Stay The Fuck Away From Me, World

As my wife and I walked hand-in-hand up the path to the front door of my parents’ house, we spied an unfamiliar sticker affixed to the screen door.

If my mother could be summed up in a sticker, it would be this one.

Fearful, paranoid, constantly warding off the evil eye or evil bacteria or evildoers in general, she is a 5’2” hundred-odd-pound bundle of anxiety with stylish short hair and librarian glasses.

And, we love her. And not just because yesterday was Mother’s Day either.

Being greeted as we were by this new sticker last night made me smile, because nothing says “my mother” quite like a “stay the fuck away from me, world” sticker on the front door that’s approximately a full foot tall. If she could enclose the property in razor-wire without it looking institutional, she would do it. Because, really—why take a chance?

We do not take chances in my family. In fact, when my wife texted me while I was at work Saturday to let me know that she had an idea percolating about something special to do next weekend to celebrate my birthday, this was my reply:

“As long as it doesn’t involve me performing and/or socializing too much, or potentially risking my life or our lives outside of the normal risks, you should be okay. I love you.”

Ah, good old genetics. Thanks for those hand-me-down worry-warts, Mom.

Not only are my parents proudly displaying this boldly-hued burglar warning on their screen-door, they had two more of them, they had two more of them, in case my sister and I wanted one for either or both of our houses.

I politely declined. The previous owners of our house, also apparently scared straight by the wicked world, had already placed an older version of this sticker on our front door years ago. My sister declined because she’s an asshole.

The previous owners of our house also have metal grates on the basement windows, three locks on the basement door, and auxiliary locks on all the windows in the house, operated by small keys. I think we must be distantly related.

I love my mom and her paranoia and her fears, many of which I have inherited. While I don’t wake up covered in sweat after having nightmares about thousands of half-naked Koreans storming the beach like she does, I am, basically, afraid of everything. Seeing that sticker on the front door of their house reminded me of the day when I was in fifth grade and I stayed home from school sick. And I called the police because some scruffy-looking guy was crawling through our bushes in front of our house. Three radio cars with emergency lights ablaze responded in under three minutes. When he didn’t comply with their directions fast enough, he was taken down.

It was the guy from the water company trying to read our meter.

I was worried that, when my mother got home from work and found out what I'd done, that I'd gotten a menial public servant thrown to the ground because I was a tightly-wound, neurotic child who watched far too much "Rescue, 911" for his own good, that I would get in trouble, that she would be disappointed in me, ashamed of me, mad at me, bewildered and confused by me. But she wasn't any of those things. She held me close and said,

"I'm very proud of you-- I'd have done exactly the same thing."

Of course she would have.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I love your crazy, I love your sticker, and I love you.

Hold Me, For I am Scared

For someone who wants to be a cop, I sure scare easy. I pulled up in front of my office on Thursday morning and one of my neighbors walked up to my car and tapped lightly on the driver's side window. I screamed, "JEEE-SUS!" and jumped so high that my goddamned head almost cracked the sunroof glass. It's a good thing I'm not a cop yet, or I'd have drilled the woman between the eyes.

And that would have been sad-- because she was probably unarmed, and she is also very nice. And you know that's not a compliment I throw around a lot.

When you're Jewish and have forearms the girth of malnourished twigs, you tend to be scared of a lot of things, I find. Maybe it's because I'm hyperaware of things that could pose injury and/or death, or maybe it's just because life is inherently fragile and the world is inherently dangerous. My wife, sometimes to fill a brief conversational lull, will remark on how easy it would be to just drive her car into the opposing lane of traffic and slam into an oncoming car.

And then we enjoy pot pie night and watch "Jeopardy!"

Seriously, though-- life is full of dangers, not just my wife's metallic orange Honda Fit that you might want to pay a little extra attention to if you see it zipping around the next time you're tooling around suburban southeastern Pennsylvania.

What dangers, Mr. Apron, I am rhetorically hearing you ask yourself as you read my blog in a state of seminudness with Q-tips sticking out of both ears. Well, I'm glad you asked:

1.) ALL THAT SHIT UNDER THE HOOD OF YOUR CAR

Most of you who read this blog are female. We can all acknowledge this. I think Sebastian peaced out months ago, and I don't know what the hell happened to Jay. What is it with these British males and their sense of non-commitment? They could learn a thing or two from all of you Canadian women.

Anyway, being female, many of you may not spend much time under the hood of your car. I'm not saying this to be sexist, or an asshole, or even a sexist asshole. This sexist asshole-like statement is at least somewhat research-based. I conducted a psychological study (such as it was) back in college that had to do with knowledge of your own automobile. 10 male participants, 10 female participants. Each one had to answer thirty questions about not cars in general, but their own car. What does your speedometer go up to? How many cylinders are in your car's engine? Does your car have dual airbags? Does your car have Anti-Lock Brakes? Is your car a four-speed, five-speed, or six-speed? Does your car have a power driver's seat? Those kind of questions-- I even asked "What is the make and model and year of your car?"

