The World According to Chuck

I suppose in August, when we go to Santa Fe for the wedding, we’ll have to put our dog, Strider, in a kennel. He’s never been in a kennel and we’ve never been in this situation, since we’ve never all left home since he was born.

Strider is 12 years old, by the way. And a couple of months.

So this is all new, and I have to assume he’s looking forward to a break. But it’s not like we’re all home bound. Just, mostly, me. This upcoming trip will be an exception, then, and I have no idea who’s going to clean the bathroom and load the dishwasher, but I plan on having a long talk with Strider before I go.

Julie tends to leave for a couple of weeks, at least cumulatively, once a year, and in 2007 she took John with her, on a mission trip for church. This was sort of thrilling and sort of intimidating for me, a week without humans. I survived, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun as I’d hoped. The air was still, there was no music, I suddenly missed video games in the background, and I knew right away I was

Home Alone
(Originally published 8/22/2007)

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and son left me alone for a few days. Not in the “please leave me alone” way, but in the packed bags, full tank, don’t-forget-to-feed-the-dog way.

There were times in my life when that was sort of a thrill, solitude and space. A friend of mine once summed up the situation pretty well, having the women and children in our lives out of the house for an extended period of time, leaving us to our own devices.

“It’s Pop-Tart time,” he said, and he was right.

It’s possible that my friend and I are exceptions to the rule (that’s come up before, actually), but I suspect there’s something in the chromosomes and culture going on here. Something about a taste of anarchy, about freedom from female supervision, about true nature and caged beasts. I could be wrong.

But I ate a couple of frozen pizzas that week, something I never do, and I stayed up real late watching spy movies. Ice cream was also involved, as were unmade beds and some really loud music.

The problem with pretending that you’re a 15-year-old and your parents are gone for the weekend can be found in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which notes that entropy always increases. “Entropy,” in this particular case, refers to the irreversible aging of the human gastrointestinal system. I should have a T-shirt made:

“My family went on vacation, and all I got was this stupid heartburn.”

Aside from a poor diet, though, and an odd choice of movies (they combined one night to produce a very strange dream, which I decided to call “The Bourne Appendectomy”), I discovered that I’ve apparently grown out of solitude. There was a time when I craved it, when I dreamed of long, solitary weekends with good books, silence, and no small people asking me to make macaroni and cheese or find a stray Lego, but I’m apparently past that now.

It was lonely. I wandered the aisles of the grocery store, never once going to the produce section, got way too excited over a sale on paper towels, cornered a neighbor I saw and blabbed to him for a good 10 minutes, and whined to my favorite check-out person, Gayle.

“Look at me,” I said. “I’m buying frozen pizza and diet soda. What kind of life is this?”

She was sympathetic. “Try Subway,” she said, but then she had customers waiting.

My ideas about being industrious went out the window. The bedroom didn’t get painted, the bedding didn’t get washed, the garage didn’t get cleaned and the floor didn’t get scrubbed. I listened to talk radio, ran the dishwasher twice by mistake, watched a few Mariners games, and once, when Kenny Loggins’ “Footloose” came on my iPod, I tried to do that dance Kevin Bacon did in the movie and I think I broke something.

I couldn’t sleep. There was something about having a bed to myself that gave me too many options; I stacked and restacked pillows, I tossed, I turned, I swung my arms around, knowing I wouldn’t hit anything human, and still I ended up the next morning sort of sideways, with a sore neck and the dog licking my feet, inquiring about breakfast. The bed looked like someone had searched it for weapons.

I freely admit my domestication, but then I’ve known that for years. The dirty clothes go in the hamper, milk is to be consumed in a glass and not straight from the carton, the vacuum cleaner and toothpaste cap both have functions, and the toilet seat is to be left down, period. I get that.

I just didn’t realize how accustomed I’d become to the company of others, to need and be needed, to share dumb experiences and instant replays of walk-off home runs. For five short days in early August, I became a theoretical human being, a philosophy lesson, an empirical question. If a man is alone in the house, and he stubs his toe, does he make a sound?

Well, yes. He does. He actually makes lots of noises when he’s alone, but I don’t really want to talk about noises.

The point is, the toe will hurt a lot longer without someone else around to feel sorry for you, even if they might point out that the dining room table has been in that exact same spot for years now and nobody else seems to be stubbing their toes. It’s the sympathy that counts.

My wife and son came back late one night, sunburned and covered with mosquito bites, full of stories about the beach and the people, glad to see me and pretending not to notice the pizza boxes.

The next day, John mentioned that he’d missed my super-special macaroni and cheese. I sighed, said “I guess I could make you some,” tried to look put out, and failed, of course.