Spinball Lizard
Unexpected thrills from Self-Evident: We hold these tooths
Spinball Lizard
Okay. Believe I’m on safe ground here. Everything, I mean, everything, starts from a name. A title. Don’t give me that “rose by any other ...”1 nonsense. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Jimmy Buffet nailed it. Come up with a good title and the rest is simple-dimple. “Margaritaville” anyone? Do you think there ever was a “Margaritaville” before Buffet smoked that joint?
Or swallowed that rum? (Likely both.)
So here we start with a title that can’t have any real-world coordinates and fiction will flow forth like cool water from a montane spring. Drink deep dear reader! Drink deep!
Tooths are what we pursue. Unvarnished tooths. Tooths that are self-evident, as the title page indicated. Here we could do worse than to consider the Carcharodontosaurus, could we not?
Further to consider how the Carcharodontosaurus just happened to be in Melissa’s foyer. That’s some kind of spin!
Melissa we recall,2 was smart enough, or lucky enough (luck often supplanting wisdom in successful lives), about which more anon, to leave Al as soon as her girlfriends discovered his golf habit. Al’s lying to her about his addiction was, perhaps, to be endured. But the chagrin. Oh, the chagrin. Seeing the pity in others’ eyes when they knew about the golf.
It is very difficult to find oneself pitied. IMHO.
The thing being, the more important thing, is that while self-esteem came galloping to the rescue, what it rescued Melissa from was a life of misery, a burden that would have bowed her inexorably. You can’t be both married to a golfer and happy. The two are more than poles apart. Think Mercury3 and the object formerly known as a planet, Pluto.
This should be taught in school, by at least the eighth grade. No later.
We, that is we thoughtful readers (see footnote 14), do recall that Melissa left Husband1 because Nutter (nickname, though not, perhaps, a hypocoristic, for the enlightenment of those not described in footnote 3), because H1 was inattentive to all the little things he should have said and done but never took the time. He was a decent enough human being, just hadn’t quite matured vis-à-vis4 relationships. He finally pulled his weight with Lurlene.5
Melissa had married Al on the rebound, and as mentioned on page 24 (of the aforementioned—Footnote 23—Waist Not), fled when the sorry truth outed itself.
But now that we think about it, we never learned whence she fled.
First, as is so often the case, an apartment. Unlike, say, Debby,6 Melissa had no dog, which made finding a place a bit easier. A third floor unit in an old, repurposed, mansion. Perhaps that overstates it: Let’s just say a large old house built by a magnate back during the Roaring 20s. Gone somewhat to seed and carved into four units during the Sagging Aughts. Or maybe post WWII. (I don’t think I can reasonably to be held responsible for historic detail regarding my own fabrications.)
There to regroup. To reconsider and reset her trajectory.
You wouldn’t know, insofar as I didn’t come up with this tidbit until this very minute, what Melissa does for a living. You might make a wild guess and be surprised and delighted to learn that you are correct, but, honest injun, fat fricking chance.
All of us not born with a mouthful of that legendary silver spoon have to do something, right? Even if you hinge your hopes on a winning ticket, you need the first dollar. Melissa is no different from you or me in that regard. As Paul Simon framed it, “You can’t be forever blessed.”7 Pennies saved and dollars earned.
You know the drill.
Where was I?
Oh, right, she came home from the office to find, there in her foyer, a Carcharodontosaurus. Surprised isn’t the first part of it. I mean, she’d never even had a goldfish, let alone a dog, let alone, oh, a goat or other mid-size quadruped.
That is to say, never since her young youth had she been intimately associated with quadrupedalism. And here I’m not talking about a kitten or a puppy, rather her own pre-ambulatory self. Crawling.
You know what they say, or used to say, modern science having dispelled evolutionary myth. Viz: Ontogeny does not actually recapitulate phylogeny, though they used to say it. But to the extent that most of us crawl before we walk it could be said that we were once quadrupeds. Kind of injects a little humility, no? Down on all fours like so many other “lower” forms.
