You're the Best: Back after Monkey Wrestling

Wow. It’s been a while since I’ve written. I know you’re wondering why, thinking, “Cyrus must have been doing something great. Maybe he helped deliver a baby or something.” Actually, I’m recovering from getting beat up by a chimpanzee.

If you remember, two weeks ago Rex Tugwell invited us to monkey wrestling “down at the airport.” I didn’t want to go, figuring that monkey wrestling was really code for some kind of metaphorical but nevertheless public de-pantsing at the hands of Rex. Both Sammy and Boyce, however, were excited to go.

I was none too excited that we had to go with Rex Tugwell, nor could I understand why he was inviting us in the first place. But when he told us to pick him up about a mile away from the airport, I figured why: if the police showed up he wouldn’t have to worry about his car being identified. Boyce said he’d bring his van since he was angry about the threat of going to part-time work, so we all sat in the back as he drove us to the airport.

Our city has a small municipal airport, and just to the west of it are a series of hangars for little prop planes. Rex pointed us to the last one where some cars were parked out back. We went into the hangar to find about three dozen men standing around a boxing ring. They were just drinking, but I got the feeling that something incredibly disturbing was happening. Like when I was a kid and woke up in the middle of the night to see my uncle’s car entirely on its side in our front yard, and he there digging a hole and laughing.

We walked with Rex who would high-five random people or call them horrible names and laugh with his mouth way too open to trust him as anything but ready to eat his own arm. In one corner of the ring was a small metal cage, and Rex told us there’s the monkey. It had just enough room in the cage to turn around. Sammy said it was actually a chimpanzee, and Rex said, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Rex told us that you paid twenty-five dollars to enter the ring. The monkey would be released and if you could stay in the ring with it for one minute then you won a thousand dollars. The only thing was, you had to put your money down before the first guy ever gets in the ring.

Rex begged us to put our money down, and Sammy, who was really trying to get a good look at the chimp, as though it’s height might change whether he entered or not, decided first. He told Boyce he had to do it, and Boyce said fine. Rex told me that he was willing to pay my money if I entered. It didn’t take much to convince me. Even though most things make me nervous and scared, I do them anyway. We went to the ring and got a good view to watch the first guy with the chimp.

The first guy was bigger than Boyce. He was really serious, spitting into his hands and trying to get a good footing on the mat. I watched the owner of the chimp shouting at it until suddenly a bell rang and the front of the cage slid straight up. I don’t know how fast normal chimpanzees are, but I had to assume that this one had eaten the four other fastest chimps. In two strides it was across the ring and latched to the man’s face and neck like the way a starfish sucks onto a rock. The man immediately fell on his back, and the chimp began pummeling him on the sides of the head. The bell rang again and immediately the chimp jumped off the man and ran back into his cage where the gate slid back down. The man lying on the mat looked hurt, but more than anything he looked scared—like he’d reached down to pick a flower and came back without an arm. They dragged him off the mat and when he stumbled by us Sammy asked him if he had any advice. I don’t think he heard us since he just kept waving his hands in the air. Rex couldn’t stop laughing, but Boyce, Sammy, and I were scared. Sammy guessed that this wasn’t animal cruelly since clearly nothing was ever going to happen to the chimp.

(For an example of a chimp fight)

Seven more men were pummeled in like fashion, though to the chimp’s credit he always jumped off them when the bell rang. No one got too hurt, though one guy did lose two teeth which really freaked out Boyce. Rex asked if I was going to chicken out and I told him I most certainly would. Surprisingly, when Sammy was informed he was next he didn’t hesitate to jump into the ring. He walked up to the chimp’s owner and spoke to him for a second, then leaned down to talk to the chimp. Before he left Sammy told us his strategy was to befriend the chimp. He had a candy bar in his pocket that he had unwrapped, and when he spoke with the owner, he snuck the chimp a piece. As he walked away to his corner of the ring he winked at us. When the bell rang he was going to offer the chimp the rest of the candy bar, thus winning without either fighting or defending himself.

Waiting for the bell he took the candy bar out of his pocket and waved it at the chimp. The bell rang and the chimp burst out of his cage. Sammy didn’t even have time to extend his arm with the candy bar. In pure defense he simply chucked the candy bar at the chimp and then heaved himself over the top rope. He landed hard on a foldout table and knocked over quite a few drinks, but no matter because everyone thought it was hilarious. Everyone was cheering him and patting him on the back for such an absurd, doomed strategy. Sammy held his arms up to the roar of the crowd.

