Anonymous Letters and Anonymous Turds

I haven't posted here since the demise of the Manny. Nor have I written very much at all, despite the desperate pleading from my legions of fans for the sequel to my novel, The Hundred: Book Two. It's in the works, I assure you, you girl who sleeps with Book One beneath her pillow (that doorstopper must give her a crick in the neck!), you wanna-be author boy in that one school in the Bronx, and you creepy guy in the trench coat at the end of my driveway. Fans!

I just happen to be very busy right now. We moved to a new state two months ago. (Rah Rah Connecticut! And hurrah for our state animal, the Sperm Whale! Really? I just Googled this and I am a little shocked. And thrilled. Did you know that Moby Dick was based on a real Sperm Whale who was called...wait for it...Mocha Dick! He roamed the South Pacific in the 1840s. I'm not kidding at all. From Wikipedia: Mocha Dick was a notorious male sperm whale that lived in the Pacific Ocean in the early 19th century, usually encountered in the waters near the island of Mocha, off southern Chile. He was often accompanied by Whatta Dick and Totall Dick, his brethren, who pretty much destroyed everything. Mocha Dick survived many skirmishes (by some accounts at least 100) with whalers before he was eventually killed.)

Told you Mocha Dick was real! You were inclined to disbelieve me, weren't you? His bwuddahs are real, too!

So, back to me and my writing, or lack thereof. I wrote several songs in the last few months, and they even have real chords! And I can play piano and sing! (Albeit like a dying goat.) I also wrote some anonymous letters to strangers in my old neighborhood, before we moved. No, no, they weren't those sorts of anonymous letters! Not the kind of letters that also include a turd lovingly Scotch-taped to the envelope. (Although, I must say, some individuals might have merited such a delivery.) They were lovely handwritten letters, containing hope, inspiration, intriguing quotes, and sometimes a full shot glass worth of Vodka, if you wrung them out carefully.

I did it as a sort of experiment. I was feeling a little ill-at-ease at times before our move, and also overwhelmed, so I thought: Why not spread some love/happiness/surprise/whatnot into the void of the neighborhood by penning these completely original letters and then slipping them into random mailboxes? I'd write them at night. No copies were made, so I can't prove to you what they said. Of course, there's the beauty in it, right?

Then, on the way to the gym or the post office the next day, I'd scan houses and mailboxes for the right "vibe." When the house felt just right (maybe maybe it would have a little sad feeling, as if the people who lived there might need one of my letters), I would quietly steal up the walkway and slip the letter in the mailbox and then scurry away.

Then I would always get a really pleased feeling, like the kind of feeling you get when you have placed a pickle under your friend's pillow and you can just deliciously picture them discovering it at 3 a.m. and shouting, "What the fuck? Who would put a fucking pickle under my pillow?!?"

This is simply a pickle. Ever found one under your pillow? 

Except this was awesome and different! Not a pickle. A nice letter, written by a former English major with a Master's Degree in Writing. Me! So instead, they might say, "Honey, there is a psychopath around here writing anonymous letters filled with goopy sentiment, and the paper smells a little like Cheetos. In fact, there is some orange detritus on the edge of the paper here. But, gee, I feel so much better suddenly about my life, and now I shall write anonymous letters as well and the joy will spread throughout the world and defeat terrorism and other bad things. Yay!"

Weirdly, after delivery of a letter, something good would often come my way. Not checks and barrels full of money (Poo poo on you, The Secret), but a bit of good news, or a happy day, or someone using the serial comma without provocation, or some such.

I don't know if anyone reading this received one of my letters, but, by gosh, you should note it in the comments if you did.

So when we moved into our new home, a new sort of anonymous "delivery" began to appear. As background, our family loves board games and has often played the game "Balderdash," which is the same thing as the old game "Dictionary." In Balderdash (or "Bladder Dash" as someone most famously called it) you get an obscure word and then everyone has to write a phony definition that will fool people and garner votes. One day when we played, the word was "Thob." Someone submitted the definition: "A poo that doesn't flush." Ever after, should a son fail to flush the toilet after expulsion, it was by definition a "Thob."

Thobbie the Thob!

Then it began.

Day Two in our new house: I enter the downstairs bathroom and find a horrible, fat Thob covered in acres of toilet paper. "J'accuse!" I said to our youngest boy, who denied any part in the matter.

Day Three: A fresh Thob discovered, same toilet. Same acreage of TP. Many fingers were pointed.

