BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Whoever has been writing POOPMOBILE on my car can just quit it. I get the joke. It's not like I have time to scrub off a hundred and fifty pounds of stuff that's stuck like cement. With Destinee's softball schedule, I hardly have time to tease my hair.

Each of us has our own test of character. The ordeal we must endure to be revered as martyrs. War. Disease. Pestilence. For me it's birds. Birds must have made a deal with the devil to visit tribulations of biblical proportion upon me.

All these things have really happened. Birds swooping down the chimney like demonic Santas to fly around the house and tease my poor obese cat, causing him to fall off the piano and sprain his little tail. A gigantic blue jay dive-bombing me when I was hanging out clothes. (That's how I got all these gashes on my face.) But worst of all several years ago--like something out of the Book of Job--birds built a nest in a vent on the roof and every time we turned on the bathroom fan, it sucked lice down onto our human bodies, which is how Sonny and I caught lice, the subject of last week's column. (Beauty shop business has dropped off 90% since the paper came out. THE LICE ARE GONE. REPEAT--THE LICE ARE GONE.) It reminds me of an Alfred Hitchcock movie and I'm Tippi Hedren, French twist and all.

People like birds. They join clubs and count them. But the afflicted, the martyrs--who have been granted omniscience in exchange for their suffering--know the TRUTH. Birds are malevolent lice infested excrement machines.

I'm embarrassed about the poopmobile. It makes things worse at Destinee's games, the meeting place for a hate group known as PARENTS WITHOUT LIVES. You know them--intense jerks who cuss the players and get angry at the coach. Why isn't there bird stuff all over their cars? It's like the birds are saying, "These people are right. They ARE better than everyone else."

There's Lulu Crenshaw, who gets her Lexus waxed every week. The chiropractor's wife, she brags on and on about her daughter's voice, tap and cheerleading skills. Lulu also wants us to know how special Lulu herself is, with her expensive ski trips and free body adjustments. She's just busting her britches trying to impress us, but obviously she doesn't know what it takes. Maybe if she slept with a member of Confederate Railroad or something.

Another winner is Bobby Tate, the banker, who screams till he's red in the face at his daughter Rachel. The girls say he still spanks her, even though she's a teenager now. A real manly fellow.

Then there's Earl Jones, a stocky little man whose daughter, Shalynn, is the star of the team. Too bad that's not enough to make Earl happy. He's got to cuss a blue streak when a player strikes out or misses a fly. Maybe Earl's not proud of his own score in the game of life.

As for the rest of us, even though we might like to be at the racetrack or taking a nap on the front porch, we're there because watching girls play ball makes our hearts sing. We wouldn't dream of repeating what we hear in the stands. It would make us ashamed--not because our daughter made the out that lost the game--but because of how ugly it makes somebody else's parent look.

You know somebody like Earl. When he yells at some poor player who already wishes she could crawl in a hole and die, the rest of us need to be there to drown him out. Or beat him up. Or hand him a copy of this column.

You could even stick your foot out kind of sneaky and trip him, so we all could have a well-deserved laugh.

The birds are right about one thing. Make it look like an accident.