The women all bombed. It was painful.

Anyway, maybe you do or maybe you don't spend a lot of time under the hood of your car. I think that's good. Do you know how many things under there can hurt, maim, and/or kill you? At least seven. All those belts and chains and fans-- and don't even get me started on the fucking battery! The first time as an EMT I had to jumpstart a stalled-out ambulance I almost passed out from the sickening anticipation that I was about to be electrocuted.

So, yeah, I'm scared of everything under the hood of my car. Except maybe for the windshield washer reservoir. But that scares me too, a little. When I fill it, a little pee comes out. Because the hood could slam down on my head at any second-- just like the sky on Henny Penny.

2.) GETTING HARRASSED

This is not one of my irrational fears-- because it happens a lot. I don't know-- maybe it was the moustache (which went the way of the dinosaurs yesterday, Halle-jew-yah!!!!!) but people seem to take great delight in shouting out random epithets at me. Some of them don't even make sense. Two black kids cornered me while I was taking out the trash at the theatre and asked me if those were my "real seeing glasses." They then informed me that I looked like a "big, ugly dyke" they know.

Nice.

I get that I'm probably not going to make it to the 10 Sexiest Men, but, really-- I don't think I look like the Elephant Man's cousin. What is it about me that attracts the random, negative attention? The only reason I haven't been jumped yet by these uncouth youths is because I am usually able to resist the urge to blurt out something about hate-fucking their grandmothers' corpse-mouth.

3.) GETTING JUMPED

As I get older, my patience with the random epithets will most likely wane and I worry that I will soon no longer be able to resist corpse-mouth replies. And then I will get my head stomped on. And then I really will look like the Elephant Man's cousin.

4.) GETTING INTOXICATED

Sooner or later, a situation is going to present itself where I will cave to the immense psycho-social pressures of society and either imbibe a licentious quantity of alcoholic beverage or snort rat poison just to be accepted into some writer's clique or, depending on how the next couple years go, plumber's union. I've never been drunk or stoned or high before, and the idea of it scares me. My brain is so fucked up and haywire as it is, I don't know if it could handle the introduction of some hallucinogenic or depressive substance. Kind of like adding a 438th ingredient to Salsa-Flavored Doritos.

5.) MY FAMILY

No joke-- my family scares the shit out of me. They're weird and unpredictable and say fucked up things, and, since my sister's baby was born we're all completely manic depressive. Any one of us is capable of pretty much anything at this point. Eight years ago, a girl broke up with me because my family was "too boring." Well, that was part of the problem. Another part was that I liked cuddling and she didn't.

So, my family legitimately scares me. Chances are they'll just putter and worry themselves into their graves without much fuss, but there is the outside chance that the stress of life will compel my mother to violently rapel, SWAT-style, through the glass booth of the local college radio station and start broadcasting mind-control messages in some invented language and my father will become a gay porn star who always wears sunglasses.

6.) THE DOGS

One is elderly, one is a puppy. I'm scared the old one is going to die, and I'm scared the young one is going to make me kill myself. Honestly, one more turdlette on the rug and I might throw myself down the stairs with a bedsheet tied around my slender, swan-like-though-hairy neck.

7.) UNEMPLOYMENT

I know it's so cool that "everybody's doing it" these days, but when my job ends on August 27th, I'm petrified that I won't have a job, even a shitty-assed lousy one for which I am intensely overqualified, for me to do. This fear is justified because I've applied for at least thirty shitty-assed, lousy jobs for which I am intensely overqualified, and nobody's called me back. Maybe I should start applying for Human Resource jobs. I'd love to get paid for not calling anybody back all day.

8.) TELEVISION

I'm afraid that I watch it too much. And, yet, whenever someone I know talks about or references something that happened recently on TV, I invariably have no clue about what the fuck they're talking about.

9.) DYING

Come on-- you didn't think you were going to get a Top 10 Fears list from ME and have that one missing, did you? Please.

10.) GETTING SALMONELLA POISONING

My wife and I bake a lot, and she's a spoon-licker. Every time she does it, she looks at me with this naughty grin and lifts her eyebrows up and down. And she never gets sick. I don't get it. You people who eat cookie dough are fucking balls-up rebels. And you're also nutty thrill-seekers. Why don't you just run your tongues along the rims of your toilet bowls?

Travel Plans

My wife's funny.

We're trying to decide where to go on vacation this summer.

"We should go on one last big trip before we have a baby," she says. That sounds reasonable enough.

"Great," I reply. Where?"

"Oh, I don't know. Somewhere on a plane."

"Ah."