There was another guy to go before Boyce, so we thought to talk strategy. Boyce thought the best thing to do was just try to give an enormous kick to the chimp on its way over to him. We told him if he did that he’d never be able to get over the ropes before the chimp began punishing him with those meathooks. Boyce just shrugged though. When the guy before him got slaughtered, Boyce put a huge wad of gum between his front teeth and gums, then climbed into the ring.

Just before the bell rang Boyce put his right leg back to get ready to kick. He looked like someone who really wanted to kick a long field goal. As soon as the bell rang he started to kick. I don’t even think the chimp was out of his cage before the kick was half-over. That chimp though was so fast that Boyce actually timed it perfectly and kicked that chimp square in the face. It fell over to his side and Boyce just stood there, kind of stunned. Then the chimp got up, stared at Boyce for a few seconds, and rushed him. Boyce didn’t waste any time and dove out of the ring. The crowd cheered for him because he’d made it the longest: 14 seconds, and half of that was just the chimp staring at him in a you-know-I’m-going-to-eat-your-eyes-out-for-that-right? kind of way.

Rex informed me that I was next and both Boyce and Sammy, sensing my lack of resolve, told me to stand right at the ropes, and as soon as the bell rang to just get out of there. That way when we told the story to people I could always say I did it too. I thought it was better than my plan of simply screaming at the chimp until I blacked out. I climbed in the ring.

Whenever I have to do something I don’t want to do, I always imagine I’m doing it for Rachel. Even if it’s washing a ton of dishes, I think, “No Cyrus, you do this for her.” And even though I knew Rachel would be horrified to know I was attempting to wrestle a caged, undoubtedly ’roid-raging chimp, I still thought to myself in the ring, “No Cyrus, you do this for her.” Even when I looked back and saw Rex Tugwell talking with other people and laughing, knowing full well he just wanted to see me hurt in a way that 24 hours earlier I didn’t even know existed, I still said, “No Cyrus, you do this for her.”

I wished for just a second that ornithology had some kind of crossover to primates. If I were forced to fight an osprey I could at least know where to try for a lucky hit. The chimp seemed impenetrable. I thought the eyes and groin were the universal weak points, but going after the chimp’s eyes seemed ungentlemanly. Besides, I’m sure others thought the same thing only to be faced with a brute force that makes the mind go blank and the bladder go empty. Nothing three feet tall should be able to pile drive a three hundred pound man. Even the largest guy of the night, some 400 pound man who thought he’d just fall on his foe, learned that a chimp can punch through several layers of fat to make a man scream, “My liver! He burst my liver!”

Sometimes it seemed like the chimp was just messing with the contestants, and I expected him to do the same thing. It spun one guy around twice before it finally just grabbed him by the foot and dragged him to the ground where it leaped on top of him. Another guy tried to run away and the chimp jumped on his back. For a good five seconds it just rode him as though to say, “Where are we going, friend?” Then, suddenly, it punched him several times in the back of the head.

I wondered what undignified move the chimp would do to me. The whole night it had never gone for a man’s groin. It was either a noble, principled fighter or simply saving its crotch attack for the final fight of the night, which was of course me. I whispered one last time that this was all for Rachel, and then the bell rang.

I just kind of screamed “Oh dear God!” at the top of my lungs and turned to climb the turnstile. I didn’t think anything, even when I felt the chimp jump on my back. I just kept screaming uncontrollably. Everything went white and I was later told the chimp had rammed its forehead into the back of my skull. I have no idea why it would do this instead of punching or biting—what analysis did it do while riding my back to think that trying to break my skull with its skull was the best maneuver? Whatever the case was I saw white for a second and fell over to my side. I was not aware of this at the time but I twisted as I fell, and actually landed on the chimp. It’s head must have hit funny because it was dazed for a second.

Feeling no primate on my back, I stood up and realized I was in the middle of the ring. The chimp was getting up and I panicked. I don’t know why I did what I did. I had watched Boyce, Sammy, and many others leap out of the ring at the very first opportunity. Why didn’t I leap? My God, why? I don’t know. But with reeling tunnel vision, all I saw was that chimp dazed for a second and, inside my skull, on the opposite side where the chimp headbutted me, were the letters R-A-C-H-E-L. I didn’t even see her, just the letters. And suddenly, without thinking, I just kicked the chimp as hard as I could right in the chin.

