Messiah Complex

My babysitter, Martha, had some pretty unusual beliefs. She believed in making chocolate milk in a jar, not in a glass. She believed Full House to be a funnier show than Mr. Belvedere (come now!). She believed in reincarnation (if I didn’t behave, she’d warn, I’d come back as a pig or a cockroach). She believed in communing with the dead. And, she believed she was Jesus, the Son of the Most High God, returning to the world to share a message of redemption and judgment.

I had no reason not to take her at word. In fact, I took her words quite seriously, often asking her questions about her f/Father and about how I might arrange a next-life return as a rich-and-famous movie star. At the age of 10, it did not strike me as particularly unusual that Martha was Christ reincarnate; I just felt lucky to be babysat by the daughterson of God.

I believed Martha to be omniscient, which is, of course, a prerequisite for being God or the direct offspring thereof. Case in point. As is not uncommon with children, when I was just a wee buckaroo, I had a strong aversion for bathtaking. Perhaps unlike other children, it was not the time or effort that I disliked; it was, rather, the total and prolonged immersion that I did not care for. Thus, I developed (and taught—to my brother) a procedure I cleverly coined the “fake bath”.

This is the protocol one would follow to take a “fake bath”.

1. Enter bathroom and securely close door.
2. Pour bath.
3. Turn water off.
4. Remove clothing.
5. Don pajamas.
6. Pace back and forth in bathroom.
7. Every third or fourth lap, audibly stir water to mimic sound of frolicking in bathtub.
8. Sprinkle clothes and hair with bath water to mimic not-fully-dry look.
9. Soak wash cloth in bathwater.
10. Carefully dampen towel (this is tricky and crucial—not too damp and not too dry).
11. Allow 15-20 minutes to elapse.
12. Drain water.
13. 5 minutes after tub has completed draining, emerge from bathroom.

The “fake bath” was not a cheap gimmick. It took as much effort and concentration as a non-fake (so-called "real") bath. But, I convinced myself, it was worth the cost.

I was halfway through a “fake bath” (pacing and occasionally stirring the bathwater) when Marthagod knocked on the bathroom door.

“Are you in the bath?” She knew I was not.

“Yes.”

“I need to come in and get something out of the closet.”

“No, you can’t. I’m naked,” I lied.

“I worked in the nursing home. I’ve seen hundreds of old men naked.”

“But I’m not an old man.”

“Never mind that. I’m coming in.”

“No, Martha!” But it was too late.

The door slid open, and I was in my pajamas--not in the bathtub as I had advertised. I did what occurred naturally: I fell to the ground, prostrate before Martha, like a sinner before an angry God. I had been exposed as the “fake bath” taker I was. I was face-down and ashamed. “Get up,” she commanded. I did as I was told. She undressed me, and I stood before her a limp noodle of a preteen. Then she bathed me.

I recently retold this story to my parents, and my mother claims to have suspected my “fake baths”. She says I often emerged from the bathtub smelling no better than going in, though she was not sure if it was due to inefficient cleansing or the complete absence of cleansing. My mother, while praiseworthy on multiple counts, was not, like Martha (it seemed), omniscient. (Were I ever to revive the practice of "fake bathing", I would include an additional, new step: deodorant.)

One spring morning, however, the jig was up. Martha was driving my brother and me to school when a careless motorist swerved in front of our car, nearly causing an accident. Martha lost her temper and committed a grave offense: she swore. My brother and I looked at each other. We both knew what this meant: A perfect being would not swear (we’d get our mouths washed with soap if we as much as uttered half of what she had blurted. This lady, while clearly possessing incredible powers of wisdom and knowledge, was not perfect. God, we were taught, was perfect. Therefore, Martha, was not Christ II.

An adult in our situation (having the existence of his or her deity disproved) might have experienced crushing disillusionment. My brother and I, however, felt great pride. “Busted!” said the look in his eyes. “We totally got her,” I thought. “She is so not Jesus.”

I recall these days with a sort of bizarre nostalgia, and I wonder who was in fact crazier: Martha, the self-declared comeback Jesus kid or my parents for hiring and maintaining her as our babysitter after it became clear that she believed herself divine. My parents may not be totally at fault: she did come highly recommended—both by her previous employers and by her Father (or so she told us). Perhaps my folks gave in to the idea that she was in fact Messiah, Jr.: who better to entrust your children to than Martha, the son of God?

Keep off the grass

Our grass needed to be cut, but I had been putting the chore off for some time (excusably so, in my humble opinion, as my ankle is still a bit on the sprained side). This afternoon, I was sitting on the couch reading when I heard the sound of a lawnmower in the back yard. I limped to the window and saw my wife mowing the lawn. What a gal.

