“’Tell me this,’ he said at
last. ‘Have you a desideratum*?’
This queer question was
unexpected but I answered it quickly enough. I said I had.
‘What desideratum?’
‘To find what I am looking
form.’
‘That is a handsome
desideratum,’ said Martin Finnucane. ‘What way will you bring it about or
mature its mutandum* and bring it ultimately to passable factivity?’”
*desideratum: something that is
wanted
* mutandum: something that is to
be changed
- Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman
I spoke to my sisters-in-law
recently. Apart from other explicit pearls of wisdom that drip off them like
drool from the chin of a teething infant, I learned I have some problems with
boundaries. Mine, that is.
I don’t want to talk to
anyone except the pizza delivery guy. And that’s only because he’s moderately
cute. Not like my imaginary friend, Paulo-the-Pool-Boy cute. But the best part
of my day is closing the door behind Pizza boy and Paulo, second (or third?)
only to hanging up the phone after a check-in call from DOS. I managed to get
through the obligatory birthday call (on the wrong day, natch) like a laxative
through DOB who is 4’10” and about as wide.
They may be perfectly nice
people. Their brother loved them to the extent he loved anything that somebody
graciously handed him for free. Their mother loves them to the extent that she
remembers which end of the telephone received to put to her ear and also
remembers who they are. They may love their mother to the extent that I did
every fucking thing to assure her twilight years wouldn’t be spent on alone
under a bridge drinking her dinner from a bottle in a paper bag while they
asked me for free legal advice about their respective train-wreck lives.
I don’t want to be estranged
from these in-laws. Estranged connotes confrontational partings, disputes about
mutual relatives - now gone in body and/or in spirit, angry arguments or overt
outbursts of passive aggressiveness. Contesting wills and arguing about large
amounts of money. It implies some emotional bonds that have been emotionally
broken.
Yeah, no. I just don’t want
to maintain the travesty of the mockery of the sham that we were ever friends.
So, while I don’t want to fight with them or tell them to get lost, I would
appreciate it if they would just leave me alone.
AT$T recently did me a favor
by disconnecting my cellphone over a bill dispute. It was satisfactorily
resolved after about a week - and with minimal glitter. I may have forgotten to
tell DOS that my cell now works again. It is a possible activity that I got the point across - like a circus elephant jumping a tiny bicycle over the Grand Canyon.
Mutandumed halfway to my desideratum. They still have my home phone
number.
Photo Credit: Okamoto-Kiichi, from 50 Watts
