MORNINGS WITH MO AND CURLY: The Modern Family in Action
Supposedly, if you fold a large piece of paper in
half again and again for fifty times, you get the world's largest spitball.
Nah, you supposedly get a folded paper that would reach to the moon. I cannot imagine how that can be so,
but it's supposed to be an illustration of geometric progression and I read it
in a hardcover book, so it must be true.
The book is called The
Tipping Point, and it is written by
Malcolm Gladwell. It describes how
ideas spread through our society in a viral manner. Fascinating stuff, but just a casual brain exercise
until I witnessed the Tipping Point in my own home.
Here's what happened-Mo
(my son) and Curly (my husband) and I (Larry, I guess) suddenly achieved
bathroom/ dressing room/ kitchen gridlock on the same morning. See, until Ken (Curly) got a job in
town (and I'm not complaining about that, mind you), Mo and I had a kind of
beautiful routine worked out. I
would awaken, write a few lines in my journal while overlooking the garden and
being overlooked by a four-leaf clover. Nah‚ being overlooked by a
budding sunrise. My golden hair
tumbling gently over my velvet apron,
I would then sweetly awaken the softly-sleeping Mo by shaking the bamboo
stakes which he has installed around his compound. (Part of that sentence is true; can you find and circle the parts that are NOT?) While the little prince performed his
morning ablutions, I would cook
him a nutritious and well-presented balanced breakfast, saving just the
smallest bowl of gruel for myself because I am the Long-Suffering and Martyred
Mother.
He would arrive
downstairs handsomely and warmly arrayed in the clothing he and I had selected
and laid out the night before on the gleaming oak dressing table. Beaming, he would eat, carefully
placing his folded damask napkin next to his soiled plate very near the sink
when finished, and delivering a sweet kiss to my flawless cheek as I readied
his scholarly materials. Then, with
a flourish befitting a young Liberace‚ or maybe even Eminem‚ he
would begin to play lovely classical piano compositions for me until I rang a
tiny silver-throated bell and we proceeded to our Pathfinder chariot, which I
had prewarmed against the morning chill.
All that was possible
because Curly (Ken) had already risen hours before and quietly stolen all the
bagels..nah, quietly stolen away
into the predawn chill, leaving
only a sweet note of morning greeting behind on the armoire.
We-e-ell, let me tell you about yesterday morning now.
The dressing room light
is positioned so it just clears the French doors which afford access to our
boudoir. My Curly is a regularly
sensitive guy-he generally either secures the doors or douses the light before
it can blast me like the morning express train from my slumber. But this day-because our new
"shedule" is not perfected-nay not even close-, Curly cruelly
crucified my frontal lobe by flinging apart the aforementioned doors and
shouting, to my astonished ears, "What color are my PANTS?" I could not fathom the light, thinking
maybe I had been raptured up into a bad place, and could certainly not fathom
the question. "Are they
GREEN?" he demanded to know.
"Yes, green," I managed, and off he went like the White Rabbit down
the rabbithole.
I was just drifting back
into the arms of slumber when once again he burst upon the scene.
"What color is this
shirt?" he cried,
distraught. "Does it
clash?"
I gazed upon a shirt that
rivaled Joseph's many-colored dreamcoat.
"Perfect," I
pronounced and off he dashed.
But minutes later
crashing sounds issued from the bath.
BEEPING and moaning too horrible to speculate upon. Then the shower sound-shrieking
and moaning from Curly as Mo (Alex) arose to make ready from school. You know the problem-one bathroom and
only one. Anyone running cold
water anywhere can lobsterize anybody else anywhere else in the house. Come on, you do so know. You lived in such a house.
I lay abed and imagined Mo
in our past Golden Mornings-playing my favorite, a piece we came to call "Furry Lisa," or the Hirsuit Girl. (It was months before I read the title
on the musical arrangement and found it was really "Fer Elisa.") But, you see, what makes this a modern tale is that I have a job
as well.
I won't bore you with the
gruesome details, but somewhere in there I had to have a shower too-a very
chilly shower. And breakfast has
now become Poptarts and Coca Cola-nah, but it does perhaps lack at least one major angle of the food
triangle-the one that calls for edible substances in the food. And getting out the door, well,
just peruse the following dialogue:
Curly: Where are my keys?
Me: They are on the keyrack.
Curly: Where is my Palm Pilott?
(Note to readers: when I typed
"PalmPilot," a freaky little message just popped up on my computer
screen suggesting a "PilotDesktopIkon"! It's the same annoying little noodge that pops up when I
start to type a dang letter-a paperclip with Groucho Marx eyebrows that says in
his dialogue bubble "It looks like you are typing a letter. Need help?"-it's darned unnerving
if you ask me. Do I look stupid?)
Curly: Where is my Palm Pilot? (happened again.)
Me: Try your brief case. (A Palm Pilot organizes one's
life. Do you see a problem?)
Curly: Have you seen my keys?
So then Curly slams out
the door.
Mo: Mo-oo-o-o-o-m? Have you seen my Math book? (I heard the dulcet sound of
something "tipping.")
Me: Yes. It's very attractive.
Mo: Never mind. Have you seen my hat?
Me: Also nice looking.
Mo: Mo-o-o-o-o-om!!!! (with eyerolling and exasperation.)
Then, my world returns to normal as I watch
Mo slip out the door-and I do mean slip-we use more salt than Jay's potato chip
factory and still it's a rink out there.
Me: (to the cats) Where's my schoolbag?
So I don't know if I could fold a paper
fifty times for any reason-that may indeed be the trick. In fact, I feel lucky to just have time to READ a paper these
mornings. And about that shower
gridlock. I know all about the
shrieking and the boiling water bath-but I still don't know where the beeping
came from.
Gay
Davidson-Zielske