My Brother is Missing

Mom had taken my brother, Cam, to the beach to go swimming. He didn’t get to the shore often, so it was a treat. It was a hot summer day in July and they were both looking forward to a dip in the ocean.

The day they choose was much like any other. Sunny and hot. Mom had gone through hip surgery a few years ago and could still be a bit unsteady. She asked my brother if they could hold hands. She slipped her hand into his. Together they waded out into the surf.

The waves were not as rough as she anticipated. Her confidence grew. He released her hand. She was not yet ready to head back to the beach, but he said he wanted to take a walk. She nodded, and off he went. She watched him for a moment, then turned to watch the horizon bob up and down.

When she grew a bit weary, she decided to head back. Her hip would bother her at times like these, when fatigue set in. Her earlier determined footsteps became grim and labored. The beach, only five minutes away earlier, now seemed more like 25 minutes away. Damn this hip. Damn the heat.

Mom finally emerged from the surf. She made her way to where they left their beach blankets and chairs. Cam was nowhere to be seen. She felt uneasy.

It wasn’t like Cam to wander off without telling her. She wondered if something had happened to him on his way to shore – a cramp. She hadn’t watched him come all the way in. Or, perhaps someone had grabbed him after he had gotten to shore – a

kidnapping. She read of such things happening. She knew what she would do. She would tell a lifeguard.

"Excuse me, sir, my son is missing, and he is wearing special trunks,” she announced. The lifeguard, being an alert sort of person, immediately seized upon that critical fact, and pounced.

“Oh, My God, Ma’am, I’m so sorry,” he said. “We’ll do everything we can to find your son. What is his name? These ‘special trunks’ of his could be a distinguishing feature—What kind of orthopedic trucks are they? Oh, and how old is your poor little boy?

My rapidly panicking mom replied, haltingly, under a welling veil of tears, “My son’s name is Cam. His trunks are very special – a now discontinued nautical red. I got them on sale for just 1.99! I bought them for his father, who wore them only once before he died, but don’t tell my son that,” she quickly added in a conspiratorial fashion. The lifeguard slowly lowered his detective’s pad.

“I never told him. If I told my son that he never would have worn those lovely red trunks.”

“He’s wearing a dead guy’s trunks,” the lifeguard said flatly.

“And my son just turned 40 in April,” she added brightly, ignoring the lifeguard’s comment.

At that moment, six-foot tall, 40-ish man with long hair wandered up behind Mom. The lifeguard’s jaw dropped and he stared open-mouthed as my brother piped up from behind her and said, “Hi, Mom. I went for a walk. Who are we looking for?”

Plunging In

"It all comes back to poop," my brother-in-law, Frank, once said. He was referring to the conversations held by the family into which he married. That would be my family. Every conversation inevitably returns to bowel movements -- those of kids, pets, the elderly, and you. Yes, sad to say, we are up to our eyeballs in defecation. Quantity, frequency, color, and consistency are all terribly important qualities. They must be.

When I changed my sister's diapers when she was a baby (I am now 46, she is a 34-year-old supermom), using the old cloth kind, back in the early 1970s, my mom would always ask, "How much was there?"

"How much what?" I replied.

"You know, Number Two," she said.

"Oh, you mean poop," I replied.

"Yes." She was now getting irritated because I used a "common" word. "How much?"

"Enough to fill a diaper, stink like something crawled up inside her and died, and be the most hideous shade of green you've ever seen," I said. "Does that answer your question?"

"Don't be a smart-mouth," she said. "You don't want to grow up like Chucky."

"I don't know how to measure poop loads in a diaper. There was a load of it. You want to see it?" Mom wanted complete 24-hour news reports of what went in my sister's one end and out the other.

"No. I guess that's good enough."

I never did figure out what "good enough" was with baby poop. I was afraid of getting The Poop Lecture. Even Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs says "poo." We always said poop.

I did, however, figure out what Baby Poop Green is. It is much like a train wreck. You want to look away, but you can't. Your eyeballs are being sucked out of your head, twisting your cranium toward a color so grotesque it can't possibly exist in nature, yet it does.

Speaking of grotesque, I also learned one more thing about baby poop. It has a stench like no other.

Babies are supposed to look cute so you want to take care of them. That's what I've heard, anyway. It is a cruel contradiction of Mother Nature that even the world's cutest baby, my niece Alexa, will gently expel from her tiny processing plant a substance that exudes a delicate bouquet not unlike that of a drifter's corpse, but worse.

The aroma does not gently waft in your direction like perfume. This odor lumbers toward you like Dr. Frankenstein's creation. More mustard gas than cologne, this monstrous attack upon your olfactory senses was launched not by an invading army bent on conquering your lands, but by a baby who already has devoted slaves.

I believe they're called parents.

