You never can Tell


By Felix Carroll
Through some sort of trippy, cosmic, causally unrelated occurrence, we had both been taken to Puerto Rico by our parents at separate times in our childhoods, and both of us vomited at the famous tourist attraction, Castillo de San Felipe del Morro, in Old San Juan (way too much sun).
As if that weren't enough foreshadowing that my wife and I would eventually meet and fall in love, we both grew up with mothers who, whenever mention was made of having to take the garbage to the dump, would launch into the "William Tell Overture." You know — to the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump — that gallant, galloping, all-trumpeters-on-deck instrumental by Rossini that's often equated with the theme song to "The Lone Ranger."
Allow me to set the scene:
(It's a fine and pleasant suburban Saturday morning in the 1980s. Lawn mowers purr in the distance, peppered with the thumps and hollering of a pack of pajama-wearing siblings upstairs strangling each other. Downstairs in the kitchen, Dad stands by the doorway holding two bags of garbage. Mom enters, smiling.)
Mom: Good morning, Honey. Whatcha doin?
Dad: I'm going to the dump.
(Having courted doom, he winces.)
Mom: Oh, really? To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump ...
(She stops and looks at him with a smile that's bright and earnest. He smiles thinly. Fade to black.)
Then, maybe about two years into our marriage, my wife and I welcomed her mother for a visit. On a fine, pleasant Saturday morning (birds tweeting, yadda-yadda), I was gathering the garbage when my mother-in-law got wind of what I was up to and proceeded to gallop around the living room, "To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump ..."
I pulled my wife aside. "Holy crap, your mother does that, too?" I asked.
"Always. Why? Your mother does that?"
"Always."
As children, the mom/dump/"William Tell Overture" thing marked for both my wife and me a first-time experience of something funny turning into something annoying — so annoying it becomes kinda funny again, even though it's still very, very annoying. In therapy, they call this acceptance.
Whenever my mother visits, she, too, gallops around the living room on Saturday mornings. And nowadays my wife, surrendering to the sins of the mother, gallops, too, but with a despondent-sort-of hobble.
"It's not even a 'dump,' technically," I said a couple weeks back. "It's a 'transfer station.'"
We both looked at each other. Yes, it's a "transfer station," not a dump! The dumps of our youth, too, were transfer stations — merely terminals from which trash is eventually hauled to who-knows-where, maybe a rocket ship and shot into outer space. This was an epiphany. (Did you know the definition of "epiphany"? It's this: "A snooty-sounding word for realizing something only a chucklehead wouldn't have realized long, long ago."
We wondered, "What if we simply substituted 'dump' for 'transfer station.'"
Forthwith, we tested it out.
"Okay, gotta go, Mom," I heard my wife say, speaking on the phone to her mother. "We have to go to the transfer station."
Nothing. No galloping. Just a cheerful goodbye.
I then called my mother and made small talk for a bit, then said: "Well, gotta head to the transfer station."
"Sounds fun," she said.
I tried again:
"Yep, gotta pack up the garbage and head to the transfer station."
Nothing. William Tell's horse stayed in its stall. Instead, my mother somehow found an opportunity to launch into a soliloquy about her father coming to America and working as a lineman for Ma Bell, and then about how good the pizza was at Poopsie's.
"You remember Poopsie's, right?"
"Sure do," I said. "OK, then, I gotta head to the transfer station."
"Sounds like a special day for you," she said.
"Oh, trust me, it is."

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