Dispatches from the Cusp of Greatness

By Jocelyn Jane Cox

The caffeine makes you so jittery that your hands flap faster than hummingbird wings. In fact, when hummingbirds pass you on the street, they temporarily stop flapping in order to point, laugh, and even capture you on video. 

People can hear your heart beating from miles away. Your neighbors on every side are constantly banging on the walls of your apartment yelling, “Turn that crappy Techno down!” but you don’t own any Techno music and never have. 

You get a second sink installed in your kitchen that spouts only coffee. When the fawcett of your more-conventional sink breaks, you don’t bother to get it fixed since you haven’t used it in a long time, anyway.

You google key words “coffee” and “intravenous.” 

During the rare nights that you fall asleep, you have fantastical dreams about rivers of coffee, walking toward them, kneeling down, and slurping from cupped hands. You have similar dreams about caffeinated waterfalls and geysers.

When your friends invite you out for drinks, you order coffee. Or you order coffee and a drink. Or worse, you order coffee with a drink poured into it. Furthermore, you are unfazed by the bartender’s obvious annoyance.

When you have trouble falling asleep, you get up and drink a cup hoping it will give you that extra boost of energy you need to close your eyelids.

You plan a trip to Columbia. 

Due to the expense of this habit, you fall behind on your bills. You receive an eviction notice. You decide that your only solution is to date a barista or become one yourself.  Of course, making and serving coffee would severely interrupt the ingestion of it.      

Your friends orchestrate an intervention. They hold a mirror up to your face so you can see how brown your teeth have become. 

Your mother lectures you about the benefits of green tea.

By Jocelyn Jane Cox

This summer is supposed to be a particularly buggy one. Here are some things you may want to take into consideration:

1. Do not apply Chapstic right before jogging down by the river. It will act as an adhesive and your lips will get covered in a layer of gnats.
2. Make sure your air conditioner is flush with your window frame. If there are gaps on either side, mosquitoes will sneak in to hold a dance party on your ceiling and your body will serve as the open bar.
3. Do not open your fire escape door even if it’s the only way you can get any cross breeze. This is an invitation for obese flies to congregate in a lethargic ball above your coffee table, so that you cannot see past them to the TV.
4. Always lock your front door. Water bugs have been known to climb stairs, fill tubs, and they are notoriously wasteful when it comes to designer bubble bath.
5. When your adorable little niece comes over, don’t let her spit out a half-sucked butterscotch on your front stoop. Starving ants from six surrounding counties will hitch rides to your place for the feast. 
6. If you leave your door open too long while bringing in groceries, wild horse flies will gallop in behind you, then stampede all over your famous pasta salad. 
7. Be sure to replace the broken window in your bedroom. You don’t want bumblebees to fly in and pollinate the flowers on your bed sheets.
8. Moths? Don’t even think about turning on any lights until after Labor Day.  
9. If you’re sitting on a lawn chair at a friend’s barbecue and you don’t tuck your feet up under you, red ants will march up your leg and quickly transform it into a military zone.
10. Similarly, if high winds have compromised the integrity of the tiny metal grids of your window screens, wasps will strong-arm their way through and shoot you. 

Remember, it’s going to be particularly buggy this summer, so, in addition to all of the above considerations, it’s recommended that you sleep with your eyes open, your mouth closed, and your earplugs in. 

***

Please help your fellow citizens: contribute any advice you may have by clicking on comment below.

by Jocelyn Jane Cox

My car is not a turquoise Thunderbird convertible, but a black Hyundai Elantra GT with a hatchback, purchased five years ago for its sensible 10-year warranty and excellent gas mileage.

I was not subconsciously or consciously trying to escape a dissatisfying marriage or an indecisive boyfriend named Jimmy, but going to visit my mother down in Delaware who had the same two days off from work as me. We were planning on eating some of her homemade lasagna and stopping by T.J. Maxx.

I was not wearing a white sundress, a sleeveless denim shirt strategically tied at the waist to reveal my midriff, or a Harley Davidson T-shirt. I was wearing a green fleece, a pair of jeans, and the sneakers I usually wear to the gym. Halfway through the trip, I took off the fleece, under which I had on an orange T-shirt I’ve owned since high school.

My route did not start in Arkansas, then zigzag through Oklahoma and Colorado to end at the Grand Canyon. I started off in the EZ pass lane of the George Washington Bridge’s tolls to get to the New Jersey Turnpike, then the Delaware Memorial Bridge, then Route 141, north. I really needed to pay extra attention to that final step because I missed that exit, once, and had to drive about 15 miles south on I-95 before I could turn around.

