I spent some time in an easy chair this last weekend. Held down by a five-pound cat, there was nothing I could do but clutch the remote.
There was a blanket involved, of course, and almost two hours of the back-to-back viewing of my current televised fascination, Hoarders.
Willie walks through the room, backs up, and pauses.
“What are you doing?” He says this in a tone of voice one would expect to hear if one were to be caught, say, pulling the wings off flies or using imitation cheese: Equal mixtures of horrified and concerned.
“Hmm?” I cannot be bothered to pull my eyes from the screen. “These people, they have predispositions, right? And then something bad happens and flips some switch in their head and suddenly they can’t throw away their fastfood wrappers.”
Willie sits down on the couch. “Why are the helpers wearing gas masks?”
“Cat feces,” I say.
“What?!”
“Cat feces.”
“Cat…”
“Shhhh!”
Poor Willie. He suffers, this one.
He stands up in disgust. “Why are you watching this?”
“What?” I drag my eyes from the show. “It’s the people! They’re fascinating. See, they don’t want to be like this, some of them. Of course, some of them are just full-fledged crabby. Like this one guy –“
Willie raises a hand, waggles it at me. “No need, no need,” he says, backing out of the room.
“Well there’s the cat, too,” I mutter defensively. “I mean, I can’t just get up. She’s all comfortable, and I hate to disrupt her.”
Willie shakes his head.
I am a mystery to him.