Make a Wish

When you deal with little children, you break your back to ensure that they're happy, at whatever personal inconvenience of yours, or those around you.

It's a capital offense, for instance, to disturb the sleep of a baby-- at least, it is in my neck of the woods, and I suspect that it is in yours, too. And I'm not entirely convinced that it's displaced youngest child syndrome at work when I ask, "Um, why?" Why must I receive a detailed text message from my eldest sister with instructions about how I am to enter the house in which I was raised because my nephew is asleep?

"When u come over today; mom says to go around to the side of the house and tap lightly on the side door-- DO NOT use your key inside the front door in case the baby's sleeping, and DON'T CALL the office number. Thnx."

I didn't go over anyway-- I just wasn't interested. God forbid I should fart and wake the kid up.

When we were children, my parents broke their backs trying to please us, and they usually did, even though they combined to raise three of the most impossible to satisfy children that ever came around these parts. We're... particular, each in our own way. One thing they always did for each of us, to make us feel special, to make us happy, was decorate the dining room when it was time for our birthdays. When we were younger, they would surreptitiously stash decorations-- streamers mostly-- in the hall closet and, when we would feign sleep on the night before our birthdays, they would stay up late, draping the now long-gone dining room ceiling light fixture with streamers, twisted just right. Occupying the bedroom downstairs, I could hear the plastic stchrtch of the Scotch tape dispenser two rooms away as my mother and father worked together.

As we grew older, maybe perhaps we chanced to think that this tradition might stop. But, as my eldest sister turned thirty, and then forty, and the dining room was still decorated, with matching plates, napkins and cups, we knew that this was for good. Very good. Now my wife and I do it for each other, in our own home. And, last night, we went over to my family's house for my eldest sister's forty-third birthday.

Forty. Three.

Pink streamers. Pink and black spotted paper cups and plates. Pink table cloth. And there she sat, the angelfood cake covered in white icing and funfetti that she had requested from us in front of her, bathed in the light of a single candle, wishing for a full three minutes. My sister. Long, fine, blond hair parted down the center, falling in front of her ears, elegant wire-rimmed glasses gently sliding down the tip of her nose. My parents in their sweatshirts. My wife in her double hoodies, well-prepared for the frigid conditions of my old home. Me in one of my father's sweatshirts, somehow still continually ill-prepared, or resistant, or in denial, or forgetful, or impervious. Willful. Stupid. Arrogant. Silly.

The baking of the cake involved a lot of willfulness, stupidity, arrogance, and silliness. A fight with my wife. A loud one, a painful one. We're married-- it happens. Time constraints, poor planning, poorer communication-- confectioner's sugar. Pressure. Heat. Family.

It happens.

We're all in love with each other here, so it's no big deal, and this pain is part of what makes us whole, I suppose. Family birthdays are notoriously melancholy around here, and maybe it's because they revolve around memories and things or feelings that we're trying to get back to that maybe aren't possible anymore. It's hard not to get disappointed when the demons you're chasing were just so darn good.

Happy Birthday.

30 Minutes at Home

What can one do when one has 30 minutes at home? After eight hours of negotioting one's way through a myriad milieu of psych patients, one laughing uproariously as he swings a shit-filled "Attends" diaper over their head like a cowboy might swing a lasso, one crying for no apparent reason, another attempting to pick a fight with two broken arms and a brain full of cobwebs, an hour-long, sunglare-filled commute home (plus a pitstop at Chipotle to bring home bulging burrito dinner for self and goodlady wife), a half-hour in between work and alleged play-- rehearsal for gay operetta that nobody will come to see. A rehearsal that will begin with another car door slam at 5:45pm and one more at 10:45pm (if we don't fuck up that badly).

What does one do?

One blogs.

Hi. I love you.

Blargh.

Oh, and Happy Veteran's Day. Um... there's lots more I'm forgetting. But, today, there's just no time.

AAAAAAAAAAH!

Or, as Cathy would say, "AAAAAAAAAACK!"

My swimsuit doesn't fit.

Ready? Aim? Shave!

There's a war out there, my friend.

And I'm not talking about this namby-pamby, heard-it-all-before shit going on in Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm not talking about Northern Ireland or Bosnia or even the Sierra Leone or Tibet. No, an epic and volatile struggle for power is happening right under our noses. And under our chins. And along our jawlines. Not to mention our pubey-pubes, if we are so inclined.

That's right, kids, I'm talking about the Razor War.

Oh, you haven't heard about it?

Well, apparently, it's been raging like an irritated patch of neck skin since 2003, and it's a war being fought by razor companies Schick and Gillette.