The crowd cheered and I realized that maybe I could do it. Maybe I could beat this chimp. But as it was getting back up someone shouted “45 more seconds!” 45?! That had only been 15 seconds? Again, I’m not sure with a second opportunity why I did not simply leap out of the ring. Instead, I ran. And for whatever reason, I ran straight for the chimp’s cage and dove into it. The chimp saw me and started bounding over to me. I reached up and from pure adrenaline broke the latches on the gate and pulled it down and shut. Since I’d broken the latch I had to hold the gate down because the chimp—well, he really wanted in that cage. I think I broke some cardinal rule in monkey fighting because that chimp was seriously pissed. He was pummeling my fingers that were holding on to the bars to keep the gate down, but I had to hold on. At one point he jumped on top of the cage and reached down to tear my ears off. I had to lean way down. Even at the time I was able to think that very few people have had a seriously pissed chimp screaming at them from above their head. You know what, though? I have.

For 45 seconds that chimp punched my hands and swiped at me. When the bell rang he suddenly went docile but damned if I was going to open that cage gate. I didn’t let go and let it up until the chimp owner got into the ring, screaming at me that I cheated. Others though were screaming that the cage was in the ring, and nothing said I couldn’t hide in there. Sammy, Boyce, and even Rex helped me out and were checking me over since I was bleeding in a few places. They were all so happy they couldn’t stop giggling. After a while some guy came over and asked if I would accept $750 dollars, and I said that was fine. They gave it to me in cash, and everyone there came by to congratulate me. Not since my uncle’s funeral have drunk strangers been so kind to me. People patted me lightly saying how great it was to see the chimp not be able to get me crying in that cage.

Boyce and Sammy agreed it was just about the single most greatest thing they’d ever seen. Rex told me he would cover for me for a few days to give me a chance to heal, and then he gave me a big, but soft hug. Someone in the background was singing the “You’re the best” song from The Karate Kid, and we kept up with that for much of the night.

That was a couple weeks ago, and things have gotten back to normal. None of my injuries were so severe I needed to see a doctor, so I just spent a lot of time watching birds and thinking. My hands have been pretty beat up so I haven’t been able to type. Now things are getting back to normal though. Even Rex is starting to treat me mean again, though some times when he finishes a three-minute speech about my masculinity, he finishes with, “Dang, that chimp was pissed, Virus.”

Sammy Loses It About Michael Jackson and Boyce Dreams

Sammy said that when he told a fellow Arby’s co-worker that one of his friends was having trouble with dreams, the co-worker asked if it was because of Michael Jackson’s death and “what his kids must be going through.” Sammy tries to like everyone, and up to that point he had been fine with Trisha. He couldn’t manage it, though. He told her he didn’t know Michael Jackson, that nobody he knew had ever met Michael Jackson, and that if he later found out that Michael Jackson was really a cyborg created by the CIA using a new type of synthetic skin, then it wouldn’t affect either his or Trisha’s life one single bit. That under no circumstances should she be talking about Michael Jackson until she first spoke about the fact that yesterday was the anniversary of the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, which did a whole lot more to define both her existence and consciousness than anything Michael Jackson ever sang, no matter how many times she watches Access Hollywood. Then Trisha called Sammy gay, and finished getting some curly fries for a drive-thru order.

At Boyce's Charlotte made us chocolate chip cookies which was her way of saying she didn’t mind we were over. While we ate I showed Boyce a mouthguard to wear while he slept to help in the short term with chipping more teeth. We played Risk for a while like we always do. We never finish the games because Boyce comes to peace arrangements and says he’s content to rule the land he has. I always say he needs to keep fighting because that’s the game, and so he swept all the men off the board and said, “There, swine flu wins.” Every time Boyce ends the game this way by sweeping his arm across the board, he says a different disease: ebola, tuberculosis, yellow fever, AIDS, the plague, rubella, smallpox, syphilis.

After Risk Sammy said he was worried he didn't act weird enough and might get chosen for the jury. Boyce said he was afraid there wasn’t enough work for him to keep getting full-time hours as a locksmith. I told them I miss Rachel. Then we figured out which were the five most sensual fruits. Answer: strawberries, cherries, grapes, mangoes, and pomegranates. Sammy wanted it noted that he disagreed about pomegranates, and instead would like to have seen olives on the list.

