Recluse

The real trick in learning to be an eccentric recluse is to leave your doorbell connected. Back when I was an amateur, wet-behind-the-ears unsocialite, I made the rookie mistake of disconnecting my doorbell and telling only close friends and family it wasn't connected. This tactic, however, discourages only the superficial layer of visitors. Even the postman knows to knock in addition to ringing, and many a time I was fooled into going to the door anyway. But that's how I knew I wasn't ready to be a real eccentric recluse. I could still be lured to the door by repetitive knocks or rings.

It may have taken ten years, but I have acquired the enlightened knowledge of how to be the recluse I always dreamed of being. The doorbell works. I hear people knock. I don't have an elaborate (or any) surveillance cameras or video doorbell. I don't even have a window that looks out on my doorstep through which I could potentially peek through imperceptibly parted curtains to ascertain who is at my door. No, the answer is, I just don't answer the door anymore. Ring away, doorbell. Over the past four years as a dispatcher I have mastered the craft of tuning out annoying sounds with infinite patience. Knock all you like, neighbor-who-can't-take-a-hint-that-I-don't-want-to-help-with-the-upcoming-blood-drive. Ring and knock in alternate patterns, political volunteer whose rehearsed rant starts with the even-more-irritating "Oh, but I'm not selling anything!" It will avail you nothing. Whether there are no cars in the driveway or a hundred. Whether all the lights are on or the house is dark. Whether you can actually hear me playing Vivaldi records in my office or the house is silent. I will not come to the door.

And that's how I know I'm ready to buckle down and write a novel.

93 Seconds

Words are the tools of thought. I remember that from time to time. I remember it when I answer the phone, and the first words between two strangers are not my recorded, "9-1-1, what is the address of your emergency?" but rather a breathless exclamation, "I was just punched in the face by my husband!"

These words intrigue me. Did she carefully construct the words she would fling at me as soon as I picked up? I find that unlikely. There are children screaming and crying in the background—one so close to the phone that I can hear her sobbing through her snot-running nose. She is drowning out her mother, and I have to ask three times if anyone needs medical attention. I never get a proper answer. Yet in this chaos this woman called me, called 9-1-1, to sum up the exact situation in a complete thought in passive voice. Does she realize how competent and articulate her subconscious is? Unlikely.

But I am aware because it is with her subconscious that I seem to ultimately be conversing. In ten words I have been handed five vital pieces of information. I know who was punched. I know who did the punching. I know where has been punched. I know how recently it has happened. And I know the relationship between the assailant and the victim. One could hardly hope for better communication. But I know she is not paying conscious attention to me because questions she at some level deems non-vital go unanswered while she tries to calm her children. Yet questions she recognizes as important to herself getting help are answered immediately.

Three times I ask if she needs medical attention. The fact that I have to ask repeatedly while her vague response is drowned in the background din tell me well enough that none is immediately needed. A query about he location of her husband, though, brings her voice clearly through the mouthpiece of her phone and into my headset. She has deliberately brought the phone closer to her mouth to tell me he ran away down the street and she did not see which way. A further prompt for his clothing description receives similar results. We must know what he looks like in order to find him. But now a question of whether there are weapons in the home elicits only sounds of mom trying to comfort children. If there are weapons, they do not concern mom enough right now. How carefully her thoughts are prioritized in so short a time.

I am on the phone with her for 93 seconds.

Perspective

In view of the past three months, whenever I hear someone say, "Oh I slept like a baby last night!" I now want to reply, "I'm so sorry. Maybe you should ask your doctor for a prescription strength sedative."

Wasp

I wasn't worried about wasps when I started gathering wood for the backyard barbecue. After all, it was only the beginning of April, and we'd had a snowstorm just a week ago. Wasps weren't on my worry radar, and certainly neither were bad haircuts. All I had on my mind were hot dogs, toasted pineapple, and relaxing hours around a campfire.

