Mummy Plotnik - Part Two
Blogmaid reminded Plotnik that he had forgotten to post a picture of the Birthday Girl. Here she is...92 years old and sharp as a machete.
Plot always thinks about his family when he comes home after spending time with them. He suspects every family is the same...interdynamics are always minefields and everyone is a terrorist.
Family Plotnik is small -- Plot has a mother and a brother. His brother, Schmekl, has a wife and two children, and Plot has a wife and two children. That's it. You wouldn't think the play could get too complicated with that small a cast.
Oh, but you'd be wrong. THE DOG, the freaking dog. It's always THE DOG. It's always been THE DOG. There can be a new dog, but it's still THE same goddam DOG. Without THE DOG, everyone gets along, a little oil, a little water, still OK. But oi, THE DOG.
Saturday night Schmekl and Little Bearnik slept over at Mummy Plotnik's, with Plot and Duck. Schmeckl is a big guy, and he needed a bed. Plot had very sore ribs, and he needed a bed. There are only two beds, and two sofas.
The negotiation included exchanges like these:
Mummy Plotnik: "I've got a huge bed, and there's just me. Somebody can sleep on the other side."
The Great Plotnik would bungee jump off Mt. Everest before he could imagine sleeping with his mother in her bed. Schmekl, clearly, is far more well-adjusted than Plotnik.
Schmekl: "Well, OK, Mom. I'll sleep in your room with you."
Little Bearnik: "But Mom, remember he snores and farts."
The Great Plotnik: (OK, he should have stayed out of this) "God, yes. He snores like a drowning chain saw, and the room smells like..."
Schmekl: "Hey!"
Somebody: "And what about THE DOG?"
Silence. Then Schmeckl says: "THE DOG sleeps with ME!"
Mummy Plotnik: "Well, forget it, then. I ain't sleeping with THE DOG too."
Plot realized Schmekl was adamant about sleeping with THE DOG, so he gave in. He slept in one of the beds in the guest room, the one on the floor, and Schmeckl and THE DOG slept in the other bed, the one on legs.
Before he turned out the light, Plot was astonished to observe that Schmekl Plotnik sleeps on his stomach, and THE DOG crawls in under the covers, between Schmekl's legs, nestled up close to his asshole.
"Jeez, Schmek, are you sure...you want THE DOG...there? Does she really want to be there?"
"She loves it. Good night, Plottie."
"Good night, Schmek."
"Arf."
Of course, an hour later THE DOG jumped out of Schmekl's bed and landed on Plotnik's stomach. Plot sat straight up. Schmekl was snoring like The Manhattan Project.
"Schmek!" Plot shook him.
Schmekl woke up. "What! What is it?"
"You're snoring! Roll over! And do something about THE damned DOG!"
"OK. Oooh, widdle poopsie doopsie, doggie woggie, come up here, you sweet little cutsie schmootsie, good widdle girl, good widdle girl, good widdle..."
"STOPPPPPPP IT!"
THE DOG hopped back on Schmek's bed, jumped down to his butthole under the blankets, and they both went immediately to sleep.
But Plot lay on his back, seething. His thoughts, distilled, went something like this:
"I hate this. I hate this. Why do I hate this? I don't know, but I hate this."
An, of course, an hour later, it happened again. Dog. Snore. WAKE UP! This time, Plot took his blanket and curled up next to Duck on the living room sofa. He should have done it in the first place. His ribs were happy. They all went immediately to sleep and slept like babies.
The next day there was the usual small family burnout nestled amongst the larger family fun day together. At some point this week someone will call someone and determine no one is really mad at anyone.
The moral of this story, children, is simply this: We're all imperfect. When we should shut up, we pipe up, and when we should pipe up, we shut up. Our point is to make our families perfect, in our eyes. They don't want to be perfect in our eyes, they want us to be perfect in their eyes. And so it goes. We are still really lucky to have them.
But Jeez. THE goddam DOG.
posted by DAK @ 10:34 AM
6 Comments:
I can't believe this has not been turned into a reality TV show yet. Families can be so weird and wonderful. How big is this dog? Our little dog used to sleep in our bed, which I mostly hated, but when she died I found it hard to sleep without her in the bed for a bit. Weird.
Douggie,
You sell your family situation short...there are thousands of us who are proud to count ourselves relatives of yours, like it or not! You need to pull out the old family tree project, spread it out over the floor and avoid feeling insignificant among all those names.
Our big dog sleeps in the bed with us too, but I make him sleep on the happy grandma's side.
No one has yet made mention of those families that sleep with the dog AND the cat, all together at the same time. We are working up to that over here on Moultrie Street. Or actually, it might only work when we are all at Jackie Pie's house, because Jackie Pie has a CA King bed, whereas I have merely a double. Then again, in the winter when it's cold and PG&E bills are absurd, maybe a TPDCA (Two People Dog Cat Arrangement) would be just the ticket.
I'll say the same thing I said when you fell off your bike ~ this is very well written!
You are hysterical! Of course you made it all up...
Once upon a time in my life, my shared housing situation was such that my bed was the couch in the living room of a house that had no bedroom. Really. So one roommate slept on the porch and one in the basement and when it got really cold (Missouri cold), one roommate would bring his blanket and pillow and sleep by the heat vent in the living room floor and the other roommate would take the other couch.
This would have been cozy enough, but sleeping in the living room with us were the one dog, the three cats, the four bunnies, the two ducks, the one goose, and Oscar the hermit crab. Only Oscar had his own bed (under a rock in his aquarium. The rest of the menagerie distributed themselves on the couches or on the floor and when anyone rolled over . . . well, I think that's where the "wave" might have originated.
One dog in a bed? I laugh at your one dog.
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