Head in the Sand ... and other unpopular positions by Linda M Au Page B

thrilled to have this
technology available in my car.
    For approximately six months.
    Then the contraption woke up one morning and decided
to forget what a CD looked like. And it hasn’t recognized a CD
since. We’ve tried every type of CD in the book. We tried every
type of cleaner known to mankind (except peanut butter, which every
preschooler seems to think belongs in CD players). Nothing worked.
Certainly not the CDs. So then I was reduced to using it as a very,
very bad radio. Which was worse than the radio that had been in my
tape deck.
    Then the thing started to physically slip out of the
slot in the dashboard. When I drove up a hill, the whole CD player
(or, should I say, “the very expensive yet cheap radio”?) would slide out the rectangular hole and whack the gear
shift. I had to drive with one hand holding the thing in place to
keep it from ramming the car into neutral, which got dangerous
after a while.
    I asked my husband to disconnect the CD player
entirely, and all I had left staring at me from the hole in the
dash were about two dozen wires of different colors. Oh sure, they
were pretty, but . . .
    Someday I hope to get him to put the tape deck back
in. I’m actually looking forward to the day when I’ll be able to
play a tape in my car again. My standards have gotten
really low in the past six months.
    Till then I have no CD player, no tape deck, no
radio, and no clock in my car. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Total silence when
I drive. Well, except for when my kids are in the car. There’s
never total silence then, of course.
    But, it’ll be months till I see another radio or tape
deck in my car. Why? Because it would mean my husband would have to
sit in my cramped, sweltering car jiggling wires around for hours
on end. And, of course, it’s August.
    Oh well. Maybe for Christmas. . . . Oh wait, it’ll be
snowing then. He won’t want to sit outside in my car then
either.
    What’s the old saying? Silence is golden? I wish I
could agree.
     
     

Back Me Up
     
    Today I’m in pain. I must’ve moved the wrong way or
turned funny or coughed or something (also known as exercising at
my age). The muscles along the right side of my back went haywire
and since then it’s been torture to move—but only in certain
directions. Like, to the right. Or the left. I have trouble
sitting, getting back up, twisting to one side, reaching down with
my right arm, and a whole host of other mundane gerundial
movements. I’m sitting in a chair right now dreading hoisting
myself up. More than usual, I mean.
    The obvious explanation for my dilemma is that I
shouldn’t have dragged that five-shelf bookcase up a flight of
stairs to the second floor this morning. It’s obvious now, but it
seemed like a good idea at the time. And, really, I didn’t do
anything extraordinary. I just eased the thing up onto each step,
one at a time. I don’t recall pulling any muscles then, and the
pain didn’t come till hours later, after I’d been sitting on the
couch for a few hours doing a lot of nothing. You know, a typical
evening at my house. Still, the mind wants to make connections, and
this is the easiest explanation that accounts for the data.
    But, it could have happened while I was vacuuming the
entryway. (That’ll teach me to clean the house.) At one point the
belt slipped off the upright vacuum and I had to un-upright it and
take the plastic bottom off, holding the whole contraption between
my knees at a weird angle and cleaning out the gunk and hair while
putting the belt back on properly. Perhaps I held something at an
odd angle for too long and yanked something then. Besides the
vacuum belt, I mean.
    Doesn’t matter. I’d love to sink into the waterbed
right now and let the heated water in the mattress help the muscles
unknot. But I’m afraid I won’t be able to get back out and I’d be
declared lost at sea. (See “Water, Water Everywhere” on page
95.)
    Plus, the TV that was in our bedroom had to be sent
back to the