First there was one wasp. I spied him on a branch next to the branch I was gathering and, after swallowing a yelp, carefully avoided that branch and checked all the other ones for intruders. But seeing no more, I gathered all the branches in our back yard to celebrate the fine weather and two months of successfully keeping a tiny human alive.

Before long, I had kindled a merry, crackling fire, tended it into a beautiful bed of embers, and even brought Baby out to admire my handiwork while Brian took over fire management. Baby was, however, unimpressed with the smoke, the wind, and the gathering dusk and was, therefore, soon taken inside to rest comfortably. Our continual passage through the kitchen in and out of the back yard disturbed her not a whit, and the evening looked promisingly calm and pleasant.

Then there were two wasps. They were both crawling on one of the logs I had used near the base of the fire, and I noted that the log came from the pile where I had espied the first offensive creeping insect. This worried me, but I chose not to engage them and crossed cautiously to the opposite side of the fire, keeping a wary eye on them the entire time. But then one of them flew away and the other crawled first towards the flames and then rapidly away, disappearing on the underside of the log and out of my mind.

We had a marvelous little roast with peppers, onions, and pineapple (a personal favorite), and I had no reason to concern myself with wasps for a full hour. One of us needing to attend the fire at all times, however, I was alone in the kitchen when I felt movement in my hair above my left brow. My hand went instinctively to brush at the hair and was not arrested in time by the terrible sound of buzzing. I half-swatted the wasp away from my head knowing full well that I was certainly about to be stung. By remarkable good fortune I was not stung, but now I was in a horrendous and terrifying situation.

The wasp hung clinging to a few strands of hair directly in front of my left eye. I couldn't scream; it's just not my go-to response, and besides, I wasn't breathing at this point. I dared not swat at him again. I had miraculously escaped being stung and knew better than to test my luck. Furthermore, two feet to my right, my child slept peacefully unaware of the dreadful danger. Even if I should manage to dislodge the wasp without getting stung, what were the chances it would fly off and land on my beautiful little girl? I fought rising hysteria as I moved toward the back door. I had every intention of making it outside and requesting help from Brian, but the wasp was in front of my eyeball. I saw its every move. I watched its six legs wriggle and cling to strands of my hair while it worked its wings once or twice. Its bulging lower half swung wildly back and forth with each step I took while its antennae twitched a few times every second.

I made it two steps toward the door when I saw the scissors. I don't know whose scissors they are. Certainly they're not any pair I ever remember owning, silly purple-handled, kid-sized, blunt-tipped things. I snatched them up instantly and cut the hair a good three inches above the wasp. Down he tumbled along with a decent clump of my hair a good six inches or more in length, and there on my kitchen floor between the counter and the back door he died an ignominious death. His carcass tumbled into the vent, and a gust from the door puffed the shorn locks of my hair across the floor.

I was several minutes recovering from this, but, my breathing and heart rate returning to normal, I stepped outside to tell Brian about my near-death experience. I wasn't expecting much of a response, maybe a chuckle or an inquiry into whether or not I got stung or perhaps a curious wondering about wasps this early in the season. But instead he frowned and knitted his brow.

"I think that was a bit of an overreaction," were his first words. This response ruffled me a bit, especially since he knows I despise insects and particularly hate wasps and that therefore having one in my hair was pretty much the most terrifying thing to happen to me since I was nearly pushed off a cliff in China in 2004. I couldn't think how to reply and retired to poking the fire and mulling over what to say. The firelight cast dramatic shadows on Brian's concerned face, deepening the furrow in his brow. A few minutes passed before he broke the silence with a tentative query that made me smile.

"How much hair did you cut off?"

That's your concern, sweetheart? That perhaps I've gone and made a terrible gash in my hair like some lack-of-motor-control two-year-old? Well, I guess I can't fault you too much. You should see the scissors I used.

Faith

The incident that started all of this happened well over eighteen months ago, if not more, but I've thought about it so very many times. It has half haunted me because, as many people do, I wish I had said something different at the time. I wish the right words had sprung readily to mind. Just because I'm a philologist doesn't mean I always have the right words at hand. I wish I could, silly as that may seem.