My wife loves to try and get me to do things I hate doing-- like recycling. And flying. She's not particularly dying to travel somewhere intercontinentally, but she wants to fly somewhere with me-- to get me out of my comfort zone. She feels this is good for me, the way that fathers feel that football is good for their pale, gawky, awkward sons. This sometimes covert, sometimes overt prodding is very similar to her insistence that I hold other peoples' children. I know part of the reason she wants me to do it is so that I get comfortable doing it, so that I'll hold our own child when we have one, and part of the reason she does it is so she can get that warm, gushy, schmoopy feeling a woman can only get when she sees her husband cradling a child, thus proving that he's not a total immature, knuckle-dragging, incompetent, retarded asshole. Every woman wants not to think that about her husband, and, even if it's true, no man really looks like that when he's holding a child, unless he's holding it upside-down, or over a balcony railing (no offense to the recently deceased).

We were originally planning on returning to Maine, like we had done last summer, only we would venture a little farther North than we did last year, to explore more of the state. I have recently been reading "Northwest Passage," an extremely poorly-written (lots of misuse of the contraction "it's" which is just unforgivable in a published work) biography of Stan Rogers, and then the idea hit me.

"Hey! Why don't we go to Maine for a little bit and then, you know, just keep going-- up to Halifax or Nova Scotia. We can go to a different country-- without flying!"

At first, my wife saw this for what it was: a totally transparent cop-out by an errant, insipid coward, but, the more I talked the idea up, the more it began to grow on her. Her parents had been up that way for a wedding recently and had nice things to say about the area. Bob, our friend who is building a master closet for us had been there with his wife and son and loved it.

"You know, instead of doing the drive, which friends of mine have done and they say it's lovely, but long, you can catch the auto ferry from Portland."

My wife's ears perked up at this. Here was an opportunity to go where I wanted to go, but to make me do another thing I don't like: travel by water.

Several years ago, we took the auto ferry from Plattsburgh, New York to Vermont and there are a couple pictures of me clutching onto the railing for dear life with a wince on my face that gives the impression some unseen bully had just smeared fresh blueberries all over my pants and called me a "faggot" but I was told I still had to smile for the picture. I think I ended up negotiating with my wife that, if I made it for the first half of the trip (probably around six minutes) that I could sit in the car for the remainder of the watery voyage.

I am very well aware that I am going to die one day, probably of a respiratory-related ailment, and though I'd like to put that off for as long as possible through constant calls to my doctor and a steady diet of maintenance inhalers, I am also pretty fanatical about avoiding dangerous situations that may hasten my demise. These situations include, but are in no way limited to:

Flying.

Taking the train.

Going out on a boat.

Flying.

Mowing the lawn.

Repairing the roof.

Walking during a thunderstorm.

Driving during a thunderstorm.

Flying during a thunderstorm.

Shoveling snow.

Getting into altercations or arguments with unknown entitites.

Parking near a BRINKS armored car.

Visiting an ATM after 7pm.

Eating the contents of any can with a visible dent.

Consuming food products past the expiration date.

Consuming medication past the expiration date.

Using public lavatories.

So I try to minimalize my chances of early demise by avoiding as many of those, and other, activities as I can, and yet, I still do lots of them-- though I'm pretty diligent about the dented can rule. You can easily spot me in the supermarket: I'm the guy obsessively fondling every goddamn can in the aisle like I'm a blind fetishist or something. But I'm really not at all crazy about flying, especially if there's no pressing reason to other than to get me to do it more (and of course, statistically, the more frequently you do it, the greater are your chances of dying while doing it-- so there) especially right before we're about to start trying to conceive. It'll make for an absolutely awful local news interview with my mom or sisters after we die over the Atlantic:

"And they were just about to start trying to have a baby.... *Boo hoo hoo!*"

Jesus-- fucking awful-- is that what I want the community to hear about me and my wife? During our honeymoon flight from Jakarta to Bali, the plane started going up and down like a fucking Yo-Yo, and that was all I could think about-- the inevitable, terrible interview sob-story that the vultures would just eat up:

"And *sniff sniff* they were on their honeymoon!"

Awful. Just fucking awful.

No thank you. I'll take that goddamn auto ferry, though. When's the last time one of those went down?

No, seriously-- will someone wikipedia that shit for me? I'm too scared to do it myself.

Kim Jong Ill'in

Is anybody else scared that North Korea is successfully testing nuclear weapons?

What the hell is Kim Jong Ill playing at? I haven't been this scared of a little guy in a jumpsuit since Richard Simmons.

I'm sorry, K.J.I., but I kind of don't really have room in my psychosis for being scared of being nuked. I'm scared of too many other things. I think, if I were alive during the time of the Cold War, when America lived in constant fear of getting zapped by those Vodka-swilling fur-heads, I would have had to be institutionalized. And being institutionalized in the 1950s, I have no doubt, was not fun. Just ask Chief Bromden.

