Ring a Zing Zing

At about 6:00 p.m. yesterday, Michael is going through our mail and suddenly yells out, “Oh shit!” I knew whatever it was must be pretty bad, because his voice went pre-puberty on him for a second. Last time his voice went all Mickey Mouse like that, it was because they had cancelled “Farscape.”

Being careful not to make any sudden movements, I asked, “So what’s wrong? Did we get another gas bill?” (Yeah, sure we get one every month, but they get more and more shocking, so I step lightly around the subject.)

He seemed to have gone catatonic as he stared down at the paper. The sound of my voice seemed to jar him slightly back into our world. He sputtered his response as best he could,”Your cell phone bill. It’s a hundred dollars!”

I fear that someday he’ll be going through bills and he’ll get so far away we’ll require the help of a minipsychic go-between to help him navigate between dimensions. “Go into the light, Michael.
There are potato chips and Tofutti bars in the light.”

Thankfully, a psychic wasn’t neccessary this time. I simply had to feign shock and concern and furrow my brow in a show of remorse.

I guess I pulled off the remorseful thing pretty well, because he shut up about it after a minimal amount of fussing.

Anyhow, later last night, we were doing a Sudoku puzzle in bed. Let me interrupt myself here for a moment and explain something to my younger readers. It’s about the birds and the bees:

When birds and bees love each other very much, they get married. Unless they are same-sex birds and bees, in which case, their state might have a constitutional ban. Anyway, all the same, they will have sex. A lot. During the first five or ten years. Then, after a while, the birds and bees are just kinda tired at the end of the day, and it doesn’t seem so important to be physically expressive. Their allergies are acting up and they are sore, so they do puzzles together. The bird might even read a Tom Clancy novel while the bee knits a scarf for her sister. They still love each other very much and they have still have sex sometimes. Just not when they have a new episode of “Deadwood” taped. You see?

So, back to last night. We finish the puzzle and Michael gets up to turn off the hall light. He notices the bathroom light next to Charlotte’s room is on as well. He puts on pants so he can turn that one off too, because he doesn’t want me to have to get up. “What do you do, Debbie? Before we get in bed, do you run wildly around the house turning lights on?” He waves his arms crazily in the air to illustrate how silly I am. (This cracks me up.)

“That’s exactly what I do, Michael. You hit the nail right on the head. You know what else I enjoy doing while I’m running around turning on all the lights?”

“No? What?”

“Talking on my cell phone.”