Try it sometime. Say it to a saleshuman or someone and then hide and wait and listen to hear if ze gets rid of it on the next unsuspecting human. Bet ze does. It's the '90s version of a parlor game, it's the invention of the mall game. Maybe I'll write a book, "What to do in a mall for a hundred hours after you've become allergic to smoked beefsteak and cheese with spicy hot mustard". Or then again maybe I won't.

Did I get you with the "ze" thing? OK, what do you do when you want to talk about a neuter human? You do the He/She thing? Bleeeeech. Not for moi. Or that "one" thing? That doesn't always work and it sounds really icky and formal like. So in light of the "Ms" concept I went out and made up my own family of pronouns. What do I care if no one knows what I am talking about? Or so it's ze, zim, zer, zers, zerself, etc. Basically, you say whatever your gut reaction would be and then stick a "z" in front and make it politically mystifying and therefore untouchable by those new left style fundamentalists, the PC'ers.

Whatever. It works for me. You can keep saying He or She gets into his or her car and goes to his or her workplace if you really need to fill up the page and waste consonants and vowels indiscriminately. Hey, go for it. Way to spill ink all over paper. I'll go for language light. It's a third less filling, you know.

Who the hell am I talking to?

Do you ever do this? Just obsess about conversations that might never take place with people you might never have met just because you are driving all alone and your brain malfunctions or something? R.F.N.  Random Firing Neurons.

I'm hanging my arm out the window and I suddenly realize I'm a candidate for skin cancer here. The sun is roasting me to medium rare today. I'll have driver's arm to go, thanks. I remember wanting a tan. I remember living 25 years of beaches and lawn chairs and baby oil and skin sloughing off like some kind of jungle snake after a huge snack. All that time of worrying about tanning or being tanner or becoming tannest and then one day after 25 years of attempts you wake up and say, well, hell, that was boring as shit. I'm not doing that anymore. And poof. A 25-year obsession is gone-daddy-gone. And really what could be more superficial than judging someone on the transitory condition of their outermost layer of epidermis???

Just drove past the halfway point. Rambling down the road. The drive seems more peaceful and pleasant than usual. Maybe because I know what lies ahead. I hate forced events like weddings and funerals and all that fake family shit. I never know what's expected of me; I always feel like I'm fucking up somehow. And this one. This one is gonna be a doozy. I mean, shit, where's the manual on how you are supposed to act at you own father's funeral? And as if I'll ever need this information again. One dad, one funeral, that's what I always say. This is where sunglasses come in. You wear them and everyone assumes what you are hiding is fucked-up eyes. That you are so much of a mess you can't be seen by the public-at-large and must have that hazy shade of plastic between yourself and the rest of obnoxious reality yearning to breathe free.

Course, in my case, I'll be hiding the fact that I'm not feeling what they want me to, that I most certainly can't cry in front of people, particularly these people, and I may be actually kinda happy to see some of the more insane folks, provided they behave themselves. Which they might do, more in deference to the bereaved than to the deceased. That should be amusing.

There goes the last toll. Bye-bye, tollbooth human. Any degree of traffic can go from here. The sky's the limit. I could be home in 40 minutes or twice that.

Damn that pickup truck. I can get around him.

The last time I saw my father he didn't recognize me and could barely get in and out of the wheel chair on his own. He could, when no one was watching or he wanted to badly enough. That's what the social worker told me.

When I was little, I would wake him up very early on weekend mornings. He didn't mind, I think he enjoyed the time together. He taught me how to do all sorts o' bizarre stuff. Underwater basket weaving. Bonsai. Hooked rugs. Vegetable gardening. Geography. Car maintenance. How to cook eggs. How to crack an egg without it unintentionally becoming breakfast for the dog. Raw. "Crack them with vigor," he said. With vigor.

Hey, I'm fine. Really.

Whatever that means. Fine. What is it? An adjective? No, wait, an adverb—it describes the verb. How you are. But not really, it really means, "Stop talking to me." Or "Stop talking to me about this." It's a stop sign in conversation. Achtung! Halt!

"How's work?"

"It's fine."

That means, either go away or talk to me about something else. Anything else. I mean how many people are fine??? And how many people's jobs are really fine? OK. Swell. No problems. I guess it's all relative.

I had this relative once. A grandfather. My father's father. Every night we had the same conversation. He'd ask me how I was, I'd say fine. He'd ask me how school was going and I'd say fine. Then, one day, I was dying of the measles. My grandfather called. He asked me how I was. I said fine. He flew off the handle. I could hear him get red in the face. What! he screamed. They told me you were sick! That you had the measles. Oh, that, I answered. Really, I do. I guess with a fever of like 212 or something, I wasn't in the mood to change a non-conversation that had worked so well, at least until one day in third grade when I had the measles.

As Philadelphia looms large the billboard announces:

Welcome to the city of Brotherly Sludge.

(signed) Another Idiot, Mayor.

The signs change, but the song remains the same. I suddenly feel like going to Fenicksville instead of my parental unit's newest house. But obligations and all that. I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep.

Red light. Civilization lurks around every bend. I examine the damage the sun wrought on my arm. Red, like the light. Oh, well, I wasn't terribly attached to that layer of skin anyway. Burn, baby, burn.

I'm noticing Philadelphia's new skyline with some disdain. You can hardly notice city hall anymore. All that work to restore Billy Penn atop city hall and now he's lost in the forest of skyscrapers. Progress.

I try to imagine the city as it was when my parents were running around. I can't imagine that too much has changed. I can't imagine that much has changed in the last 300 years. People live, get married, have kids, work to death and then calm down and die. So maybe they get married more than once now. And maybe there is more guilt attached to child rearing and more ambition and false bravado attributed to work. It's still the same damn thing. OK, the cars are uglier now than in the '50s. Maybe there were more deer in Fairmount Park. Fewer murders. More flowers in Rittenhouse Square. It's still the same place. Just the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

God, I love driving on cobblestone. Especially cobblestone with the added excitement of trolley tracks just thrown in for the thrill of "near-death experience." They should really sell tickets. I wish it were raining. That would really add to the fun. I want to know why suddenly building above Billy Penn's hat wasn't sacred, but cobblestones and trolley tracks down the main drag of Chestnut Hill are allowed to remain.

Another light. Our lives are really just a series of stop and go's aren't they? Like you go until you are hungry, then you stop to feed. Then you go until you are sleepy then you stop to sleep a third of your life away. Then you get up and ... Good thing there are love interests to keep us from noticing just how mundane it all really becomes.

Gosh, pulling out onto a blind curve is really a rush. Who needs drugs when you can feel like this just driving to work???

Almost there.

I think my mother said humans were hanging out with her, like they want to be around in case she loses it. Maybe they have a $2 pool going to see when and if. Put me down for never, guys. I know my mom.

Oh, sorry, they are there for support. And food probably. Mom's a good hostess, she wouldn't let a good deed go unnourished. If I know my mother she's gonna need all the support she can get just to deal with these folks in her house.

Mom is cool. She's a late-blooming, self-made female. We are a team. More friends than family, but really good friends and as far as I'm concerned that's more important and certainly more useful than family. Or maybe I have a problem knowing the difference. It's possible. All things are.

I wonder what still needs to be done for this funeral thing. I drive past the house 'cause there are too many cars in front to park where a normal person would. I see some rustling behind a curtain as I drive by. She can always hear my car.

And as I pull up to the curb, I see my mother step out of the side door.

Copyright © Hildie S. Block 2003