Now, I, frankly, never was really aware that there was a Razor War going on in the world, but, apparently, I'm ignorant of a lot more than that, so my own personal obliviousness shouldn't be too much a surprise but, ever since my wife informed me of this state of warfare, I have become, shall we say, piqued?

Product war itself is nothing new. Pepsi vs Coca Cola, Chevrolet vs Ford, Aunt Jemima vs Uncle Ben, Honda vs Toyota, Vagisil vs Dyosport, Wagner operas vs getting hit in the face repeatedly with a cast-iron Ebelskiver pan... you know. But it can truly be said that there is no consumer product war going on than the fight for razor superiority being waged in magazine ads everywhere, fought long and hard by Schick and Gillette.

Now, when I first heard that there was a war going on betweeen these two razor companies, I immediately put my money on Schick, thinking they were German. I mean, "Sccchiccck," right? But, after a cursory investigation (the kind I conduct most frequently) I realized that Schick was not German at all, but English! A subsidiary of a long-forgotten company called Wilkinson Sword, established in 1772 to manufacture-- you guessed it-- swords! Oh, and guns, typewriters, bayonets, gardening tools, 850cc motorcycles, and an in-line four cylinder engine for a quaint British motorcar called "The Deemster."

The fact remains that, through its alterations, mergers, and acquisitions, Wilkinson Sword has always been interested in sharp pointy things that have the potential to draw blood, harkening back to that ancient, English desire to repress its thumping, palpable desire for sex and violence.

Ever read "Hamlet"?

While sword production itself ceased in 2005, Wilkinson Sword (through its threatening, Germanic-sounding brand-name, Schick) has been busily trying to gain ground in the razor war against its faggy-sounding competitor, Gillette. Though sounding French and, therefore, gay, Gillette is number one in razor sales globally, though, for some reason, Schick has cornered the Japanese market. I think there's a racist joke in there somewhere, but I'm too tired to help it materialize. You're welcomed to have a go at it in the comments section.

Anyway, I've been thinking about this so-called Razor War for a good long while now (and by "good long while now" I mean "as I type this sentence") and I think Schick and Gillette are going about this all wrong. See, they're waging this war by inventing new razory-type products and devising new, clever advertising campaigns, full-page glossies in my car magazines (yes, I read car magazines-- surprised?) and tired, careworn reinventions of the same old thing. While I have never served in the armed forces, my father has, and I think I know a vicarious thing or two about warfare, and I am convinced that Schick and Gillette are going about this Razor War thing all wrong.

I think they need to start actually killing each other.

If you think about it-- it's the only sure way for one company to gain world supremacy over the other. Honestly? There's only so many times you can reinvent a goddamn blade that cuts your fucking hair off, right? Eventually, they're going to tire of that shit and they're not going to know what to do next. It is obvious to me that the answer lies in bloodshed. Now, Schick, formerly Wilkinson Sword, a goddamn manufacturer of weapons of death and destruction for over 200 years ought to have figured this out by now, and I'm a little disappointed that they haven't. But it's not exactly a notion that one hits upon whilst sitting cross-legged in a drawing room sipping Prince of Wales tea at 2:30 in the afternoon.

Seriously, though, how cool would it be to see executives and sales managers from Wilkinson Sword and Procter & Gamble (Gillette's O.G. Pimp-Daddy) cutting each other like motherfuckers in the street in order to gain another share of the safety razor market? Heavily armed squadrons of Schick razor developing technicians rappelling through plate-glass windows to surprise-attack Gillette executives during a board meeting! Bring back the swords and bayonets!

THAT, motherfuckers, is war.

Don't Wanna

Someone once told me, as I was complaining endlessly about an unpleasant task I had set up for myself to do one day, "Don't do it-- we spend so much of our lives doing things that we don't want to do-- paying bills, visiting our inlaws, wiping our asses, getting the car inspected-- why should you have to endure one more annoying thing that you don't want to do-- just because you think you should? Fuck that."

Just. Don't. Do it.

Hmpf. Pretty revolutionary, don't you think? As advice goes, anyway.

Trouble is, nobody actually said that to me. It's just sage-like advice that I pulled out of my ass (after wiping, of course). I do this sometimes-- give myself advice, like an old friend might, if I ever asked an old friend for advice. Which I don't, which is a shame, because that's essentially what old friends are for, and I do have a couple left. But I'm far too busy with my spinning little life to pay them much heed. You know, there are bills to pay and cars to get inspected.

