“Dumb!” . . . “DUMB!!!”
The only word that parrot knew – over and over – you tried teaching him other words – spent hours begging, pleading and cajoling. It was all you could get out of Kramer’s beak.
He was an old bird – he was tired – he had enough of you. Sitting on the perch in his cage. Staring at you, bouncing from one leg to the other. Crapping on the newspaper that hadn’t been changed in maybe a year.
Gramps loved that bird. Kramer was a gift from one of his Octogenarian girlfriends. She taught him that word – said it would keep him company when she wasn’t around, which was often. You didn’t blame her – he was, by his own admission, a slob.
Plates and silverware left sitting, having been half-eaten since the Peloponnesian Wars – strewn on bookcases and end tables, becoming specimens of dried food or science experiments. Mountains of smoked Viceroy Commanders, empty Hotel glasses and White Horse Scotch bottles. Caramel colored walls and smelling like a bar that never closed. It’s a wonder he had a girlfriend. She was lonely. She lived in a one-bedroom a floor above him. She hardly ever dressed. She was always wearing an enormous Terrycloth robe
Gramps was dead. Best anyone could guess, he was watching Seinfeld at the time. It was his favorite – the reason the Parrot was named Kramer. The girlfriend originally named him Bridget – she liked the way it sounded – gender was a low priority.
Gramps was frozen in his chair, staring straight ahead with a kind of “uh-oh” look on his face. Khaki pants and a loud Hawaiian shirt.
You wound up being the watch party because your mom was in hysterics and couldn’t handle the notion of being in the same room with a dead person, especially with one he called his favorite.
So you got the call – and you spent the better part of three hours waiting for the Coroner to show up – staring at a body sitting comfortably and not talking back.
Something about how silent a room gets when there’s a corpse close by. You could say the silence was deafening, but it was more than that.
It was as if the whole room was silently waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Nothing dropped, but it got you looking around – looking at the walls – the walls that hadn’t seen a coat of paint since Nixon was President. Bookshelves crammed with Travel books – places Gramps wanted to go to but never quite got around to.
A whole life crammed into the space of a Bachelor Apartment. A whole life you were going to have to sort through and make discoveries over. You were curious and dreading it at the same time. Finding out your mom had brothers she didn’t know about, but would soon enough. Grams death certificate. Grams, who you never actually met because she died when you were barely two at the time. A drawer full of old Gent Magazines. You discovered Gramps was a boob guy. His favorite expression; “a balcony you could do Shakespeare off of”. It finally made sense.
This was a Reality show just waiting to happen.
The kitchen was an episode all by itself. It was ground Zero for its own personal tornado.
Gramps liked bargains. When the market filled the Smart-Shopper room with dented cans and remaindered bad marketing campaigns, Gramps loaded up. A makeshift Pantry was crammed to capacity with cans of Tomato-Kambucha soup, Four Alarm Ramen, Green beans with Mandarin Oranges, Cinnamon-Garlic Marmite he accumulated over the years. Cans had already exploded, owing to ancient sell-by dates.
The undiscovered stories were one thing – the exploding cans and a 1930s era Kelvinator refrigerator with cures for Cancer and the common cold were another.
The Coroners Office finally arrived. Two attendants, a gurney and a zip-up plastic bag were the final send-off. Signing papers, getting instructions on when to pick up the body and who to call were handled with all the efficiency of an Ikea Checkout. It was their job, after all.
It didn’t help matters that the whole procedure was peppered with remarks of “Dumb” from Kramer. You kept apologizing.
The notion of you being stuck with that bird didn’t resonate well. The girlfriend was nowhere to be found and cleaning the cage made you seriously consider an animal shelter. But your mom was actually fond of Kramer, so . . .
You packed up the car, put the bird and his cage in the backseat and drove off.
With the windows rolled down and a breeze blowing in you cranked up the radio, letting KROQ drown out the steady drone of “dumb” coming from the backseat.
But then you discovered Kramer was actually singing along and gyrating to the music.
Big Audio Dynamite?
Death is strange – life is stranger.
And to go along with your lofty questions on life, here’s 90 minutes of KROQ, exactly as it was on September 26, 1986.
