Fretty Frets at the Crazy House

By A Writer Who Is Committed

Photo created by Author using Copilot

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One is crying, one is laughing, one has disappeared, and one is touching her chin with worry.

That one touching her chin? It’s me, minus a straitjacket.

Five-year-old Blondie has managed to get her floor-length locks wrapped so tightly around a curling brush that her hair’s become matted and there’s no way of untangling it. The brush just dangles and bounces when she walks but currently, she’s too occupied holding a hand mirror to her face and crying as hard as she can to see just how red the skin of her face can get.

Nine-year-old Big Sis is laughing hysterically at Blondie’s predicament, on standby beside the kitchen drawer where we keep the scissors.

Daddy B has disappeared, nowhere to be found; his car is missing from the driveway — an escapee on the loose.

Meanwhile, there’s me — Frantic Fretty — pacing the floor, dialing up friends and family for advice, consulting Google for answers, and practically melting into a puddle of panic.

The cat is hiding…The dog is stressed…Just another day at the Crazy House, I guess.

Want to take a shower?

Come.

Get undressed.

Pull back the shower curtain — only to find a life-size cardboard cutout of Sheldon Cooper standing in the bathtub. His frozen eyes are staring at you with the deranged intensity of a serial killer. You scream and hear laughter echoing from downstairs.

Let this be a lesson that, no matter what, you should never let your guard down when your offspring are as unbalanced as you.

There’s been more than once when Frantic Fretty has found herself in an uncompromised position, such as sitting on the commode after dinner in what would otherwise be a private and peaceful moment. She reaches for toilet paper, and as it unwinds, is aghast to find her fingers are touching a creepy black spider that’s been drawn onto a Cottonelle square with Sharpie, expertly crafted by Big Sis.

The booby traps are everywhere.

What kind of insanity possesses a child to unroll bath tissue, draw a menacing spider on something that will kiss another’s bunghole, and then discreetly roll the paper back just so she can frighten Frantic Fretty — lil ole me who just has to pee…?

There’s a big crowd at the Crazy House, and the world always seems to see us at our finest.

Some years ago, Frantic Fretty bought a very expensive Canon EOS digital camera. She was trying to cook dinner and, afraid the noodles would boil over, wanted to stay as close to the pot as possible. At the same time, she was so fascinated by her new camera that she couldn’t put it down. She dared to venture only as far away as the living room where she attached a huge telephoto wildlife lens, then knelt by the window, trying to zoom in on faraway birds. In a flash (and not the camera’s), the neighbors across the street emerged through their front door — man and wife — both engaged in a heated shouting match.

Fretty froze and tried not to draw attention to herself, but the argument escalated as their anger spilled out onto the driveway. That was where the wife happened to glance over to see Fretty sitting by the window with her zoom lens as if she was Gladys Kravitz spying on Samantha Stephens and taking pictures for the evening news.

Normal human beings should overlook Fretty. She fits in so well with her kooky environment as one who wants to connect with the world but just can’t seem to figure out how to sanely do it.

Take, for instance, the neighbor’s dog who never quite learned to get along with others and yet has always been allowed to roam free.

A problem, you suppose?

Well not for Frantic Fretty who thinks with a special kind of different. Our beloved heroine should be celebrated for her efforts in making friends with all of God’s creatures.

One must remember with appreciation her failed experiment with said unleashed dog, when she fried up a porkchop, tied it around her neck with knitting yarn after hearing a yo-mama-so-ugly-she-had-to-tie-a-porkchop-around-her-neck-so-the-dog-would-play-with-her joke. It was a plan so crazy, she thought it just might work.

On that fateful day, she ventured outside where the neighbor’s dog approached her but not in the loving manner she had expected.

Things took quite an ugly turn.

She returned to the Crazy House somewhat shaken where she removed her porkchopless yarn necklace while Daddy B complained, quite forlorn over the waste of a perfectly good piece of meat. And not because he was hungry, but more because of the price of pork.

Daddy B is his own type of looney, though, known to sometimes lose his ever-loving mind in hopes of hanging on to the American dollar longer than any other man alive. He once conducted his own painstaking ritual of emptying and taping vacuum cleaner bags back together - all so he could save $2.99 on a new pack at K-Mart.

He considers it a big win in getting one over on The Man every time he walks away from a restaurant with two extra straws or a handful of napkins, thinking those freebies are helping him get ahead in life.

No wonder Fretty frets.

Here at the asylum, we pride ourselves on housing only the finest collection of screwballs and nutcases — all stemming from a long line of whackos who, by the way, are equal opportunity employers. Fretty, herself, has been known to hire cigarette-smoking, nub-wielding clowns to perform at her two-year-old’s birthday party. Those toddlers are now in their late 20’s and still trying to figure out exactly what they saw that day. When one of the clowns asked the children if they wanted to pet his invisible dog at the end of the leash he had tucked under his armpit, the kids were more concerned about his invisible hands.

Fretty thought she was saving a boatload of money since those clowns were cheaper than all the others, and their advertisement in the Yellow Pages promised “an unforgettable experience.”

We try to blend in, but don’t be surprised if you hear commotion at 4:00 a.m. and see Daddy B in nothing but boxer shorts and boots chasing a rooster with a bucket of water because he’s been crowing outside the bedroom window — his vow for revenge and a clear indication that the Crazy House runs a 24-hour operation.

Still we strive, here at the hospitable hospital, to keep an open-door policy for all houseguests who wish to visit.

Disregard the reviews of Fretty’s brother who once spent a month on the inside with the unhinged bunch. That poor unassuming soul whose head was in desperate need of grooming during his stay allowed Daddy B to convince him that barbers were highway robbers.

So……Fretty’s brother dug around in the guest quarters until he discovered an electric hair trimmer under the bathroom sink downstairs. Halfway through shaving his own head, he quickly emerged from the bathroom in horror.

WHOSE PUBES ARE IN THE ATTACHMENT?!?

How is Fretty supposed to know? Daddy B bought that trimmer at a yard sale for next to nothing.

Okay. So my family’s a little nuts.

Why brag, you ask? Because as wildly unpredictable as they are, my people are boldly courageous, authentic and free-spirited. In this place, there are no discontented whispers about being bored.

Don’t believe me?

Then you should visit.

Who knows? You just might be lucky enough to be the 2,000,000th visitor to cross the threshold — a fortune worthy of celebration and extravagant prizes. The 1,000,000th visitor walked across in 2018 …….and was applauded, showered with confetti, crowned, rewarded with a check and an oversized stuffed rhinoceros direct from Super Walmart.

We even provided a courtesy ride to the bank so she could cash her check.

Now, if that isn’t hospitality, I don’t know what is.

I wonder if EBay sells straitjackets.

Photos provided by Author; Frantic Fretty with a Fortunate Friend