rosencrantz and guildenstern may not be dead

Amazing artwork ©2021 noplot, badly adapted from one of my favourite t-shirts

I went to see Hamlet one Sunday evening in August. Again.

The first time for this latest production at the Perchance Theatre in Cupids, but for the umpteenth time in my life.

Why do I keep going to see this play, other than the fact that my talented niece, Erika Squires, aka Drama Queen (DQ), was playing Horatio extremely well in it?

It feels like I know all the lines, felt like I knew them the first time I read or heard them; this play is so quotable, its words and phrases live on in common parlance, even for people who wouldn't be caught dead at a Shakespeare performance (and almost everybody gets caught dead in Hamlet, after all).

To be or not to be...

To sleep perchance to dream...

The play's the thing...

Methinks she doth protest too much (misquote, I know, but we all like to rewrite the masters)

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy

I expect this sense of recognition may not be as prevalent for people born since the turn of the century, but I think even the girl who served me ice cream the other day and was surprised to hear that Shakespeare also wrote comedies! has heard of that first quote.*

I read it first in second year university, and afterwards I saw it, can't remember when. Was it onstage? Was Mel's version (1990) really the first time I saw it, the first time I realized what a truly funny play it is, funnier than some of his comedies, in fact? Did I see the Shakespeare by the Sea production? Did I see Olivier's or just stills and clips? I know I saw Kenneth Branagh's and liked it, but can't recall much about it.

I will never forget buying a beautiful-deep-blue-OMG-it-has-pockets dress in a shop at Stratford-Not-on-Avon in the hopes that Paul Gross would notice me, a beacon of loveliness in the melancholy dark of the theatre.** 

But my favourite Hamlet so far has to be David Tennant. He brings the emotional depth, the humour and the madness that served him so well as the tenth Doctor, also my favourite Doctor. With Jean Luc Picard so amazingly good as his bad uncle Claudius, it is no surprise that a Shakespeare junky with a predilection for sci fi like me was in her glee.

DQ suggested that the evening performance was the best time to see the Perchance production, which made sense to me because Hamlet is essentially a horror story, the shades of the past haunting all the characters and driving them on to their deaths with DQ playing the only surviving blonde girl.

Since this is an outdoor theatre and the show started at 7 pm in broad daylight (plus Covid rules necessitated shortening the run time), the dark and spooky opening scene was cut, replaced by the appearance of a silent figure, a woman walking slowly, measuredly, unnaturally into the foreground before the stage. I knew Hamlet was being played by a woman but was this Hamlet Sr.'s ghost?

It turns out to be Hamlet, using new pronouns, haunting her own play like a poltergeist as she goes on to cause trouble and annoy everyone around her. It was odd to hear her addressed as "my liege" instead of "my lord", but it turns out that, Errol Flynn movies notwithstanding, "liege" does not refer only to a king and is not as definitively a male term, although I had never heard a woman addressed like that. Perhaps because it's so rare to find a woman in a position of authority back in the olden days.  Am I the only one who had to google that during the performance?

My pedantry aside, Allison Moira Kelly does a fine job as Hamlet. I was particularly startled by the intensity of her grief as she speaks her first monologue, wishing her too solid flesh would melt with her tears, which flowed freely in a bout of ugly crying which I feel compelled to call feminine, having so rarely seen that kind of emotional outpouring from a man. I cannot recall any other Hamlet of my acquaintance letting more than a few drops of moisture fall on his manly cheek, no matter the reference to Niobe's endless tears. 

It was in that moment, I made the realization that Hamlet and I were both fatherless children, and the emotional connection between us rang more clearly than it ever had before. 

Was it the idea that royalty feel differently about these things which kept me at a distance (The king is dead, long live the king! seems to remove human feelings from the equation) or just the masculine experience of grief, which seems to favour expressing overwhelming anger instead of tears, that felt foreign to me?

I have had have plenty of anger over losing my father to lung cancer when I was only 20-years old but I don't remember voicing it much. But thinking about it now, if I stumbled upon a tobacco company executive cold-bloodedly calculating the profits of ensnaring young people with their noxious death weed, denying them the chance to meet their future grandchildren, I might find it in me to stab that bastard right in the arras.

But, you know, women are taught to swallow our anger. 

