Song Of The Day: Scarecrow People / XTC
(Dutch) Word Of The Day: Valkuil / a hidden danger, unsuspected hazard or unforeseen difficulty.
(Note To Tripp Lanier: The DUTCH are from HOLLAND. The DANISH are from DENMARK. The NETHERLANDS is another name for HOLLAND. Get it straight, you're making Americans look like Texans.)
We had a party last night. Right here at the Davis household. It was a very unusual thing for me to do, I've lived in this house three years and I've literally never had a party, never invited people over. Lately I've been feeling a bit bummed out that I don't really get to hang with people from Boulder very much, I'm either on the road or between tours, and when I'm home I tend to just hole up and recouperate in isolation, softly stroking my stuffed animals in the dark until I feel clean again. But a few days ago I was like "let's have a party." My wife was like "cool." So, we invited all the Integral Institute gang and the local Dharma Pop crew over the pad, and we said bring your own food and bring your own stuff to grill, and we'll all just hang and have fun. And it WAS a blast, it was an evening of super double fun happy conversation and frivolity. I wore a hyper-pink t-shirt with ultra-pink sunglasses and brought it all together with a heart-shaped pink sticker over my third eye. In fact, my daughter Ara picked out stickers for everyone who came to the party, and each attendee put her fancy selection over their third eye. The whole evening was perfect. UNTIL...
until one of the guests made a bit of a blunder in humor. Oh boy. I don't want to get this person in any more hot water than he's already in, so I'm not going to use his real name. We'll just call him... "Ballard". Well, we're all hanging out, having fun, laughing, good times in the circle of friends, when out of nowhere, "Ballard" says
"Yeah, Marci is a little fat."
Marci is my wife, if you didn't know. Like most women, my wife is somewhat self-conscious and sensitive about her body. She also happens to be - and I am not exaggerating one bit here- one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. She's sort of an Italian Marilyn Monroe kinda vibe, maybe cross-bred with a Jenny Mcarthy personality and Selma Hyak body. Anyway, she's not a waif, she's no spindly stick figure, she's a curvy girl, but stunningly beautiful. Well, this guy -we'll call him "BALLARD"- says this, says "Yeah, Marci is a little fat", and it's like he radio-active Chernobyl farted in her face. It's toxic. It's tainted. The room went quiet. She was hurt. She's an emotional and sensitive person to begin with (Italian), but particularly about her weight (aren't most women at this point, since we've engineered a psychoticly twisted sense of 'beauty' in this culture?). But I'm telling you, if you saw my wife walking down the street, you wouldn't think "that chick's fat" you'd think "that chick is hot". Anyway, this guy -we'll call him "BALLARD" said this as a kind of edgy joke out of left field, just a random curve ball meant to play with taboos, but OH did he pick the wrong one, at the wrong moment, with the wrong person, in the wrong setting. He made my wife cry, and it was another 30 minutes before she was cool again, but I can assure you she'll be thinking of it for weeks, or years. This guy -we'll call him "Ballard"- apologized profusely, I believe sincerely, and they made up, hugged, and things were set as right as they could be. He bowed to her feet, hugged her, said he was sorry, but let's face it, there's only way to truly make amends, and as an expert in conflict resolution no one understands this more than me. Here's a solution that will provide the quickest healing:
Ballard, meet Shaft Danger, Shaft Danger, meet Ballard
We have plans to get a dog soon. A Great Dane. The biggest Great Dane we can find, and if my dear geographically challenged friend Tripp Lanier decides not to use this moniker for his first born, we might name the dog 'Shaft Danger'. And Shaft Danger is the key to Ballard's redemption. I know Ballard felt really bad about hurting my wife's feelings, and dogs truly are man's best friend, and to clear the air on this unfortunate social mis-step, all we have to do is invite the evening's guests back over to the house to conduct a simple ritual. It goes like this:
1, Ballard is ceremonially denuded with spritzer of gas and Bic lighter
2, once naked and charred, he's decorated by guests, who apply copious amounts of glue and then a coat of curly, puffy white dog hair, carefully leaving a Great-Dane sized point-of-access in the posterior, making Ballard (in the eyes of Shaft Danger) a sexy 150 pound Toy Poodle.
3, after a feast of Viagra-enriched Dog Chow, Shaft Danger puts the noodle in the poodle and makes inter-species stroodle.
4, as our Great Dane drains a rain of canine-stains, everone laughs, not in judgement or condemnation, but in release and forgiveness! and all woes are forgotten and dissolved.
You know what? It feels good to take the high road once in a while. No vengence, no bitter pay-back ploys, just a bit of therapeutic theater in the spirit of Love. That's what matters, bringing people back together.
