Just About Right (Or: Yay! More Birdshit, Please!)

Once, a long time ago, I wrote a personal essay about my father. It began this way:

"Life's different for kids whose fathers have killed people. I don't know exactly how-- it just is."

I think this is true for the kids of gangbangers, as well as for kids whose fathers participated in more sanctioned, though I'm sure just as rabid, killing as part of the Israeli Army. Though I wrote that sentence a long time ago, I still think it's true today.

Here's another sentence that's kind of like that first one:

Life's different for people who've had birds shit in their eye.

Again, I speak from experience.

On Sunday, I was standing outside moving scenery into the ill-fated U-Haul, and I was chatting away with this volunteer about the logistics of loading the Darling family's fireplace into the truck when my left eye went all warm all of a sudden and I couldn't see out of it-- but I could still see out of the right one just fine.

"That's funny," I can remember thinking to myself, "I can't wink."

Then I looked, through my right eye, of course, down at my shirt and it not featured about a three-and-a-half-inch-long stain-- deep blueish-purple in hue.

"What happened?" the volunteer asked me.

"Well," I said, "either God is having some kind of Polaner All-Fruit party up there or some motherfucking bird just shat all over my face."

Indeed, in truth-- nay-- i'faith, I fear it was the latter.

I'm different now.

I no longer look at birds the same way as I used to-- in that innocuous, half-caring way that most people do. "Oh, was that a finch?" we blithely say to each other as we drive past, not really giving a damn if it was or if it wasn't.

They're not finches or bluejays or cardinals anymore. Now, they're all Public Enemy #1. And they're all loaded.

The people I was with on Sunday all had a rollicking laugh at my expense, and everyone to whom I've told this little yarn has had the same response:

"It's good luck!"

Yes. Good luck. And may the same good luck visit you, too, friend-- preferably when you're smiling for a picture or about to kiss your mistress on the pussy. I think it's funny when people remark on what good luck terrible things are. Like rain when you're about to get married in an outdoor ceremony during a monsoon with no back-up venue. I wonder if getting shot in the face with a 12-guage is good luck. Perhaps getting branded in the chest with a red-hot poker is also equally fortuitous. I wouldn't know. But, one day, I probably will.

Lucky me.

As I stood there, frozen momentarily, as I suspect most people who've just had their eye shat into probably are, I thought to myself, "Well, this is just about right." I say that because I'm the kind of person who has, heretofore, walked around his entire life believing and billing himself to be the exact kind of person into whose eye a bird would be likely to shit. However, the compelling fact remained that, prior to Sunday evening, that particular incident had not yet occured. Sure, I've broken dishware in the presence of a girl I was trying to impress/seduce: and that felt about right, too. Sure, I've urinated all over my hands in the bathroom while trying to psyche myself up for meeting my first girlfriend's parents-- and that felt just about right, too. I have also fallen down steps and inexplicably blurted out sexual things in pubic (see?) and been caught staring at cleavage by said cleavage's responsible party and I've also sent emails with nasty, snarky things about people directly to them instead of to the person with whom I was supposed to-- and that's all felt just about right, too. But something was always missing from this persona I've created for myself, the image of the hapless schlep to whom inordinately ridiculous, funny, disgusting, unfortunate things happen-- just... because.... it would be just about right for those things to happen, you know, to him.

But now, loves: a bird has shat its way through my left eyeglass lens, into my eye and down my shirt.

And that feels just about right.