Popularity

“Mom, you don’t call the cops for something like this.”

February 1972


I woke up a little later than usual for a Saturday morning, maybe a little after eight. I walked into the kitchen in my pajamas, ungroomed and still not fully awake. I felt something was wrong, like when you look at a door that you’ve looked at a thousand time but you suddenly see it a different way. Like the Dylan lyric, “You know something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is.” I looked out the back window in the den and saw what was wrong but my brain did not accept what my eyes were recording. I looked at the wood panel contact paper on the wall and then looked out the window again: still there; a jungle of unrolled toilet paper blanketing the entire backyard. Who would tee-pee my house? Then panic hit me. Where was Dad? Why was it quiet? What would he do? I retreated to the kitchen but when I looked out the kitchen window on to Catalina Street I saw a police car. Holy crap! Dad had called the cops.
“Mom?” No answer. “MOM!”
“I’m here.” Her voice leaked out from her room.
“Mom, what’s going on?” I stood speaking to the bedroom door.
“You tell me.”
“Did Dad call the cops?”
“What happened last night?”
“I don’t know. The backyard is covered with toilet paper.”
“You didn’t see the front?” She finally emerged in her robe.
“They did the front, too?” We moved together toward the front door.
“Who? Who did it? Was it Lenny?”
“No. I told you I don’t know.” I thought it was probably Bill and Dale who had sabotaged my locker the week before when they somehow rigged an empty coffee can to dump lawn clippings when I opened the door.
“You said they.”
“Well you know, they, like it must have been more than one person.” I flung the door open. It was all white toilet paper so thick it looked like it had snowed just on our house. The picket fence was wrapped in it like it had been mortally wounded. We stood surveying for a minute.
“Who did this?”
“I have no idea.” I wasn’t going to volunteer any information; I didn’t want any more parents involved in this than I already had.
“Daddy’s very upset.” I shivered but couldn’t tell if it was from the cold outside or the thought of Dad being upset.
“I guess so, if he called the cops.” I closed the door.
“Well, what do you expect?”
“Mom, you don’t call the cops for something like this.”
“The fruit trees are covered with it. He thinks the blossoms will be damaged.”
“Oh, man.”
“He wants to sue whoever did this. He wants them put in jail.”
“You can’t, you can’t do all that. It’s toilet paper, not a hand grenade.”
“Well what can I do? That’s just the way he is.”
We came back to the den. Mom went into her room and I stood by the back door, too scared to go outside but morbidly curious about what was going on out there. Dad and two cops were standing by the garage, the furthest point from the house. One cop had his arms folded and was nodding at whatever Dad said; the other cop had his hands on his hips and wasn’t moving much. Dad was pointing at trees and shouting, sometimes even stamping his foot. As far away as Dad was, I could still make out a few phrases, which included, “My property!” and “Rights to my Privacy!” and “Throw ‘em in jail!” Then Mom re-emerged from the bedroom, startling me.
“You have to explain this to him.”
“Explain it? I don’t even know who did it.”
“Well, it must have been one of your friends. Maybe it was one of the football players.”
“The ones on the team who do this kind of stuff, they wouldn’t be interested in getting me, and the ones who are like friends to me don’t do this stuff.”
“I don’t know what to tell him,” she confided, as if she were talking to someone else.
“Me neither.”
“I don’t know how you slept through all that commotion this morning.”
“What did he say?”
“Brah rah,rah!” she said in an animated fashion while shaking her fist.
“Did he throw anything?”
“No.”
“Write anything on the wall?”
“No.”
“Then maybe he’s not so mad.”
“Go on out there then and talk to him.”
“Why am I in trouble? I didn’t do it.”
“You’re either going to talk to him out there or when he comes in.”
I looked through the window of the back door. The cops were on their way back to the squad car. I went back to my room and got dressed. I was going to put a record on and think things over but I decided against it. Besides, the opening guitar part of “Desolation Row,” began playing in my head. I stepped into the hall and the lyrics kicked in. “They’re selling postcards of the hanging, they’re painting the passports brown.”
When I made it back to the den, the song had vanished and Mom was waiting for me. I open the back door, hesitated, then stepped outside. Mom closed the door behind me. I sat down on the back porch, watching Dad who was moving slowly, in a straight line, in my direction. He walked with his hands behind him as if he were walking through a beautiful park. He had an unusual look on his face that I could not decipher. I began to wonder why talking to him outside was better than talking to him inside. Why would I talk to him at all? I didn’t do it. How would I begin our conversation anyway? If I said the right thing, it would be better than if he spoke first but if I said the wrong thing everything would be ten times worse. So what would that right thing be? Pretty good job, huh Dad? Or maybe I don’t know who did this Dad, but I sure am gonna find out! I began thinking about the grate that lead to the space underneath the house. When I was five I gave it a thorough investigation. It was cool and dark and smelled like the earth. But it was dark; unknown terrors could be hiding in the dark—red ants, spiders, lizards, salamanders. The darkness hid the truth, good or bad, and that was worse than seeing every bug and every little critter in the light. Then Dad finally came within 15 feet at the corner of the patio where he stopped and carefully began removing toilet paper from the bougainvilleas. I stood up.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Howdy doo-doo,” he answered in his sing-song voice he used when he was in a good mood. I figured he was setting me up for a huge sucker punch. It wasn’t his style to do that but these were unique circumstances.
“Dad, I …”
“I talked to the police officers. I called them because this is our private property. No one has the right to come on it and vandalize it. Other words, no one can come on the property without permission. Whoever did this broke the law. We have our rights to privacy, you get it?”
“Yeah. So, what did the cops say?”
“They were very nice. Young fellas.”
“Uh-huh.”
“One was Italian. Don’t know what the other one was.”
“Yeah? Italian, huh?” I began helping him fill a paper bag he had found on the patio.
“Sure. It wasn’t always just Irish. They opened it up to every new group. It’s not just MacMurphy now you know.”
“Yeah?”
“The Italian one, Salario, I think, he did most of the talking. More than the other guy.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said if your house gets tee-peed, it’s like a sign that you’re very popular at school!” He was beaming.
“Really?”
“Yeah, and the bigger the mess, the more popular you are.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It’s like winning a popularity contest.”
“Ah, come on.”
“That’s what he said, not me.”
“Wow.”
“But that’s not all.”
“What else?”
“He said that in 13 years he had never seen a bigger mess than this one.” He was nearly dancing as he moved on to the lemon tree.
“That’s pretty cool.”
“Waste of toilet paper though.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a sin to waste. Remember that.”
“Ok.”
I stopped harvesting toilet paper for a moment to admire Officer Solario’s brilliance, then slipped back into the house so that Mom could come out of her room.
“Mom?” I said to the door.
“What happened?” the door answered.
“Everything’s ok. I talked to him.”
“Are you sure?”
“The cops told him it was a good thing.”
“And he believed them?” She came out patting her hair as if she had just finished brushing it.
“Well, yeah.”
“Well, go help him clean up now.”
“I will, I just wanted you to know.” I turned to head for the front door.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll clean up the front. He’s just about done with the back.”
“Go on out there. It’s not even half done. Spend some time with him.” She turned me to the back door.
“Ok.”
We worked together without speaking for a while. Then he turned to me and said, “Did you hear about the bakery that went broke?”
“No.”
“They ran out of dough!”
“Good one, Dad.” I had heard it a million times, but still, it was ok. At the moment we both felt pretty good. And we both wanted it to last as long as possible.