The girls are trying their very best to annoy the crap out of each other and, not coincidentally, me. The long summer is waning, soon to come to a gracious close, and in a few ways it couldn’t come quickly enough. It’s been fun, but the time has come to speak of other things, to other people.
I get it. I remember my brother and I trying to out-annoy each other in the summer doldrums. Along with annoying my parents, in very guided attempts to display how foolish it was for them to not have activities planned for us constantly. We’ll show you how bored we are. You want us to ‘entertain ourselves?’ OK, here’s how that works.
Cue the “Unwanted Staring Game.” I’m gonna follow you around the house and stare silently at you, sending daggers of deep hate at your stupid face. I hate your stupid ugly face, Ted. What’re you doing now. Reading a comic book. How stupid.
“Mom! Matt’s staring at me!”
Silence. She doesn’t care. Or she’s out of range. Darker stare for the infidel brother. He runs, unnerved, out of the room, the comic book flying. I pick it up and follow him in a zombie trot.
“Mom! Mom!! MOM!!!!”
“WHHAATT!!?” She screams, folding laundry in the living room. Of course she had heard us somewhere in the back of her brain, somewhere that she had been tuning out as best she could. And here we were again. What the fuck was wrong NOW?
“Matt won’t stop looking at me.”
“Seriously? He’s looking at you?”
“Yes! And he won’t stop,” he motions to me, lurking with my evil dead look, which I flip to a smile as soon as her gaze whips over to me.
“I’m just trying to give him his comic book back. He won’t take it. I don’t think he should be allowed to watch those scary zombie movies anymore, it’s making him unstable.”
She stares at me with her own Mom zombie stare, ripping through me to see the truth and the little smile that leaks out the corner of my lips.
“Stop staring at him. And go play outside. NOW.”
Well, of course, he gets me back by trying something obvious and crude like trying to spit on me, and then lick me. Which he finally accomplishes after 20 solid minutes of chasing me around the backyard. So naturally, I pin him down and sit on him, tapping his chest over and over very lightly with my index finger. Which arguably becomes torture after a solid 5 minutes, as noted by his shrieks reverberating through the neighborhood.
I stop touching him eventually, of course, and begin almost touching him, stopping a fraction of an inch from his chest. He really didn’t like that either, it turns out. Over and over and over. What can I say? At least I never punched him in the face. Little shit had it coming.
“I’m not touching you. I’m not touching you. I’m still not touching you.”
Eventually he squirms free and runs into the house to rat me out. Although I can’t imagine what the little fucker was gonna tell her. “Mom, Matt kept not touching me after I spit on him and licked his elbow for some god-forsaken reason.”
Judging by the look on her face when she came out, that was not what he told her at all. Likely some enormous lie about how I beat him and called him ugly. But Mom bore the look of a looming meltdown. The conniption was at the door, and I knew there was no arguing what I had and hadn’t done. She didn’t care. She spoke slowly, softly, seething.
“Don’t look at each other. Don’t touch each other. Don’t talk to each other. Go play,” she said.
“Together?” I asked. Ted was still smiling at me, thinking I was the one getting in trouble still.
“Yes,” she spat softly, the ‘s’ cutting the air between us sharply.
“Without looking or touching?” I said, unable to believe she was serious. Was this even possible?
“Yes,” she threw an undersized football at my stomach. “Go play catch silently and only look at the ball,” she said ferociously, glaring at both of us before slamming the door to keep us out. The lock clicked. We were forced out for the most pathetic game of catch ever witnessed. It quickly morphed into mostly sitting and staring into space.
So I understand their post fart-war skirmishes whose crossfire I still get caught in. The screaming throughout the house for hours on end whenever we’re home. The constant picking at each other over the most minor of flaws and offenses. And even the excruciating, dumb surfer voice that they talk in forever and ever, it seems, my name changing from Dad to “broseph.” And the more I complain, the more they use the moronic, droning voice. Jailed by cruel little captors.
But then, just when I want to throw them both into the ocean, they show what they really are, these sisters. Fishing off the little pier in Morro Bay, desperately trying to catch their first fish with the slimy mussels dangling in the bay that last week of summer. I watch them as I scurry to get the promised cheese corn from the taffy shop just around the corner, knowing all the while that I am going to miss their first fish. No picture, no moment, I know this.
And sure enough, as I round the corner coming back, little Lilah is struggling mightily, her pole bent and wriggling, Sophie there to help her reel it in and stop her from plummeting into the bay. I run to get there but all I can do is watch and spill popcorn. Toddling like a tourist, spilling snacks on my way to miss everything. I won’t even get to eat the damn popcorn because my hands are full of dead mussel juice and the bathrooms didn’t splurge for a soap dispenser, let alone soap. Who needs soap?
“I can’t do it!” Lilah yells, tears in her voice.
“Yes you can!” Sophie says, strong and supporting and lovely, and they reel it in together, finally, slopping the pile onto the pier as I arrive.
“Daddy! Look what I caught!! It’s…” she looks and tries to find a word for the abomination on the wooden ties at our feet.
“Oh my God, it’s a squid!” Sophie yells, and the bright red squid stares at us for a good, weird second then hurls itself back into the bay, leaving only kelp fronds and Lilah’s giant smile.
I thought of that squid as I made bacon this morning. The perfect emblem for our summer. The summer that was now gone. The first day of school, suddenly back upon us. Yay! Boo! My two girls perfectly dressed and ready to go. No booger fights or fart wars this morning. Back to the main reality. The festival of annoyance was pulling back out of town for the year. All we were left with was a picture of a squid, backpacks full of sharpened pencils, and the lingering aroma of rotten eggs in the hallway.