I did not stop to do Tequila shots then dance with a nothin’-but-trouble married man. I did, however, pull over to a service station to get gas, then bought a bottle of water and some almonds.

My traveling companion did not shoot someone in order to protect me, prompting her to flee to Mexico. I was accompanied by a human-sized bag of laundry that would turn out to be four loads, which I would wash in cold water with all-purpose liquid detergent. I would put most of that laundry in the dryer and hang some of the nicer garments on a drying rack my mom has, so they wouldn’t shrink.

I did not blow up a tanker truck filled with gasoline, but I did fish around in my bag to find a piece of gum, and then I chewed it. 

I did not pick up Brad Pitt then have a night of revelatory sex with him in a rundown motel. I did think about him, though.

I did not get chased, then surrounded by a flank of cop cars, leaving me no choice but to drive straight off a cliff. I did spot a policeman on the other side of the Turnpike and therefore slowed down from the posted speed limit of 65 mph to 62 mph, just in case.      

by Jocelyn Jane Cox

When it’s cloudy, you are unable to get out of bed.

When it’s sunny, you reach over and open the window shade. You even prop up the pillows behind you and take your legs out from under the covers in order to start working on your tan.

When it’s rainy, you get tuckered out just calling in sick to work.

When it’s bright out, you get to the office only 45 minutes late.

When it’s overcast, you have trouble counting how many fingers are on each hand.

With sunrays shining upon you, you deftly use your fingers to calculate the tip you’d leave if you were to go out to lunch.

When it’s grey outside, your skin is the color of cement.

When the sun is out, people just stare at you with curiosity instead of also pointing and putting their hands over their mouths in horror.

During thunderstorms, you sob uncontrollably.

When the forecast is clear, you merely whimper.

***

But dry your eyes, I have a new humor piece posted on Yankee Pot Roast. Read it by clicking on: http://www.yankeepotroast.org/archives/2008/05/eggs_on_the_bru.html    

By Jocelyn Jane Cox

Regular reenactment of the joyride scene involving a red sports car and a parking garage in the film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Your gas tank nearing “empty” though you just filled it up yesterday.

Attendants napping in car when you arrive to pick it up.

Tiny dents from other car doors covering every inch of your car so that it begins to appear pitted as a golf ball.

Attendants constantly moving seat and steering wheel so that every time you get in your car, it feels as foreign as a rental.

Attendants sneezing on steering wheel.

Trying to change lanes on the FDR and discovering that the passenger side mirror is still folded in, the car equivalent of “sucking it in” so that more cars can be squeezed into a smaller space.

Attendants wearing off-season clothes you store in your backseat due to lack of closet space.

Seeing your car up on the lift (basically a shelving unit for cars) when you know it’s afraid of heights.

Seeing your car cowering under the lift, then noticing a dent running the length of your roof. This is followed by an accusation, a denial of guilt, and, finally, the pointing of an index finger toward a sign absolving management from any and all responsibility regarding damages.

Forgetting your cellphone, or laptop, or banana, or something else of equal importance, and being unable to retrieve it because, as another sign on the wall says, you must give the attendants three hours notice in order for them to retrieve your car.

Becoming so accustomed to leaving your keys in the ignition when you get out, that you continually do so in other parking scenarios.

However, there is one critical advantage to becoming a monthly customer at a New York parking garage:

A parking space.

You will develop quadricep muscles of impressive circumference and uncommon strength. These will come in handy for future games of kickball and also for playfully bouncing babies on your knee.

In order to move in without contracting the services of professional movers (and let’s face it, you wouldn’t even consider renting a 17^th floor walk-up if you could afford such luxuries), you will have no choice but to break your furniture down with an ax into smaller, more manageable parts. By putting it all back together again once upstairs, you will greatly improve your woodworking skills and you will be invited to lend them to your friends who also find themselves getting gradually priced out of New York City.

Though you never before had any interest in scaling Mount Everest, you will become intrigued by the prospect. After a few months, you will be able to run up to your apartment in under 40 minutes when you realize that you forgot something essential like your apple or your shoes. The fact that you will be able to do so without an oxygen tank will start to make you feel more than a little qualified for the most famous peak of the Himalayas.   

The monthly rent will be reasonable enough so that you’ll be able to afford to go out to dinner twice per year and splurge on an occasional subway ride. You will also be able to treat yourself to the splendors of electricity, which you had to forgo when you were so irresponsibly throwing your money away on that 11^th floor walk-up. 

