Zero percent down and no payments for a year

Charlie scribbled on our fitted yellow 100% Egyptian cotton bed sheets with a black ink pen this morning. Jill was taking a phone call behind the closed door of our home office. I was "resting" in a sleeping bag down in the basement next to the tent cot. My sleeping is what Charlie knows as resting.

We had been on a safari. This means we turned out the basement lights, Charlie crawled up on my back while I took him on a horseback safari adventure. We encountered dinosaurs and cows, frogs, polar bears and bald eagles. We came across a prairie dog town which we were forced to bulldoze in order to break ground on a new safari tourist hotel. Since the groundbreaking only had taken place today for the new accommodations, we were left with only one option -to camp in the chilly night air. Surrounded by a wolf pack whose glowing eyes were as numerous as the holes in the pegboard which the previous owner of the house decided would look good to finish a basement with, we could only pray for morning light and hope above all hopes that the fire would keep the wolves from devouring us.

The cover of the blinding darkness emboldened all the ugly creatures. We listened to clicking, buzzing, slithering, tapping, traipsing, humming, dripping, and howling sounds. Somewhere, miles above in the top of a muzzle tree, nested a pair of howler monkeys whose thundering voices sounded like bickering spouses. Gloating over the whole of the forest above was a magnificent moon. A coyote moon. H.W., the juvenile howler monkey, disappeared into the forest canopy unbeknownst to his parents. He joined the Aye-Aye several trees away who was too busy looking for grubs to give H.W. the time of night. With the aid of his prehensile tail, H.W. swung from branch to branch. He felt alive as the damp air whooshed past his face and flattened his fur against his body.

"Never again am I coming back to this muggy hell. I am going to the city!"

H.W. found his way to the coast, where he stowed away aboard a Norwegian Cruise Ship on a course to San Diego. Eventually, he came to Des Moines where he became the activities director for an assisted living community.

Jill yelped when she saw the graffiti on the bed sheet. Charlie and I scrambled to the scene.

"Did you do this, Charlie?" Jill asked.

"Yes, I did." He said proudly.

Hesitantly, Jill asked him if he had drawn elsewhere.

"I DID!" He said. He beckoned us to follow him to the opposite corner of the foot of the bed where he had made similar marking.

"Here!" He said.

At least his prints were symmetrically placed.

Going back to work

A drug screening is required as a condition of my future employment. I called the lab office for the hours of operation and printed off directions to the location. Normally, I would have gone by myself, but since Jill is in Wyoming on business, I had to take Charlie with me. We left in a hurry to get there by the 11am morning cutoff. I put Charlie directly in his car seat instead of letting him sit on my lap to back the car out of the garage. We covered the distance fast while listening to a feverish classical guitar number on public radio. I zipped into a half hour parking spot across from the hospital went in and quickly found the elevator to the lab's second floor suite.

An Ethiopian woman sat at the front desk guarding a silver bell and a sign-up sheet. A bedraggled woman with a sleeveless pink shirt revealing a circular bandage on her left shoulder was the only other person in the small monochromatic waiting room. She was filling out a form.

The sign-up sheet was held down by a large silver clip on a brown clipboard. A beaded metal chain connected the ink pen to the sliver clip on the clip board. The chain was too short. The entire clipboard slid a few inches when I picked up the pen to sign my name. This caught the attention of the Ethiopian woman guarding the silver bell and the sign-up sheet wearing a white lab coat and matching white pants. Her brown eyes looked up from the flat screen computer monitor.

That was when the fear of getting a shot struck Charlie. He began to wail.

"No. Mommy! I want to go home. I don't like the doctor. Don't want to go see Dr. BOS –ley!"

"It's okay." I tried to comfort him. "This is for Daddy. You don't have to get a shot."

It was no use. I believe he has inherited my tendency to black out under extreme stress. Yes, sometimes I get so anxious, the part of me that is so afraid, just trails away like water vapor. I must still be present in some capacity. It is minor slip, like tinkling when you sneeze versus a full blown breach of control.

At any rate, I couldn't bring him back from wherever he was. The bandaged woman seemed angry and distracted. She took a deep breath and stopped working on her form.

The receptionist engaged me and momentarily brought me back to reality. "Are you here for lab work?"

"Yes." I managed to find the piece of paper required of my visit with a special sequence of numbers identifying me anonymously. This I managed to find after fumbling through two coat pockets and two pants pockets.

"There is one thing." She said as she unfolded my permission slip. "Children are not permitted to go back with you."

"What?" I uttered.

"No I don't want to go to the doctor!" Tears streamed down Charlie's cheeks. His chest heaved as he choked in the dry antiseptic smelling air.

"You can't take him with you. You won't be able to give a specimen unless someone watches him."

"It's a urine screen." It sunk in then. I assumed they would be drawing my blood. They actually thought I was going to get my two year old son to pee in a cup for me so I would pass my drug test. I really got bothered then.

Charlie was screaming. There was only that one woman in the waiting room. For a second I entertained asking her to watch Charlie. Then I remembered I was in the waiting room of a urinalysis lab. Then I remembered - I was in the waiting room of a urinalysis lab. Before I blacked out, I retrieved the paper from the desk girl. I came back to consciousness out in the hallway with my back leaning on the other side of the closed waiting room door. I checked my person. I located two sets of car keys in my coat pockets and a lens cleaning cloth. The screening form was folded and in my back pocket. Charlie was in my arms. He was no longer crying but his face was wet and his eyes were red.

I took a deep breath and exhaled. "Let's go home."

Charlie exclaimed, "That was fun!"