Anyway, I give myself advice every now and then, and, invariably, I heed it not. At least I don't pay some clipboard-toting shyster to give me advice that I will then ignore. Of course, good therapists don't give advice. I learned that in college, and not much else, I'm embarrassed to say.

Yesterday, after a thoroughly annoying day of working with some of society's less fortunate, less desirable, and less assimilated beings, I got to fight through forty minutes of just-out-of-school traffic only to arrive at the doorstep of my middle sister's shabby apartment on the outskirts of the city. Broken red moulding disgraced the threshold and, as I leaned back against the wooden railing propping up her doorstep, it bent unceremoniously and threatened to cave beneath my not-very-impressive weight. I texted her, as she requests, probably because her doorbell is broken.

"I'm here."

My sister, who has had her iPhone surgically implanted up her ass, usually texts back in under two seconds flat. After four minutes of freezing my tibbles off in the cold rain, I called.

"Hi. I'm here."

"You're where?" she asked.

"I'm at your doorstep. Can you let me in, please?"

"What are you doing here?" she asked, obviously put out.

"Well, I was supposed to see you last Monday, and you postponed until this Monday. And now, it's this Monday."

There was a brief pause.

"Oh," she replied with customary eloquence, "well, I thought you were going to, like, confirm."

Like, confirm, huh? What is this, like, a doctor's office?

Instead of that biting little remark, I said nothing, determined to be a good boy.

"Well," she said, "it's too cold to go take the baby to Starbucks."

"Um, I know-- I don't care about going anywhere, I can just come up and say 'hi.'"

"Oh, yeah, sure, we'll come let you in."

And so began what was one of the more traditionally awkward twenty-six minutes of my life: meeting with my sister, on her turf. Where my mother and eldest sister are not around to conduct air puff residue tests on all of the baby's toys and sanitize his every corner. This apartment is not the happy medium I hope for my nephew. He toddles and doddles around the living room happily, putting discarded Starbucks coffee cups into his mouth that have been lying around on the floor, he gleefully chases a yellow, plastic ball that goes careening towards the vast tangle of wires and cords connected to her modem. There is shit. Everywhere. And she puts on some sort of digitized bastardization of Mickey Mouse that he pays attention to for sixteen seconds, and then wanders off in search of other stimulation-- I don't know, like, where it's supposed to come from.

And neither does he.

And neither does she.

Maybe he'll pick up some wisdom from the pithy quote on the side of the Starbucks cup, if they're still doing that-- but I doubt it. He is, after all, fourteen months old.

I'm tired of doing things I don't want to do. I just want to take my nephew away, to a diner somewhere, for bacon, eggs, and well-done hashbrowns-- like my father did with me-- once the kid's old enough.

mnkjdrweoi-00000---7777dfkjnd3

Hey, sorry for that weird text you just got from me that just contained random letters, symbols, and numbers.

Or that pocket-call where you got to hear my car's turn-signal clicking for three uninterrupted minutes while I chatted inanely with my wife and/or practiced singing the Lord Chancellor's "Nightmare Song."

See, I got this great phone-- well, actually, it's not that great. It's a Motorola Q and, with its auxiliary battery, it weighs approximately seven pounds-- BUT, it has a full QWERTY keyboard, which I've been pining after for a while. Pining so loudly and incessantly, as I learned to do as the youngest of three children, that my father, in order to shut me the fuck up, gave me his old phone-- the size of a small aircraft carrier.

I've nicknamed it "The U.S.S. George Washington."

Anyway, it doesn't exactly have a QWERTY keyboard. It more has a WERTY keyboard. The Q key and, hence, the exclamation mark, is a little fussy. So fussy, in fact, that you almost have to stand on it with both feet in order to make a Q or a q or a ! appear in a text message. If you get a text from me with a Q, you know I've worked very hard to give it to you, so be appropriately grateful.

Because this thing is more gargantuan than any of the other seventeen cellular telephones I've owned since my first one in 2002, I have no case large enough to carry the fucking thing, and having it in my pocket is a little like walking around with a small safe. So I went to Radio Shack, because nobody else does anymore, and they sold me a vinyl (Volkswagen used to call it "Leatherette") case for the phone to wear on my hip, which exacerbates the asymmetry of my body. The phone barely fits in this enormous holstery thing and, unfortunately, whenever I walk, or sit, or stand, or drive, the phone makes bleep blop bloop noises and I know it's sending incoherent text messages to my friends, enemies and Pol Pot's step-niece, Eunice.

I don't know how to lock the keyboard, so this is going to keep happening, I suspect, until I'm eligible for a legitimate upgrade, in March.

