Days to Remember to Forget

Sanity apparently took the weekend off. In its stead? A poor substitute teacher, known as Surrealism. Today started like any other Sunday, but it went south quickly. Perhaps the gray, pallid clouds of a New England February chased our friend Sanity to Naples or Cocoa or St. Pete's in search of warmer weather?

The first sign things were upside down was there was no milk for the coffee. There was no milk because I had used it all cooking Saturday night's mac n' cheese, which in of itself was a hint that Surreality was coming to visit. I cooked dinner. On a Saturday night. The mac n' cheese was wicked freaking good, I'll have you know. But when Mrs. Odd woke up and brewed up a batch of coffee, there was no milk and no happy Mrs. Odd. A smart man would have jumped in his truck and run to the corner store for a gallon of 2%, but I'm not a smart man. I'm a man. So I sat on the couch, sipping my coffee black, and suggested that Mrs. Odd could swing by the bagel place on her way to grab the milk. Yeah, stupid and dumb.

So while Mrs. Odd trudged to the local bagelry and corner market, I got on our shared laptop to check on my dozens and dozens of Facebook friends. As the little machine booted up, I noticed that my son was already logged on. Odd, I thought to myself, as he was just getting out of bed when I rallied myself at 8 o'clock. Him in bed at eight was a sign I misread in the moment, but alas, hindsight is, well, twenty-twenty. I suppose in my case, hindsight could mean I can see an ass when I look in a mirror. Back to the laptop. What was weird about my son being logged onto the computer was that I was online at one a.m., checking Facebook for the dozens and dozens of friends who are not awake at 1 a.m., and he was distinctly not awake at that early hour. So how did he log on? Hmmmm? And when did he log on, if he was just getting up? Hmmmm? Sip coffee, check Facebook, wait for bagels, forget about son's use of laptop...

Fast forward to Mrs. Odd's announcement that there were bagels. Oh, goody! I meander out to the kitchen, get in line for the toaster, and make myself an 'everything' bagel with olive-pimento cream cheese. Good, good. Mrs. Odd joins me in the family room, and I casually remark, "Hey, why didn't you get onion bagels? They are my favorite. I don't really like 'everything' bagels." Yeah, hindsight. Stupid, dumb, selfish. "Man, meet caveman. Caveman, meet dead husband." So I eat my 'everything' bagel (it is not a metaphor, I swear, just a bagel) in in oddly uncomfortable silence that I didn't recognize until now, twelve hours later. Fucking cavemen are embarrassed for me, for Christ's sake. Mrs. Odd and I eventually head out to the kitchen around ten o'clock, and a bulb sort of flickers in my head, and I call my son up from the basement. He bangs up the stairs, and says, "Yeah, Dad?" And now the flickering bulbs lights off in my head, burning with a sudden incandescence rivaling a lightning strike, and before I can stop myself, I say to my son, "What were you looking up on the Internet this morning?" Mrs. Odd looks at me oddly. My son looks at me like a deer in the headlights. I start to feel Surreality tickling me under the armpits, an uncomfortable sensation that reminds me that I am an IDIOT. Tickle, tickle.

And my son sheepishly mutters, "Boobs." And because I'm a stupid, dumb, idiotic, caveman, I laugh. Mrs. Odd is trying to figure out how the hell I got to the point that I was asking our son about his Internet search predilections, and why in the world would I laugh out loud when he calmly announces that he got up at his usual 5:30 a.m. rising time, and spent two and half hours Googling "Tit Viedos". Yes, "Tit Viedos"; his spelling not mine. I checked the laptop's history, and that's how he spelled 'video'. He got 'tit' right, which is after all, phonetic. A C-V-C word, probably not on his weekly spelling list. Oh, did I mention my son is seven?!?

Yeah, today was surreal. That was what happened before lunch. The rest of the day pretty much followed suit. For the first time in a long, long time, Monday is looking pretty damn appealing.