Chaos Theory Visits Our Household

No, I didn’t die.

You know there used to be a commercial – AT&T, I think – back when I was in college. It featured all kinds of sappy, heart-string-pulling scenarios of human interaction, all made possible by the miracle of long distance phone calling.

Anyways, there was one part of that commercial where an older African-American (trying to be PC) woman picked up the phone to find someone she hadn’t heard from in forever on the other end, and she practically screamed, “I thought you DIED!”

So that became a catchphrase in our college crowd – we would see someone we hadn’t seen in maybe a week, and we’d scream, “I thought you DIED!” And it seems to me if anyone stops by this diary, they might just think the same thing.

Other stupid catchphrases from TV I (or people I’ve known) have repeated in the past:

“Did you ever eat a pine tree? Some parts are edible!” (Repeated with a geezerly squint)

“Where’s the beef?!” (SO overused that to this day it still makes me cringe)

“Nanoo Nanoo.” (oh boy)

And no, I NEVER said “Dy-no-MITE!”, though I knew some lunchboxes that did.

Playing on the TV in the background now is the made-for-TV movie about Sonny and Cher, part of ABC’s Flashback Weekend (I’ve been told in endless promos as I try to work). Does it mean you’re getting old when they start making nostalgia movies about stuff you remember perfectly well from when it happened? They’re playing (remade) clips from the Sonny and Cher variety show on TV, and I remember watching those exact same skits, lying on the sculpted red carpeting of my parents’ living room floor.

(Train of thought derailed by the arrival of e-mail…)

So what’s happened the last couple weeks? Let’s see, two major events jump to mind – I was downsized out of a long-term contract programming position that I had been in for almost five years, and our two “female” hamsters became proud parents. Which to write about? Hamsters or downsizing? Downsizing or hamsters? I think I’m in more of a hamster mood – will save the downsizing for another entry.

Well, it’s all my fault, really. Members of my family had been petitioning (as they will) to bring a rodent into our happy household for quite some time. I stood firmly on the anti-rodent side of the fence – too many memories of the endless chattering, squealing, bar-crashing, and excreting of my sister’s guinea pigs.

What followed (of course) were the requisite, “but they’re so cute”… and “they don’t make those guinea pig noises”… and “they’re so small – how much could they really go to the bathroom?”… and so on. So my beloved and I ended up at the pet store, looking at a bin of hamsters – clearly labelled “All Females”. Not that it mattered – if by some crazy reason we WERE to get a hamster, we were only going to get one, for goodness’ sake.

Except that we did find a white one, and she was so cute, and she sat quietly in my wife’s hand, and she really was small, so how much could she go to the bathroom, REALLY? And it was ME (me, nobody else) who said “Well, she’s got to have a friend – she’s going to be lonely by herself”, and (this reinforced by the pimply faced store helper) since they’re all girls, it’s safe to have two.

Did you ever see (or read) “Jurassic Park”? Of course you did. Remember how all the dinosaurs were females, and because of that all the scientists KNEW that they couldn’t breed. And how Jeff Goldblum said “Nature will find a way”, and then the dinosaurs did breed and proceeded to kick (and gobble) all the scientists little asses?

Well, nature found a way in our household, too. Which goes to prove a few points:

1) You should NEVER trust a pimply-faced kid to determine the sex of rodents that have genitalia smaller than a grain of rice,

2) If you’re going to buy hamsters, you might as well buy the big multi-story many-tubed hamster house with attached exercise wheel and garage, because chances are you’ll need it, and

3) Maybe when there’s one little hamster, they really don’t go to the bathroom THAT much, but when there’s eight of them they sure as hell DO.