But what I really wish─what I really want─is for people to think more about the words they use. Words are the tools of thought. Relying on another person to understand one's intended meaning without ensuring one is adequately conveying that meaning is the intellectual equivalent of relying on another driver to make sure I don't die in a fiery car crash on the way home. It's ridiculous and puts all the power in the wrong hands. Yet how many times every day, every hour, does one casually, flippantly, carelessly allow a reader, a listener to understand one's meaning. 

I don't intend to insist that every person at all times be meticulously aware of every possible misunderstanding that can be drawn from everyday conversation. But I do want people to just think more about what they say.

Some months ago a woman, just to make conversation, asked me about my work as a 9-1-1 dispatcher. Being a contemplative sort, I waited a moment to ensure I didn't go rushing into an explanation that would be too in-depth for someone unfamiliar with the law enforcement world. But my hesitation left the smallest gap in the conversation that she felt the need to fill with the statement, "Surely your work must restore your faith in humanity all the time!"

Surely? . . . Really? Surely? Why so surely? Why must it? And why my faith in humanity? Is my faith in humanity in need of regular restoration? What has caused this supposed deterioration of my supposed faith in humanity? What is the status of your own faith in humanity? What do you even mean by humanity? What do you mean by faith?  For heaven's sake, woman, think about the words coming out of your mouth!!!

But, of course, I didn't say that. At the time all I mustered was a very inadequate, "No. No it does not." I should have liked to explain all of this to her, but I also feel that a lengthy, linguistic, theoretical explanation would have been lost on her anyway. After all, at the time she didn't even continue the conversation, choosing instead to move on to something she may have considered more accessible. Shoes, I think it was.

After I left the gathering at which she had made such an odd assertion, I wanted very much to return and clarify that I do indeed have faith in humanity. It simply differs from the line most would take at that statement.

The absolute first point to establish is that when one mentions the word "faith," one frequently thinks of religion first. The concept of having faith in God. But even in this sense the term is incomplete. What one truly means by saying one has faith in God, generally, is that one believes deliberately and intensely that a superior being not only exists, but has influence over one's life, an intent to do good, or has one's best interest at heart, and actively involves Himself in bringing about the best results for one's existence.

However, that's too long to say all in one go. So one simply says, "I have faith in God."

This is not the sense I am discussing here. Faith in every dictionary I checked (and believe me, I check more dictionaries than you do) had multiple meanings, about half of them specifically designated for religious use and the other half used in a secular sense to talk about basic trust or belief. 

The lack of precise definition given in the phrase "have faith in X" works quite well in the religious arena where one's particular beliefs about God and His level of involvement or care in one's life varies, sometimes drastically, from one person to another and can furthermore be a source of intense debate or conflict if one were to try to affirmatively define what having faith meant for another person. But this is not the sense that I am discussing, not the sense I feel the speaker misused, and not the sense upon which I am about to embark on a linguistic thought.

Where the use of the word becomes more problematic is when it is applied to firmer subjects. Science. Justice. Humanity.

One might say, "Well, I mean, I don't have faith in science like that." What, then, is it like? Does one never rely on "scientific" data to influence one's judgment? One's decision to purchase "organic" vegetables over those treated with pesticides? What of one's emphatic stance on global warming, whether for or against? On what is one basing one's belief that the world is round? Or that it is flat? That the Earth circumnavigates the sun? Or that gravity is the force that draws objects having mass towards the center of the Earth? Even supposing one disbelieves the traditional stances on every one of these points, that still constitutes having a level of faith in science.

Because here we arrive at the fundamental inadequacy of the over-simplistic statement at hand. One can have faith in science and concurrently disbelieve its teachings. This is linguistically sound for the mere reason that one has failed to define what one has faith that science can accomplish. This notion is generally more simply expressed in the negative, as in, "So-and-so doesn't have faith in science." But this is a disservice to the linguistic function of the word.

