Life Litters the Lawn, as the Sonicare Hums Along

by Jim Washburn

“You know, Jim’s going about this all wrong,” my wife told me a friend told her as we were setting up for our yard sale this morning. I mention this to suggest that the advice I proffered in this column last week on yard sales should not necessarily be the final word on the subject. For that matter, at 6:30 this morning I had no recollection or interest in whatever I’d written. I just wanted the day to get to where it is now: over.

My wife’s Sonicare had turned itself on at 1 am. It’s been doing that at odd times the last few days, though any time is odd, since toothbrushes aren’t supposed to be self-actualizing. I’ve tried seeing this from its side: I was made to brush, so I am brushing now. And since I hate wasted energy, a couple of times when it’s started up, I’ve yelled to Leslie, “Quick! Get it in your mouth!”

But it’s becoming damned annoying. It’s as startling as an alarm when it kicks in. We’ve tried all its settings. We’ve laid it down at different angles. We offered it a stick of Dentyne. Last night when it started up, I wrapped it in swaddling clothes and left it at the far end of the house.

I was awake anyway, working on yard sale prep, as I was again at 5 this morning. And when the quarter-wielding droves started to swarm, it was still a chaotic jumble. Leslie helped. Friends helped. But there was about ten hours of prep that should have happened and didn’t. Many things we’d intended to sell remained in a heap indoors; many more lay unexcavated in the garage. I had to apologize to my friend Kedric as he helped me brute the Soloflex—once owned by turban-wearing bassist Willie J. Campbell—out of the garage, because I’d so tossed things around looking for other things that it looked like a rat’s nest. “It’s OK,” he said, and having seen his office, I suppose it is.

No one bought the Soloflex, nor did they buy most of the heavy, rare, weird junk we had on the driveway. I mean there was an early ’70s Mosrite guitar so rare that I’ve never seen another and people just went “hrumph” and bought a $2 CD. A ’70s entertainment center so heavy that it’s tsunami-proof remains in front of our house, partially obscuring it. It cost the friend who gave it to us something like $1,200 back then; now we’re hoping someone responds to the “Curb Alert” we put on Craigslist, and hauls it away for free.

Knick-knacks were big, as were sundries. At day’s end my front pockets were so stuffed with $1 bills it looked like I had two butts. I did have a lobster-like sunburn. Total sales? Maybe $500, a.k.a. a slow week on eBay.

Loads of friends came by; we had plenty of help. Donuts were shared. Ukulele was heard to be played. People bought stuff they liked, cheap. A small boy lifted a stuffed animal from the fifty-cent bin and hugged it tentatively. I had no choice but to call the police. No, actually, when his mother called him, he put it down and walked toward her. Of course we stopped him and gave him the animal. We’re not heartless. The toddler continued to their van, hugging the stuffed toy to his chest. It looked awfully flat for a cat, and had Xs for eyes.

“What,” I asked my wife, “is that?”

“That’s Earl the Dead Cat.”

Wikipedia tells me that under-stuffed Earl was introduced in 1985, billed as “the last cat you’ll ever need.” I don’t need Wikipedia to tell me that’s going to be one downcast little boy when he realizes he’s spent the best years of his childhood hugging a dead cat. 

It was a fine day, and I endeavored to enjoy it, and tried my be-here-now best to be-there-then. But of course when you’re trying to be more conscious, you’re not, because “trying” requires that you evaluate and step outside yourself when you should be feeling and intuiting.

My mind stuck on how unprepared I was. I have bad gig dreams, where suddenly the stage lights go up, and I’m on my knees trying to surmise where my signal chain jumped the track, frantically fumbling with fuzztones as everyone stares like they’ve given up waiting for me to do something that wasn’t stupid. Then I’m asked to turn in my homework.

—Aak! That fucking toothbrush just went off again! It sounds angry, like the battery’s overloaded on meth. And I put this thing in my mouth?—

So I wasn’t as present at the yard sale as I would like to have been, and felt I was hours behind deadline the whole while. In years past I’d be utterly addled by such situations, and so uptight that I was not spreading plenty aloha to my friends. But one advantage of age is you’ve been through enough clusterfucks to realize they are not the exception to the rule. Life is suffering, Buddha said, without ever even going to a Billy Ray Cyrus concert. Something always goes wrong. Half the things you meant to do fall by the wayside. Realize that, and it’s easier to stumble through the day as graciously as you can. And keeping a stiff upper lip so your teeth don’t fall out.  

One reason why I’ve been so far behind is, on top of moving, curating a museum exhibit, and the usual work, I was offered, and took, another project this month. Now I’ve got a workload I can just about barely handle, if I cut back on sleep and other frills. Money makes the monkey dance. But can he do it with grace and aplomb? 

Whew, I just heard five words I never expected my wife would say: “Don’t fuck up my bristles.” The Sonicare was sounding off again, the second time in ten minutes, from the living room. We decided I’d best wrap it papoose-style in towels, the bristle head safely suspended beyond the wrapping, out in the garage. It is the goddamned Telltale Heart of toothbrushes. I hear it even when it isn’t on now. 

I’ll be walking Nikita blocks from home. From a window I hear that electric drone. Sonicare. Sonicare. Is that humming really there?

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