Childhood fears

Chuckbert's post reminded me of a childhood fear I had when we were living over on Alabama Avenue: I was afraid to sit down in the bathtub when I took a bath. I was afraid I'd fall backward and hit my head. The possibility of drowning always hung over me.

An image straight out of a Hitchcock movie

Housecleaning

In preparation for a visit from his girlfriend, my neighbor cleaned house very thoroughly.

It's okay. I'm wearing gloves.

I don't know what's happening with food workers in Los Alamos, but it ought to be stopped.

This week I met one of our local authors for coffee at the Coffee Booth. I stepped up to the counter and ordered a coffee in a mug, and the young man got a ceramic mug and inspected it for cleanliness, as the staff there always does. He found a speck of something, and instead of giving me a different mug, he reached inside, scraped the speck carefully with his finger, dumped out whatever was in there, and handed me the mug. I asked for a to-go cup

Several months ago I was standing in line at the Subway next door. The staff there wears plastic gloves on their hands when they prepare the sammitches. The other customers and I watched in disbelief as the young "sandwich artist" scratched her head with her gloved hand and then went back to the customer's order. The customer said, "You just scratched your head!" And the young woman replied, "It's okay. I'm wearing gloves." We went to Ruby K's.

I gave Subway a wide berth after than, but went back about a month ago. This time the young man who was making a sandwich scratched his butt and returned to making sandwiches. The customer said, "You scratched your butt!" The young man replied, "It's okay. I'm wearing gloves." We went to Ruby K's again. (I'm also writing a letter to the president of Subway.)

Michele recalls a time she was at an ice cream parlor in New Hope, Pennsylvania. It was a hot day, and the ice cream in the cone that the helper was preparing began to drip a little. So he licked the drippy part and then handed the cone to the customer. Michele said the only sounds in the place were those of crickets chirping, pins dropping, and tumbleweeds rolling across the deserted streets.


It's okay. We'll put on gloves.

Feel free to drop me a line c/o the Algonquin

Yesterday was one for the charts at the store. My thoughts ranged from the exigent but really dangerous (chopping up all the broken down cardboard cartons to make a fire in the workroom so we could stay warm) to the illegal (whacking a customer upside the head with The New Variorum Edition Of Shakespeare, all 86 pounds worth, which would certainly redefine the expression "giving her the Works"). My nobility of mind and fear of arrest stayed my hand.

One of the hot sellers at the store is mood rings, which change color according to your mood or body temperature. Kids like them a lot, and adults who were kids in the seventies get all nostalgic and weepy when they see the rings.

Because our landlord figures it's more cost effective to cool the place when it's cold outside and to heat it in the middle of summer, the air conditioning was going full blast yesterday because it was 37 degrees with winds gusting to 40 mph. Becky came into the office with the tray of mood rings and said, "Call the landlord. It's so cold in here that all the mood rings are black."


Black: stressed, tense, harried, freezing your ears off.

The day was slow but steady. When I left for a while at 2:00, about a dozen guys on vintage Indian motorcycles were in the parking lot. Although they looked gnarly on their bikes, I bet they were all accountants and insurance actuaries. I wish I had asked them to line up nicely for a picture.

I went back in at 6:00 to help Perry. A woman and her two children came in shortly after I arrived. The two girls were about 8 and 10 years old, and they and their mother were grubby in a long-standing, sticky way. The mother seemed vague and abstracted as she wandered around. The girls, on the other hand, were having a good old time in the toy section, where they examined everything and commented loudly on all the products. The older girl asked if we had a public bathroom, and I said no and directed her to the museum next door, which was having an event and was open late. We don't usually let people use the bathroom in the store because we store household chemicals in there, and they have to pass through the workroom, which houses box cutters, tools, the paper cutter, sensitive information, and the staff's personal stuff.

The kids didn't go to the museum, and continued their loud discussion. The older girl read selections from various books to the younger one. They kept racing back and forth between their mother and the toys to tell their mom what they had found.

The older girl came back to the counter and showed me some magnetic earrings. "If these are half price," she asked, "how much are they?" I said, "They're regularly $2.50." I showed her the price tag and asked, "How much is half of $2.50?" She knitted her brow and was silent for a few moments. I tried to help by breaking the problem down. "How much is half of two?" She knitted her brow. I held up two fingers. "If the earrings cost two dollars, how much is half of two?" "One?" she asked. I figured if she had trouble dividing two by two, dividing 50 by two would be impossible, so I said, "These are $1.25." "Sweet!" she said, and went to show her mom. The younger one found a bird call.

Bird call: Here, birdy, birdy, birdy.

Finally, after an hour, they all hove up to the counter. They had found the bird call and the earrings. The mother handed me the laminated easy-fold roadmap of New Mexico and said she didn't want it after all. They paid for their purchase and left. As they walked to the door, I saw that the pants of the younger girl were sopping wet. I thought, you don't suppose she . . . .

I went around to the front of the counter, and there it was: a puddle of urine. I was really steamed because the kid had peed her pants on our carpet; the mother was apparently so oblivious that she didn't notice the wet pants, and if she did notice them, she didn't wonder how they got that way; and if she did know how they got that way, why she didn't offer to clean up the puddle.

I got out the Lysol disinfectant and carpet cleaner and started mopping up the puddle. Perry, who had been training a new employee, asked, "Do we have a biohazard?"

After a while my anger at the mother abated. Now I just feel sad for them.

"No, you smell. This has an odor."--Dad

Fragrances, scents, and odors are powerful memory triggers for me. Research has shown the link between odor and memory.

Robert Benchley wrote in "Saturday's Smells" (The Benchley Roundup) about his new pipe tobacco that "smells like Saturday, and frequently puts me in a chronic holiday mood." When I smell the scent of the Russian olive blossoms in the spring, for example, I'm transported back to grade school and anticipating the beginning of the Lassie League season. Pair the Russian olive blossoms with the scent of a leather softball glove and you really have something. I smell the odor of unwashed feet and am repelled, but when the same odor comes from a container of feta cheese, I anticipate a great meal of pizza with garlic, spinach, and feta. I used to enjoy the smell of woodsmoke a lot, but after the Cerro Grande Fire, not so much.

And, of course, we have the body odors of people. One of our staffers (no longer with us) at the store exuded a gamy air of oily flatulence that no Febreze could subdue; a colleague at Los Alamos National Laboratory smelled like six quarts of whole milk left on the porch in the summer sun for three weeks.

What odors, scents, fragrances, aromas, and smells bring back memories both good and bad for you?

Pad thai by night and bidet

Michele and I got together for lunch today at the local Thai restaurant. I had a noodle bowl with grilled pork, and Michele got her favorite curry with tofu. We stepped up to the counter to pay the bill and saw a stack of brochures offering a product not normally associated with restaurants (well, probably after you go to a restaurant). It seems we have our own local distributor now.