How much wood would my ass pass if my ass could pass wood?

January 17, 2006 - 11:45 p.m.

One other story, the highlight of my trip actually, that I forgot to mention because I was way too preoccupied staring at Henry’s face that has been tattooed inside my stupid eyelids. My ride to the Philadelphia airport, coming home after Christmas.

Know this: My uncle owns a custom staircase business, which is really quite sweet and I totally admire the beauty of the curved-ness and of course I like things made of wood. He only works in wood and gives the finger to “modern” shit like metal railings etc. He also, not surprisingly, employs his father, who happens to be my grandfather with 5 fingers. How did I fail to mention that my 87 year-old grandpa has a job and has never retired? Holy shit, is that normal?

Yep, well gramps works a few hours a day in the wood shop, mostly mentoring the young lads and puttering around with his own personal projects. It truly is no surprise that a person working with motorized razorblades for 65 years would lose a few digits, if not an appendage or a scalp.

(Hmm, this caused me to think about certain people I knew in my hometown, factory workers, who would cry a thousand tears into their pillow every night because it was just so unfair that they couldn’t retire until they were 55 years old. Something could be said here, but I’m not sure what it is...)

Anyway. So I was hanging out at my uncle’s house and he agreed to drive me to the Philadelphia airport the following morning at 5am, for my 7am flight, so that I could get back to Chicago and go STRAIGHT TO WORK, because I am psycho like that.

He said, “We’re going to take the truck tomorrow because I have a client in Philly, so I will visit him after I drop you off.”

My cousins are snickering.

I said, “That’s fine, I’ll probably just sleep on the way there anyway, since I have to go to work after I land.”

*HA HA HA HA*

Everyone is laughing at me.

“You’re not going to get any sleep in The Truck!”

Whatever. I am no baby. It’s probably like a U-haul truck, right? I know he doesn’t own any semi-trailer trucks so it must be. I can sleep in a bumpy, noisy truck.

Then my aunt said, “Well, I can give you some wool blankets for your legs, and a down jacket, and I’ll make you a thermos of coffee…”

Me: “No, really, I’ll be fine. Geeez! I mean, you have heat in the truck, right? I’m not THAT big of a wuss!”

(Note: cannot use the word “pussy” in front of religious people.)

The next morning I find my uncle waiting outside for me with the truck running.

It’s a bread truck.

Do you know what a bread truck is? It’s the same thing as the brown UPS trucks (or a BREAD COMPANY’S trucks, if you’ve ever noticed, derrr).

It has that sliding driver’s door and in the summer you often see the UPS guy riding along on a high seat with the door wide open and he just jumps in and out. And maybe you also noticed there is no passenger seat, no other seat at all?

Yeah.

Well, according to Uncle Stairs, I am way lucky because they used to keep lawn chairs in there for passengers and he just installed a QUOTE passenger seat UNQUOTE. The seat was a tiny platform as wide as my narrow white ass, attached to the wall, and it had a spring to keep it folded upright, so I pulled the tiny platform down and perched there, my back straight as a board, flat against the wall.

No arm rests, of course, just a platform, and you’d be surprised how much you need BALANCE to ride in a bumpy truck at 65 mph, but I just had my platform, teetering there, wobbling back and forth like a butt-cheek tight rope walker. Occasionally palming the windows and walls to prevent myself from falling off.

And I was all wrapped up in a down jacket with fur hat, mittens, scarf, and thermos of coffee. The heat was blasting. But oh, did I forget to mention?

There was an entire spiral staircase in the truck with us.

Spiral.

Staircase.

Entire.

Hanging out the back of the truck by several feet, with - dum-dum-dum! All the fucking doors wide-ass open.

And in case it wasn’t painfully obvious by what I wrote above, there is no separate cab area for the riders, no. Just one big box, wide-the-hell open, with a staircase from floor to ceiling, being held in with BUNGEE CORDS (for god’s sake), my luggage sliding all over the rear area, the heat blasting and disintegrating into nothingness before it reaches my face.

Pre-dawn blackness, 5 am, 15 degrees, 65 mph, and a noise beyond clankity-clank, beyond ruckus, more like a jack hammer in a wind tunnel, for one and a half hours on the highway to Philadelphia.

There are metal shelves that line the walls and hold tools and at one point an entire metal tool box came crashing down and we thought something flew out the back so we had to stop in the middle of the highway while Uncle went to the back and inspected and I was totally picturing an Oprah-esque scenario where some mother of 5 was following us in her Toyota Camry and now has a socket wrench impaled in her forehead and she’s slumped over the wheel, careening towards my uncle who is dodging traffic to secure the rear. I got out my cell phone, dialed 9-1 and waited…and thought about whether I should wear pink or green to Harpo Studios, when I tearfully tell my tragic story off all the innocent people who died that day, all because I needed a ride to the airport.

Oprah will ask me if I’ve learned to forgive myself and I’ll say, “I…when I think about Tanya’s children…growing up without a mother…I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself.”

But no one died. And we never did figure out if something flew out the back but now that I’m aware that it’s possible for things to fly out the back I’m staring at my luggage, staring with an intensity like Superman shooting red rays of fire out of his eyes, just LOOK at it and WILL it not to fly out the back of this truck. And it’s sliding back and forth all over the place in two inches of sawdust, and I just KNOW that if it starts to slide out the back and I try to leap from my perch and swoop down to grab it, that I will surely be crushed to death by the giant rolling staircase. Death by Staircase. Sounds like Morrissey’s latest album.

As we arrived at the airport, it suddenly occurred to me: Who the hell gets dropped of at the airport in a bread truck? We totally looked like terrorists. Isn’t that the kind of truck that you always hear about, that were parked outside an embassy, full of bombs? Bread trucks are always used by criminals in the movies. We pulled up and caught the eyes of a few employees, and even though the side of the truck said STAIRS and had a picture of a staircase, and there were indeed honest-to-goodness stairs hanging out the back, we still looked like terrorists posing as wood-working honkeys.

I jumped out and my uncle began tossing luggage at me, wood chips flying through the air. He came out and gave me a hug and yelled, “So long! Thanks for visiting!” and then he peeled away, rattle-rattle-thunder-clatter-boom-boom-boom. And then I dragged my tired, dirty, sore ass to get in line at security, covered head to toe in wood particles, my messy curly afro entangled with kindling, looking like a goddamn Siberian hamster who just crawled out of her nest after giving birth to, and eating her young. The uppity holiday travelers stared at me like: Ugh. They allow HOMELESS PEOPLE on airplanes now??

Thanks, Uncle Stairs.

Thanks for Family Memory #732, that I will never forget.

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