This is an open letter to those who see fit to chuckle when I tell them about the torrent of water, as black and forbidding as the River Styx, that surged through my house after freakish deluge on Christmas Eve: it's not funny. No, seriously, it's just not. It was scary, and owing to all the public holidays over this past week we have been unable to get the insurance sponsored cleaners in until tomorrow. Mr Bingells and I have made a start, but it is a gargantuan task, and although an assessor has attended to formulate an opinion on any structural damage and quantify the clean up, the professional work cannot start until tomorrow because the agency had to ascertain what cleaning technicians were available. Well, they call them technicians; I just call them mop jockeys. Whatever one wishes to dub them, they will do a good job and I'm looking forward to my house not smelling musty and moldy and fusty. I will bid farewell to my new-ish lounge, and to my computer desk, and to my computer. Other items are doubtlessly screwed over. I haven't looked in the garden shed yet, but I'm betting my record collection is fucked hard like a bitch. My house stinks. I have lost items. There is clutter everywhere. It holds the appearance, atmosphere, and appeal of downtown Aleppo.
So, no, it's not really funny at all.
But for some reason, people find it amusing. Look, different things make different people laugh. Some people find farting vulgar and crude; high school boys will laugh themselves into a hernia when someone drops one. I had a flatmate who found 'Married With Children' crass, yet I would have a good old belly laugh at Al Bundy's insults ('I'd come around and say that to your face, but I haven't got enough fuel in my car!', delivered whilst standing behind a tubby woman).
I try to be accepting that it's diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, but this time I'm not going to. I am sick of chucklers. I've been dealing with people who have a serious case of what I call 'the Dr Hibberds', after that character on 'The Simpsons' who chuckles at inappropriate times, at things that are not in the least bit funny.
In co-operation with the infantile and inappropriate laughter, there is the platitude: 'You should have lived up the hill.' Well, this just in: I don't live up the hill. Why do you think I want to be told I should have lived up the hill? This is redolent of victim blaming. Or maybe I'm just waaaaaay too sensitive at the moment. I get a little touchy when I'm facing huge stress, when I'm all over the place ferrying children to a motel, and - here's one that'll make you chucklers laugh until you've evacuated your bowels - my 12yo comes down with a virus that sees him sit up suddenly through the night and barf like a demonically possessed adolescent all through the motel's bed linen. Howsabout that for a good ol' laff? Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck!
So, to the next person who decides to chuckle: you have been warned. Persist with the chuckling, and I will gaffer-tape you to a large cactus, grab a paint ball gun, and shoot at you with balls of your own shit. Understand?
So, yes. I've been frightened. I'm dealing with monumental stress and exhaustion. I've got some worrisome situations with which to deal. Instead of seeing in the New Year with a friend at the pub, I spent it in a motel cleaning up a vomiting kid. On top of all this was the heartbreaking news about the death of a friend on New Year's Eve (congratulations, 2016, you fucking voracious raptor: another scalp).
So, here's to the New Year. May 2017 not suck.
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