Farting Around

We were driving home through Virginia post-Thanksgiving, and my husband was talking about his truck’s failing transmission. The garage in Virginia said it would cost $6k to replace, and he hoped a local mechanic could do better. My husband spoke of rebuilding the transmission, the hours of labor, and the possibility of a new vehicle. Meanwhile, Queen’s “We Will Rock You” came on the radio.

“You feel that?” my husband asked.

“Huh? Oh yeah, yeah, I like all their songs. This a good one,” I answered in surprise. I’d been nodding my head, you know, just feelin’ it.

“No! The transmission! Are you even listening to me? It just jumped!”

“Ohhh, no. I didn’t feel anything,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t turn down the Queen song to better hear the transmission. At times, it’s like we don’t even speak the same language.

I read an interview recently with Kurt Vonnegut, in which he described finishing his latest book (on a typewriter), then heading out to the store for an envelope. His wife asked why he didn’t just buy a stack of envelopes.

That wasn’t the point – he wanted to mosey on the way, chat with people, mess about. Vonnegut said, “”I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”

I’m really feelin that quote.

I worked side-by-side with another teacher for years in a set of three conjoined trailers. Our rooms connected through a storage closet, and we’d sneak over to write funny messages on each other’s boards, bursting in during class to mock each other.

Once, at an all-day teacher’s training, we sat in small seats in a public school library, listening to a long-winded speaker. During a stretch break, my colleague offered to pay me twenty dollars if I’d fall out of my chair in the middle of the next presentation.

I took that bet and never regretted it. Of such nonsense is true happiness made.

When we depart from somewhere in separate vehicles, heading home, my husband and I (safely) race each other, usually with one child each in our backseats. The winning team gets to jump out in the driveway and do the “chicken dinner dance”, singing “winner, winner, chicken dinner,” while bobbing side to side and flapping their elbows like birds. It is this that pleases me most of all, whether or not I win.

As a child I was called “piddling Paulina,” for my ability to putter about and not get anything done. Paulina was my grandmother’s name (I’m not sure how she got sucked into the situation). It was meant as an admonishment, but I didn’t take it that way. I saw it as more of a life’s calling.

For the past year, I’ve been seeking permission to write aboard an old boat. I spied it with my little eye while visiting a friend’s property – a large wooden sailboat set on land near a marsh. I sent a handwritten card to the address documented in the property records. No response. I sent another.

The second letter prompted a phone call from the owner, who seemed as surprised as I was that she was contacting me. She’d enjoyed a story about tobacco barns on my blog, and her grandfather was a writer. She gave tentative permission, once she spoke with her siblings.

Eventually, another sibling contacted me, and we arranged a meeting. I showed up in all my glory: a crazy lady wanting to write on a derelict boat. I learned that the boat had sailed from Sweden, where it was built by hand, and was moved with a crane from the water to the grassy shore. Why? For a guest house, for the hell of it, because it was cool, for the same reason I’d drive a half-hour out of my way to write there.

The owners said yes, bless their sweet souls, because what else is life for, if not for piddling around on old boats?

Yesterday was my first official sanctioned boat visit. I used it to finish cutting three chapters from my novel, tightening the plot and reducing word count. On the boat, I managed to cauterize the veins from Chapters 8-10, leaving a newly spliced artery connecting Ch 7 to Ch 11. I think it will hold.

Will that book ever be published? Will there be anything to show for my time sitting on a stranger’s boat (and in so many other places)? I don’t know, and that’s OK. We are not here to make monuments.

Recently, I invited a friend to serve on a nonprofit board with me. He asked what I expect of him in his new role.

“I’m hoping you’ll fall out of your chair at one of the meetings,” I said, and I meant it.

by Jessi Waugh