The view is unparalleled. You will be able to easily inspect, judge, and envy the lifestyles of residents who live on the 17^th floors of three other buildings. Of course, since all of these people will have been delivered to their apartments by the gravity-defying power of elevators, they will have the energy to walk over to their windows and close the blinds when they notice you.  

by Jocelyn Jane Cox

First of all, you are not an Eskimo, despite the convincing claim you made to this effect from behind a scarf in the winter of 1979. Eskimos are in fact indigenous to a region known as Alaska in the Northwestern quadrant of North America, not a small suburb of Madison, Wisconsin (though it is true that, occasionally, snow accumulation was comparable.) Furthermore, “eskimo” is not a status to which you can spontaneously convert.

For your information, the official method of constructing an igloo utilizes basic rules of masonry and involves balancing tightly-packed rectangles of snow in a circle, each layer slightly inside the other to gradually sculpt the dome. It does not include shoveling snow onto a red wagon from excavation sites all over the driveway and lawn then dumping these loads onto a stationary pile until it is of adequate height in your estimation. It also does not involve digging snow out from inside this large mound with frostbitten hands (despite mittens) until there is a human-sized cavity within. However, you are to be commended on the dumb luck success of this haphazard engineering.

Let it be known that forcing a person of smaller stature, limited resources, and (let’s face it) inferior intellect to transport snow in the manner detailed above, out in the cold for more than eight hours at a stretch with very few hot chocolate breaks, is an infraction of numerous OSHA regulations and, in some jurisdictions, could even be considered slave labor. On a similar legal note, records indicate that you failed to apply for the requisite building permits and fines may very well be administered retroactively.

Moreover, encouraging your “assistant” to crawl inside this highly unstable structure and wave with you from the igloo’s “front door” so that our mother could take a Polaroid picture not only subjected me to extreme danger, but also put our mother at unreasonable risk of losing both her children to a tragic and needless roof collapse.       

Finally, it is of some small consolation that the combination of Global Warming (ergo, less frozen precipitation), my own dignity, and the busy nature of our respective careers will heretofore prevent you from subjecting me to your ambitious and, okay, in retrospect, I guess somewhat entertaining Eskimo aspirations.

by Jocelyn Jane Cox

Fortunately, for both of us, I did not get a very good look at you. I probably couldn’t provide any specific, identifying physical characteristics to a police sketch artist. Likewise, I probably couldn’t pick you out of line-up.

You should know, however, that there were other witnesses to your hit-and-run. And while we were all grateful about the “run” part, I can assure you that the “hit” resulted in no small amount of physical and psychological trauma. Of course, I’m sure you realize this.

Maybe it was an honest mistake. If so, didn’t your mother ever teach you to look both ways before scurrying across the sidewalk? But I doubt it was all that innocent: more likely, it was a prank. If so, please note for your future reference that my foot is not a stepping stone, a gymnastics vault, a mountain to be scaled, or part of an obstacle course available for your recreational pleasure. Actually, I have a sick feeling that this was more of a pre-meditated act, perhaps something you’d been plotting for months.

Whatever the case, after I felt the distinct scrambling of your sharp-ish little paws across the top of my open-shoed, sock-less foot, you may have noticed that I was immediately overcome with a case of the heebie jeebies so violent that I not only whiplashed my neck but strained most of the muscles in my body before slipping into a catatonic state. 

All of this is obviously tragic, but what I’m most concerned about is…you.

I read a Russian novel once about a man who committed a crime and while he never got caught, his own guilt and paranoia prompted him to finally confess and ruined the rest of his life. The thought that your conscience may be punishing you in a similar fashion gnaws away at me now, night after night.

I want you know that, despite not sleeping since The Incident, I am better now. Luckily, my companions that evening, with whom I’d shared a lovely dinner preceded by a performance of live music, were appropriately dismayed on my behalf. In between chuckles, they were able to soothe me, pack me into a car, and deliver me to the relative safety of my home. Once there, I snapped out of my trance in order to scrub off the skin where you left your pawprints. I then destroyed the affected shoe by building a bonfire in my sink.

Most importantly, I need you to know that I forgive you. I believe that all creatures, both cute and ugly, deserve a second chance. I don’t want you to think of yourself as a bad rat and for that perception to become self-perpetuating. To be perfectly clear, I do not want you to scamper across another foot - mine or anyone else’s - for any reason, ever again. For though I do not know you well, I know that you are better than that.

From here on, I urge you to scamper with sidewalk traffic. Or, better: wait until no one is around when you can scamper from garbage heap to garbage heap with the reckless abandon you so obviously enjoy. Because, though I will never leave my house again, I want you to feel the wind blowing through your fur, I want you to fulfill your every dream, I want you, young rat, to start over…to be free.