So, until then, enjoy hearing from me on an increased basis, even if it just amounts to a load of horseshit, even more smelly and indecipherable than usual.

34u84y8fdsFFFFf (notice the distinct lack of Q, q, and !)

Pardon Me, But There's a Condom on Your Antenna

For all the declamations and declarations about the crassness and crudeness of modern society (maybe some people are actually reading this blog after all...), I think we're still pretty civilized and polite, as a general rule. Sure, when we're online, hidden behind our clever screennames and our cutesy avatars, we let our collective hair down perhaps a wee bit too much, but, when we've got to face each other one-on-one, I think we're basically all over our P's & Q's, because, when you get down to it, most of us who have lived this long were raised by good mommies and daddies.

And it shows, you little punim, you.

Now, those of you who know me in real life know that this whole Mr. Apron thing is a a pretty shrewd facade. Well, of course, there are some facets of Mr. Apron that I share-- the petulent love of a good obscenity, especially a trusty old pornographic portmanteau-- like "vomcock," the shameless self-deprecations, the, um, limestone-solid vocabulary. The, uh... big...... nose.

You can see it from there, can't you? Don't lie. I don't care.

However, while my mouth may be as big as a toiletbowl on this toilet bowl brush of a blog, in real life it is about as pert and petite as a Lego lady's purse. It takes months of knowing you before I can crack a joke, it takes me a long time to warm up, getting comfortable is very difficult for me, and speaking my mind is almost an impossibility because I am far too busy predicting and inventing and obsessing over all of the ways you are going to judge me.

I'm, you know.... shy.

Guys feel silly calling themselves shy. Shy is for girls. It's for gays. It's for, I don't know... ponies? Puppies? "Oh, she's shy," a middle-aged woman says to a 5-year-old girl after a white poodle shrinks from her proffered hand. 30-year-old men aren't shy. Unless they're really poodles.

But, here I am: shy. As my mother and I are fond of saying: it is what it is.

I started a new job at the end of August, and I've moved from children to psychiatric patients in one fell swoop, which admittedly was a big transition, but I think perhaps an even bigger transition was going from having one coworker, who was also my boss, to having forty-or-so coworkers in a given shift-- and at least four of them at any given time, are my boss(es)/supervisor(s). So, the first month of my employment, I was constantly introducing/being forced to introduce myself to people, sometimes more than once, you know, because nobody remembers a shy poodle the first time they meet her. Introductions for me are painful, because I can smell people sizing me up, and I can smell their judgments. And they can, I'm sure, smell my fear, emanating from my impossibly large pores. I am petrified of saying the wrong thing, or getting tongue-tied, or looking at someone's breasts, or having a booger dangling or an eye twitch or sneezing in someone's face or saying something inappropriate, or racist, or patently inaccurate, like, "Hey, did you know that the world is flat-- just like Pam Anderson's chest?"

For the first little bit of time that I know you, I am painfully, awkwardly, incomparably shy, and careful not to offend, or single myself out, or draw attention to myself with some sort of bizarre comment or statement-- unlike the ones I make here, um, every day. So, imagine my consternation when, in the employee parking lot on Friday, I observed a condom, filled with I don't know what, attached to the antenna of Bob, the maintenance man's, Chevrolet Equinox.

"Oh my God," I said, looking around for, you know, somebody else to see it so they would have to go tell Bob that there was a moog-filled condom tied to his car antenna. Only, there wasn't anybody else around which, of course, meant that I was going to have to go do it myself.

Now, Bob is an older man, maybe in his mid-sixties. He wears hearing aids. Immediately, I started obsessing.

"What am I going to say? He's going to think I'm nuts. Worse-- he's going to think I put it there as some kind of sick practical joke. What if he doesn't hear me right? What if he hears, 'Bob, I've got a condom for your Aunt Fanny.' and he punches me in the face?"

Well, I found Bob cleaning up the activity room on the Acute Unit. I took a deep breath and walked up to him, as calmly as I could. He was mopping the floor, and I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to face me and I wrinkled up my brow and scrunched up my eyebrows as if I was about to give him news of a freshly deceased kin.

"Um, Bob-- you drive a Chevy Equinox, right?"

"Yes," he said, craning his neck so he could hear the punchline better.

"Well, there's, um, what I believe is a... a... condom, um, filled with-- uh, anyway, it's, it's actually tied to your, um, your antenna."

Pause. I waited for him to hit me in the face. Instead he looked thoughtful for a moment until he replied,

"Humpf. That's the second one this week. Thanks, fella."

