Most Freudians would trace all the problems in your life back to your days as a young lad. And maybe they are right. I’ve never been face up on the couch chatting away at a doctor, but when you examine the evidence at hand, they may be onto something. Perhaps the reason for my recent downfall stems from my lack of a pet in my childhood. Maybe I would have learned how to love, thereby keeping the good Chi in constant supply. I bet the Bow Wow, Ruff Ruff would have taught me a thing or two about the transference of love to another living being. Ever a Purr Purr, Meow Meow might have done the trick, but the baffling, muted silence of my parent’s pet, a bird, didn’t get you very far on the path to altruistic love. Our bird pet didn’t do me any justice back then, and she was still screwing with my life.
Jon’s wedding was approaching very quickly and I had run into another problem. I only had the one suit, and it wasn’t going to suffice since the wedding was black tie. I was the only one going to this wedding that was dead broke, and the only one that was dateless. I didn’t want to embarrass myself by bringing Lisa. She knew how pathetic I was, but she didn’t need to see the details of this incipient fiasco first hand.
I walked downstairs. I found my mom sitting at the kitchen table eating a brownie and my dad sitting in front of the birdcage “whistling” to our bird, Misty. My blood immediately started to boil.
It is pretty much common knowledge that cockatiels are raised to speak. They learn to mimic the sounds that they hear around them. Some whistle Beethoven, some tell their owners how pretty they are, and then there are those few that never say one word. How this happens, and why, is a mystery. In my childhood house, the mystery was solved with one word - fear. Fear is what stifled the voice of the cockatiel known as Misty.
Misty never had a fighting chance. How could she? My mom would screech so loud that poor Misty ran to the back of her cage and sprouted goose, er, cockatiel, bumps. My dad would always try to calm Misty down, gently muttering to the bird, “It’s okay, okay, birdie, birdie. It’s okay, shhhhhhhhhhh.” It was this contradiction between the screeching and the birdie ‘shhhhhh’ that marred my early years - and it was now what made my blood boil.
“It’s okay. You okay, Birdie? Wheeeeeee Whooooo,” every day I hear this. Day in and day out. Part of the reason Misty never learned how to say anything stemmed from the disturbing fact that my dad didn’t know how to whistle. He would stand in front of Misty’s cage for hours on end, repeating over and over, like a mental patient, “Okay birdie. Wheeeee, Whooooo.” The ‘Wheeeee Whooooo’ sound was my Dad attempting to whistle a two-tone call to Misty. One note up, one note down. Simple. All that came out, though, with my Father’s lips pursed in whistle-like form, was that sound masquerading as a whistle. Wheeee Whoooo wasn’t going to cut it.
I had always wanted to hang out with the bird, bond with the bird, maybe shoot the shit with the bird for a few hours, but it would just sit there freaked out by my Dad. All it managed to do was eat and crap all over the cage. This couldn’t be a pet. I’ve seen pets before. Some of my friends had pets. They would throw Rover a stick and he would bring it back, or they would take Rover for walks and runs. I knew how it worked. Even the stupid cats did something.
Once, I decided to see if Misty could do some of the things Rover could do. I reached into the cage and grabbed a hold of her. I took her out, sat her on the ground, took a pencil, since a stick would be too big, and threw it.
“Go fetch, Misty, get the stick, girl.” Misty didn’t budge. “Go get the pencil, Misty!” I pleaded. Misty scrunched her face and sat there, mute. Maybe fetch wasn’t for her.
I decided to take Misty for a walk instead. I looked around for some rope, but Misty was about the size of a glasses case, so a rope leash wouldn’t work. I pulled out a long strand of dental floss, made a noose, and threw it over the bird’s head. I picked her up and we went outside for a nice walk.
I put her down on the driveway and Misty started to really move. By move, I mean, she must have been pushing 1 to 2 centimeters an hour. That was good, right? Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my neighbor, Jack, and Jack’s mom, watching my bird show on the driveway. This definitely did not look very good to outside observers. I didn’t want to be reported for bird abuse.
“Hey Jack,” I said, waving. “Just taking the ol’ bird out for a walk.”
“Oh, OK,” Jack said, shaking his head, bewildered. His mom just stared at me stone-faced.
We weren’t really getting anywhere. Misty did occasionally try to take off and fly, but, with clipped wings and a dental floss noose, she couldn’t get very far. She did manage to bang her head a few times on the asphalt when she would get some air and come crashing back down.