However, there is no societal restraint on womanly tears, inconvenient and uncomfortable to watch as they may be. Hamlet, the character, although usually a man, is quite womanly (in the traditional sense) in this play. He/she makes everyone else squirm, insisting on displaying natural human emotions when everyone else just wants to pretend those pesky things should have run their course by now, three weeks being plenty of time to mourn a Dead Dad. Claudius, aka the Dad Slayer, has a vested interest in squashing natural emotion of course, as does his former sister-in-law, Gertrude, aka Hamlet's Mom, aka Cleopatra, the Queen of Denial, who should have been grieving a dead husband, not getting on with the business of living happily ever after with a new king.

Even if it's not very manly (in the traditional sense), Hamlet has good reason to be sad and angry since her father was murdered and her mom doesn't seem to care. If that weren't bad enough, the villain looks exactly like Dad, in this and many other productions. Jody Richardson is so good in both roles, auto-tuned and scary as the ghost, desperate and malevolently plotting as Claudius.

In fact the whole cast is excellent.

Marthe Bernard is an affecting Ophelia, her mad scene heartrending. Whether Hamlet is actually in love with her is another question, but that is a question the play fails to answer whatever gender Hamlet may be. Ophelia's father, Polonius, is convinced that Hamlet does love his daughter but he is hardly any judge of emotional truth, ignoring the painful situation he is putting Ophelia in by asking her to spy on someone she truly loves.

When Hamlet kills Polonius, it is no wonder that Ophelia is driven mad by the conflicting demands of love for both of them, which leads to her death by drowning. Grief and the natural anger arising from her death brings everything to head when her brother Laertes (a passionate Owen Van Houten) agrees to murder Hamlet to get his revenge but then everyone gets accidentally-on-purpose murdered. The End.

It's kind of a bummer. 

But unlike anyone in Hamlet, I have access to the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and two-and-a-half English degrees so I'll deal.***

After DQ relieved my fears that the genderbending would ruin Horatio's elegiac farewell to her best friend ("Good night, sweet princess" wouldn't have had quite the same ring to it) and the play was over, perchance to let CSI do its work with all the corpses laying about since Fortinbras was nowhere in evidence, I realized that Gertrude neglected to announce that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. They are friends of Hamlet's who unwittingly become the weapon Claudius uses to rid himself of his irritating niece; sent off to England with Hamlet, they carry a letter asking the English king to kill Hamlet upon receipt of same. Hamlet has a lucky escape when their ship encounters pirates but sends R & G on without her, a new letter in their hands directing the English king to kill them instead, because apparently, the British take homicidal direction well?

It cheered me up to no end to think that these perennially interchangeable patsies may in fact have survived the play. Their unquestioning willingness to do whatever they are told suggests they were unlikely to open the letter sealing their doom, thereby actively saving themselves, but one can at least hope they misplaced it.

So to sum up, it was a really good production of Hamlet, made me think lots of interesting (to me) thoughts, and I would recommend that you jump in your tardises (tardisi?) and go back in time to see it. Or go see any and all productions at Perchance Theatre next year because they are worth the trip.

*call me a cranky old lady telling kids to get off my lawn, which is what SWDNO essentially did at the time, but that particular encounter as we were on our way to see the delightful As You Like It got my granny knickers in a twist at the educational system, deplorable state of!

**I wore it the other day for a background role in a tv show filming locally and nearly lost it (talk about your Shakespearean tragedies!) to the wardrobe mistress when I carelessly left it lying about and then made a holy show of myself dragging everything out of my bag in the middle of New Gower Street when it suddenly occurred to me to check that I had everything. There was an overly dramatic last minute rescue as I spotted the deep blue edge peaking out of a pile of neatly-packed costumes through the open door of the van, dragging my precious out, heedless of those lesser items who had never had the privilege of viewing Paul Gross nor considered tossing themselves on stage in tribute...

***aka I'll achieve catharsis and purify and purge my negative emotions and stuff through art.

it's not time yet, go lie down

One morning back in June, the day I started writing this post, I was sitting at the kitchen counter, eating peanut butter toast and working on a killer sudoku, enjoying the cool summer breeze wafting in through the screened patio door, listening to the birdsong outside, trying not to cry.

 

The novelty of having the patio door open in June was not lost on me on this not-exactly-tropical island where summer usually only deigns to occur on the occasional weekday in July. Plus I haven't had a patio screen door in about 15 years. 

