Vaporback Writer

Posted on Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Whining


My husband the ficus tree has not a single protective bone in his body (or maybe I should say stem instead of bone, but I think you get the picture). It's a good thing that I have a mother to worry about me. When I started this job, she decided I need to have a cell phone. Even though I haven't lived under her roof in more than twenty years, she still hates the thought of me driving alone in the dark of night. Mechanical problems, accidents, car jackings--these are the sorts of things she envisions when she thinks of her daughters out alone in the world. When I talk to Howser about work, all he thinks is, "I wonder when she'll stop talking so I can get back to killing aliens." I actually make him look at me and note what I'm wearing when I go for hikes (potted plants don't hike), so that he can tell the police what I was wearing if I go missing. "Whatever," he says. "It's not like you don't have more dental records than anyone else on the planet." When Mom gave me the cell phone, it didn't even occur to Howser to be embarrassed that he didn't think of it first. He just said, "Huh," and went back to his video game.

I work in two different branches of my local library. One of them is located in one of the biggest shopping malls in the state. It's a pretty new concept, libraries in shopping malls. The idea is to bring the library to the people instead of expecting the people to make trip to a stand-alone library. It's proven quite popular with the patrons, but less so with the staff. We, like all mall employees, have to park on the outer fringes of the parking lot and make our way in the dark through the riff-raff that security shoos out of the mall at closing time. It can be a little scary.

Yesterday I worked at the mall--a short shift that ended mid-afternoon. It was a bright, sunny day. The parking lot was full of birdsong and happy shoppers. I whistled as I made my way to my car, thinking about what we might have in the fridge for dinner. I pulled out of the parking lot at about 3:00 pm. At about the same time, on the opposite side of the parking lot, two men got into their car and were shot to death. The gunman was in the car with them. No one yet knows if he was acquainted with his victims or had picked their car at random and waited there for their arrival. So far, no arrests have been made.

I didn't know about the shootings until later that evening. I told Howser about the story I'd seen on the news. I'm not sure how I was expecting him to respond, but I really wasn't too surprised when all he said was, "Huh. That's cool."