Boyce slept on the couch, I slept on the floor, and Sammy slept on a recliner. We asked Boyce what would be signs that he was dreaming he was Jud. Boyce wasn’t sure, but singing, hoeing, bidding at a pie auction, and dying were all possibilities.

In the morning Boyce told us he didn’t dream about being Jud, but he did dream about Rachel. I never dream about Rachel. Just like I don’t dream about birds or doubling down on a good hand. I asked Boyce what she was doing, and he said practicing on one of my boomerangs. I said that was stupid. She wasn’t coming back. Boyce said I was stupid, but then he got what I meant.

Boyce as Jud and How to Fix It

A few years ago Boyce finally stopped making fun of me for interpreting dreams when he told me he’d been having a recurring one. He kept dreaming that he was called on at the last second to play Jud from Oklahoma! Boyce owns the album because he thinks the cover is “classy.” It’s actually a rather boring album cover so both Sammy and I think that Boyce actually loves Oklahoma!, testified by the fact that Boyce Jr. will always play “Surrey with a Fringe on Top” whenever you asked him to grind his axe.

In Boyce’s recurring dream, he was rushed into the part of Jud and at first, could never remember the words. A classic dream, I told him, about anxieties of failure, especially in front of others. I told him not to be surprised if future versions of his dream included being naked, forgetting to go to class, or being forced to eat muppets out of jack-o-lanterns at the request of Paul Bunyan and the Buddha, all classic symbols in anxiety dreams. But Boyce told me his dream evolved and he started getting better as Jud. Once he did so well that a talent agent asked him to join Seinfeld, but then she made advances on him and Boyce felt uncomfortable and declined.

The problem was every time Boyce woke up from one of his Oklahoma! dreams, he’d chipped his teeth a bit. He didn’t know if he was punching himself in order to recreate his death at the hands of that unfairly smug Curly, or if he was grinding his teeth due to the pressure of being a Broadway star. I told him it might even be the opposite: his teeth cause the dream to happen, not the other way around. When his mind attempts to represent shattered enamel it chooses a potentially sexually violent ranchhand who sings at his own funeral.

Boyce loves his teeth, and any damage to them is like the poisoning of his soul. He doesn’t have dental insurance working as a locksmith, but he doesn’t worry about the money. He just adores his teeth like a baby rock pigeon adores its regurgitated crop-milk. Sammy told him teeth were a sign of mortality, and pointed him to Edgar Andy Poe’s short story "Berenice." Boyce told him he’d like to tear Sammy’s teeth out if he offers him one more book, and Sammy told me it seems that Boyce had already read the story.

This morning Boyce called me to say he’d dreamed he was Jud again, and this time he was so good he finally got invited to the cast party afterward. When he checked his teeth he had a new chip running up one of his front teeth. He was panicking because there’s nothing he can do about it. As soon as he goes to sleep he can’t control what he dreams anymore than I could control how a Common Merganser flaps its wings (my words, not his). I told him there might be something we can do. Sammy and I are going to spend the night at Boyce’s to try and keep him from dreaming about Oklahoma!, but still making sure he gets some sleep. I’ll report on how things go tomorrow.

I Interpret a Dream and Boyce's Family

Worked at the Sleep Center last night. From the utility closet I listened to a woman named O----- F----- (name withheld: she seemed like she had social problems but was unaware of said social problems, and is therefore the kind of person who googles herself every day) tell her dream to Marcie, the attendant who was working last night.

O------- was in a mall where she saw a man with a machine gun sneak in. She rushed into a store where she and a small Asian woman hid among ceramics. As the man walked by with his gun, she realized she couldn't just sit there and do nothing. She grabbed a bat that was apparently available among the ceramics of angels and small boys in overalls "goin' fishin.'" She hit the man with the gun and celebrated that she stopped any crime from happening. A cop though, in what might be described as the ultimate buzzkill, told her that all she managed to do was stop the murder of a woman who was pregnant with a child who would grow up to murder Batman.

