Those bells! Those bells! The fires of hell must certainly be on the near horizon!

How was my Holiday, you ask? Well it started out just fine, over the river and through the woods fine. . . but  then things turned. . . 

Adam and I spent Thursday and Friday mostly driving. We drove down to Cerulean Ky. to have a big meal with my mother and her other, more inferior offspring.

Mom doesn’t currently live in her house. Since the mild stroke she’s been in an assisted living apartment called Barkley Plantation. (A very fine place, by the way.)

We feasted and then Steve left. I think I’d angered him. “Hey Steve I was looking at your ride. Do those Toyota minivans come in any  color other than ‘pathetic’?”  The rest of us took mom back to the plantation, and to her concerned cat, Miss Kitty. (The last three or four cats mom has had were all called Miss Kitty.)

Back in Cerulean Jeff left for his house down the block to tend to the wood stove and his herd of Chihuahuas. This left Kathy, Adam and I in the enormous house. We watched TV.

In the morning Kathy and I had breakfast, I made us a thanksgiving leftover concoction, based on an old family dish called mashed potato cakes. (Mmmmm.)

Onions, turkey, eggs, mashed potatoes, stuffing (used as a binder) “It tastes like Thanksgiving!” was the rave review from my unattractive and often boorish sister.

She left before we did. We turned down the heaters, shut off as much as we could. Jeff goes by the house a couple of times a day to adjust things.

We stopped by to visit mom and her cat again on the way out of town. Once on the interstate I recalled that we’d forgotten to grab the leftover pie and cookies like we said we would. I’d lose almost an hour doubling back so I didn’t. I was already road weary from the previous day’s four-plus hour trek and the car seat was already starting to poke, prod and hurt in all those familiar and awkward to massage places. I really wished I’d grabbed the pie though, it would last a couple of months at my house. I love apple pie. Dina, Jeff’s wonderful, saintly and slightly scary wife made the thing from a recipe called Martha Stewart's Mile High Apple Pie . It was delicious, it was also enormous. The recipe starts with: ‘5 ½ pounds of firm, tart apples.” In a standard nine inch pan! Yeah, it’s almost taller than it is wide. The equivalent to a standard pie slice would be only about 1/4 inch wide from this towering behemoth.

The cookies were home made too. Adam ate several, oatmeal, chocolate chip, sugar. . .

Oh well.

The road trip back took four hours and six minutes. I know this because every time I make this trip I try to break the four hour mark. Friday’s conditions were ideal, sunny, cool, full tank of gas, well fed, eager to get it over with. Had it not been for a shopping traffic slowdown in Perryville, our one pit stop at roughly the halfway point, and a fifteen mile per hour under the posted speed limit minivan on Highway A between Festus and Hillsboro, I might have made it. But no, four hours and six %^$!! minutes. This sort of set my mood toward going foul.

I was wasted the rest of the day since Angel had rolled out the full feast there. I took on more carbs in those two days than the previous three months combined. I felt stuffed, bloated, heart-burned and sluggish. I spent the evening drooling and making sad, guttural, grunting noises.

On Saturday I made a run to Desoto to pick up the week’s supplies and a prescription refill to replace the drugs that I had left behind in Cerulean.

I knew there would be trouble the moment I turned into the parking lot. I could see them. I could already hear them.

Bell ringers.

There are some noises that I cannot stand. They reverberate in my head like a torture device. Most noises don’t bother me at all. Dogs barking or howling in the basement doesn’t even wake me up. But some things, like my first wife’s voice, the crying of a baby, cartoons (high pitched shouting) and those bells. They enter my skull holes and start bouncing off the walls. I find them disorienting, shrill, percussive and angry. If noises were colors then this sound would be bright, very bright and rapidly strobing, blood red.

It’s not simply annoying, like the lady at work, (she knows who I’m talking about) I find the ringing enraging.

I decided to take a stand. I’d had enough already and the season was just getting underway, I hadn’t even parked the car.

I stepped out and the volume increased. I felt the urge to be violent, to let go of my long pent-up rage and let that taut rubber band finally snap. I’d grab whatever was handy, something heavy and blunt, I wanted bruises and shattered bones, I wanted crumpled heaps twitching on the sidewalk while I reduced those stupid, offensive, maddening bells  back to the base ore from whence they came. I’d melt them with acid, strap them to some train tracks and then take an acetylene torch to whatever was left. Then I’d put those ashes back into the ground.

I was sure they saw me, knew what I was planning. They started ringing louder and faster, louder and faster. This did not frighten me nor stifle my resolve. I marched forward, looking for a bludgeoning device, settled on the butt-tower (those tall plastic devices used for extinguishing and disposing of cigarettes that are at every doorway.)

