Pig Paths

My wife MaryElizabeth says the shortest distance between two points is the one that keeps you moving. Whatever Einstein meant by space-time, my wife has a definition all her own.

She says it’s all laid out in pig paths, alternative routes to the most commonly used (and most congested) ways of getting around town.

The way MaryElizabeth sees it, space and time are not separate entities; the point of the game is not to eat up a given amount of space in a set amount of time. Rather, space and time are all one hunk which shrinks as time stranded in traffic diminishes, and expands with every second that ticks away as you sit idle, anywhere along your route. The winners in life are the ones who hold it all to a minimum.

What this has to do with pigs is for MaryElizabeth to know and the rest of us to meditate on, as she steers her way down side streets, across church parking lots, down one-way alleys the wrong way, hopping onto the freeway at one exit and back off at the next, then doubling back a block to her destination.

As most of us measure time, this trip might take more minutes and seconds than just driving down the straightest route and stopping dutifully at the stoplights.

For MaryElizabeth, though, the pig path holds resting in place to a minimum, and in doing so redeems any extra time or effort involved. Getting there isn’t half, or three-quarters, of the fun. What matters is getting there without having to hit your brakes.

I ride shotgun on the pig paths, which is fine with me. If I were driving I’d waste space-time right and left, and ME would be driven nuts. Plus, as the bemused observer, I get to watch her scurry down the paths babbling to herself and emitting little pig grunts. On the road, I feel like Hopalong Cassidy playing sidekick to Gabby Hayes.

Can you imagine what a joy it is to sit back, drop the leading man poses, stalwart demeanor, and straight-arrow lines, and just careen down the road with a wacko who knows what she’s doing? What a delight it is to be George Fenneman to a Groucho Marx?

This is my kind of traveling. For me, on the pig paths, getting there is all the fun.

The Bag o' Death

My wife has placed me in quarantine. This week I am battling a cold, and while she is perfectly willing to support the cause from afar, procuring war materiel--Puffs, antihistimines, aspirin from the grocery store--there is no way she is willing to join me on the front lines.

I understand and to some degree support her squeamishness. She works as a massage therapist, a hands-on, one-woman business that would quickly tank if her nose were dripping all over her clients on the massage table. I rely on her income as much as she does.

But it's been a lonely and comical week. When she enters the room she asks what I have touched, and promptly sprays the contaminated object--doorknob, countertop, drinking glass, cat--with Lysol. She waves cheerily at me as I drag my tired, stuffy head to my bachelor's bed each night. I carry my Puffs around with me as I move from room to room, along with a plastic sack full of used tissues she calls "The Bag o' Death."

Sneezing is discouraged, tolerated only if the sneeze is captured, successfully contained, and immediately disposed of in the BOD.

I like to think our enforced distance has brought us together. It has given us a common project, a goofy new child that we monitor constantly, a partnership of avoidance in which we both have a stake. It's an oversized ottoman in the living room around which we dance.

Slip ups are sweet. She buys a hot chocolate at Starbucks so delicious she impulsively gives me a sip. In my isolation I am never alone--I sneeze on the toilet and the door opens, a disembodied hand injects a disinfecting spritz of Lysol into the middle of the room, and quickly withdraws.