"Death by Chinese: Only After the General Tsao's Chicken Has Welded Your Arteries Shut and, Spiraling to the Ground, You're Stabbed in an Artery by a Pair of Chopsticks"

The background to this story is so simple that I'm actually going to try to keep it that way.

I know.

But give a girl credit for good intentions.

Truth is, it's late, which means the tv screen is only broadcasting windchill temperatures for towns up by the Canadian border, so I need to go to bed or at least head upstairs and read because that'll mean my body will be a few feet further away from the boxes of Thin Mints, Thanks-a-Lotses, Carmel Delites, and Peanut Butter Patties that keep trying to leap into my mouth.

Here's what you need to know:

1) My six-year-old, Paco (his W-2 reads "Wee Niblet"), loves China and all things Chinese, especially that saucy minx, Madame Mao. Okay, also gongs and dragons. And maybe not so much Madame Mao. Like they even learn about her in kindergarten. With the size of today's classes and all the irrelevant No Child Left Behind standardized testing, they're lucky if they manage to get as far as Mussolini in their "Famous Mercurial World Leaders" unit by the end of the school year. Madame Mao has to wait for first grade. And for reincarnation. 'Cause she's dead. Pretty much, she'd be lucky to go to first grade, at this point.

2) Paco has a best friend, Tappy. Tappy is a real person although the pseudonym I've just made up for him here makes him sound like a pet woodpecker. But, really, Tappy exists. He, too, goes to kindergarten and actively knows nothing about Madame Mao.

3) Last week, I took Paco and Tappy (and all their many imaginary friends, including Paco's pal Surrpy) to see a noon-time concert in the cafeteria at my college. While the boys did make french fries dance on the table while we were there, the formal performance was, in fact, given by a troupe of Chinese musicians who play traditional instruments. At the start of the program, Surrpy rushed the stage. It got kind of ugly when the Hell's Angels security guards beat him down.

Gawd. He's only a toddler, and he's invisible.

Biker security is hardcore.


This is the Chinese group, playing at a different college the week before:



In a total random sidenote--and wasn't I doing so well with keeping things simple?--a little bit after the performance, the entire group of female musicians went into the bathroom to change out of their show clothes and into jeans and hoodies before they were treated to hamburgers in the cafeteria. As it turns out, I had to pee. When I opened the bathroom door and waded into all eight of them half-naked, it was incredibly unnerving to see all their heads swivel and have them call out, loudly and in unison, "HIIIIIIIII!" Fearing a group hug, I wanly gestured a sort of "howdeedoo-you-scare-me" and ducked into the nearest stall, where I contemplated the advantages and disadvantages of joining The People's Party upon my exit. Advantage: I could take off my shirt in public. Disadvantage: I'd be taking off my shirt in public. Bigger disadvantage: I'd be surrounded their pert "HIIIII"s which would emphasize the saggingness of my "howdeedoo"s.


Refocusing now on the main event:

Just at the concert's end, the college's hail-fellow-well-met history instructor, seeing me there with two kids still young enough to be dazzled that they were drinking pop, came over to our table to make nice and ask how the boys had liked the performance. Naturally, the lads sat and stared at him, frozen and mute, Sprite bottles locked to their lips.

As I do, I piped up. "Oh, they really enjoyed it. Both of these little guys really love China. Paco here even has announced he's going to live there when he grows up."

Continuing the nice, History Instructor asked of Tappy, "And how about you? Do you want to live there, also?"

Feeling the fizz of bubbles up his nose, Tappy did a strange grin/grimace as he responded, "I do, but only if they don't kill me."

Beat.


Beat.

Huh?

Even I couldn't think of a quick load of crap to throw at my colleague to push us past that one. All I could come up with was, "Uh? What? You mean you want to live there before you die, Tappy?"

With a tiny burp, Tappy--whose family are devoted members of the Assemblies of God, as it turns out--carried on, "No, I mean that in China they point a rifle at your chest and ask you in a mean voice, 'DO YOU BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST?' So they'd probably kill me. I think I'm just going to live in California."

And again with the awkward beat of bewildered silence.

Plus another, during which I resisted noting that while he has a point about human rights abuse, we could also--IF HE WEREN'T SIX--discuss the statistical likelihood of dying at the wrong end of a gun in the U.S., particularly in California. We'll let Madame Mao give that lecture next year, in first grade.

So, hmmmmmmm...


What to say to my stunned-looking fellow brain enlightener who, incidentally, has spent a career specializing in Chinese history, politics, and culture?