The problem with having rampaging labs is that they are really hard on screens, especially if one of those labs is in fact a 100-pound Newfoundland and Labrador with ginormous paws who is not afraid to use them, and when you are taking too long to find the pause button on the remote so you can go let him inside.

Hearts ©2016 no plot

If you were able to resist that sweet face (I certainly couldn't), you would not be able to resist the power of that tremendous paw, shredding metal screens like they were tissue paper or simply demanding the pats that you were legally obligated to provide him under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Hearts amendment, 2007).*

Pwning this couch since 2007.** ©2020 no plot

Hearts came into our lives by stealth.  We would never have taken on a dog of his size at that point in time*** given that we were in canine recovery, having endured an entire year of crazy in the form of Shadow, the lab-husky mix who made us understand why some people abandon their children on doorsteps. 

Shadow contemplates his prey, an evil gleam in his eye. The shoe was never seen again.
©2005 Mike who probably didn't know what he was getting us into.**** 

Shadow was approximately four months old when we got him, having spent most of that time living on the parish up in Natuashish. One day, he decided to run into Mike's house and used his powers of cuteness to enthrall Mike who in turn convinced us that all this adorable pup needed was a good home (to trash) and some unsuspecting people to love (traumatize).  He was a sweet dog but he had no off-switch, which was problematic in a family that is constantly misplacing its on-switch. He tore a terrible path of mastication through our lives, shredding dog toys, child's toys, slippers, shoes, boots, window screens, screen doors, coffee tables, etc. He dug under every fence, slipped every backyard tie. He was a very difficult dog to live with until one day, he got very, very sick, very, very fast, and then he up and died. We were devastated (but also relieved).

It was a while before we could muster up any enthusiasm for getting another dog. But after 5 months of not knowing when he was well off, Her Father started visiting the SPCA websites again, convinced that if he avoided puppies, he could find an older dog whose personality and behaviour would be more readily apparent, easier to assess; a calm dog who would fit into our lives with less disruption and decidedly less carnage.

Which is why we decided to adopt Sylvie, a stray who had been found wandering the streets of Mount Pearl.

Sylvie, aka the Trojan Horse. ©2007ish no plot

She was quiet, she was calm, she was approximately one year old. She was everything we were looking for.

She was also not spayed but they didn't think she was pregnant...

.... ©2007 no plot

HF came back from the vet's in early May to announce that Sylvie was about to become an unwed mother at any minute - any minute turned out to be 9 p.m. that night. I desperately googled birth plans for dogs and was horrified to see that it involved a lot more than hot water and towels.

I looked at Sylvie and wondered how dogs managed to give birth before they could read about it on the internet. I decided to let her get on with it, since she probably knew more about it than I did, but I left the webpage open just in case. She gave birth in this very room not five feet away from the computer. I expect she checked it once or twice when we weren't looking.

The first pup to arrive was named Special by SWDNO who, at 5-almost-6 years old, was given leave to stay up past her bedtime to see the puppies being born. She named the second pup Hearts.  We have no idea if the first two pups were in fact the ones who ended up with those names because it was at least two weeks before we were able to tell them apart. They were all ninja black, or so it appeared at first.

The third puppy arrived after we had convinced SWDNO to go to bed, informing her that Sylvie was done having babies when clearly she wasn't. Four and five arrived sometime in the night after HF used the same ruse on me.

The next morning I woke up at 6 a.m. and jumped out of bed like it was Christmas morning and Santa had finally brought me exactly what I wanted.  Up to this point, I hadn't really felt that connected to Sylvie, particularly since she made it clear from the start that HF was her one true love, but we finally proceeded to bond over our joint love of adorable puppies; all was finally forgiven regarding the birthday lamb chop stolen off my plate one month before.*****

My mother was amazed that I was willing to take on the hassle of caring for puppies, but it wasn't really any more surprising than my willingness to care for SWDNO. It was a bit overwhelming at times but at least Sylvie was more helpful in cleaning up poop than certain other co-parents I could name, even if her method was unexpected and rather disturbing.******

Even though we couldn't tell them apart or even determine their sex (we checked - it seriously could have gone either way), we decided on names for the other three pups; I called one Third of Five. HF named one Jasper and Drama Queen named one Princess.