I reflected on this and was reminded of the deadbeat lawnmowing men in my paternal genetic lineage. I have never seen my father with a lawnmower, and the quantifiable reason why, I am told, goes a little something like this.

My folks were newlyweds and had just bought a house. My mother, whose father had been the primary lawnmower in his household, expected my father to be the primary lawnmower in his. She made the expectation clear to him. Apparently too proud to tell her that he had never before mowed a lawn, my father obeyed marching orders and went outside to cut the grass.

Moments, then minutes of silence passed. After some time, it seemed strange to my mother that no mower noise could be heard. When she peered through her window, she was shocked at what she saw: my father, sitting cross-legged in the grass. He apparently could not get the darn thing to start, and was sitting with the mower, blade-down, on his lap, tugging at the pull cord with all his might.

My mother burst forth from the front door, shouting, “No! No! No! Stop!!!”

Thankfully, he heeded her new command and stopped what he was doing; for this I am eternally grateful. Had he been successful in starting the mower and gotten those blades a turnin’ above his lap, I would surely not be here to blog about it.

He has never again attempted to mow the lawn. Probably a good thing.

Poll Results: Half of Land of Yajeev readers repeat offenders

Thanks to all who participated in the survey on my site. I asked you, “How did you find this blog?”

The response was overwhelming. 6 of you voted in my poll, and a whopping 50% of you reported that you had linked to this site from the old MySpace-based blog.

A “really great friend” informed a third of the respondents about this site. No “not so great friend[s]” spread the word about the Land of Yajeev, which is probably for the best.

Only one surveyed was referred here by direct mail, and 16% Google searched “land of yajeev”. Unfortunately, no one seems to have found this site by reference from other blog sites or from the radio and television advertising campaign. Clearly, the marketing department needs some help; fortunately, my pop is a great marketing strategist.

While I haven’t yet subjected these data to rigorous statistical analysis, with an n=6, the results can only be described as significant, if not scientific.

Can you find it in your hearts to forgive me?

Dear Mom and Dad,

I’ve been carrying a burden of guilt for too long. I have a confession to make: I have been less than forthcoming.

For many moons, I have been living a lie. The year was 1988, and I was in the second grade (you may have read about my entry into this grade level in a previous blog post). The offense: vociferous rowdiness on the school bus. The driver had heard my outside voice from within the school bus one too many times. He promised that a pink demerit slip would be sent home. He was a man of his word. This unbridled disorderliness is not the source of my shame, however; nay, I fear that spurts of uncontrollable hyperactivity are hardwired into my DNA. My personal sorrow is in the deception that ensued.

Every day for a week, I checked the mailbox for an envelope with the return address of the grade school. One afternoon, it arrived. I committed a federal offense by opening this parcel meant for your eyes only.

Inside the envelope, as promised, was the dreaded pink-tinted disciplinary report. While I had been persistent in checking the mail daily, I had not the foresight to plan what to do after I had actually opened the fateful notice. So, I did what came naturally without thought: I ripped the demerit into a thousand little pieces, and… Now what!?!? I had torn the conduct report to smithereens but had no exit strategy. Staring at the pink scraps cradled in my hands, I knew that proper disposal was essential. This crime had to be concealed. Whatever trouble I would have encountered with an intact demerit would be multiplied by as many times as there were shreds of deceit in my palms.

If I threw the shreds away in the kitchen trash, I suspected that you might see the papers and piece them together like the jigsaws we used to do together. I could just imagine the setting: Dad retrieving the bits of paper from the can under the sink, spreading them out on the kitchen table, calling me in to help him with the puzzle, saying, “Help me find the border pieces.” There I would be, sweating as each new fragment was assembled and the truth of my disciplinary infraction and subsequent subterfuge came into sharp relief. No, the kitchen trash would not do.

I next considered the trashcan in the garage, but rejected it on similar grounds. One solution remained. I looked both ways to avoid being sideswiped by parental traffic and sprinted to the backyard where I dug the deepest hole my little hands could in the few minutes I had before you would return home from your hard day at the office. I placed the tattered pink pieces into the hole and hastily covered it up with the dirt I had displaced moments before. My secret was buried.

You came home, and I put on my (flushed and sweaty) cherubic face. I prescreened and filtered every word that came forth from my lips in the days that followed, careful not to entangle myself in a web of fibbage. I was a second grader in crisis, filled with inner tumult. I was weighed down by the overwhelming guilt, but I was too far in to extricate myself from the quagmire. It was more than any 7 year-old should have to bear.

Garbage night had always been my least favorite, but on this particular week, Thursday could not come soon enough. Shortly before the trashcans were to be taken to the curb, I made like a dog at his favorite patch of dirt and dug like mad. I recovered as many of the dirt-stained shards of my notice of punishment as I could and carefully transferred them to the soon-to-be-collected garbage. The next morning, my plan continued without hitch, as only a few bits of pink debris on the ground around the garbage cans were all that remained of my demerit. I, of course, gathered them as quickly as I could to preempt either of you from picking up a piece or two and deciphering from the fragments of text still legible (like “while the bus was moving” and “like a wild dog”) what had transpired.