Day Four: More Thobs, this time in multiple toilets. We suspect copycats. Guests are present and they are also queried.

Day Five: Another lone Thob in a toilet previously unsullied. The atmosphere is grim in the house, and accusations fly.

Day Six: This time, a Thob in the toilet closest to the boys' bedroom. Middle Child discovers it and reacts with terror and wild running-about. "It smells bad!" he cries.

Day Seven: Quiet and peace reigns. Is it over?

Day Eight: A new Thob! Back to the original, with a full roll of toilet paper nearly hiding its glistening pelt. Horror in the household.

Soon after that, the Wild Thobber left off his repulsive activities, and we have not seen a new Thob since. But I await its arrival, with anticipation and a little bit of glee.

For who amongst us hasn't wanted to leave a surprise for someone else? Or find one. A pickle under the pillow, a Thob in the executive washroom, an anonymous and completely random letter to the lonely, housebound person who used to work in the sad office with the diner plants and the candy trays at every fluorescent-lit cubicle? A little cairn of rocks where there isn't supposed to be one. A note duct-taped underneath a bench in an out-of-the-way train station, from which very few people ever leave. Write letters to the world.

All Food Is Poison and Anything You Eat May Kill You

People with panic and anxiety disorder are very suggestible, and they are especially suggestible to their own stupidity. The story of the last month, below, reveals my extremely scientific approach to food intolerance and how it may affect the brain. Please note: If you read this and decide that you, too, are intolerant to all the things I have listed, then we should have a martini together. Contact me. (Except that martinis are derived from wheat, and are now a terrible poison to me. I will be drinking a tea made out of organic quinoa shavings, while you enjoy your delicious martini.)

About one month ago, I decided I was intolerant to Gluten. Gluten can cause all sorts of bad things, I’d read, and I wanted no part of it. It has been reported to cause indigestion, osteoporosis, rashes, and depression. I cut all Gluten out of my life. By the second day off Gluten, I decided I was cured of every anxious thought I have ever had. I ran about through the wet grass in the night, and hurled a tennis ball at the moon.

“Yah! I am cured!” I said to the moon.

A few days later I started feeling dizzy and anxious again, so I decided I had an intestinal parasite. I researched all kinds of parasites, and found out that some can bore into one’s brain! They really can. They can invade every major organ in the body. I researched some online cures that promised to expunge parasites from the body.

But what if it wasn’t a parasite? What if it was just my own idiocy? Then I would have paid $47 for a revolting “colon cleanse” that would just cleanse the nutrients from my body and make me even more dizzy and ill.

I held off, but still brooded heavily about the parasites.

Another week or two went by. By Thursday 5/19, I decided that I didn’t drink enough water. Water, by God, now that was the solution! If I could gurgle down about 10 glasses a day of water, I would be instantly healed and would wake up with my hair in a braid and a song on my lips. As I woke, I would sing a song that would begin with the words: “Another glorious day to celebrate my life!” I made a chart and started to check off how many glasses of water I imbibed per day. On the first day, I drank 10 glasses of clean, pure water.

I woke up feeling just as rotten as ever. “Perhaps,” I thought, “I was right about the parasites.” I also pondered a bit about brain tumors and incurable mental illness. Or maybe I had lactose intolerance? Maybe I was allergic to coffee. Maybe there was some kind of oil in the coffee bean that was sick-making, and caused incurable mental illness. Why, look at the proliferation of coffee shops, and all the poor sad addicts standing in line.

On Friday 5/20, I gave up coffee.


On Saturday 5/21, I was fully convinced that my troubles were all due to a mysterious malady called Fructose Malabsorption. If you have this problem, you can’t eat most fruits, high fructose corn syrup, asparagus, artichokes, onions, leeks, wheat, and brown rice. Basically, everything that is good for you. Fructose Malabsorption can make one extremely anxious and depressed, and can even make one’s eyeballs ache. Plus, it causes bad poop incidents and a bloated tummy that looks like you just swallowed a dodgeball. All these terrible things have happened to me. Therefore, I had "Fructmal."

I started drinking coffee again. What did it matter? Apples were poison.

By Sunday 5/22, I had discarded the Fructose Malabsorption theory altogether. It would be a bore to never eat an apple again! How would I explain this weird food intolerance at Appletini parties?

