I Look Better In Binary

I Look Better In Binary

By Becky M. Pourchot

Copyright © 2011 Becky M. Pourchot, all rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Book design and illustrations by Andrew Welyczko

First printing October, 2011 - Smashwords Edition

To Mom and Dad,

who still laugh at my jokes.

Table of Contents

Nickels for Whooping Cranes

The Phantom Nightlight

Spittoons Aren’t Just for Cowboys

I’m a Jew Who Loves Ham

My Mom Doesn’t Make Me Waffles

The Girl with the Hail Sized Bosom

There are No Winners in Truth Or Dare

Curiosity Killed the Rabbit

Discipline for Ducklings

The Family Jewels

I Look Better in Binary

The Blue Spruce

Photo Collage

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Nickels for Whooping Cranes

I flipped through my treasured deck of Wild Safari Animal Cards, past hippos and hyenas, paying due attention to each and every animal and all their quirky character traits. I stopped at an image of an exceptionally cute hedgehog and read out loud, On average, a hedgehog’s heart beats three hundred times per minute.

I did not know that, I thought, feeling a chill of excitement course through my eleven year old body.

My mom was not willing to pay the low, low price of $19.99 for the animal card collection (even after she witnessed the TV ad for the educational cards that will make your kids say ‘Wow’), but she was willing to pay fifty cents for a used, slightly tattered version at a garage sale. Despite the fact that the deck was completely missing the marsupial section and the free explorer’s compass, I was still exceedingly happy to own the set.

I flipped past oxen and sloths then came to a long necked bird with outstretched wings. The majestic whooping crane, I thought with pride. You see, I had a kinship with these birds. I was a card carrying member of the International Crane Foundation—only the most important bird rehabilitation center in the world.

A couple months back, while staying home from school with a case of double pinkeye, my friend Heidi called me.

You totally missed the best field trip ever, she said, assuring me that if I had gone, my life would have been changed forever. According to Heidi, the International Crane Foundation (IFC) in Baraboo, Wisconsin was a magical place—a place where birds the size of gazelles roamed in spacious pens waiting for the day that they would fly free. Heidi said she got to tag a bird and a few lucky others got to use crane shaped puppets to hand feed the newborn whooping cranes.

Best of all, Heidi said, when the tour came to an end, everyone in the entire sixth grade class got a crane shaped cookie.

I listened intently and decided that even though I had missed the tour, I was going to find some way to be a part of this brilliant, bird-loving operation.

Perhaps, I thought, the International Crane Foundation deserved a charity event.

For as long as I can remember I wanted to host a carnival in my backyard. Not one that simply provided mindless entertainment for the masses, but one that rose above the dirt, grime and hedonism of regular fairs and instead raised funds for injured, neglected, or endangered animals—like whooping cranes.

I envisioned my guests flocking from all over—not only from my neighborhood of Parkwood Hills but the adjacent Faircrest and Orchard Ridge on the other side of the mall. Their pockets would be packed full of their parents’ dollars, all of them eager to spend big money on questionable entertainment. At the end of the day they’d head home, arms full of plastic swords and neon dogs the size of three year olds, their bellies happily bloated with corn dogs and fried onion blossoms all for the sake of animals in need. It was going to be the greatest animal benefit carnival Acadia Drive had ever seen.

Summer vacation had just begun, and I had a lot of planning ahead of me. A week before the scheduled event, I laid myself down on the living room floor, kicked my heels to my shorts, opened a notebook in front of me and scrawled the words: Rides, games, food, and prizes across the top of the page.

Addressing rides first, I wrote down my plans. I envisioned a full sized Ferris wheel, with neon lit spokes, a mini rollercoaster with a dragon head, and a tilt-o-whirl with paintings of clowns that would whip by, blowing the scent of fried cheese curds your way.

Now mind you, I personally hated midway rides. There was nothing enticing to me about a rusting pirate ship swinging so high it pushed the boundaries of its hinges. Besides, I had what my dad once called an inner ear imbalance causing me to vomit while riding anything that included the words gyro, spin, or whirl in its title. However, the savvy business girl in me knew midway rides were what drew people in, so I decided if my friends were willing to pay money to risk revisiting their breakfasts it was okay by me.

