Shaving Cream in the Bathtub

Saturday, May 26th, began as a peaceful day for me. I had 2 slices of leftover Tony’s pepperoni pizza for breakfast, washed down with a yogurt/banana smoothie. I read the New York Times online, writing a few nifty little limericks about some of the stories, and sent them to the writers of said stories. Then I went shopping just across the street at Fresh Market for ground turkey and a big can of navy beans so I could make turkey bean soup today and serve it in the lobby of my apartment building to anyone who wanted a bowl for lunch.

Then Amy showed up. Now, if you’ve read any of my memoirs here before you know that she and I were married for fifteen years and had 8 kids together. Then she divorced me. In the summer of 2017 she moved here to Provo just a few blocks away from me and we began cautiously feeling out each other about a reconnection. It didn’t work, and I was the one who finally called it off. This did not sit well with her, naturally enough. So when she came over yesterday to say she wanted to talk to me, I figured she wanted to blow off a little steam -- and I figured I had it coming. I promised her I would not interrupt her at all. And I didn’t; I was completely tongue-tied by her words and delivery.

She took 8 pages of handwritten script out of her purse and put on her reading glasses. At this point I knew I was in for some heavy weather, and decided to record the approaching cataclysm for posterity. I unobtrusively turned on my laptop and set it to record.

I’ve spent several hours this morning transcribing her eloquent and passionate diatribe. I think if she were to repeat it onstage as a one woman show she might win a host of theater awards, and certainly have a sold-out hit on her hands. Her invective is scintillating. Her reasoning is bold beyond reckoning. And her volume and vibrato, once she hits her stride, would power a nuclear submarine. Her use of recurring themes during her wonderful anathema is superb. That I am a prevaricator and an imposter is to be expected, but she rings so many changes on my poisonous characteristics that only Shakespeare could limn such another villain. And throughout her rant she is constantly referring darkly to ‘shaving cream in the bathtub’ with the same ambiguous horror as Aunt Ada Doom, in the novel Cold Comfort Farm, where she steadily adverts to seeing “something nasty in the woodshed.”  

I see no point in reproducing the entire text of her malediction here, but I want to share a portion of it that I find, as Alice said, “curiouser and curiouser” the more I consider it. To quote:

Did you know that God is the great comedian? He knows how to laugh and how to get other people to laugh. And you try to be like him! (she gives a very haughty sneer) You don’t know the first thing about being funny or about humor. You can’t be funny because of your fear. Because of your lying ways. Because you always want someone else to do your work for you -- even your so-called funny business!

If you want to be funny like God is funny you’d better wake up and start seeing what God sees, not what you see. See how paying every debt is going to keep us all busy until we die. That’s what you should be seeing and making funny about -- not all this other mockery you think will excuse you. Ask God to make you funny and he will. I know he will. But you can’t make yourself funny, not by one cubit or stature. You have never been funny in your entire life, because you have never feared God your entire life. He guides the laughter of the universe and of each person and down to each individual atom of matter. Did you know that spirit is matter so fine that we can’t see it? And that fine matter is laughing all the time. It is what laughter is made of, and you can’t access it -- you won’t access it because of your dishonesty. And you’ve made me so dishonest that I used to think you were funny! I’m so angry that I let myself be fooled by you! You can never be funny until you pay all your debts -- we learned that in our self reliance class at church. So be funny, Tim -- just try to be funny without help from the Great Comedian. I feel sorry for you for even trying . . . “

This represents just one of Amy’s paragraphs. If you want to read the complete text It’s all going into my next book, to be called “Castigat Ridendo Mores.”