It is much more difficult to interpret dreams without reading the people's files, but a promise is a promise. Just hearing the way the woman talked though, she seems to think a lot of herself, as is evidenced by the fact that she a) stopped the mall shooting, and b) felt she was good enough to hide out with Asians. However, there is a fly in the ointment. The women was in a shop of what can only be described as sentimentalized dreck. She wasn't able in her dream to even hide out in a "cool" shop, or even one that pretends to be a "cool" shop like where kids buy shirts with distressed clowns and aliens on them. She also found her most heroic act to be an anti-heroic act by literally allowing the eventual murder of a hero. Clearly, this woman hides a debilitating lack of self-worth behind a thin veil of middle-class sentimentality and cosmopolitanism. Nevertheless, by telling the dream she has a vague impression that sharing with another (even if it is a stranger) could lead to some realized sense of community. She will either come back for more treatments at the Sleep Center or be dead by her own hand within the week.

Today is the first day that Sammy can go in for an interview at the courthouse, so I'll let you know tomorrow how it went. Sammy called Boyce before he left for the courthouse to make sure he was willing to risk a fine/jail time just to stay out of jury duty, and Boyce told him he couldn't be away from his wife and kid for that long.

Boyce's wife is different. Sammy and I don't mind, though, but other people get in a fit about it. Charlotte doesn't really like to be around other people, though she doesn't mind being around us because we don't ask questions we know she doesn't want to answer. We just let her do her thing, and her favorite thing is getting out blank sheet music and writing the musical notation for everything she hears. Commercials, songs, people humming--she writes it all out on sheet music, and it's always right. I once gave her a cd of bird songs and she loved it because it was so hard for her to do, but she eventually got most of them right, I think. Charlotte would then give all the sheet music to Boyce who would then try to play it on his guitar. Boyce isn't very good on the guitar though, but now their son Boyce Jr. is eight and he's already better than his dad is. So now Charlotte gives the music to Boyce Jr. and he plays it for her.

The first time Rachel met Charlotte she used the s-word around Boyce. She called Charlotte a "savant." I didn't even know what the word meant--I thought it meant a kind of medieval sword, so I made this "swushing" sound and tried to cut everyone's head off with an air sword, which was obviously really inappropriate--but Boyce knew what it meant. He yelled at Rachel that just because Charlotte is good at one thing doesn't mean she's good at other things. Then Boyce shouted at Charlotte to add 150 and 146 and she couldn't do it, and both Charlotte and Rachel started to cry. It got really weird there, and Boyce apologized, and to lighten the mood I went to air-chop everybody's head off again with my savant-sword but Sammy told me to quit before I got revved up.

Chronics at the Sleep Center

We don't get too many regulars at the Sleep Center. Some sleep problems are acute, so people get the problem fixed and don't come back. Other people have chronic problems but after they come here a couple times they realize nothing at the Sleep Center can help them find the merciful joy of oblivion until they confess they slept with their brother's wife, ran over a construction worker in Mexico, or admit that's probably too much pork for one person to consistently ingest.

Like all medical settings though, we do have a few chronic patients who come even though we can't help them. They don't care insurance isn't paying or that Mark and some of the other attendants are making fun of them barely-behind their backs. They just don't want to be alone. One guy told me he was doing research for an article he's writing for the New Yorker, but then he messed his pants in his sleep, so I'm pretty sure he was a crippled alcoholic who needed a friend.

I first started reading people's files at the Sleep Center because of one of these chronic patients. Once, I was mopping the floor and a chronic patient leaned forward on his chair and said, "I bet I could kill you and no one would even care. I've killed people, you know." I didn't know what to say and he just kept staring at me. I thought I better check his file so when I was cleaning I just pulled open the cabinet and looked him up. Turns out he never really killed anyone. He was just a lucid dreamer, so he was having trouble keeping reality straight sometimes. The next time I saw him I touched him on the shoulder and told him not to worry, that he never really killed anyone. He told me to leave him alone and that, instead of bothering him, I should go do horrible, horrible things to my sister. That guy was eventually banned from the Sleep Center because he told Marcie, another attendant at the Sleep Center, that he was going to wear her one day.

From then on I really started to enjoy reading people's files. Sometimes people were messed up so you felt good your life wasn't as bad as theirs, and other times people seemed so hurt, and when you talked to them they were so kind, that you never thought you could feel so strongly for a stranger. I never read Rachel's file, though. Even when she told me I could. She told me I couldn't read any more files, that it wasn't right, and that I could only read one more, and that it would be hers. I said I didn't want to, though.

So I read another person's file instead, and sweet grackle!, that guy was just completely insane.