Why even as I write this, there’s a story on the CNN website about prehistoric hominid footprints in Tanzania. Archaeologists have uncovered 408 of them suckers and determined that there were 17 individuals trekking across a span of volcanic mud (hence the sucking sound). Fourteen adult females, two adult males and a juvenile male. (Dating odds excellent for the guys.) Some time between 5,700 and 19,100 years ago this crowd is thought to have been on a shopping trip. Bipeds foraging, back before chain grocery stores moved into the neighborhood and ruined everything.
Less than 18 miles away researchers have found fossilized tracks of quadrupeds: zebra, antelope and buffalo. (Thought you’d want to know, but here we are trending into nonfiction again, so I’ll just leave it at that.)
So Melissa returned home from her job at Cavendish & Co. eager to freshen up, preparatory to her much anticipated date with Steve, only to be startled by the aforementioned Carcharodontosaurus. Wouldn’t we all? Be?
Yeah, yeah. You’re so damn cool. You can pretend that you’d be totally chill. But nuh-uh.
Your standard model Carcharodontosaurus is like, oh, four car lengths, can run maybe 25 mph, owns eight inch long teeth and can swallow a human-size object—like say, you or me— in one gulp. Could, I mean. Obviously they are extinct or none of us would leave the house.
Melissa met Steve at a get-together, which is the sort of event where one might easily meet a potential “other.” It is far, far preferable to see the real thing, as versus one of those chancy right swipes. Pretense is a balloon more easily pricked in person.
Steve is a good apple. I tell you this so you won’t worry about Melissa. He is pleasant, and kind, and whether or not things “work out” over a long term, he won’t break her heart. He loves his job, which is a blessing. A true blessing. Those who do not are nothing more than wage slaves, and slavery in any form is to be declaimed. Certainly there is no room for it in wildly humorous and clearly first-rate literature. Viz: the current tome.
He’s a dog-catcher.
Applied quadrupedal science at its finest.
But we were discussing teeth. Carcharodontosaurus is an unusual name. Not something you’d apply to a newborn unless you have a very strange sense of … well, not humor, exactly. Maybe “propriety.” That’s it. A strange approach to propriety.
Can you imagine, or even bear the thought, of what school would be like for a tyke with that kind of handle? The taunts. The jeers?
Carcharodontosaurus, as you’ve surely gleaned, being the sort of well-educated reader that you are, was a dinosaur! And you with advanced degrees will know without my saying so, that this was a particularly toothy version. Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach named it so because its teeth reminded him of those of the giant shark genus Carcharodon. But he didn’t discover the first one, and how he snatched naming rights is a great question. Note that he was a German. Just sayin’.
The discoverers were Charles Depéret and J. Savornin. Frenchmen. See? It all makes sense now. C’est à prévoir.8
But I digress. I’m feeling pretty good about Melissa and Steve. Looks like a good fit. This is a first date, and it would be silly to stake a bet at the outset. But I’ve just got a hunch. Perhaps we’ll check in with them somewhere downhill.9
Spoiler Alert!10
*****
Note per footnotes: Substack renumbers when I post, but footnotes sometimes refer to previous super important stuff in the print version, so originals are in [#].
1 [22] Shakespeare again. You can tell you’re in high quality lit or high cotton.
2 [23] At least those of us who purchased and actually read Waist Not, Want Knot, (Brave Ulysses Books, 2020.)
3 [24] This is drawing me dangerously close to “Mercutio,” which was the name of Dog1, right up until Peter Gregutt corrected my Shakespeare reference on page 14, but I am strong.
4 [25] The accent grave indicates that we are speaking French here. Very sophisticated, non?
5 [26] The habitual nudist. You really should have read Waist Not first.
6 [27] You do remember Debby. Right? (See footnote 23.)
7 [28] Followed by, “Tomorrow’s gonna be another working day, and I’m tryin’ to get some rest. That’s all I’m tryin’ … is to get some rest.”
8 [29] Trans: This is to be expected.
9 [30] Note to first-time readers of my drivel. All my stories go downhill.
10 [31] Carchy was on the cover of an edition of the Journal of Paleontology. It was a shock because Melissa doesn’t have a subscription. The mail person pushed it through the wrong slot! C’est dommage! The intended recipient lives next door and M’s subsequent good-neighbor door knock to place the magazine in rightful hands is a story not to be missed! (See page 110.) [ Note to Substack readers: Of the print verson.]
Copyright© 2020, Cecil Bothwell, All rights reserved.