After Misty banged her head a couple of times, I got nervous, and decided to call it a day. After all, we had given it the ol’ college try. “We’re going back inside now,” I said to Jack, who was still watching, and motioned towards the house.
Both dejected, and Misty possibly brain damaged, we went back inside. I threw Misty back in her cage, then sat down in front of the television.
Moments later, my dad arrived home, “Hello, birdie. Wheeeee Whooooo – Wheeeee Whooooo.”
You see? He didn’t care if the bird did anything except sit on its perch. There was a man capable of love. He loved the bird even though he expressed it in tone-deaf, vocal spurts. Why couldn’t I love Misty the same way?
My mom would sometimes pick Misty up, put her in her cupped hands and kiss the bird all over. Kiss the bird! As if this wasn’t repulsive enough, she also wanted me to “give kisses” to Misty. I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t kissing a bird that didn’t talk, didn’t fetch, and didn’t go for walks.
“Meeep,” some kind of weird sound came out of Misty.
“You see, she loves you, and wants kisses,” said my mom, cooing lovingly at Misty.
Here was Mom’s argument; if the bird was emitting anything remotely like a sound at you, it meant she loved you. Come on, mom, I would think to myself. Did you ever think the bird was just slow? Maybe the bird has to relieve itself? Maybe the bird wants to be set free? Did any of these reasons occur to you, mom?
“I’m not kissing the bird.”
As I walked down the stairs - and heard my father talking to the bird for the ten-thousandth time in my life - my immediate reaction was to freak, but I regained my composure and tried to speak to them nicely and calmly. After all, I needed cash to rent a tux.
“Hey guys,” I tried to keep it nice and light.
My mom was in her post-work outfit of a skirt and a frilly, button-down, white blouse. Dad had also changed, and now wore his 10 year-old polo shirt that he’d tucked very snugly into his jeans, with his belt cinched a notch too tightly around his waist. That shirt was not going to escape.
“Weeeeeee Whoooooo.”
“I just got off the phone with Avi, and it seems we have a bit of a situation,” I broached the subject lightly.
“Situation?” My mom said with a mouthful of brownie. “What kind of situation could there be on a Friday night at eight-thirty?”
“You hear this birdie, weeeeeee whoooooo, we have a situation, yes, we do.” This grown man was actually talking baby talk to a bird.
“Dad, can you cut it with the bird?” I snapped.
“Oh, David, is that anyway to talk to your Dad?” Mom asked.
“Mom, why is Dad talking to the bird?” I asked.
“Why not? It’s a living thing with feelings. You know you should talk to Misty every now and again. It wouldn’t hurt. You know that ignoring her will hurt her feelings. Why don’t you apologize to the bird for not talking to her? Give the bird some kisses.”
“I’m not kissing the bird,” I said.
“David, that is no way to act. Give the bird some kisses,” she demanded.
“Mom, please, enough with the bird.”
Then my Dad saved me.
“What’s the situation?” he asked.
“Well, I was just informed that things weren’t working out . . .“
“Weren’t working out?! What’s not working out?” My mom exploded.
“I don’t know, she didn’t give me an answer when I –”
“She? I thought you said you talked to Avi?” My dad said.
“Not exactly, it was the secretary that . . .”
“Oh, my God, the secretary! You mean you can’t even get fired right?” My Mom screamed.
“Meep,” Misty weighed in on the issue.
“You mean to tell me, the secretary called, and fired you on the phone?” Dad asked.
“Yes. That’s what happened,” I said.
“What kind of operation is this? Who hires someone, then fires them that same week, and doesn’t even have the decency to call themselves? What is with this guy? Isn’t he a professional?” My dad was closely examining the situation.
“I really don’t know. I’m very upset,” I said.
My new strategy was to play the victim.
“Look, don’t get yourself all upset,” Mom said. “It’s not your fault. This person doesn’t know how to behave.”
“I know, but I have Jon’s wedding coming up this weekend. It’s black tie, and I don’t have any money to rent a tux. I don’t know what to do.”
I threw out the line hoping for a bite.
“I’ll lend you the money for the tux,” said my father. “You can’t look like a fool at your friend’s wedding, but you better take a good look around that wedding and do some serious thinking. Take a look at what grown-ups are like. Maybe you could learn to be a little bit more like your friend, Jon. He has his shit together. Maybe you’ll learn something!” My dad put an exclamation point on the day.
“Thanks, Dad,” I grovelled.