It would be filled with sand or water or both at the bottom, heavy, with its own long handle. Perfect.

I approached, something in the landscape bothered me. I felt my brilliant plan going sour.

These weren’t the expected geriatric, arthritic senior citizens my plan had assumed. No these guys were younger, muscled, wide shouldered, mountainous men. They caught my eye, it was fight or flight for me, they’d stepped up to the challenge.

Time to crack open a myth.

You know in movies and TV shows where the fast little guy or the 98 pound, high heeled, stick-woman detective out-maneuvers and overpowers enormous, drug-fueled bad-ass bad guys?

That almost never happens. Being light, agile and trained in various martial arts is no compensation for being half as tall and half as wide as the bad guy. Physics, amigos, physics. In the real world, ninety-nine and a half times out of a hundred, the smaller person gets the entire bejesus beat out of them by the under-trained, ham fisted, sluggish, dim-witted, Neanderthal. In a hands-on free for all, it’s endurance, endurance, endurance, that wins. This is why guns were invented, to stop bigger, badder people from killing you before they can get close enough to whoop your scrawny torso. Weapons, stabbing and shooting weapons, are all about closing the distance, extending your lethal reach.

I sized these guys up, there were three of them. Those three together were bigger and heavier than my Chevy coupe.

I altered my plan. You see, I could be a champion, a real badass myself, if:

A. I knew anything about fighting.

B. Had ever actually been in a fight.

C. I hadn't usually found it much more satisfying to run away while victory was still theoretically possible rather than sticking around, flying into the foray and determining for certain that it wasn’t.

D. I’d not studied The Art of War. (Sun Tzu)

My enemy outnumbered me, outweighed me, and by all appearances had superior skills and experience. Plus, by virtue of their height, held the higher ground. Sun Tzu says in situations like this: “Run away! Run away from the stench and trenches! Run away!”(Or maybe that was Monty Python.)

 They wore leather vests, with patches, a biker club. Their reputation as an over-hyped stereotypically violent fraternity preceded them.

Plan B.

Avoid eye contact. Pretend that the bells don’t bother me. Stare at my shoes, pretend not to notice them. Try very hard to not look like a vicious, cocked and loaded, lethal weapon.

I made it. I swept past the snarling greeter, past the poorly dressed overweight people, past the snot nosed kids coating the toys with snot-borne mucus and germs. Deep inside the store I was able to suppress the rage, just enough, by diverting my attention instead to the overhead music in the peaceful sanctity of the men’s underwear aisle. Just as I was calming, a little, I listened closer. That music, hypnotic, catchy, jaunty and lilting.  DAMMIT it’s Christmas Music!!!

Also on the list of sounds that drive me nearer to insanity than where I typically waddle, is Christmas music. Every bit of it, all of it. Yes, even that song, and that one, yes, all of them, especially that one.

Hey, don’t let your chestnuts get all roasted by my blasphemy. Christmas music is vastly overplayed, simplistic and banal. It’s tailored to get a rise out of you, to alter your emotions. Well, with me it certainly does. Ire, anger and rage to name a few. Enough to make me want instead, to run out the front door, grab that ash can and go down swinging in a violent, screaming and certainly suicidal, bloodbath.

So I grabbed bananas, some soup, a couple of Christmas cards for my mom, and my pills. Not the right kind of pills though, not the soothing, mood calming, happy cloud drugs. No, to quash this hissing, boiling fury was going to take something stronger, more potent than mere prescription chemicals, it would take something purely savage and mighty, like, like apple pie.

What? Oh. . .Crap.

Editor's note: The author is not a violent person, at all. He lacks the requisite physical, mental, and emotional guts to ever physically attack anyone not causing him or his family imminent harm. He'd probably lose then too, but he might at least put up a token struggle.

His angry, bitter and threatening words herein are only indicative of his unfettered fantasy universe. As a writer of creative non-fiction, he has license, and the propensity, to exaggerate, embellish, and well, lets just call it what it is, lie, to animate an otherwise mundane story about going to the store to pick up a prescription.

Editor's note.(2)

The author has nothing against the charities involved in the collection of donations. He is sure they are perfectly noble causes. He, in fact, extends his humblest gratitude to those willing to volunteer their time and energy to help the less fortunate. He also has no dislike and wishes no ill will to members of motorcycle clubs, Walmart greeters, or the many delightful patrons of that particular discount chain. 

Author's note: I still hate those infernal bells.