Puppy pinwheel, ©2007 no plot

As the days passed, it became clear that a) they were all boys but Hearts, Special, and Princess were totally man enough to deal, and b) the pup who we were constantly finding several feet from the puppy pen in the dining room had brown leggings. We decided that this was Third of Five. 

Then one morning we came down to discover The Great Escape in progress.

Great escaping is exhausting, ©2007 no plot.

It then became clear that Third of Five was in reality the reincarnation of Steve McQueen, tasked with reconnoitring the mysterious world outside the prison camp puppy pen to prepare the way for his brothers' ill-fated escape attempt.

Eventually, we noticed that two pups had white toes on their hind feet. They became Hearts and Special. You could only tell them apart by picking them up because Special had two white hearts on his chest and Hearts had only one.*******

The SPCA said they would help us find homes for the pups when they were old enough - they would have taken the whole family back if we wanted but I just laughed in their faces, or I would have if I had been speaking to them, because MY PUPPIES!

HF said we should find homes for all the pups but he was clearly delusional, because MY PUPPIES! I knew we couldn't keep them all, especially when we noticed the size of their paws and realized they were going to be Big Boys!, but giving all of them up was unthinkable. I ended up having to bribe HF by finally agreeing to buy a gas-guzzling SUV, global warming be damned, so we could transport twice as many dogs as we had originally intended.********

I thought choosing which one to keep was going to be hard, but in the end I didn't have to make the choice.  Hearts and SWDNO made the choice for me.

Every time SWDNO entered the puppy pen, she would sit down on a low stool and there would be a mad puppy rush towards her. She would then pick up the one who got to her first; nine times out of ten, that puppy was Hearts. 

Then SWDNO told us we were keeping Hearts so we just agreed.

It broke my heart to give up the others but I have never regretted our choice.

Having two labs seemed to have saved us no end of trouble with inappropriate chewing. Steve McQueen's adoptive mother regaled me with a long list of the things he destroyed, including a cell phone, but Hearts and Sylvie were mostly happy to chew on each other, only occasionally doing the naughty by chewing pencils, pens, tissues, but not much else.

Little girls make excellent chew toys, ©2007 no plot

Also we had to keep the kitchen doors closed or Hearts, aka Jean Valjean, would steal some bread from the-not-so-safe-after-all furthest corner of the counter or raid the garbage can. Then he would sneakily hide around the corner by the patio door to snack on his booty out of sight of the casual passerby. He would never steal anything off the table or counter while you were watching but if you were foolish enough to leave him alone, all bets were off.

Hearts was also a chocoholic, starting with his first Christmas when he found and demolished an entire bag of Laura Secord chocolate balls that had been buried in a bag of Christmas presents. Then there was the time he found the Easy Bake Oven cake mixes that had been stashed in a bedroom closet and he decided to test them out. And the two children I still owe new hoodies after he gnawed a hole in their pockets to get at the tasty sweets inside.  If chocolate had been a controlled substance, Hearts would have had a great career as a sniffer dog at the airport.

For the first year or so, the dogs would stalk us in the mornings, waiting for the first sign of life to start pestering us to give them breakfast. Hearts would stick his big, old nose in your face if you merely cracked an eyelid at him. Because we are expert dog trainers, we eventually cured them of that habit with the simple command "It's not time yet, go lie down!" (patent pending). Rolling over became permissable once more until a more reasonable hour, but once your feet hit the floor, it was "no time to pee, give me my Dentastix!"

We had to walk them every day or there would be wrassling, wrassling that would rearrange the furniture.  Sylvie revealed that she was not exactly as calm as we thought, turning into a psycho-killer every time we ran into another dog when we had her on leash.  All other dogs must die! she'd snarl, also, pickups, vans, and SUVs (irony) because she's a committed environmentalist.

Hearts, on the other hand, loved every dog he ever met. So much so that several times he pulled me off my feet in his eagerness to get to them. He was always so disappointed whenever the other dog refused to be BFFs.  Although why anyone would get nervous about 100 lbs of muscle heading straight for them dragging a middle-aged woman in his wake, I'll never know. 

Once we switched to a Gentle Leader, a leash which went around his nose instead of his thickly impervious neck, I was able to walk him without incurring further road rash.

