42

My great-grandparents used to play a dominoes game called "42" with their friends. I knew how to play dominoes, but I never found out where the 42 entered into it, unless you added up the dots on your dominoes. Seems to me like the game would be over pretty quick.....

I turned 42 today and Adrian treated me to a lovely day. He bought me a book I wanted ("The Story of the 13th Floor Elevators and Roky Erickson") and treated me to lunch at Red Lobster. My co-workers were baffled at my choice of restaurant for my birthday nosh, but Red Lobster has given me 30 years of comforting memories.

My mom used to let me skip school on the days when my grandmother had to drive to Dallas to get her post-colon cancer check-ups every year. She had colon cancer surgery in 1976 when I was 11 years old and for 5 years after that, she got checked every year. After her appointment, she would take me to lunch at Red Lobster on LBJ Freeway in Garland on the way home. My mom and I would eat at that same Red Lobster whenever we went to Dallas and she had the money for it. It was always a HUGE treat.

I ate there with my mom and my friend Esther on the day I had to check myself into Presbyterian Hospital psychiatric ward. It was a small bright spot in an otherwise horrific day, and it's the only part of that day that I remember really well, besides my new roommate falling asleep standing up in the hospital that afternoon. She was taking Halcion and had shuffled hypnotically over to my bedside to comfort me, her slippers rhythmically sliding across the floor in short bursts. I was sitting on my bed whimpering, because not only had I never been in the hospital for anything at that point, I was in the hospital now for being CRAZY. The Halcion kicked in at mid-sentence and she started snoring while she stood next to my bed with her hand on mine. I was so afraid she would collapse and hurt herself, I picked her up and laid her on her own bed. I hadn't slept for 2 weeks prior to that and I didn't sleep that night either, even though the nurses kept dosing me with benzodiazepam. It worked eventually, because I don't remember the next two weeks that I was in the locked ward. I had visitors apparently; Esther and her then boyfriend came to visit me and he was so freaked out by my "zombieness", Esther had to talk him out of kidnapping me from the hospital and taking me home with them.

That Red Lobster eventually became a funeral home. Adrian always wondered why they didn't keep the lobsters on the funeral home signs. It would have attracted sailors, so maybe they should have: "Let us bury you at sea, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!" or maybe "You stab 'em, we slab 'em, YARRR!!!" or how about "When you're dead, you ain't red no more!" Garland wasn't really anywhere close to the sea, but you get the idea. I don't know why people don't hire me to think this shit up for them.....