It's A Bushwhack!

Tra la la, dum dee dum... I went about my day today.  It was crazy busy at work this morning with all sorts of, um, interesting goings on.  By interesting I mean, well, weird.  Full-moon-in-two-days-weird.  Nothing was wrong, but I was definitely up to my eyeballs in oddities that I know how to tackle but am presented with infrequently.  I was working up a metaphorical sweat (as my office has a steady year round temperature of about, oh, 61 degrees, there's never any actual sweat,) trying to accomplish a whole bunch of different things at once.

So, of course, my cell phone rang.
And, of course, the number display showed the phone number of the Crazymaker's Clan Compound.
Bugger.

I turned off the ringer - just as I would do with any other non-emergency call and I kept about my business.  I had a definite 'oh shite' moment, but a moment is truly and wholly all it was.  Like this:

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Done.

I was under a deadline for a particular task, so I got back to it and I didn't stop even when my phone beeped to alert me to a voicemail.  Eventually, a couple of hours later, I informed my colleagues that I was going to take a break by saying, "Well, my crazy family called during all that, so I'm going to go take a break and check my voicemail, put my hair up because it's driving me crazy and have a snack."

Of these three tasks, I can honestly say that the slice of homemade banana bread I was looking forward to was my top priority.  Really, shouldn't homemade banana bread always be a top priority?  Ten seconds in the microwave, a dab of butter... mmmmm.  Bliss.

At any rate, the VM was from NM.
"Hi Vanci.  It's mom.  I needed to tell you something, it's kind of important, so I'd really appreciate it if you'd call me back at your convenience."

My reaction?  I laughed my damn ass off.  I almost shot banana bread out of my nose.  I mean, really.  Really?  Really, really?  Who does that?  What are we, ten years old?  "Psst, I have something important to tell you, but not right now."  Lord.

I was processing, after I stopped guffawing in the break room, to see how I felt about this cryptic message when my agile brain made a sudden leap that I didn't expect.  I immediately thought of the movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?  There's a scene about two-thirds through the movie where two of the protagonists, Everett and Delmar, are hiding from the law in a movie theater in the middle of the day.  The movie stops, a whistle blows and an entire chain gang of convicts is marched into the theater in shackles where they proceed to take up many rows just a few back from Everett and Delmar in the otherwise empty theater.

Pete, the third main character who has been recently separated from the other two, happens to be in this chain gang.  Obviously, he was recaptured by the law - as opposed to being turned into a toad as Delmar had assumed.  Pete sees his buddies and leans forward to whisper as only John Turturro could:

"Do NOT!  Seek!  The treasure!!!!"

This, my friends, was the voice of sanity for me today.  Fittingly, it turns out that there really is no'treasure' in the movie, or at least not the type of treasure the boys really want, just as there would be none at the other end of any effort or journey I would make to return that phone call.

I can't remember if it's in the theater or later in the movie - when the boys show up at the 'treasure' location and find an ambush waiting for them, that one of the characters exclaims, "It's a bushwhack!"  But I knew right away that this is exactly that.

It's a bushwhack, an ambush, a sneak attack.  That voicemail was crafted to be nothing more than a big, shiny, fat, barbed and lethal hook.  I know this because I know the Narcs very, very well.  But even if I didn't, look at the logic:  if it was truly important information that I needed to know, why not just say it?  Why the drama?  The mystery?  The self-importance of 'you will call me or I will not tell you my secret?'

And do you know what the next step in my process was?  I don't care.  Whatever 'sort of important' information NM feels obliged to share with me, I simply do not care.  There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, that I want from anyone in the NFOO, that I'm willing to give to anyone in the NFOO.  Nothing they can say or do in any way affects or effects my life.

The only news, honestly, that I could receive that would change my day would be that one of them has passed away.  And, to be truly honest, even if it sounds ugly, I am fairly certain that the effect this news would have would be relief.

Short of that, if NM has discovered some new disease on the internet that she can self-diagnose with, I don't care.  If a family pet died, I don't care.  If there's a recently discovered hereditary predisposition to random spontaneous combustion, I don't care.  If GCYB was abducted by aliens, I don't care.  If a long lost relative that I wasn't aware of just left me a million dollars in his will, I don't care.

So, do not seek the treasure.  Why?  Cause that way lies madness, dissatisfaction, harm, foul play, evil people and ultimately, nothing but a worm on a shiny hook.  The good guys just don't lay in wait in the bushes prepared to, well, whack their victim.

I won't be returning this or any calls.  There's no treasure there anyway.

Love,
Vanci