Posts Tagged ‘losing my job’

The Curious Case of the Son in the Night-Time

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

By Tiber

I guess it was inevitable. My father has just informed me that he knows I lost my job and that I’m back living here at home, hiding out in my old third-floor bedroom full-time and not just “dropping by” for meals.

In a way, I’m sort of relieved. It’s so cold outside, I’ve been getting frostbite having to sneak out the back and then circle all the way around the house so I can ”arrive” at the front door for dinner. My parents’ house is so big that, in this weather, half-way into your trip around it, you run into St. Bernards mixing up Mojitos, so you shoot the breeze until the real breeze turns gale-force and your lips ice over. Okay, I made that part up. But it’s still freezing outside.

Anyway, I asked Dad how he’d figured out that I was back. He said, first of all, that he had deduced my full-time presence when, one night, on the back stairs, he heard a footfall that didn’t belong to any of the 20 or so family and staff people already living here.

Then later, he thought he detected added heft when one of the maids threw some laundry down the chute, as if there were more dirty towels than usual.

And on top of that, he recognized a certain kind of dust on my jacket that only comes from the third-floor, where my bedroom is. He claims it’s from Aunt April operating power tools. I’m afraid it may just be from Aunt April.

I was busted anyway. But I had to admit I was truly impressed with Dad’s remarkable detective skills.

Then, he went on to say he also knew I’d lost my job and was living back at home because fourteen people had told him.

So much for living with Sherlock Holmes. It’s more like living in the home for retired mob informants.

Squirrel World

Monday, November 16th, 2009

By Tiber

I was watching squirrels yesterday.
 
Can you tell who has no relationship and no job?
 
Oh, shut up. You’re probably the kind of person who mocks a sophisticated appreciation for the intricacies of nature as expressed by our tree-dwelling- oh, dear God, I have no relationship and no job.
 
So, yes, I was watching squirrels and one of them caught my eye. He seems healthy. His weight is good. He darts around, has a lot of energy. But he has no bushy tail.
 
He has a tail. It’s just not bushy like the other squirrels. His looks more like a piece of string.
 
So how did it get this way?
 
Did he get it stuck somewhere and then shear it off? Is he an over-groomer? Did his mother have that one date with a rat that she’d really prefer not to discuss? 
 
Maybe this squirrel is just naturally different. Maybe he was born that way.  Then what if the other squirrels are just pretending to be eating nuts, when, in reality, they’re laughing at him behind their paws?
 
…Did I mention that I have no relationship and no job?
 
Once, my sister, Iris Nell, became hysterical because she saw a squirrel spread-eagled over an electrical box, its little paws dangling limply over the sides. My mother called to get someone to remove the little guy’s body so it wouldn’t upset any more children but when she asked for the “Rodent Patrol,” they hung up on her.
 
Fortunately, the squirrel suddenly jumped up on his own and scurried off. Turns out, they sometimes lie like that just to cool off.
It was a good thing that I knew this because today, I caught the rat-tailed squirrel in that same position on a tree branch, his paws hanging motionlessly over the sides.
 
In my morose condition, I would have worried that he’d fallen into his own depression over the other squirrels mocking his tail and then I would have felt obligated to go out and buy him a pecan pie.
 
 
 

 

Lose job. Find old room.

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

By Tiber

I’m a total coward. I still haven’t told my father that I’m back at home full-time, hiding out in my old room at night because I lost my job. I don’t know what I’d do if his house wasn’t so big. Of course, somebody else in this big house may have already told him I’m here.

Dad just ran into me, while I was haunting the entrance to the dining room. When you’re unemployed, you start fantasizing about dinner with a focus seldom seen outside of an assisted-living facility at 4.

Anyway, Dad said, as he passed by and disappeared into his study,

“Oh, good. I see you’ve dropped by for dinner again. Let’s shoot some pool afterwards.”

“Oh, no. What did he mean by that?!?”

You see how paranoid this is making me? It could just mean that he wants to shoot some pool after dinner. It could also mean,

“I found out you lost your job so I’m throwing you out onto the street and I wanted to get one last game of pool in before your fingers all freeze and fall off.”

He must know I’m here! Contrary to my belief as a teenager that a fork could out-debate him, he’s not stupid.

He knows! I know he knows!  I also discovered that when you’re trying to hide something but appear as if you’re just casually shooting pool, it’s better not to blurt out things like,

“Why?!? What have you heard?!? Who?!? Are you talking about me?!? What? Where? Here?!? Me?!? Seriously?!? Because I can’t believe-…Oh. Sorry…I meant, your shot.”

The game mercifully ended with me about to break the pool cue over my head when Dad poked his head back in the door and said,

“You should drop by more often, Tiber. It was good to see you.”

This is even worse than I thought. What did he mean by that?!?

I decided to tell him all. Dad, I lost my job and I’ve moved back home. It’s just that my shoelace was untied. I bent down and very carefully re-did it. Then I heard a noise in the hall but safety first! I bent down and, even more precisely, re-tied my shoelace all over again.

Then I marched right out into the hall. Unfortunately, though, by then, Dad had gone. Oh, well. I’ll tell him later…For sure.

The beginning of the blog

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

By Tiber

My job was outsourced, my girlfriend left me and in a freak pest control accident, which wasn’t even my fault, half of my apartment blew up, leaving my big-screen TV the size of confetti. Cheers!

My name is Tiber (middle names are Luke and Philo but that’s another story). I’m named after the river in Rome which is a great river. I just didn’t like it as my name  because it was different. But now I like it fine, especially since I found out that one day later in my parents’ itinerary and I could have ended up as “House of the Vestal Virgins…Luke Philo.” 

In any case, with nowhere to live and no money for therapy, I decided to secretly move back into my old room in my parents’ house. The reason I figured I could get away with this and pretend I was just dropping by a lot for meals, is because my parents’ house covers about an acre. The family made its fortune back in the 1800’s manufacturing ladies’ whalebone corsets.

I always wished it was in something more macho, like the Vanderbilts’ railroads but hey, who am I to complain?  By the time women realized, “Hey, you mean if I stop wearing these things, I can breathe?!?,” our money was made.

Most of my adult brothers and sisters have never even moved out but my sister, Iris Nell, was the only one to know that I’d moved back in. She frowned.   

“Look, I know you lost your job but is there any way you could run after it?”

“No. I’ll get something else. Eventually. In the meantime, I’ll just live here.”  And that’s when she told me. There’s a rumor going around that Dad’s money may be going too. Or even gone. How is this possible? It was a lot of money. It was a lot of underwear!  

Wild-eyed, Iris Nell grabbed my shirt sleeve and froze, as if she’d just seen blood oozing out from under my bed.  

“We may all have to get jobs!!!”    

Well, this should be interesting.  As far as I know, nobody in my family can actually do anything.  Our house is really named “Villa de la Lune” but we long ago reduced that to the more aptly titled “Villa de Loon.” I have a feeling that now, this is going to be more true of it than ever.