I don’t like to admit I’m superstitious, but that doesn’t stop me from being superstitious. It’s something I picked up from my mother. My sisters and I all knock on wood, just like Mom did.
As if the act of tapping something made of wood will hold the proponents of life-altering bad things at bay. I just presume all the bad things that happen to me are when I fail to knock on wood. My father thought we were all nuts.
Mom also believed bad things happened in threes. Frankly, so much bad stuff happens it’s hard not to find three. I had to take Sweet Pea to the vet.
It’s not an excursion she enjoys but since losing Cairo, I’ve changed my tune on sick cats. The whole “I’ll just keep an eye on her for 24 hours” has morphed into a police response to an abducted child: the first 24 hours are critical. After sneaking the cage from the basement with ninja-like prowess, I scooped Pea from her bed where she was blissfully sleeping.
She is tiny, maybe eight or nine pounds. But she is mighty. Within a minute, I had ribbons of blood running down my arms.
The minute I picked her up, I’d pulled the pin on a hand grenade. As I wrestled with the door closure, she exploded out of the cage and went to hide in some part of the house I had yet to discover. In 60 years.
Pea did not go to the vet that day. I had to call and admit defeat, and the young woman on the other end of the line did not seem surprised, at all. It seems many of you are playing with hand grenades.
We made a new appointment after ascertaining the only person who needed immediate medical attention was now me. I tended to my wounds; 45 years of cat ownership confers useful experience, though not, apparently, enough to remember which cat has to be wrapped in a towel before being caged. With Pea sulking somewhere in the bowels of the house, I headed outside to start tackling some fall cleanup.
Air and sunlight heal many things. As I reached far into the dead tiger lilies to grab a vine, something poked me in the butt. I presumed it was one of the prickle bushes I’d thought I had eradicated.
Poor little Alfie, the kids’ pup, came out of the garden one day with dozens of green burrs on his little face. I had promptly ripped them all out but must have missed one. I felt for the burr, but managed only to get poked again.
The damn thing was inside my sweatpants. I reached in to grab it and pulled out a wasp. I’m not sure who was more surprised: a wasp that had managed to invade some weird woman’s sweatpants or a woman who now had a horrified look on her face while clutching her arse as she held a wasp in her hand.
I did the only thing you can do at such a time. I flung the wasp away from me and ran to the house screaming in pain, torn-up arms now forgotten. I grabbed an antihistamine because I remember my father was deathly allergic to wasps, and surely this pain must be the result of something requiring epic medical intervention.
I swallowed the little pink pill and prepared to die, imagining my bum doubling in size. I sat on an ice pack and thought of Mom. Arms, butt .
.. what would the third thing be? I knocked on some wood like it was my backup goaltender.
I woke up the next day with a giant mosquito bite right beside the wasp sting. So much wildlife. I think I’ve earned a voice over by David Attenborough.
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