Babbler Excerpt No. 2

Who needs Ex-Lax®?
Reprinted courtesy of The Beemer Babbler

Had it not been for the fact that she was already on the "john" when she opened the envelope from Oakland University, Erin Beemer, 18, undoubtedly would have "pooped" her pants.

"They'd sent me a bunch of stuff previously, so I just thought it was a reminder about orientation, or something just as mundane," remarks the eldest issue of the conjugal union of Susan and Earl Beemer. "But—like, omigod!—it was a two-thousand dollar scholarship I hadn't even applied for!"

"They must have discovered that Erin was one of the top ten students in her high-school graduating class," her mother offers from across the room, where she's buffing her exquisite fingernails while sucking cheap wine from a 12-ounce plastic tumbler. And although not asked for the information, she points out nevertheless that her wine comes in a box.

"Suf's right," Shortboy declares. "It's a feather in OU's cap to land a crack student like Car Driver Girl. They wouldn't want to lose her to the Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts, for instance."

Thea Beemer, 15, strides brusquely into the room and flops onto the recliner, scowling. "Erin tinks she's SO bu-luh-ee great," she rails, superbly mimicking a working-class Dublin accent. "She awl-wise gets every-ting. Ih maykes me wan-uh pyook!"

Erin counters in a staccato Valley Girl delivery: "Oh—my—gawd!" she exclaims. "I do not either!"

Someone outside expresses disagreement through the open living-room window. "You do too get everything!" shouts sister Remy, 17, who until then had been discussing various aspects of Jeff Hagen's former girlfriend with Jeff Hagen on the front porch. "What about your job teaching ballet for fifteen bucks an hour?"

"I haven't even started that stinkin' job yet, you imbeciles!"

Springing from the couch, she leaps on Thea and begins strangling the astonished adolescent with fingers chewed to hideous bluntness by more than a decade of nail biting. Dropping the faux brogue, Thea implores her enraged sister to choke Remy or Kelly instead, but Erin isn't having any.

"Sure, I'm getting two grand from Oakland and fifteen bucks an hour from the Rochester School of Dance. But I do not get everything—and I can prove it!"

She lets Thea slip to the floor and produces yet another letter from the hip pocket of her mauve Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. "Aren't you all forgetting this?"

It's the notice from the Dayton-Hudson Corporation advising that she's no longer eligible for her mother's employee discount now that she's over eighteen.

"So there, buttheads! Read it and weep!"

Ex-Lax is a registered trademark of Novartis AG.

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At the ballet on Saturday night ...

I saw a middle-aged couple in the lobby. The lady wore a black floral print skirt, charcoal hose, and a cream-colored sleeveless top. Her hair, a blond dye job, was arranged in a loose French twist, and her skin looked leathery and lightly tanned. The man was about six inches taller than she. His left hand and wrist were encased in a funky elastic bandage resembling a fingerless glove, and he was wearing horn-rimmed glasses, grayish-brown slacks, and a cranberry polo shirt. His straight brown hair was shiny-slick with some kind of preparation. After a short while, the woman and man turned to move elsewhere; in doing this, he grabbed her arm and jerked her toward the direction he had in mind, as one might roughly redirect a child who'd already been scolded twice that evening.

At the ballet on Saturday night ...

someone sitting near me was broadcasting the camphoraceous smell of moth balls.

At the ballet on Saturday night ...

the heavy velvet curtain continued lowering long after touching the stage, its vertical pleats forming a chorus-line of red and wrinkled elephants' legs.

At the ballet on Saturday night ...

I saw a teenage couple in the lobby. The young man wore a gray shirt with button-down collars and a striped tie. He had a floppy mop of sandy hair and a meager mustache and goatee. The glowing young woman clinging to him had tawny skin, darting eyes, and shimmering shoulder-length hair the color of Godiva chocolate. Her spaghetti-strapped crimson sheath plunged deep below her waist in back and confirmed the absence of panties with form-hugging chutzpah. Turning toward Susan, I nodded in their direction and said, "That boy doesn't have a chance."

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