Unfortunately, Mom, Dad, the dishonesty didn’t stop here; one lie leads inescapably to the next. I feared your punishment for my misconduct (which almost certainly would have been less agonizing than the torment I put myself through in devising and concealing my plan). This I had managed to avoid. Hours of scheming and duplicity spared me minutes on the time-out chair and a handwritten letter of apology to the bus driver.

What was unavoidable, of course, was the punishment mandated by the school. The justice of Dr. Xxxxxx and his sidekick Mr. Xxxxxx was severe; they ruled with an iron yarmulke. Their penalty: that I be prohibited from Friday swimming class, which, as it turns out, wasn’t much of a punishment for me. I wasn’t all that fond of swimming class (you remember the time that I skinned the entire ftront side of my body trying to impress my classmates by jumping backwards off the diving board). Plus, missing swimming class meant I would be have to spend the time normally reserved for my aquatic misadventures playing Stickybear Typing on the class’s Apple IIc. Most of my friends were addicted to Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda, but I was a Stickybear guy all the way, so this as an alternative to swimming wasn’t such a bad deal. In fact, if it didn’t require such shameful misrepresentation, I might be persuaded to engage in disorderly school bus conduct more often.

I was barred from swimming, but you sent me to school with swimming trunks and a towel. I couldn’t very well bring them back home neatly folded in my gym bag the way they were when I left for school. After the closing bell of the school day and before my bus left the parking lot, I scampered to the lavatory for appropriate modification of swimming materials. The swimming trunks were soaked in water from the sink, crumpled up into a ball and stuffed back into my bag. The towel was thoroughly spattered with water such that it was damp but not dripping. Finally, I splashed my hair and proceeded to towel dry it with my dampened towel.

I returned home, and unfortunately, you were none the wiser.

Mom, Dad, I may have avoided the earthly punishment you might have (appropriately) meted out for my misbehavior and cover-up. But, take solace in the fact that I have been afflicted with this thorn in my flesh, this pang in my conscience for the past 19 years.

I'm sorry. Can you find it in your hearts to forgive me?

Sincerely,

Your son

Waddle, waddle, quack, quack.

The following is a transcript from a recent telephone conversation with my mother.

Me: Mom, there's something we need to talk about.

Mom: OK…

Me: I just saw my podiatrist.

Mom: And?

Me: I have something of a bone to pick with you.

Mom: What is it?

Me: I asked him about the duck walk.

Mom: Oh, dear.

Me: Listen, Mom, Dr. Lowery says I was born with it. That it's in my bone structure.

Mom: I see.

Me: Mom, God made me this way. There's nothing you or I or anyone could consciously do to change my behavior. All that time you spent trying to correct my steps--

Mom: I was just trying to help you to be a normal boy.

Me: Normal? Mom, I was who I was, and I am who I am. This is all the normal you're going to get out of me. I can't change. All I have ever wanted was for you to love me for who I was, not for how I walked.

Mom: Couldn't you at least try to point your toes straight ahead when you walk?

Me: I did not choose this, and I couldn't possibly choose to walk any differently. Believe me, if I could have chosen my gait, it would certainly not have been that of a duck: heels in, toes out. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. The stares, the guffaws, the mockery—it's not been an easy road. (lengthy pause) But, it is a road I must continue to travel as courageously as I possibly can, knowing full well that pain will surely follow me all of my days.

Mom: You can't control it?

Me: I've tried. Honest, I have.

Mom: What about a good therapist?

Me: You're missing the point.

Mom: You're saying this is genetic?

Me: Yes, Mom, that's what I'm trying to tell you.

Mom: If you have kids, are there going to be little ducks waddling around the house?

Me: Yes, Mom, and I hope you'll love them, independent of their manner of locomotion.

Mom: I'll try.

Me: That's all I ask.



Originally Posted: Tuesday, May 6, 2007
(Then) Curent Mood: (pre)determined
http://blog.myspace.com/yajeev

Awkward moment at TGI Fridays

We recently went out to eat with my parents at TGI Fridays (I ate a Dippable Cheesy Bacon Burger). My parents are routinely asking me about my work in graduate school, which, as my readers know, concerns yeast genetics.

They inquired about what I would like to do next, and I mentioned, somewhat flippantly, that I'd probably end up working on a sexier research project, at which point my mom began singing (with feeling), "He's too sexy for his yeast."

I'm not sure if she knows that's not how the song goes.


Originally Posted: Tuesday, December 3, 2006
(Then) Curent Mood: weird
http://blog.myspace.com/yajeev