen. The change is instant and profound.

It’s sobering and powerful to watch, like all those social media clips of Baby at his first birthday party getting his very first taste of white sugar when somebody hands him a spoonful of chocolate frosting. Then somebody films his astounded whiplash reaction, and viewers find this hilarious.

Mom closes her eyes for a few minutes of rest until the end of the song.

Then her kiddo somehow breaks away enough to grab the blanket and cover his face and hide. Mom puts away the phone and says “Where are you?”

He peeks out, all eager again, overjoyed that she is still there and happy to see him.

Share the Dirt

Neighbor Milan stopped by the garden strip today. “Hi Mary! Say, those extra flower pots? Do you think I can buy that big blue one? How much would you like for it? I’m rescuing a fern.” I point him to Neighbor Leonard, enjoying a relaxing cigarette under a shade tree. “That’s Len’s flower pot. Let’s go ask.” We set out to ask, and Len insists that Milan can have the pot, no problem. Milan is delighted and grateful, especially when I share some extra potting soil. “What can I pay?” he asks. I suggest that he should simply be nice to me, and that is payment enough. “What! When I was ever not nice to you??” I explain that that’s the whole point: all he has to do is continue his good behavior. “Can I pay you with a hug?” he suggests. Sure, but it’s only an elbow hug. “I don’t want to get potting soil handprints on your nice white t-shirt.” But “No no,” he protests. “We are all gardeners here. Got to share and share alike each other’s DIRT.”

Escape Artist

Until pandemic lockdown there were zero rabbits here. That is, the native rabbitesque variants were around but stayed in wild areas, and I’ve never seen one. Now in the last five years or so, all of a sudden these Eastern Cottontails have spread all over the place.

Rabbits ate Australia, so I’m not entirely sold on them. But on a silent morning at sunrise on a quiet garden street, when a bunlet is the size of my palm he is a dear thing to see.

This fella thinks he’s hiding, under a large leaf, munching on something good. When I spot him I look the other way and angle my walk away, making little tongue clicks so he doesn’t think I’m sneaking up.

Still, he pops out looking every which way. Taking courage, he shoots across the street like a billiard ball to get away from me. Then he rockets some more, zoomies back and forth across the street, panicking at an approaching car. Finally he rockets straight back across the street smack up against the shoe of the creature he was fleeing. Now what? Well, rely on Plan B: freeze. He holds really really still against my shoe figuring I won’t notice. I stand there and pretend to not see him. He finally eases his way back under the large leaf. Where did I leave off? He goes back to munching.