Instead, I now determined that my trouble was corn and dairy. Corn, the evil of America! No pretty corn-fed maidens, sipping frothy glasses of milk, would tempt me again. I packed up the industrial-sized bag of Costco tortilla chips and, on Monday 5/23, thrust them at our nanny on my way to work.

“Take them, take the awful things from my sight!” I begged.

“But, we just bought those,” she said.

“And look, I have eaten half the bag,” I cried. “It is no wonder the corn has made me quite ill and mad.”

I glared at the cheese in our fridge with suspicion. No doubt it had been made from mad cows and goats, and eating it would pickle my brain matter. I would eat no cheese. I gave up coffee again. I had some weak tea without sugar and milk. I felt very bitter.

By now there was very little left on the "safe list" that I could eat. I ate a few nuts and a banana for breakfast, and became worried about the Fructose thing all over again. “Suppose I was right, and this banana is not on the ‘safe” list, and it makes me sicker than ever!” I fretted about this on the way to work.

By 11:00 I was so weak and shaky from not eating a proper breakfast that I had a panic attack, and immediately nibbled at the corner of a small Xanax. I felt much better.

If you can cure me of this stupidity, I will send you a package of cookies. They will not contain any wheat, corn, dairy, nuts, fruit juices, or sugar, and will taste like little turds coated in sawdust.

Up From the Ground Come A-Bubbling...Turds?

I've had a pretty rough week that included panic attacks so severe that I had to put down the phone during a conference call, lie down on the bathroom floor, and breathe into a paper bag. So yesterday, when my husband came to me and said he had "something to show me," I became strangely and erroneously excited. Perhaps what he intended to show me was something nice, like a bunny rabbit in the garden wearing a circlet of daisies around its head, or a bag of diamonds.

It was not something nice.

Since we have moved into our 1890 Victorian house, we have discovered all manner of interesting goodies left behind by the former owners. Our idealistic sensibilities have been damaged by a serious dearth of cash and gold doubloons, treasures which we assumed would simply drop out of the ceiling tiles at surprising moments, or cascade into our arms when we peeled back the hideous wallpaper. My pal in Mahopac is always finding cool stuff on his property, like Native American artifacts and gravestones. We find things like human faeces.

Since that 2008 post, we have unearthed the following:
1. A tarnished spoon
2. Two very old bottles buried in the garden (pretty cool, actually, but yet another painful reminder of all the historic stuff that the former owners destroyed and mangled)
3. A few tattered paperdolls in a crawlspace under the stairs
4. 6 undamaged--and empty--cardboard toothpaste boxes from the 1970s (I sure forgot what the old Crest branding used to look like, and boy was I glad to see it again)
5. A can of "genuine Florida sunshine" in the rafters of the basement (It fell out on my head while I was doing laundry and almost gave me a melanoma)
6. Two perfectly pristine turds, and their accompanying toilet paper, resting near a small pipehole in the front yard

Ah, this last find was the most startling, I must say! For months, we had wondered just why this pipe existed. It lies flush with the ground in the grass next to our walkway, and the cap on it has a small hole in the center about two inches in diameter. Sometimes the boys poke sticks into it, and we can see water glimmering below. I had a theory at one point that it once housed a flagpole. Until yesterday, it was an interesting little mystery.

While walking past it, our nanny heard an ominous gurgling and bubbling sound, concurrent with shower, dishwasher, and toilet usage within the house. Later, she discovered that "something" had been tossed up with some force from the pipe's aperture. My husband was beckoned, and bent over to view just what it was. "Those are...turds," he said, with some evident lack of pleasure. A few shiny flies buzzed up and confirmed the diagnosis. Then he glanced down at his sandals. The sidewalk next to the pipe, where he was standing, was puddled with what appeared to be "water" but clearly wasn't just "water."

My middle child was fingered as the former owner of the offending objects, given away by his size and for the fact that it was he who sat upon the pot before the earth began gurgling and released its foul offering. He denied it, of course: "My little brother has the smallest poops in the house because HE is the smallest! So those are his turds." His argument had a fatal flaw, as the youngest and the potty have not yet become acquainted.

We noted with some relief that the aperture in the pipe, being the small size that it is, would prevent some of the potential "larger items" from escape. But then my husband shook his head with a sad and portentous expression. "Whatever force shot those turds up outta that hole, it's pretty powerful. I think almost anything might get pushed right through. Boom!"

It could become our own Old Faithful, finally making us rich through tourism dollars. I hope that the wee, sweet bunny rabbit is not in the area when she blows again.