Michael D. Davis.

I think I’ve pretty well established the madhouse in which I live. If such a thing as a normal person exists, no member of my family can be considered one. My experience on Sunday over a 20 minute period perfectly illustrates this point.

The 20 minutes started off with my Ma. We had been sitting in the living room watching TV, but she had decided to put on her pajamas. She came back a few minutes later in pajamas, but without her eyeglasses. She said, “I was gonna get a pop, but I forgot. ”

“Did you forget anything else?” I asked. “Your glasses are gone.” She left with glasses and came back without and didn’t seem to notice that she could see less than usual. I got up, left Ma with Dixie, and went to retrieve a pop and her glasses.

When I got to the kitchen, I found my sister. She stood in the middle of the room, oddly attired, stuffing a wad of wet wipes into a sack. When I say wad of wet wipes, I mean the entire contents of a wet wipe container. I ignored this. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t want to know what was going on.

By the time I got back to the living room with Ma’s glasses and pop, Dixie was up and staring at the wall. Her eyes were fixed on this one point at the corner of the ceiling and the wall. It took me a moment to figure out she was staring at a dust bunny. This dust bunny usually stayed still in its place; however, we’d turned on the fan that day, and it decided to move about in the breeze. Dixie wasn’t having it. She barked, growled, and climbed up on pillows to get a better look at the intrepid intruder.

I got the broom to remedy the situation. I got the dust bunny out of its hiding spot as Dixie supervised. When she was satisfied that I had completed the job, she went to lie down.

I went to tell my sister of the odd and humorous events of the evening; however, she and the sack of wet wipes were gone from the kitchen. I found her in her room. After a brief chat, I started back to the living room. I walked past the room in which my father sat pantsless, watching TV, and something fell off the wall inside the room. I was somehow blamed for this occurrence, as my father said something along the lines of, “How’d ya knock that down from out there?”

Back in the living room, I found Dixie still giving the wall sideways glances. I fell upon the couch, suddenly very tired. To some, this may seem like a very odd 20 minutes, and it was. But for me, it was just 20 minutes on a regular Sunday.