It's In The Holiday Mail

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© 2004 R.C. Barajas

o there I was, crouched low over the rug, dismembering a body with a hacksaw.

That’s not a line one gets to write very often in non-fiction. I can’t even remember the last time I got to write such a colorful sentence. You really have to know the right people to get to write something like that.

But the truth is, before you earn the writing of such a sentence, you’re faced with the actual dismembering itself. I like to find something to help take my mind off the sheer drudgery of the task. For me, audiobooks are the answer.

Listening to Al Franken read his, “Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” made the hacking and sawing more enjoyable – not that it wasn’t already. Hearing the transparent anti-truths of the pundits and politicians Al lambastes, gave me a soothing, almost transcendental rage that helped the hacksaw move very smartly through the dense material at hand.

By the time the kids got home from school, my tricep was exhausted and the room was strewn with body parts. I was almost done, except for the especially troubling thorax, so I left the midsection propped in a corner with the saw in its sternum. Man, was that floor a mess!

The interesting part, of course, will be mailing these bits and pieces – ten in all – to the people on my holiday list. This is likely to be fairly expensive. The body as a whole was no featherweight, and the exploded diagram version certainly adds up to the sum of its parts – minus a few less attractive scraps and oddments that I already disposed of. 

Then, I’ll have to rustle up sturdy boxes for each piece, not to mention the Ziploc Double-Guard gallon-sized plastic bags (The best for freezing meat! Actually says so on the box!). As with any fun but messy project, it’s the sorting out and cleaning-up that’s the real pain in the neck.

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