Gurgling, I managed to jerk my head towards Tappy and choke out an inane, "I think maybe it's the first time he's had Sprite."

Without another word, History Instructor fled to the haven of his office.

Not able to flee, exactly, what with being in charge of all kindergarteners Saved and Unsaved, I took the next best option and informed the boys that I had to go to the bathroom and they'd have to wait just outside.

In the bathroom, as you well know, I was faced with a brigade of Chinese who did, indeed, point their weapons directly at me.

Praise Jeebus, but it's a miracle I made it out alive.



Here are a couple minutes of the music ensemble playing that day in the cafeteria. Keep your eyes peeled for rifles and Surrpy.

"If a Tree Falls in the Backyard, Does It Make a Sound If Only the Mail Carrier Is There to Hear It?"

Now, first off, I'm not complainin'.

But the skies around here have been pretty unstable lately, with words like "low pressure system" and "cold front" being bandied about by the weatherheads. Translation: it's blessedly cool and lovely...but it's also raining in eight-minute-spates about five times each day. That, too, is good and fine. We likes the water here in garden country.

However, the other day, the Weather God got into a bit of a snit and stirred up a day of seriously-strong wind gusts. Exhibit A: I was attemtping to exit my favorite coffee shop, iced hazelnut latte in paw, when I was suddenly, completely, literally unable to push the door open. I turned my back to the door, even, and put my legs behind it. No luck. I couldn't budge the door even a fraction, as it was held shut by the wind.

Fortuitously, a nice woman, her skirt tossed up over her ears (thank heavens she opted to wear her knickers that windy morning, even if they were of the dingey grey granny variety), blew up to the building and worked the door from the other side. Our combined female might finally did the job.

Still skeptical about the force of the gusts? I give you, then, Exhibit B (formerly known as Our Park-Like Backyard):

Yea, so we gusted home that day from the coffee shop and various errand runnings, only to discover that one of our lovely trees had dramatically toppled onto our neighbors' fence. According to all laws of Nature, of course, it was predestined that the fence be spankin' new, the screws barely dry, the paint barely drilled in. The only witness to the blowdown was the mail carrier, who was still breathless and awed as he recounted the moment of "tiiiimmmmbbber" to us; later that evening, he began a continued stalking of the downed tree when he drove by it several times, his wife in tow, before ultimately converting his mail truck into a tour bus that he now uses to shuttle passengers down the alley on a daily schedule of 1 p.m, 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. (his microphoned commentary of "The Mighty Arbor met its fate under dour skies on July 10th, in the year of Our Lord two-thousand-ought-ought-seven" is already wearing on us).

So now we have a little disaster in the backyard, and I don't mean The Wee Niblet pouting on the swing mid-afternoon, when his needs for a nap and a snack combine to make him a fearsome beast. No, I mean we have this big, dead, formerly luscious tree laying like a passed-out sorority girl, unconscious atop our recently-transplanted raspberry canes.

And I find that

I mourn the loss of the tire swing that hung from its branches.

I mourn the loss of the knotted climbing rope that led neighborhood children up the bark.

I mourn the loss--deep in my gut--of the tree itself, for the whole thing, even that which still stands upright, has to come down, and its corpse must undergo a complete hack-job. Quite out of proportion to the event itself, I mourn the death of this glorious old behemoth. I am profoundly, even mawkishly, sad.

But even more deeply and profoundly, I mourn the clean-up estimate dropped with a loud clang onto our checkbook today by the local tree service. That's got my heart hurting more than anything, for our bank account had already been severely depleted by the recent big road trip and rental of the U-Haul. And now this new bill looms larger than any sale of Hummels and vintage Rosenthal china (my mom bought it in France in 1960, and we have 88 pieces of it, and it's not at all foofy, and you know you want it!) can recoup.

*big sigh of financial woe*

The Children would so have enjoyed college, too.

Without a college education, they'll be virtually useless, right? Sans degree, I'm pretty sure they'll never be able to support us handsomely in our dotage, and isn't that the point of progeny?

Thus, the sign on my front lawn needs to change from "Hummels for Sale" to "Children for Sale." One of them can just about push the vacuum, and the other is able to laze in the bathtub for an hour and a half without supplemental oxygen. Clearly, they are valuable additions to any household that almost needs vacuuming and is short on air. I'll even toss in a discount if you buy both kids AND the Rosenthal china, 'k? Like five dollars off.

So here's the deal: you buy 'em; you send 'em to college; and then you send 'em back here to Ma and Pa. By then, we may have just about paid off the damn tree debt.

But you can keep the china.