Memorial Day is a good day to ask a ghost not to sit on your lap while you’re on the toilet

While you were at that barbecue yesterday, I was squatting awkwardly in a cemetery, muttering about my toilet to a headstone. Good times!

I was supposed to be tracking down sandals for Sophie at Wal-Mart. But Wal-Mart makes me want to huddle in a pile of clearance-rack size-6x Mary-Kate & Ashley sequined peasant skirts and gnaw my wrist veins open and spurt wanly at passing shoppers until store security guards get wind of my suicidal hijinks and drag my gray clammy body out back via the loading dock. I am always looking for a good reason to put off a trip to Wal-Mart.

Since it was Memorial Day, and I knew one of the Mr. Pipe & Mrs. Kitchen clan had served in World War I, I decided to take flowers to the cemetery where all of the former inhabitants of our home are buried. I cut the flowers from our garden-that-is-not-really-a-garden-of-our-own-doing. Plentiful dog poop is the reason forget-me-nots and violets have sprouted out back; purple creeping phlox that the family before us planted on the front lawn continues to make an appearance each year.

The only thing I have achieved personally, gardenwise, is clearing enough space a few weeks back to assure that many happy caravans of gypsy weeds could find a new place to call home. As I type this, they are propagating like bunnies and doing tarot card readings for the other weeds and complaining about my politically incorrect nomenclature for them. But as always, I digress.

We were talking about Norman. It was Norman’s headstone I was talking to. Norman and his family are the folks that we bought the house from, and Norman had all sorts of lung problems. At the closing, he was in his 80s, and hooked up to a portable oxygen tank. We’re pretty sure the bowling ball and the odd hospital-issue breathing apparatus we found several years back in the crawlspace in the upstairs bathroom belonged to Norman. We donated the bowling ball to a local artist who was creating a gigantic installation from found balls. There are many, many good jokes to be made, and I am sorely tempted to go skipping and chuckling through the funny, funny world of found ball art, but there are more serious issues we must cover today.

We threw out the breathing apparatus, as we were unable to interest the found ball artist in a found breathing apparatus project, but it may have been a bad move. Norman died in 2004, and I am getting the impression he’s maybe a little ticked off about our moving his bowling ball and his breathing stuff.

When Tree came to town and I gave her her first in-person tour of the house (her first two readings of the house were remote readings, which still makes my brain spin in two directions like the double window fan I got at Wal-Mart), she stopped cold in the bathroom, held her hand over our toilet, and said, “There’s someone here. Do you feel that? Oh. Wow.”

I did not want to feel that. I did not want to picture a ghost feeling me feeling it, right over our toilet.

But I stuck out my hand anyway, hoping I was not patting any ghostly privates. Nothing that I could discern.

Tree waved her hand over the loo again and shook her cute sweet head. “It’s gone now. But you should know . . .” I scanned her face frantically, the way I do with flight attendants. But Tree was smirking, so I wasn’t too freaked out. A smirking psychic friend is preferable to a wailing or shrieking or Exorcist-vomiting psychic friend. “. . . you really have a full house here.”

The bathroom of your home is not the best place to hear this sort of information, particularly when it is coming to you via a trusted source.

I asked Tree what my options were. I told her I did not like the concept of ghosts playing How Many Of Us Can We Fit In This Bathroom in our bathroom. I told her I did not like the concept of my face buried in Mr. Toilet’s ghostly hovering rump while I take care of business on the potty. I told her I did not like the concept of stripping for a shower while Mr. Toilet throws phantom wooden nickels at my naked Polish-American ass and sneers at the poor quality of the entertainment.

Tree was very helpful. She told me it was perfectly all right to have a room that was off-limits to spirits. I told her I wanted to have two or three or four rooms that were off-limits. “Is that allowed?”

Tree said it was allowed, and that I just needed to tell the ghosts that I needed Jenny Private Time. Jenny’s Privates’ Time. Either way, I needed it bad, and so I told the Toilet Ghost and any other par-TAY 24-7 ghosts in the vicinity that the bathroom and the bedroom were henceforth spirit-free zones.