My mom walked into the room and glanced down at my elaborate lists.

You know Disney won’t license out a Dumbo ride to you, she said.

I looked up at her and frowned then crossed out the word Dumbo, then sadly slashed through Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and It’s a Small World as well.

My mom then read out loud with a sour tinge in her voice: Funnel cakes, cotton candy, and spicy curly fries? Who’s going to make all those, Becky?

I thought maybe Velma the lunch lady from school might want to donate her time.

I was guessing that without students to feed, Velma was probably bored, staring longingly out the window, cursing that summer vacation even existed. I’d be doing Velma a favor.

I think I remember her saying she spent her summers trucking cross country with her husband, Mom said.

Somehow I couldn’t imagine Velma doing anything non-food related. I chose to stick with my pre-conceived image of the pepper-grey lunch lady sitting at her kitchen table alone all summer long with a cold tray of tater tots beside her and no one to feed. Poor Velma missed her kids. If only I had her phone number, I bet she’d jump at a chance to serve corn dogs.

Disappointed, I crossed deep-fried turkey legs, and frozen Twinkie pops from my list.

Part of my plan for the midway also involved importing a few unsavory carnies all the way from Texas to come in and set up games that involved BB guns, ping pong balls and really heavy hammers. My mom didn’t like this at all.

Do you know anyone from Texas?

I didn’t. In fact, the only people I’d even seen from Texas were in the movie The Best Little Whore House in Texas, and they were probably just actors. I was screwed. I crossed out toothless carnies.

Feeling a bit dejected about my plans, I moved on to my charity options. Though the cranes were first on my list, there were two other important charities that desperately needed my consideration. The first was Jews for Roo’s—an Australian Hasidic group that brought food to malnourished marsupials. The second was the Hollywood Exploited Llama Project or HELP, which found foster care for neglected camelids in the entertainment industry.

Even though I knew there were performing alpacas that needed a nurturing environment, I was still leaning towards the ICF with their clever puppet cranes and sugar cookies. Baraboo was only an hour by car, which meant when my carnival was over I could actually get a tour, pet a rare white-naped crane behind the ears, then hand over a giant cardboard check with my generous donation on it.

In my mind, my mom would take a photo of me and the director (dressed in her full body whooping crane suit, of course) passing the check between us. People decades later would visit the crane center, see the faded photo on the lobby wall of the director and me and say: Oh that’s Becky Meyer, the amazing sixth grader whose donation single-handedly rescued the whooping crane from extinction.

I’d like to think at the age of eleven, my philanthropic tendencies were self-motivated, but there were outside influences—mainly God and guilt. In late May, about a month before my fundraising event culminated, I sat behind a school desk in a beige colored room, anxiously watching David Brooks walk around the Sunday School classroom with a tin box in his hand. Each classmate dutifully dropped their parent’s spare coins in, the money echoing with a ca-chink at the bottom of the can. We were learning about tzedakah—Jewish charity—and my dad had forgotten to give me any change.

Though my parents never actually said it out loud, I theorized that they passive aggressively forgot my tzedakah because they thought providing tree saplings for traffic medians in Israel was ludicrous, thus from time to time they conveniently forgot.

When David reached my desk, I cupped my empty hand over the slot and slid my fingers as if I was releasing a coin.

My teacher, Hanna, looked to me.

I don’t think it made it in, she said.

I realized that she probably thought I had pocketed it. This was not good. Hanna was friends with the rabbi, and the rabbi, I assumed, was pals with God. That’s two degrees of separation from the big man himself. So I confessed.

My parents forgot to give me money, I blurted out almost in tears.

That’s fine, Becky. You can always bring more next week.

Hanna acted as if she didn’t care, but there was no guarantee that she wouldn’t report me to God.

I’m so, so sorry God, I thought, I promise next week I’ll bring enough money so the Israelites can plant enough trees to landscape an entire mall parking lot.

As I repented in my head, my teacher moved on to the lesson.

"Of the 613 mitzvoth, or good deeds, that a Jew is expected to perform, tzedakah is the most important. Tzedak-ah can be ranked in a hierarchy with eight levels, she said, placing an emphasis on the ah" in tzedakah, which I took as a demonstration of her mastery of the Hebrew language—the language of God.