I will endeavor, though, to eek out a little bit of room in my cluttered, crammed, trembling little brain for the fear of nuclear holocaust, but I'm telling you, North Korea, it isn't going to be easy.

See, I'm already afraid of:

* Getting electrocuted

As a new homeowner of what probably constitutes to most people as "a fixer-upper" this is a very inconvenient fear. Currently, our house has virtually no lightswitch covers. This is the result of a combination of laziness on our part because, after the first floor got painted we just never replaced the switch covers and theft on the part of whoever stripped the first floor of wallpaper-- some of our switch covers just, um, disappeared. Conveniently. There must be a huge black market desire for lightswitch covers-- especially the ones with two slots. Those bastards are just so freaking cool. Because all of our switchplates are uncovered, I know that, one day, I'm going to try to flip on a lightswitch after taking a shower and my boney index finger, instead of hitting the switch, will entrench itself deep within the open caverns of tubes and wires inside the wall and I will be turned Extra Tasty Crispy in about four seconds flat.

I wish I wasn't afraid of getting electrocuted. There are two hideous sconces that need to be replaced in our bedroom. There are lighting issues in the basement. There should be motion-sensing lights outside in the driveway. If I wasn't so afraid of getting shocked, I'd fix all this shit. As it is, I'm happy to get our electrician to do it for me, but he's almost 90 years old and doesn't show up when we schedule appointments. Maybe he's dead.

* Getting baptized

According to published reports and crime statistics, drive-by baptisms are on the rise. Just last week, a 76-year-old woman in Mozambique was accosted by three unidentified men who shoved her head inside a public toilet bowl as they shouted, "You are now one with Christ!" The other day, an undercover Christian posing as a rabbi wearing a fake beard and polystyrene nose tried to baptize a Yeshiva student in a mikvah, but was unsuccessful. Baptisms are beautiful things, but only when perpetrated against the willing. I'm just not ready to accept Christ. Not until he pays me back the $23.76 he owes me from that dinner we were supposed to split at Applebee's.

And those kooky Mormons complicate matters in this arena by insisting on conducting postmortem baptisms on Jews. They say that they've stopped, but, come on.

* Getting tortured

I have dark hair and a beard, so I know that, sooner or later, some jarhead is going to be attaching car battery cables to my nipples in some dark basement. Isn't this fear a nice complement to my fear of electrocution?

* Getting cast in a Japanese instructional video

For any down-on-his-luck actor, this is worse than doing porn, even Japanese porn where the women all make that annoying, high-pitched squeal even though they're getting penetrated by guys whose shafts are as big as a thumbnail. I just don't want to be the businessman sitting at a park bench in some recording studio and have to endure take after take of a young, Japanese schoolgirl coming up to me, clutching her stomach and yelling, "I haba bad kase ob die-ya-ree-yah!"

* Getting old

I don't mind the increasing amounts of fuzz on/in my ears or the prospect of growing bitchtits, but I do fear everything that comes along with getting old like becoming out-of-touch with pop culture, style, trends, technology, comedy, culture, table conversation, logic, and the latest advances in airport security. I also don't want to start smelling like that. Is there something you can wear when you're old to not make you smell like... that?

* Getting taunted

I'm so afraid of being made fun of that I will not, under any circumstances, attend a stand-up comedy event for fear that the individual at the microphone will peer out into the audience, quickly identify me as the most painfully awkward person there, and mercilessly and accurately attack me about everything from my shoes to my haircut to my outwardly obvious array of abberant behaviors. Even when my best friend, Dave, scored a stand-up gig at our college, I refused to attend. And, nearly a decade later, he's still pissed at me.

Unfortunately, I was unable to avoid attending middle school.

* Dying second

Statistically, I'm almost positive that this won't happen. Mrs. Apron's a year younger than me, she's a vegetarian, I'm not, and I routinely send myself over the edge in terms of stress, anxiety, paranoia and obsessive worry. This all bodes for a heart attack or stroke somewhere within the next eight minutes. Death really doesn't frighten me that much, as long as I'm first.

* Getting attacked by the dog

Sure we play rough and he's as gentle as a sedated lamb, sure he lets me stick goopy medication down his ear canal without so much as a flinch. Sure he lets me shove Benadryl down his throat without growling at me. One day, though-- one day I know that, as I'm softly petting him or rubbing his belly he's going to whip around and sink his teeth right into my neck so deeply that he'll probably decapitate me in one fell swoop. Dogs are like that, you know.

* Richard Simmons

I know I kind of addressed this at the very beginning of this post, but it bears repetition. Get the fuck away from me, please. I'd rather get my mung ass baptized a thousand times than be alive and in the same time zone with you.