It was also highly inadvisable to let him know that you had any notion of taking him for a Chinese cooking pot (wok) or an opposite of cow (woc), or make any sudden moves towards the stairs or breathe in his general direction after supper, or it was Hammer Time. Navigating down the multitudinous stairs in a split-level is no easy chore with a wooly mammoth dancing at your heels like he's trying out for Soul Train.

When Hearts felt joy, the very ground trembled.

Fortunately for us, if it wasn't breakfast or walk time, Hearts was the chillest dog I have ever met.  He loved to just hang with the fam; weekend mornings usually found the no plot family gathered in the living room, both dogs sprawled on the floor, Hearts soaking up all the available rays.

A furry sundial, ©2020 no plot

His favourite position was horizontal but this did not mean he would not bestir himself to demand the attention that was his due. Sylvie might lie idly by, waiting for someone to notice her, but Hearts would accost you for love as you lay hove off on the love seat, obediently sitting beside you and smiting you with his mighty paw until you complied. But before too long he would slump to the floor, all the while expecting you to contort yourself to continue with the pats (op cit. Charter of Rights and Freedom).

I'm not sure when SWDNO got the brilliant idea that Hearts would make a good Therapy Dog with St. John Ambulance but when she did, I agreed wholeheartedly. A little halfheartedly, when I realized she was too young to do it and I would have to be his handler. I was all for her working on her social anxiety by talking to absolute strangers but not quite as keen on working on my own.

I like people a whole lot better when I don't have to rack my brains for words and...sentences and...stuff... Whatever. The point is, Hearts was always up for meeting other dogs and being worshipped by humans. In fact he insisted on it.

I decided that since I was always willing to talk to anyone who was willing to admire my dog, I could somehow manage. 

Hearts passed the Therapy Dog test with flying colours. He had no problem with walking into a roomful of dogs and letting them live (unlike Sylvie). He accepted that he couldn't be their BFF, for now, and allowed me to keep him from sniffing their butts (but secretly plotted to do so at his first opportunity). 

Tremendous bangs and crashes from dropped metal objects fazed him not a bit. When the examiner put a blanket over his head and made weird noises at him to simulate unexpected behaviour a dog might encounter, Hearts just stuck his head under the blanket and licked him on the nose.

I love a man in uniform, ©2018 no plot

We started off visiting a nursing home but I quickly learned that parallel parking an enormous canine next to a hospital bed was not easy to do, especially when the dog in question was more keen to give into the lure of gravity when the pats were light and tentative. We started visiting a dementia ward because the women there were ambulatory and more likely to pat hard enough to keep him happy. Even those who weren't interested in patting him would smile delightedly and ask questions, usually the same ones, over and over.

SWDNO's high school and university were a little more to his liking, teenagers and young adults being more likely to worship him on their knees, sometimes 5 and 6 at a time. There was plenty of dog to go around. 

No matter where we ended up, Hearts always got excited when he saw me wearing the St. John's Ambulance t-shirt that meant we were about to go get some pats.

But even when the pats were not up to scratch, I think he still liked to go and just be with people. He had a knack for showing up when I needed him, in any case. Whenever I begrudgingly got around to doing the melon-farming dishes, he was usually there lying on the kitchen floor behind me, giving me moral support.

Helping with dishes and mopping the floor with his tongue which was too big for his mouth anyway, ©2018 no plot

When Hearts turned 13 back in May and Sylvie probably turned 14, I worried he wouldn't be with us much longer. Thirteen has been an unlucky age for too many of my dogs, Jason, Mugsy, Becky, probably Snuffy.

Birthday boy and girl in hand crafted hats by SWDNO. ©2020 no plot

It still didn't make it easier when HF came home from the vet's with the news. Hearts had started to slow down on our walks again - we thought his arthritis was paining him but it was cancer. There wasn't anything to be done that wouldn't put him through needless pain that wasn't likely to do much good anyway.

We hoped for more time but less than a week later, I was standing with him at the end of the driveway, waiting for the mobile vet to come. I had shown him his leash each day since we got the diagnosis; he got excited every time, but each day our walk was a little bit shorter. Today, the driveway was as far as he would go.

Two little blonde girls from two doors over were riding their bikes past us, as they had done many times before, but suddenly, one of them stopped in front of us and hopped off her bike.

"Can I pat your dog?" she asked for the first time ever.

He lay down at my feet and soon there were two blonde heads leaning over him, giving him pats. I don't know why they felt the urge to pat him that day and not any other day they had seen us walking him. It may have been because they had lost their own dog not long before.

