The Observer’s particular brand of
feminism
is a practical one. We can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan if
we feel like it, and if an opportunity presents itself — like, say, a very
unfamiliar and insistent noise in our still-dark bedroom at 5 a.m. on a recent
morning — we will never, ever let you forget you’re a man.

So, we have set the scene for you.
It was dark, The Observer couldn’t sleep, and at some point we became aware of
a kind of skittery, scratchy noise. We dug a sharp elbow into Spouse’s nearest
body part, he started awake and heard the noise, and was out of bed and on his
feet with a speed that was either admirable or stupid, The Observer still
hasn’t decided.

Advertisement

“I don’t think it’s a person,”
Spouse said. Well, whew. “I think something got in, like a bug or something.”

So The Observer — who, we should
mention at this point, is all but legally blind without our glasses — was heartened,
and turned on the lamp.

Advertisement

“Unprintable expletive!” Spouse
shouted.

We got our glasses on just in time
to see something large and furry and black fly across the room and disappear
into the laundry hamper.

Advertisement

“Even more unprintable expletive!”
The Observer shouted, and dived headfirst under the covers, like some cartoon
housewife with a big bloomered behind poking out and shaking.

We stayed there while Spouse rigged
up an escape route for the bat, which at some point ventured back out of the
laundry hamper and could be heard flapping around far too near The Observer’s
sheet-covered head for comfort. But by the time Spouse was ready to flush it
out the back door, it had disappeared.

Advertisement

This was when The Observer finally
got the nerve to show our face. A disappeared bat in the bedroom? We wondered
how long it would be before we’d ever sleep again. Spouse rattled the window
blinds, poked at various stacks and piles with his big toe, peeked under the
bed. Nothing.

Just as he went looking for a
flashlight, though, our new friend crawled out from the underside of the window
scarf, and The Observer hightailed it to the other end of the house, banished
for fear our banshee shrieking might wake the baby in the next room.

Advertisement

After all that drama, Spouse and a
white bath towel quickly and quietly returned the bat to its natural environs,
and we slunk back towards bed.

At which point — of course — the
baby woke up.

Advertisement

 

The Observer went to Sunday brunch
at a new West Little Rock restaurant, just ahead of
benediction at the megachurches. So our party was done and exiting as the
hostess was telling hordes of new arrivals about 90-minute waits at a
restaurant whose opening came with little public notice.

But this item is not about yet
another case of Little Rock chain
restaurant hysteria. It’s about the power of imagination.

The highlight of The Observer’s
visit wasn’t the restaurant’s French toast but a nondescript Ford Escort in the
parking lot. Proudly screwed to the front bumper was a Chippendales license
plate. The plate bore a selection of photos of bare-chested Chippendales, the
ripped male dancers.

What kind of person puts a
Chippendales license plate on their car? The mind raced.

Advertisement

Man? Woman? Married? Single? Ripped?
Pudgy? (Given the restaurant, its food and the crowd, we’d say the odds favor
unripped.) Has appeared on “Girls (or Boys) Gone Wild”? Has tossed
undergarments on a stage before writhing dancers?

We favored lingering in the parking
lot to get some answers. The Observer’s first and only mate was having none of
it. It occurred to us later that the reality probably couldn’t have topped our
imagining.

 

In last week’s column, The Observer
dropped the mental ball (getting slipperier all the time!) and referred to City
Director Dean Kumpuris by his brother’s name, Drew.

We know the difference; it’s their
alliterative names that caused the brain blip. Their sweet mother, Kula
Kumpuris, knows the difference too, but that didn’t stop her from calling them
“Dreen” a time or two.

Arkansas Times: Your voice in the fight

Are you tired of watered-down news and biased reporting? The Arkansas Times has been fighting for truth and justice for 50 years. As an alternative newspaper in Little Rock, we are tough, determined, and unafraid to take on powerful forces. With over 63,000 Facebook followers, 58,000 Twitter followers, 35,000 Arkansas blog followers, and 70,000 daily email blasts, we are making a difference. But we can't do it without you. Join the 3,400 paid subscribers who support our great journalism and help us hire more writers. Sign up for a subscription today or make a donation of as little as $1 and help keep the Arkansas Times feisty for years to come.

Previous article Thursday thread Next article New planet