| Home Sweet Home Brian Purdy |
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I am a writer. I write at home. I don't write in my penthouse, my beach house, or my shanty in old shanty town. I write in my bedroom. Upstairs in my bedroom. In this way I am never lonesome. For a while I tried nailing my door shut and dropping notes down the warm air register when I wanted food. This brbught a certain amount of food, but it also brought my mother, two sisters, a dog, and an assortment of small fry waving ski poles, hockey sticks and pikes for carrying heads. Although I've never seen the blue prints, I know the family has a carefully detailed plan to prevent any attempt I might make for freedom. Whenever it is necessary for all of them to go out at the same time, the dog is left behind to keep an eye on me. If the dog has a business appointment with some other dogs, a group of door-to-door salesmen takes over. They throw a cordon around the house, pitch tents, build campfires, and begin drilling for water. In between the salesmen a battery of carefully trained telephone spies are alerted. The wires hum with vague requests for someone named 'Dora' or a 'Mr Schitzel.' When I get fighting mad they just laugh and hang up. Usually, however, the family does a pretty thorough job without extra help. Last Saturday, for instance, I was grinding away at a love story when I heard sounds of tunnelling, and a head came through the floor just to the left of my desk. Apparently young gold robbers were abroad in the land and I was Fort Knox. Nudged into a corner at the end of a ski pole, I stood with my face to the wall while they emptied the bureau drawers, pried the pearls from my shirt studs, and melted down my gold cuff links. Then they escaped down a ladder of neckties, wearing my blue suit. A few minutes later, while I was warming myself over a small fire in my wastepaper basket, my mother entered the room with some neighbour ladies. "Sit still, dear", she said briskly, placing a ladder over my head. "I'm just going to take the drapes down so we can try the new paint the girls brought over. It goes on like magic. " "Why not move him?", suggested one of the girls. "We could lug him into the hallway." "Throw a sheet over him," said another. "I had an uncle once who was a writer and we never moved him. Finally painted him into the wall." "He doesn't mind at all," cooed my mother. "Just move your trpewriter a little, dear," she continued, "So I can put my foot on your desk." "I wouldn't stand it for a minute," said one of the girls, "Mooning around the house all day in an old bathrobe." "Don't bother about me," I said dully. "I'll creep under the bed. Just beat on the headboard when you're through." Time passes very quickly under a bed, and, before I knew it, the eight year old was home from the Saturday Matinee, accompanied by several whirling dervishes, vaguely identified as 'Tweetsie', 'Migsy', and 'Beep'. "Let's pillow fight," said Beep, exploding a bubble gum bomb that snapped up every window shade in the room." "What if we miss and hit him?", asked Tweetsie, - evidently a conservative. "It's only my brother," said the eight-year old. "I get Migsie on my side and no fair anybody sneaking into the bathroom and getting wet towels." "It's no fun without wet towels," sulked Beep. " Make him get out." I'm out now. I'm in the garage, up in the rafters, working with a burnt match and a hurricane lamp. Some mice I know are coming over to keep me company. |