The Old Monk and a Fire Truck

After the apple episode, I have slowly grown more and more annoyed with the Old Monk once again. The two things about him that bother me, in brief:

1) He lies in wait until we come home, and then pops out of his apartment to see Reilly. This bothers me because when I come home—with Reilly under one arm and the rest of me laden down like a pack mule—I just want to get up the four flights of stairs without interruption.

2) When I do the obligatory stop for the Old Monk, he is always rough with Reilly, pushing heavily on her cheek or pulling on her limbs. I submit the following evidence of his roughness: Reilly, who loves everyone who crosses her path, is always tentative and afraid when the Old Monk is around her.

On Sunday, the Overcast Family returned home from a nice morning out at the playground, and as we came through the second door downstairs, the Old Monk emerged from his apartment. After submitting Reilly to the monk’s endearment, Shawn fled up the stairs while I put the stroller away. Much to my annoyance, the Monk followed me. With my eyes rolled so far back in my head, it was a wonder I could see anything, but it was at that moment that the Old monk reached into a bag and pulled out a brand new Hess toy fire truck. He gave it to me.

I called out to Shawn, who had already made it up the first flight of stairs, to come back down with Reilly. “The Old Monk has a gift for her,” I said.

Shawn looked as sheepish as I felt. To thank him, she reached out and touched his hand, a universal thank you, since we don’t share each other’s languages. And when she touched his hand, he very gently gave it a squeeze.

Reilly missed all these sensitivities, but didn’t overlook the truck. She got down to playing with it as soon as we made it upstairs:

Mouse in the house, or, The one not about the baby

The exterminator dropped by yesterday and asked to come in. I turned him away because Shawn and I don’t like having chemicals in our apartment. “Anyway,” I told him, “I haven’t seen a bug or mouse in this house for a couple months. (Famous last words, right?)

I’m a better exterminator thant the exterminator anyway. He swears by glue traps. I swear by snap traps. He sprays chemicals and uses ineffective poisons. I use Skippy peanutbutter and intuition.

Since we’ve lived in the City, we’ve moved from one mouse-infested apartment to the next. Our current apartment is the worst. I’ve averaged one mouse kill per month, which would put my extermination total around 30. Think I’m exaggerating? Not a bit. Think I’m proud? Damn right! And if you think I’m a little cavalier about my mouse killing, too bad. Even tenderhearted Shawn hates the little buggers.

You see, we live in a building that is 150 years old. Each time I call our building manager up about the problem, she looks around for a mouse hole, fills it, and tells me we’ll be mouse-free. She knows as well as I know that that’s bullshit. The Buddhist building owners have done nothing to the structure of this brownstone since they bought it 30 years ago except slap a little paint on here and there. It’s not that we have one mouse hole. Our entire apartment is a mouse hole. In fact, I even saw a mouse peep his little head out from the top of our crown molding one day. They’re in the walls, man!

Just a few minutes ago, I was doing the dishes and figured I’d better check our mousetrap. Something smelled a little funky. Sure enough, I’d got one. They can’t resist the Skippy.

Each time I kill a mouse, I have to laugh a little. The reason is because the Buddhists in this building believe in reincarnation. So, each time I catch a mouse in my snap trap, I think of dropping the thing off in front of one of the Buddhist’s doors with a note that says, “Herein lies your uncle Tom. May he come back as a cockroach.”

The Old Monk and an Apple

As many of you know, our family lives in a brownstone that is owned by a Buddhist church. For most of the year, we are the only tenant, and the house is overrun with the minister, his sisters, parishioners, and students of the religion. There is one monk, we call him, the “Old Monk” (for obvious reasons). He used to sit in a chair at the landing below our staircase and pray. We never could tell whether to acknowledge him or to let him go on praying, so, for a long time, we walked by him without ever speaking. Over time, we have attempted some conversation with him. I say ‘attempted’ because he doesn’t know a lick of English. Still, we got to like the guy, an eccentric old monk wandering the building.

Lately, he’s stopped going to the chair at the bottom of our landing. I don’t know why—perhaps his bones are getting old. He lives on the first floor, and his chair is on the third floor, so perhaps his age is preventing him from making it up those two extra flights. As it is, he has a hell of a time making it up the first flight. So, instead of sitting on the third floor, he stands at the top of the first landing. And every time I pass him by with Reilly, I feel obliged to stop, since he just loves the baby. He loves to pinch her cheeks and touch her face, which Theresa downstairs says is a great blessing. I don’t see it that way. I see it as an old man with dirty hands touching the face of my baby.

It’s gotten to the point now that I hate coming home, because he is always there, and there is no way for me to get past him without the compulsory stop and pinch. It’s hard because sometimes all a guy wants to do after a long day at work and an annoying pickup at daycare, is to get up to his apartment and kick off his work shoes. For those in suburbia, imagine coming home from work to find your neighbor sitting on your porch. EVERY TIME you come home. Shawn takes another angle on this. She says he’s just a sweet, old, lonely man who has nothing to do all day except wander the hallway outside his apartment, and so he waits all day for Reilly because it gives him a little human contact.

This past Sunday, we ran into the Old Monk downstairs as we were leaving the apartment. He went to the Holy Food Box and pulled out an apple. He then handed the apple to Reilly. Never mind that Reilly is incapable of holding an apple. Or of eating one. The old man wanted to give her a holy apple, and so he did. Shawn took it on Reilly’s behalf and I ushered our family out of that weird situation and into the Sunday sunshine.

Later that afternoon, as I sat outside of Shawn’s salon, Avalon, waiting for her appointment to end, Reilly started to get bored and cranky. I reached inside her diaper bag for a toy, and instead pulled out the apple. What the heck, I thought. I gave Reilly the apple. She grabbed it.

She studied it.

And to my amazement, she stuck it in her mouth.

And to my great surprise, I found myself silently thanking the Old Monk for giving Reilly her first apple, and just a few moments of joy.

The Holy Food Box

As I was writing today’s entry, I realized that I would have to explain one of the proper nouns that shows up in paragraph 4, sentence 2: “Holy Food Box.” Since the Holy Food Box is such a unique part of our daily life, I figured that I would give it its own, private entry in the annals of Big City, Small World.

The Holy Food Box sits near the entry of our apartment building. In it are various different foodstuffs that have been blessed in the Buddhist prayer services. To drive this point home, there is a little sign that says “Blessed Food from our Prayer Service. Please Take.”



One might expect the contents of the Holy Food Box to contain authentic Tibetan foodstuffs like thenthuk:
or momos:

Instead, there are holy Fritos, holy Diet Coke, and assorted holy hard candies. The other day, I ate a bag of Wise brand holy barbeque potato chips, and they gave me a holy stomach ache. Now I stay away from the Holy Food Box. I don’t trust its karma.