For example, a devout scientist would be better served to say he has faith in science to define parameters of the known universe and to explain much of its workings as well as faith in using science as a tool to further discover hitherto unknown facts about the workings of said universe. By contrast, a doubter of scientific capability would easiest describe his stance by simply negating the affirmative statement given by the scientist. But were the doubter more eloquent, he might choose to use affirmative language of his own and express his own belief by saying he has faith that science is inadequate to ever come to correct conclusions regarding physical phenomena of any sort, and he believes that any effort put forth in that field lacks the understanding and the ability to truly know.

Faith, after all, merely means "firm trust or belief in or reliance upon something" or "belief based on evidence, testimony, or authority." Trusting that an authority is right uses the same verb, the same action, as trusting that an authority is wrong. This is not necessarily the same as distrusting a thing or an authority. If I trust that a drunkard is drunk and is going to tell me he isn't drunk, when experience, evidence, and a third-party witness affirm that he is, then I am trusting in a specific course of action and relying on its results in an affirmative manner. This is different from distrusting that the drunkard will tell me he is drunk. There is more ambiguity in the negative. But I digress and begin to nitpick.

The simple truth is, we don't choose precise wording. We merely say that the scientist has faith in his craft while the other person is, at best, a doubter or an idiot, depending on how foolish the doubter chooses to sound and how firmly we have faith in the correctness of scientific data.

As for humanity, defaulting to the generally understood meaning of the word as "human faculties, attributes, or characteristics collectively," I have faith. I absolutely have faith. I have faith that most humans generally desire to do what is commonly called "good" in a moral sense. I have faith that many humans fail in the execution of their good intentions but that they have good intentions nonetheless. I have a great deal of faith that humanity has declined in moral standing over the course of history, regardless of the debated length of history. I have an extraordinary amount of faith that the common human lacks a great amount of sense. I have even more faith that a given individual who is already behaving criminally and stupidly will not cease his actions of his own voluntary accord. I have faith in the involuntary responses of the human body and their ability to override the logical thought process of almost any given human. I have faith that most people experience fear and few people handle that experience with a calm demeanor or general well-being.

I have faith in human selfishness and its effect on the thought process of many humans. I have faith that human selfishness will often help a person to survive an otherwise overwhelmingly challenging situation. I have faith that the human ego will more often than not lead an individual to trust his own decision-making process over the instructions given by a stranger. I have faith that many people possess enormous quantities of willful steadfastness and that they will rely on this quality above that of reason or persuasion. I have faith that most mothers love their children and will sacrifice a great deal to benefit their children's well-being. I have faith that most humans choose to rely on their own experience and interpretation of events over those who reliably may have better information or more thorough experience.

Some may call my faith cynical or pessimistic and many—many—may disagree with me, which I affirm they are more than welcome to do, these being, after all, my beliefs. But really faith alone is neither up nor down. Faith is firm trust or belief. I have faith that I will die one day. That does not mean I do not love living. It merely means that I have faith.

Who Needs English?

One day I walked in the white-washed classroom to find two boys in an all-out scuffle, rolling on the tile floor while the rest of the class stood in a polite semi-circle nearby. I separated the two, grasping them by the collars of their jackets and, holding one per hand, instinctively asked, "What happened?"

I ought to have considered that I was talking to two angry five-year-old boys who had had fewer than about 100 hours of instruction in the English language, but when you walk in on two of your students pummeling each other, that consideration isn't the first thing to come to mind. Besides, I had only had one hour of Chinese language instruction, so mathematically they were one hundred times more qualified to attempt communication than I was.

English is not what they defaulted to, however. Each in defense of his own position, both boys began a half-shouted Chinese explanation punctuated with accusatory pointing and demonstrative air-punches. However, the explanation being in Chinese, I did not understand. "Wait, what?" I asked apparently believing that a second inquiry would procure different results. I was destined to be disappointed.

Further defensive shouting ensued in rising little Chinese voices. They were both desperate that I understand the situation. I couldn't blame them for wanting me to know what was going on. If they couldn't satisfactorily explain it to me, they'd likely be handed over to their Chinese teacher, who dealt with them much more harshly than any of us foreigners did. I held up my hands and asked a third time.

