Worries

I woke up in the middle of the night the other night (well, obviously it was at night, since it was, you see, the middle) to worry about the coming pandemic. Bird flu, or ebola, or something we don't know about yet - you know, the 21st century variant on the Black Plague. That thing that's going to kill most of us and bring our dissolute, decadent way of life to a terrible, tragic yet somehow justified (in the eyes of 25th century historians, anyway) end. I'm not particularly worried about it killing me - hell, I've lived enough. All sudden death means to me is that I'll have to be reincarnated sooner in order to get my lazy ass around to writing the Great American Novel and probably I'll have to do a lot of the same things over again, since life lessons have this way of sort of not sticking to me. I have to do all that in my next life anyway, regardless of when I die, since it it's a bit late to fix myself; I haven't written that Great Novel or painted that Great Painting and I kind of doubt that the Great American Blog counts in that Great American Creative This Is Your Life Work So Get It Right This Time On the Karmic Wheel Please For Pity's Sake sweepstakes. So the problem isn't me dying of a horrible sudden pandemic disease, although obviously that's devoutly to be avoided (there's more beer to be drunk, and I need to be here to drink it;) the problem is M. If the Plague comes and we all die except him, he'll be stuck in this house with no earthly idea of how to feed himself or drive a standard shift car - and this is a two standard shift Saturn household. Of course it is. We live in Asheville - we're all about the low gas mileage and the cool points inherent in the clutch.

So after tossing and turning and finally turning on the light, I decided that it was vital that M learn to drive a standard shift car. I'm not sure where the hell he's going to go if 90% of the people in the US are dead, or even if only 75% of them are - in fact, he'd probably be better off staying in Asheville, where at least the weather is nice and the survivors are likely to be no loonier post pandemic than they were pre, but you know, you have to give your kids options. Maybe he wants to go to whatever will be the post apocalyptic hot spot - Thunderdome, or something - but he'll need wheels to get there. And black leather and spikes, but that's his lookout.

I told him this tonight and he said he could already drive a stick and anyway didn't care and jesus, Mom, will you just shut up? He's at that age where he would be overjoyed if everyone under the age of 13 and over the age of 19 died tomorrow: they don't understand, man! I also told him I was getting him a life coach to get his ass organized and he had better not plan on having fun like this once school started and I think that was the point at which he cracked, desperately howled for his sister to toss him her keys and started her car up. His sister is a bit miffed at him at the moment, because he hasn't washed the dishes in three days, despite apparently intense inter-sibling bargaining. We have a dish rota theoretically going on, in which each person is assigned a day, and if they don't do their day, then the dishes pass over and they have to do the next day, and so on. M's day was Friday. It is now Monday. Every plate, and bowl, and piece of mismatched silverware in the house is sitting by the sink, to say nothing of the pots and pans. I know the bargaining was intense, because he told me that he was going to pay his sister $10, which is half of his weekly allowance, to wash the dishes, and then I heard him earnestly explaining, “Dude. You need $10. You’ll be so happy when you see that $10.”
“But there are way more dishes there than you said there were!” said A,
and M, who is rarely at a loss, said, “Fine. You pay me $5 and I’ll wash half of them. No, wait. You give me $15 and I’ll do them all.”
That was probably when she started after him and he started her car up. "Don't worry," I said, "He can't drive a standard shift. You can catch him easy when he starts hopping down the street."