Behind the Sleep Center

It's been a few days since I've written because the Sleep Center gave me more hours. They know I'm willing to work day and night because I'd just as soon be there as any place else, so sometimes I work days, sometimes nights, and sometimes like last night I finish my shift and just hang out behind the building.

There are some woods behind the Sleep Center, and I built a couple nesting boxes to see if I could get lucky and attract a Great Horned Owl, Rachel's favorite bird. The Great Horned never came, but an Eastern Screech Owl did come, so sometimes after my shift at night, especially when I know Sammy is working the late shift at Arby's (which is just a few blocks away), I'll sit in a chair against the outside of the building and listen until Sammy shows up.

When Sammy does show up during his break, he generally tries to imitate a bird call or scare me by pretending he's two people speaking about how to murder me. Last night he had Boyce with him, and they must not have got their stories straight, because I heard Sammy whisper, "How should we kill him?" and Boyce responded with "Buuuuuurd....I'm a buuuuuurd...Buuuuuurd...," as though birds sing and call by announcing their species in English. And they certainly don't do it to pelvic grinding which Boyce added for no reason.

I pulled out the two extra folding chairs I keep for them behind the dumpster and they sat down with me. A few weeks ago Boyce had got a letter that he was a potential juror, and yesterday afternoon he got a letter saying he needed to go to the courthouse for an interview. Boyce and Sammy decided to switch places, so Sammy is going to the courthouse instead.

This isn't entirely unusual. All three of us have fake drivers' licenses with each others' names. We know each other's social security numbers and mothers' maiden names, so we can impersonate one another in almost any situation. We started doing it in our early twenties when we learned that Sammy had already been impersonating us with fake id's for almost seven years. Sammy told us he started doing it when he was seventeen and would buy beer with an id that said Boyce Lancaster. He wouldn't even drink the beer. He'd sell it to some middle schoolers or, all by himself in the parking lot, he'd throw it at the ground as hard as he could and then jump rope the spinning, spraying can. Once he gave a 24-pack he bought to a crazy homeless man. The homeless guy looked at him weird, and Sammy said he was the devil's messenger, and that although these looked like beers they were actually liquid damnation made of hot sand and splinters, just to see if the guy would still open one. He did, but what really thrilled Sammy, was the homeless guy offered Sammy one, too. Sammy loved that he never could tell how the homeless guy meant it.

Sammy used fake id's with any clerk who previously looked at him wrong because of his missing fingers. He'd never tell the clerk later that on three successive nights he, a seventeen year old kid, was Cyrus Wetherbee, Samuel Clifton, and Boyce Lancaster. He just wanted to prove to himself that the clerk was a fool.

Boyce doesn't want to do jury duty because he's got his wife and kid, and he needs to spend a lot of his time with them. Boyce is married to Charlotte, and his son's name is Boyce Jr. Sammy is happy to get away from Arby's for a while, and he likes to self-dare about how often he can use unusual words in social situations. He's already promised to use the words "bodacious" and "fetal development" five separate times each during his interview at the courthouse. Boyce told him he'd buy him a round if he can find a way to say, "bodacious fetal development" in a sentence. Sammy is very excited to try.

We stayed behind the Sleep Center a little longer to wait for the Eastern Screech Owl to come but it never did.

In Memoriam: American Music

It's not an easy day to blog after yesterday's death. It's unfortunate that only once people have passed do we think about how they've affected all our lives. Whenever I hear about a passing, whether it's of a good person or bad, I always think about what Rachel would say: "To the dead all is forgiven."

June 25, 2009 is going to be remembered in the history of American music. When a person this important passes, you don't forget it. When someone brought so much joy to people's lives on such an intimate level it shouldn't be shrugged off like some old feather. When a person like this spent so much time giving music to people, providing comfort for others' most important and difficult moments, it deserves to have the attention all the media is giving it.

You might ask yourself if all the national attention this is getting might be a bit ridiculous. After all, we didn't all have a personal relationship with such a person, did we? No, but we're celebrating an important person. Let's raise a glass then to Erma Louise Pittman Ellis of Cranberry, West Virginia. To quote her obituary, "She was known in Raleigh and surrounding counties for her music ministry on WOAY TV and Radio and was part of the Skelton Trio. Louise sang with the trio and individually at more than 2,000 funerals over a span of 50 years. She lovingly shared her music to comfort families during their time of sorrow." Certainly someone worth the whole country thinking about.

http://www.register-herald.com/obituaries/local_story_175223217.html

Sammy and Boyce

Ate lunch yesterday with Sammy and Boyce on the curb of the Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sammy, who works at Arby's and always gets us free food, asked us if we couldn't eat on the curb of the KFC next door so he could say that he went some place different for lunch. It was a nice day. Boyce gave some house sparrows bits of curly fries, even though he knows I don't like that.