This time some of the classmates tried pitching in, one or two of them even realizing that English needed to be employed if any progress were to be made. "Teacher," one girl stepped forward and began by pointing at first the larger boy then the smaller and then punching her fist into her cupped palm. This outraged the larger boy who shouted that she was wrong. She shrugged and retreated, clasping her hands behind her back and waiting for someone else to try a better explanation. Mentally I noted that verbs such as "hit," "punch," and "fight" were shockingly absent in a program of basic foreign language vocabulary instruction. But that couldn't be addressed just now.

I couldn't see any other option than to call for their Chinese teacher, hesitant as I was to do so. I reached for the door when the larger boy shouted out, "TEACHER!" He was standing forward now, a look of desperation on his face. He had a little bit of a reputation for scrapping, and this incident likely would not go well for him if reported. "Teacher! Teacher!" His chest heaved with pent-up desire to tell me what was going on.

"Teacher!" he said a little quieter this time but with fierce intensity. "Teacher! He my mm!" He pointed swiftly at the smaller boy, then at himself, and then punched his fist into his other palm. "My he mm!" He jabbed his finger into his own chest, flung it in a quick point at the smaller boy, then swung his leg wildly in an imitative kick. "He my mm" he punched his hand again, "one!" He held up a single finger.

Ah. I spoke slowly. "He punched you." The boy nodded, punching his hand a third time. "You kicked him." He swung his leg again, nodding along. "But, he hit you first." He nodded savagely, holding up a single finger again. The class nodded along, and the smaller boy looked angrily around at the lack of support.

Three consecutive fragment sentences consisting of a three-word vernacular and no verbs. There was even an order of events. No wonder my major is obsolete. The people with the most spoken language on Earth have no need of my skill set.

Mouse

I'm not particularly skittish about mice. They exist, and I'm okay with that, unlike spiders which creep the bejeezees out of me whether I can see them or not. And when I saw this mouse, I wasn't skittish about it either. Just annoyed. Annoyed that it was running around my kitchen floor. Annoyed that it was two in the morning. Annoyed that I hadn't slept in thirty-five hours. 

I stomped my foot. 

I'm not a screamer. I'm Asian. If that justification doesn't make sense to you, just ask the next Asian you know to scream. So instead of yelping or jumping or making any other surprised effeminate response, I stomped my foot. This was not a well-thought out action. Upon discovering a mouse in one's kitchen, the primary goal would be to trap, contain, or otherwise eradicate the mouse's presence. Stomping accomplishes none of these goals. Stomping literally just startles the mouse more than turning on the kitchen light at two in the morning when it probably thought it had the kitchen all to itself. I stomped. The mouse squeaked. And the mouse disappeared. 

This was not ideal.

"Mouse," I said. "Mouse. Mouse in the kitchen. Mouse in the kitchen. Mouse ran away. Mouse is somewhere. Mouse." (I'm not particularly articulate after thirty-five going on thirty-six hours of sleep deprivation.) Thankfully Brian, bless his practical head, understands sleep-deprived Mailespeak and immediately stepped into the kitchen with a one-word response.

"Where?"

I pointed. I wanted to have the energy to be more upset. I wanted to throw all the furniture out of the house, hunt this vermin down, trap its ass, and carefully explain to it that it is unacceptable to get me this upset after I have had very little sleep, and could it please for the love of all humanity choose a better time to cause such turmoil in my life! But I just pointed. 

"What did it look like?" Brian asked.

Really? It's a mouse. Would you like a sketch done up? Let's put out an ATL: All units prepare to copy attempt to locate mouse running at large. Teenage-sized brown mouse with long tail, large, flattened ears, and frightened expression. Last seen headed northbound between the garbage can and the kitchen floor vent. Time lapse approximately one minute. Mouse is wanted for disturbing the peace and will not be cooperative. If located, stop and remove from kitchen. End of broadcast zero-two-ten hours.