The best kind of charity is the kind that allows people to be self reliant. The least impressive is the one in which someone donates unenthusiastically.

That’s level one for you, Mom and Dad, I thought still a little miffed.

Hanna handed out a sheet with the eight levels of tzedakah on it, and we went around the room and each of us shared an act of charity we had performed. I had trouble coming up with anything God worthy, so without anything better I said, Once I gave a nickel to a man in a Santa hat ringing a bell in front of the Piggly Wiggly.

Yes. That counts, Hanna said slowly, but I somehow suspected that Jews for Roos would have been a better option.

At the end of class I folded up the tzedakah sheet and tucked it in my pocket. My mom frequently reminded me of the importance of doing mitzvoth (especially when she needed help cleaning out the car or carrying in the groceries), so I appreciated having a list of God’s extra credit points on hand.

Despite making it very clear to God that I would do his bidding from then on out, things with the carnival were going miserably. When I looked in the phonebook for carnival rides nothing was listed. I did find a petting zoo for hire, but having been a supporter of the Hollywood Llama Project, I couldn’t participate in such a venture in good standing, so I decided against it.

I found a clown for hire, but when I spoke with Choco on the phone, he didn’t strike me as the jovial sort. There was an odd pounding followed by a squeal sound in the background at Choco’s house that sounded vaguely like chipmunks being hit with hammers, and I decided Choco was probably not as sweet as the yellow pages clip art depicted. When he asked for a fifty dollar down payment, I asked him if I could pay him with the funny money (issued by Alfred E. Neuman himself). I had hoped that since he was a clown he might appreciate the humor, but Choco just said Not funny kid, with a smoker’s cough, and hung up.

Things were not looking good, but knowing that those poor baby cranes desperately needed puppet mothers kept me from giving up. I resolved to downsize my operations.

With little more than a date planned out, I began making signs. In bubble letters I wrote: The Crazy, Colossal Crane Carnival. Rides, Games, Food, and Fun Fun Fun! Sure, I knew it wasn’t going to be colossal, or all that crazy, but I thought the alliteration was brilliant. I wrote the word fun a bunch of times hoping people would be led to believe it was going to be a ton of excitement—more fun than the Sun Prairie Corn Festival that only listed the word fun twice on their signs.

I then made ten different versions of the sign, drawing images of cranes with bow ties—some riding Ferris wheels and others throwing darts at balloons. Unfortunately I didn’t exactly know what a crane looked like, so most of the pictures ended up looking like Big Bird. It wasn’t an ideal depiction, but it would have to do.

Searching out the far corners of our house, in closets and under couch cushions, I went on a hunt for supplies. I found rainbow striped bouncy balls, a dog saliva covered Frisbee, and a few dirty foam balls with child sized bites taken out of them. I then went to the kitchen and counted out five plastic containers from our Lazy Susan.

My mom coveted her Tupperware like a hobbit coveted The Ring. As I grabbed at her plastic bowls, from the other room she became telepathically aware that her precious Fridge Smart storage set was at risk. She yelled across the house, Don’t take my Tupperware! I took them anyway and resolved to return them right after the carnival.

I grabbed a steak knife and three sponges from under the sink and headed for the garage where I began sawing a circle into a large cardboard box. I stuck my head in for sizing and made appropriate adjustments, then painted two elfin ears and a pointy red hat on top of the circle and carefully painted the words Splat the Gnome.

I then went into the basement and dove into our toy boxes, pulling out discarded army guys, long forgotten rubber reptiles, and plastic food from a toy kitchen that I never really used. I threw it all in a bag and wrote with magic marker prizes on the side. My carnival was coming along nicely.

When my mom saw the heap of materials I collected for the carnival, she wasn’t pleased.

You can’t keep your stuff in the middle of the living room. Cookie is going to be here cleaning all day. She’s doing the living room next. Bring this up to your room now.

Cookie had been our cleaning woman for five years. When I asked how she got her nickname, she told me that friends gave it to her because she loves cookies so much. She was thin and sinewy with wrinkles so deep it looked like tears had left gullies on her face. She certainly didn’t look like someone who ate Oreos with abandon.

I could hear Cookie vacuuming on the stairs, so I quickly piled my supplies into my arms and dropped them in