The Call of Nature

I knew the phone call would come, it always does, with regularity and not always with predictability. Its importunity is predictably ill-timed, just as it was this morning.

The phone rang and the voice said, with urgency, “Is it convenient to talk now?” How could I say “No” to such distress, but unfortunately I had received a simultaneous call from nature which was also urgent. It always happens this way!

Nature is never predictable, but somehow the wires of human nature and nature itself are connected, sorta like the old “party lines.” It is a mystery not yet understood. Nature notwithstanding, some calls are always inconvenient… thank you, somebody, for caller-id!

This morning’s call required a quick decision …which call to answer? Fortunately, decisions of such nature are easily made, the laconic words of my father still echoing in the distance, “Son, always answer the call of nature.” His advice was as repetitive as a Hindu Om mantra.

Before kids had cell phones it was not difficult to practice an essential doctrine. Every tree, creek, field or back yard was fair game for all boys and perhaps for not a few girls. Good habits of hygiene developed early in life. This advice was always downloaded upon our own children and any others who might benefit.

Now this was not the only wisdom my father passed on. He had an aversion for stairs, and repeatedly advised, “Now son, never walk down the stairs with your hands in your pockets.” I never did, which probably saved my life many times late at night in strange places.

I forgot his advice only once on the school playground. I didn’t see the rock and tripped, hands in pockets, my face biting the dust. Riotous laughter rose from the recess crowd, and it has affected my personality to this day. Further, the scars remain a stark witness to violating my father’s advice, and I hear him now, “I told you so!” However, it may be a plausible excuse for what nature has done to my face in general.

Concerning escalators, my father tortured us, especially my mother. “Careful,” he’d say as we approached an escalator, “those things can catch your pants, or heel, and literally eat you, squeezing you into a pancake and spitting you out in the basement.” We believed this craftily concocted cockamamie fable for years, and I’m sure it’s what caused my mother’s paranoia in department stores. She literally jumped on and off escalators for the rest of her natural life.

Elevators were also suspect. In fact, I don’t think he ever rode one. As I recall, maybe he never left the ground floor, which may be a clue to his own delusions. Memory is somewhat vague, but I do recall his cautioning, “Son, elevators can malfunction, stop between floors, and you cannot escape. And what if nature happens to call? No, you should avoid elevators like I do.” His harangue droned on.

Other advice about the dangers of daily living were drummed into my head, some I remember, some I’ve rejected as pure bunk. But his viewpoints on ‘the call of nature’ were actually prescient in his primeval era. And I’m still mystified by this abstruse enigma of ‘the call of nature.”

For example, the “call’ never seems to come conveniently. Take church. It is a total embarrassment to sit on the front row, being badgered about sin and urged to repent when another ‘urge’ comes upon you. The choice again…confess or despoil the premises. It is, of course, the work of the devil, and he laughs as you walk back up the aisle, still a sinner, head low, almost in a run, highly humiliated in your rapid exit. “Look at him,” people think, laughing, knowing. Likewise the movies.

Then there’s the airplane, and you’re window-seated. Suddenly, without warning, ‘nature calls.’ You hesitate, hoping it’s a false alarm, but it calls again, and again, in extremis. You bolt from the seat, stumble over two sleeping passengers, rush down the aisle, and guess what? You’re number 10 in line for the one toilet. Never fails! Which may be the reason the congressman, his name escapes me, relieved himself in the galley, claiming, upon arrest, “extreme hardship.”

Time and space prohibit recollections of such places like China, sports stadiums, cars, space ships and any place with running water. But there’s no need to elaborate further. Besides, I think I’m being called just now.

Bud Hearn
July 30, 2009