At one point Sammy pulled apart a piece of roast beef that hung over his bun, and he held it up in the air. He said he thought it looked like one of those ultrasounds of a baby. He asked Boyce if it was a boy or girl, and Boyce told him it was meat. Sammy asked me if birds eat roast beef. I didn't even respond because I knew Sammy was going to give the roast beef to the sparrows no matter what I said. A few of the sparrows fought over the piece of ultrasound baby roast beef, and one of them flew away with it to the other side of the parking lot. Look at that, Sammy shouted, Baby Alice can fly!

Sammy Clifton is the only person I know who both reads constantly and has lost fingers to a hatchet on two separate occasions (one involved attempting to split a walnut in half, the other was from his brother). He's distantly related to Charles Brockden Brown, who's an old writer. He's tried to make me read a lot, the same way Rachel tried to make me religious a lot. Neither have really stuck, and all I do is make up the details that I can't properly remember. Once I thought Sammy was going to have an aneurysm when I said, "Captain Eh-rab." If you saw all the books he's read you wouldn't think he works at Arby's. But then when you saw he only has eight fingers you might think it all balances out.

I met Boyce when he punched me on the school bus. He climbed on the bus, asked who Cyrus Wetherbee was, and then walked up and slugged me in the side of the neck. Someone told him Cyrus Wetherbee was making fun of his mother. It wasn't true, though. I never even heard the name Boyce Lancaster before. He apologized and asked if I wanted to borrow some of his old Christmas records. That seemed just as weird as punching me in the side of the neck. When I asked him why he punched me there, he told me that it's not right to do wrong to someone's teeth. I think he'd cut a man's heart out before he hurt his teeth. Boyce has an enormous music collection, mostly old records. He listens to the music because he likes the album covers. He says that means he's got some pretty terrible music, but it always looks nice.

When I told Sammy and Boyce I was going to write this blog they thought it was a good idea. I told Boyce I'd link to some of his favorite record covers.

After lunch Sammy went back to work and Boyce gave me a ride home in his locksmith van. Sammy called me later that night to apologize about giving roast beef to the house sparrows. I told him Alice was passing through some sparrow's cloaca as we spoke, and he wouldn't stop laughing. He made me call Boyce and tell him that. Boyce didn't laugh until Sammy said a cloaca was another word for the bird's crapper. It's also the canal the egg passes through, but I didn't want to ruin their fun.

Welcome to the Bird Casino

I know what you're thinking: aren't we all "blogged" out? So many "people" giving opinions and yet none of them are any wiser or refreshing than a book of quotes that you take on a midnight swim. That's why I began the Bird Casino. I've been keeping a journal for years, so why not put it online for strangers to see? I hope you learn a little about me, and a whole lot about yourself. Come along, won't you?

On this inaugural post I thought I'd just write about myself for a bit. My name is Cyrus Wetherbee. I do part-time custodial work at the local Sleep Center. It's a place where people come to get their sleep analyzed when they aren't resting well because they're in physical pain, having trouble with medications, or unable to silence the pounding of the Great Kettle Drum of Grief after they accidentally caused the death of a spouse (it could have happened to anyone, Mr. Biddlestein!).

Here is a list of things I love that are not bird or gambling related: the Green Bay Packers, reading, practicing my boomerang, sharpening stuff, listening to bird calls, learning about where Indian reservations are, watching people's hands, interpreting people's dreams, picking berries, and blackjack. More than anything though, I love Rachel, even though she doesn't know. Don't worry, I highly doubt she'll ever read this.

I should probably mention that if you're looking for a blog that gets into religion, politics, sports, birds, and gambling...then you found it! Seriously though, it's going to be about Rachel, too. Love is what makes us human. Though I do think dogs, apes, pigs, and some species of birds are capable of love (the jury is still out on you, cats!). All of those animals though are unable to use language like we do. To be fair, honeybees and hammerhead sharks use a very unique, complex language. But they don't love. So again: to love and use language is to be human. Oh, Rachel.