"It was smallish and brown," I said.

My sister joined us at the kitchen door. She sleeps on our couch when she's working an ambulance shift and between the light, my stomping, and the declaration of the presence of mice, she was now awake. Now there were three of us standing silently by, staring at the floor where I said a mouse had been a moment earlier. Maybe if we stared long enough, the mouse would magically reappear and we could ask it to leave and then all go to bed. This may have been delusional optimism on my part. I think the others were just wishing I would let it go and go to bed. In fact, I don't just think that, I know that. I know that because Brian said it.

"How about we just not worry about it right now and you go to bed?"

"I can't just go to bed. The mouse is running around!"

"So?"

"So it's running around!"

"So?"

"I can't go sleep while it's running around."

"Why not?"

"It's going to get all over stuff and eat our food and contaminate everything and run across my face in the night!"

Brian rolled his eyes.

"Mice carry hantavirus! I'm going to have to sterilize everything!"

Brian scoff laughed. He does this when he thinks I'm being unreasonable. "Oh no!" he said. "The mouse is going to run around the floor! And eat all the food we don't have sitting out! And then leap onto your face in your bed in the middle of the night because that's what mice do! And then you'll catch hantavirus!" He tends to exaggerate when he thinks I'm being unreasonable.

"It WILL!" I held firm. I am not being unreasonable about this. It's two-thirty in the morning and this is REAL. There was no doubt in my mind that if we did not take action immediately, this mouse would wreck havoc, spread disease, and basically bring about the downfall of America. I tried to tell Brian as much, but he's taller and stronger than I am. This is only problematic when he decides that instead of listening to my practical and logical concerns at two-thirty in the morning he's going to strongarm me into bed, throw a pillow at my head, and tell me to go to sleep and not worry about a stupid mouse. For the record, I expressed my reasonable fears of contracting hantavirus right up until the moment I passed out from exhaustion.

Then the mouse ran across my head.

I kid you not. I was awakened by the tickling sensation of paws landing on the side of my head, just above my ear, followed by the skittering motion of a mouse running across my head in the middle of the night. I would have screamed if I weren't Asian. I leapt up in bed and had a very controlled freak-out. I was kneeling on the bed having cast off the blanket and woken Brian up simply by jerking awake and nearly shouting "IT RAN ACROSS MY HEAD." 

"Seriously?" was Brian's succinct response. 

"It ran across my head!" I reiterated. Brian turned on the light, and there it was. One small, brown mouse running maniacally around our bedroom floor. It was only three in the morning. We watched it run from one end of the room to the other, climb over the freshly cleaned laundry, nose its way behind the boxes and suitcases in our closet, then frantically retrace its steps in reverse only to repeat the cycle again.

"I'm going to have to wash all that laundry," I said.

"What the hell is wrong with this mouse?" Brian said.

"I told you it would run across my head," I said.

"What the hell," Brian managed again.

I did tell you it would run across my head. I did. Now I have to go look up incubation periods and symptoms for hantavirus.

You Asked

Seven-year-old: Pete and Repeat are in a boat. Pete fell out. Who was left?

Me: Oh that's a good question. Let's start with some obvious clarifications first, though, k? First off, did both parties survive this incident? Who exactly is telling you this account? Was it Pete? And if it was Pete, are both Repeat and the boat accounted for? Because this could be Pete trying to cover up the disappearance of Repeat and the loss of a boat. Was this Repeat? Does he still have the boat? Have we checked the boat or the area for any evidence or witnesses that can back up this story? Oh I guess that leads me to ask where exactly this took place. Were they on open water? Or were they just launching the boat in a marina? What size boat was this? Were they really the only ones on board? Did they have life jackets? Was this a motorized boat? After Pete fell out, what effort did Repeat make to get Pete back in? And while we're asking questions, what kind of name is "Repeat"? It must be a nickname or something because I'm not aware of any culture with maritime navigational capabilities that names people after verbs like "repeat." Hey! Where did you go? Come back! I need more information! This is potentially a very serious situation!