Whatever it was, it was some kind of therapy for me to stand there in the warm sun, watching him do the job he was born for one last time. It made us all feel a little better.

He must have pats. All the pats. © no plot, HF, SWDNO

*To tell the truth, the old screen door was shredded by Shadow, the dog we owned before Hearts came into our lives. But since Hearts's favourite way of summoning his staff was to whack the window or door he saw you through with enough force that you feared the glass would shatter, it didn't seem prudent to install the new screen when we got a new patio door

**Note the paws which are almost as big as the head

***absolute lie, see sweet face op cit., photos above, also we are idiots

****or did he? Hmmmmmmmm

*****since she never repeated the offence, she was able to plead her belly and the charges were dropped

******mama dogs eat puppy poop, gross but also extremely efficient

*******Princess had a white "V" on his chest and Jasper was completely black. Since Hearts had two hearts (one inside, one out), that makes him a Time Lord

********Three-times as much dog as it turned out since Hearts fully grown was almost twice as heavy as Sylvie. The vet thought the pups were part Newf, confirmed by a DNA test later on. Sylvie is mostly Labrador; Hearts was a genuine Newfoundland and Labrador.

subject

While I was tweaking my last post for publication the other day I had a sudden crisis of conscience. I knew She Who Does Not Obey was embarrassed about her zombiephobia and didn't want anyone to know about it. She wouldn't even let me tell her camp counselor to take the proper precautions, i.e. locate the nearest weapons cache and practice bashing heads with them.

Although I am maintaining a secret identity, so that I might fight internet crime more effectively, the only readers I have know who I am (that is as far as I know - does anyone know how to install a site meter?).

Ny niece Drama Queen knows I have a blog and I knew she had probably read at least one post. SWDNO was going to hear about it if I didn't tell her first.

As good as the story was, it was not a story wholly my own. I had only partial ownership.

And if that wasn't enough, I also knew what it was like to be the subject of someone else's tale.

My father was a newspaper columnist who wrote about the outdoors, but from time to time, he peopled his column with characters who he claimed to be his actual family. We shared the same names and birth order, but there were times when we found it difficult to recognize ourselves.

Once we hit puberty, it became especially embarrassing to face our friends the morning after the column appeared. My sister TR gained the horrifying (to her) nickname of "Nature Girl" after one such column declared her absolute devotion to the great outdoors, although my father was apparently the only one who had observed said devotion.

Our avatars were often called upon to express a childlike wonder at some aspect of nature according to the demands of the topic of the day. I expect we actually did say such things once upon a time, but as teenagers we would rather eat dirt than make such uncool utterings.

As for me, it seemed that he saw me as a pig-tailed innocent and not the badass teen I truly was. But since my badassery consisted solely of watching my friends smoke, and watching my friends drink, and learning to identify the sickly sweet scent of a joint without ever trying one myself, he probably had me down better than I was willing to admit at the time.

However, to my dying day I will always deny ever having said "The plot thickens."

A girl has to maintain some dignity, after all.

But whether I agreed or disagreed with how I was portrayed, my father was a writer and his topic was his life. My four siblings and I were inextricably part of his life and so many of his experiences of the outdoors. There was no way for him to take us out of his writing without leaving out something that he felt was important and true.

He had his share of hunting and fishing trips with the boys, but I think that he spent far more time taking his children out into the wilds of Newfoundland and sharing his love of this wonderful island with us. We spent most of our summers travelling around the island, first sleeping in a tent when our baby snowsuits served as sleeping bags, then later in a trailer that somehow managed to sleep seven.

When I was ten or so, my parents sold our trailer and built a cabin just a short 20 minute drive from our home, but to this day it still feels like you are as far removed from the city as anyone could wish. We spent all our summers there from that point on, my father loved it so. And despite our adolescent posing to the contrary, we loved it too. We still love it and still share it.

Given all of that, I can see no way for him to remove us from his story when he took such trouble to make us a part of it.

But he must have made some decisions about what he would and wouldn't write, some boundaries he wouldn't cross.

While I was writing my zombie post, I felt like I was dangerously close to a boundary I shouldn't cross at least not without a letter of transit.

This was brought home to me quite obviously while I was editing my work. She was hanging off of me, clambering over the couch I was on, sitting on my shoulders as I typed. She could hardly fail to catch the occasional word on my screen.