In both college and graduate school, I was not afraid to tackle obscenely clogged toilets in the dormitories. I do not use the word "obscenely" lightly. Some guys never learned to courtesy flush BEFORE they are done grunting. When they finish, get up, turn around, and confront the brown pyramidal mountain they have built, they simply hitch up their pants and leave. Some young women have not yet learned that feminine hygiene items should not be flushed.

I don't mind plunging. I'm good at plunging. While in high school, at some point, my poor dad lost patience with all the times my brother and sister stopped up the toilet. I volunteered to learn how to plunge. With a palpable sense of relief, he showed me. From then on, I killed clogs with a vengeance. I vanquished one bowl after another of swirling water that rose alarmingly higher with every frantic jiggle of the handle. Maybe I should have been a plumber.

This past fall, my Mom and Aunt Beryl went to my late grandmother's place in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey, for the weekend. The weather promised to be nice, and air conditioning was no longer necessary. They didn't need the oil furnace fired up yet, either. One thing they desperately needed, but didn't have yet, was a functioning toilet. They were blissfully unaware the toilet wasn't quite ready for duty.

I don't know about anyone else, but the first thing I do when I arrive somewhere is use the head and get a drink. It sets a dividing line between "not there yet" and "we're here." It helps me clear my mind. Mom doesn't do that, I guess. Neither does Beryl.

When Mom and Beryl arrived at the Nan's place, they went out to dinner. By that I mean they immediately went out to dinner. They opened the door, brought their weekend flotilla of 52 bags in, turned around, and walked right out the door again to get something to eat.

Upon their return, they needed to use the head, but found the toilet wouldn't flush. I know how to diagnose such things, but they don't. My brother, Cam, knows about these things, too. They called him. Not me. Thank Christ.

Why the harsh reaction? You might ask. When my brother recounted this tale at Thanksgiving, he said they called him about every two minutes with problems. I would have gone postal after the second call. He is far more patient with Mom than I am.

When they called him about the toilet (after first calling him six or seven times about the TV), he said he wanted to put a bullet in his head. Instead, he decided to have some fun. He invented the "How Badly Do You Need to Poop?" quiz. This should be a game show.

He initially advised them to just use the head and leave it alone. In other words, pee in it, don't flush, close the door, no harm done. From the rising panic in mom's voice, my brother correctly discerned that she needed to relieve herself in a major, "material" manner. First, understand that mom is a 1950s person, and she doesn't use words like "pee" and "poop." She always used Number One and Number Two. My brother pounced.

"You guys need to poop!" he triumphantly exclaimed.

My mom admitted that was so.

Cam said, "Just hold it."

"But we can't!" Mom wailed plaintively on the phone.

"You guys must really need to poop!" my brother boomed.

My mom whimpered in the affirmative.

Pretending this could be a major repair, my brother went into sympathetic diagnosing mode.

"How much does Aunt Beryl really need to poop?"

Mom and Beryl, best friends since childhood, never discussed such matters. They had never even bunked together in the same bed, let alone in the same room. It simply wasn't done in their world.

"I can't ask Beryl that!" Mom was shocked.

Cam insisted, "You have to. On a scale of 1 to 10. Ask her right now!" He still pretended things were critical and that something bad could happen at any moment.

He heard a muffled "oh, 6 or 7." He was certain Beryl was downplaying things and that she was actually at about 9 or 10.

Mom being Mom, told the truth. "Ten," she said dully, admitting defeat, convinced she'd be squatting out back in the hedges.

Cam let them off the hook. "In that case," he said, "turn the water on."

"What?" mom asked.

"Look behind the toilet. There's a little knob back there on the pipe going into the tank. Turn the knob counter-clockwise, to the left."

Mom was so relieved that, well, relief might be in sight that she forgot to yell at Cam for playing her like a fiddle.

Mom turned the water on and got the Porcelain Goblet working.

A slice of heaven, indeed.

Strange Man -- Secret Agent Man?

London (AP) – A man dressed in tuxedo was taken into custody early this morning. He was found hiking along one of the major roads leading into the city. When asked his name by a local constable, he said his name was “Bond...James Bond.” Constable Plod said he smelled the strong odor of alcohol on his breath, possibly vodka.

When questioned, the man identifying himself as Mr. Bond described a huge underground missile complex and a wealthy industrialist bent on world domination. Mr. Bond said he destroyed the missiles and killed the supposed villain. Having confessed to murder, Mr. Bond was cautioned, arrested on the spot, and charged with murder.

When searched, Mr. Bond was found to be carrying a Walther PPK and a handful of other gadgets he asked the constable not to touch. He explained most could be used as weapons. Mr. Bond was again cautioned, as firearms are strictly regulated in Britain and concealed weapons of any kind are forbidden.

The man said he was a commander in the Royal Navy, on attachment with MI-6 as an agent, and that this could be confirmed by MI-6. MI-6 had not returned any of the several phone calls made by the police on his behalf by press time. The not-so-secret agent calling himself James Bond is currently assisting the police in their inquiries.