Well, Sour Some Pickles and Elect Some Dickholes, It's... DEAR APRON!

In celebration of democracy, in celebration of demockracy, in celebration of tea parties and Halloween parties and political parties, and dress-up-your-dog-like-a-fairy parties, and dress-your-fairy-up-like-a-dog parties, let's put the party firmly in our pants, where it goddamn well belongs, and shake it till we break it with another incest-friendly edition of...

DEAR APRON:

A male cousin sent me an invitation to his wedding. I have met his fiancee a few times at family reunions and weddings, and she seems very sweet. The problem is my cousin sexually abused me for many years when I was younger. I have no desire to attend his wedding.

Am I obligated to send a card or a gift? I don't want his fiancee to think I don't like her, but it makes me sick to think of celebrating his marriage after what he did. What do I say when other family members ask why I'm not going? Am I obligated to tell her what he did? -- NEEDS TO KNOW IN TEXAS

DEAR NEEDS TO KNOW:

Well, I have to say: big time props for you. This is the first wedding etiquette letter I've ever answered that is even remotely interesting.

I mean, usually they're banal and insipid whinings about how Aunt Frieda doesn't get along with my second nephew twice removed by cystectomy, but we've already made the seating chart and Aunt Flo's dripping all over the damask tablecloths and the officiant never told us how much he charges and we need a Gluten free alternative for Cousin Bethesda because she has several of those made-up diseases.

Thank you for writing a letter with some actual balls. Oh, I'm sorry-- is it not right to say the word "balls" to someone who was molested by his male cousin? You should just send him a giftcard to Target.

DEAR APRON:

I could never figure out why "Margaret," my wife of 20 years, married me. After our wedding she tried to give me an image makeover. She'd buy me clothes I left hanging in the closet. She'd contradict and correct me in public. In general, she'd find fault with almost everything I did. She put me down often, and if I reacted, she would either claim it wasn't what she meant to say or tell me, "You do it, too." I finally gave up and left her.

Margaret has an excellent reputation, so people try to pry into why I left her. When I tell them I won't bad-mouth her, they tell me she says plenty about me. My response is, "Then you know all there is to know, don't you?"

Two women close to my age, plus one college-age girl, are trying to pursue me. I'm afraid if I don't leave this area, Margaret will allege that I left her for one of them.

Your thoughts, please. -- KEEPING MUM IN CLEVELAND

DEAR KEEPING MUM:

My thoughts? Why, I'm so glad you asked.

My thoughts right now are centering around a foursome, obviously. And, co-starring a smooth, nubile, chestnut-haired, firm-breasted college-age girl, combined with some sexually educated and assuredly voracious middle-aged women-- it would most likely be a foursome that would require some significant quantities of Saran Wrap, a deck of playing cards, two-and-half quarts of Nutella, and several feet of bungee cord.

Oh, and Margaret's a fucked cunt. Next?

DEAR APRON:

My husband and I have been together for two years, and he still doesn't know my mother's last name (it's different from my maiden name), nor does he know the names of all of my siblings. He doesn't think it's a big deal. What is your opinion?
-- NAME GAME IN KNOXVILLE, TENN.

DEAR NAME GAME:

I'm sorry-- he doesn't remember the names of your mother and your siblings, or he doesn't know them?

If he doesn't remember them, then I think he needs a battery of psychiatric tests to rule out early-onset dementia.

If he doesn't know them, then you should tell him what their names are and stop concealing information from him, you fucked cunt.

Your name wouldn't happen to be "Margaret," would it?

DEAR APRON:

My husband, "Lance," is making a career change and has been offered a great opportunity. He is very excited about it. Because his experience in this new field is minimal, Lance asked for letters of recommendation from some professionals who are familiar with his work. He was hoping the letters would provide insight into his abilities that his resume lacks at this early stage.

The problem? All three of the letters he has received contain glaring mistakes. They are all from college professors and on letterhead stationery. While they do offer glowing recommendations, one letter omitted an important word in a sentence, another misused a common word, and the third refers to Lance as "Ms."

I told Lance the letters do not reflect negatively on him because he didn't write them. But he thinks they will give the impression he associates with sub-par representatives of the field. He refuses to ask for new letters because he doesn't want to offend the writers by pointing out the errors. Should Lance use these letters? -- STUMPED IN TALLAHASSEE

DEER STUMPT:

Im sorry tht Vince is havin suck a tuf time wit this rekomendashin shit.. i here hes a lazee fag, so u shud just be happe that thes pepl are wiling to lye abowt him and say hes a gud wrker and doesnt snif sharpies in the suplie closit.