It was then that I confessed all, allowing her to read selected passages, but not all - there being certain details of zombie behaviour I wished to convey to you but not share with her. When fighting off the undead, discretion can be the better part of valour.

In the end, I got her blessing, her desire to be an internet celebrity outweighing her self-consciousness I guess.

So I expect you will see She Who Does Not Obey appearing on these pages for some time to come, but I will try to weigh my need to tell a tale against her need to protect her own story as she sees fit.

She is so much a part of me, that I'm afraid I cannot tell you about me without telling you about her. It's the price you pay for proximity.

i blame michael jackson

Last night, She Who Does Not Obey told me she couldn’t go to sleep because she was afraid of zombies. (Freakin' zombies!)

In the end it turned out she could. It was later than I had been hoping for but that is often the case for many non-zombie related reasons I shall not go into at this time.

She had hinted at a zombie-phobia before, but it had never really caused a problem.

Then, this morning, she was shuffling slowly along, getting ready for summer camp, when a horrified cry rang out from the bathroom. I raced to her side, after putting the last few items into her lunchbag, picking up a dirty sock, and hiding the toast scraps from the rampaging black labs.

It was a Catastrophe of Monumental Proportions!

She had accidentally scraped something off her teeth with her fingers right after wiping herself but before washing her hands!

She was unclear as to where the something went after she got it off her teeth. She had immediately washed her hands and then brushed her teeth, but she had still PUT HER FINGERS IN HER MOUTH WITHOUT WASHING HER HANDS AND DIDN’T KNOW WHERE THE SOMETHING WENT. She may have swallowed it!

I told her that this was okay and that a one-time failure in the bathroom hygiene department wasn’t going to make her sick/kill her/turn her into a zombie (I don't believe I actually mentioned zombies at this point). But she refused to listen to my logic and positively refused to shuffle along any further.

Then she suddenly developed a bad belly as she is wont to do. So I called her bluff and called Grandma to look after her (Grandma, alas, was not available). She positively refused to go to Grandma's anyway.

Then she finally revealed to me that the problem was actually three-pronged.

First it was the NOT WASHING HER HANDS thing.

Then it was her Slight Belly Ache.

Third and most important of all was the T-Word!
(which is our current code for the Michael Jackson Thriller video)

Curse you Michael Jackson!

It’s all his fault really.

If only SWDNO's dance school had not presciently decided to do a medley of MJ songs at the year-end recital, including Thriller and zombie dancers who recreated moves from the video. Then Drama Queen (SWDNO's 11-year-old cousin) wouldn't have seen it and been intrigued, prompting me to tell her about the video.

Drama Queen wanted to watch the video but she didn’t want to watch it alone - she tried once but couldn't make it all the way through. Her 8-year-old brother Destructo and SWDNO were curious as well and refused to leave the room for the viewing.

It was then I lost my mind, thinking it would be okay because I remembered the video as being really funny. I had completely forgotten about how it’s really not so funny until the zombies start to dance. Plus I forgot that 8-year olds have a very underdeveloped sense of black humour at least where horror movies are concerned.

SWDNO claimed it was okay and I thought I had dodged a bullet. In any case, I didn’t hear any more about it until last week when Michael Jackson decided to up and die on me. His sense of black humour was apparently quite developed.

When that happened, it seemed to have unleashed a zombie horde into the world at large. She could not go to camp because she was afraid of the them.

I told her zombies don’t exist, but she wasn’t buying it.

I told her zombies don’t exist, but if they did exist they only come out at night, but she insisted they come out in the day. I felt bad about that because that is in fact a lie – zombies do not have a problem with daylight.

(She is now very suspicious about the nocturnal habits of werewolves as well)

I told her that zombies are very stupid and slow and that if the idiots in Shaun of the Dead can defeat them, anyone can. I did not mention that the majority of the cast of Shaun of the Dead end up dead or zombies or dead zombies.

I described the scene where Shaun and his friend Ed go through Shaun's record collection and have oodles of time to debate the merits of various albums before deciding which ones to throw at the advancing zombies. She thought that was funny.

After she had determined that there were still things to laugh at in this zombie-plagued world, I was finally able to convince her to go down the stairs, put on her sandals, pick up her cricket bat and start beating her way to the car.

I was 45-minutes late for work.