But SOME SPIRITS WERE NOT LISTENING. I’ve never much liked being in our bathroom, particularly not at night, and I figured after my stern talking-to, I’d immediately feel like I was in Zero-Ghosts Spa Heaven. But no! No no no!

The scalp has been going off! My scalp goes off like a car alarm! No, you can’t hear it. Bad analogy, but they are my trademark, so I must not stop them, ever.

My scalp has been tingling ever since my second reading with Tree (the reading that happened RIGHT AFTER THE UPSTAIRS TOILET OVERFLOWED, AND MAY I REMIND YOU THAT IT OVERFLOWED AFTER SOPH AND I GAVE MRS. KITCHEN AN OFFERING OF A PAINTING AND SOME CHAMPAGNE, WAS MR. TOILET JEALOUS?). It does not tingle all the time, but it weirdly “goes off” at strange times…and it feels like someone is gently moving my hair.

It is very bad to feel like someone is gently moving your hair when you are going wee-wee. And occasionally, that’s what it feels like is happening. Mr. Toilet has not been listening! He is being brazen! I have been very displeased with Mr. Toilet. And I have told him so in the bathroom, and I have wrapped my naked body in blazing white light yadda yadda yadda and STILL the scalp goes off in the bathroom.

I can’t know for sure if Mr. Toilet is Norman, jonesin’ from the grave for a little oxygenated bowling, but considering the crawlspace is right smack where Tree stopped and stuck out her magic hand, well, I figured it was a good place to start.

I think I’ve told you before — there have only been three families in this house, and one of them is us. I have been spending an insane amount of time researching the first family who lived here, the Richmonds. So I’m wondering if Norman (the patriarch of the second family) is cranky about this and feeling left out. But his family is still alive — including his wife — so I’m not sure why he’d waste his Crossing Over moments in our bathroom, sitting on my lap while I heed the call of nature and leaf through Sephora catalogs. Life after death! Such a mystery!

I had found Norman’s grave by accident the last time I was at the cemetery, researching the Richmonds. And after I stopped by the Richmonds’ plot yesterday, I took my remaining forget-me-nots to Norman. And if you hadn’t gone to that barbecue and had instead been hiding behind a nearby tombstone, you would have caught snatches of this monologue:

Hello, Norman, sir. If you’re the one who’s been hanging around our toilet, that’s really going to have to stop, sir. I really don’t appreciate that sort of company. I know I’ve been talking about the Richmonds a lot, and I don’t want you to feel left out or anything, but look, you’ve got family nearby, and I’m sure they could use you around. We love the house, we respect you and your family, and we love the tulips and the phlox. The shed is great too. And everybody who visits talks about the screened-in porch. Tree and I also got a kick out of seeing all the puzzles you left upstairs in the attic.

What I’m saying is, you don’t need to assert yourself, sir. Rest assured, sir, you are remembered. So let’s just move on. I have a hard enough time sleeping as it is, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d respect my need for a little downtime in the bathroom, particularly in the evenings. We’re sorry about the bowling ball and the breathing contraption, but we’d never inherited crawlspace items before, and we did what seemed best at the time. I’m also sorry about throwing out your Red Cross Blood Drive newsletters and the coupons, but we told the postman three times that you didn’t live here anymore, and we had a small child and didn’t have the energy for any extra bureaucracy so, yes, we did throw out some of your mail. Please try to understand, we were doing the best we could, just like everybody else. You did the best you could, we’re doing the best we can, and that’s all anybody can ask of anybody, sir.

So please, stay out of the bathroom, sir, and don’t make the toilet overflow and drip through the kitchen ceiling anymore. Mrs. Kitchen sure doesn’t appreciate it, and we’ve got our hands full around already. I’ll drop by and visit you here at the cemetery from time to time, but a lady needs her space where it counts.

33 comments May 30th, 2006