RAT CLUB

Rat Club is an island in the heart’s ocean.

Let me back up.

If, pursuant to the laws of Yard Vehicles, you are reminded mid-heft that you really cannot be yanking the orange plastic caster-wheeled car filled with water, sand, and pine needles over the threshold of the mud room with the intent to park it on the couch;

If, in the course of the ever-fraught events that fall under the broad and battered umbrella of “breakfast,” it becomes clear that Mama has continued her unbroken streak of making the Very Worst Possible Thing to Have to Eat, such as PORRIDGE WITH SYRUP THAT YOU JUST ASKED FOR;

If, as is the way of this broken world, brother has stolen most of the legs off the pony from the Toy Library;

If, with her intolerable ease, sister is making yet another beautiful drawing, and you are having a great deal of trouble remembering that you yourself recently became an initiate of the Art Project, when you finally picked up a pen without yelling that it was too hard and throwing it, and in fact even made A Dog Named Poop, which was rather famous immediately, and so could rest easy if only you could ditch the habit of art-hatred but it is proving terribly hard;

“A Dog Named Poop”

If your brother has just put a toy car in your hair with some stolen gum;

If the toilet paper shredding project that was going really well has just been canceled by a deranged-looking blonde who uttered nothing but “Mama’s going to go take a time-out by the mailbox”;

If you jumped out of the highest “owl nest” in the apple tree and TOLD brother it was a secret but he told Mama anyway, even though you only super mildly twisted your ankle and thus it had been a huge success and the finking out on you was entirely unnecessary;

If Mama got salty with you while buckling you into the bus in the morning because you move at glacial pace 100% of the time and she worries for some reason about the seventeen cars waiting behind Ms. Alyssa’s bus while you ask pressing questions about the interactions between ice and lava, or what the precise nature of the Edmund Fitzgerald’s payload was;

If you were very proud of your school picture, that you didn’t yell at or bite the photographer, whom you were assured was *allowed* to take your picture (unlike the lady at the skate park who called the cops on your mom) but when the pictures finally arrived in your mailbox you felt that sister’s chosen background of “lasers” was in fact FAR better than your own choice, “radiant,” despite the deep and consistent love of hydrangeas that guided your original choice;

If it becomes difficult to wait until school the next day to tell your music teacher about Michael Jackson, whose song “Thriller” you admire so fervently as to make you wax poetic inside of agrammatical sentence-sighs from your car bumper seat;

If Dada unstrung the filthy playroom hammock on account of Dangerous Swinging Choices Despite Reminders, and now all that’s left is the high-dangling D-ring you cannot reach, even with a Kitchen Stool—

Why then, peace be upon you, for there is always, always Rat Club.

Rat Club usually meets under the dining room table. It has many variations.

If you need to feel calmer, or more engaged, you can always get something semi-fragile to very-fragile out of the server, which stands nearby. Something about handling with verve and precarity the dual fragility and sturdiness of Serving Dishes is really quite the perfect tonic to the stresses of Being Told What to Do. Get your platter or bowl quietly though. And if Mama has already nixed this particular library of breakables, you can always pad to the basement in bare feet to get Overflow Vases, which she usually grudgingly lets by, on account of she hates having so many vases anyway, and is too tired stop you as you run by, because you are fast, very fast, as a member of the Rat Race.

If you need to feel Powerful and/or Helpful, there is a variation of Rat Club in which the under-table area becomes an animal hospital. There is almost never a shortage of “hurt chick” to tend, in the form of a sibling, who requires urgent care for a perennially broken wing, or having been recently ravaged by an alligator, or the especially involved situation of both of these things having occurred, plus piranhas.

If you’re mostly just hangry, but for you this is a dangerous situation, because your brain without enough glucose available to it becomes unwired such that all you can do or even think about is tackling and medium-hard punching/biting your sister, and you will do this until your mother’s SI joint goes out again trying to pull you off her— well then, there is always Ratty’s Restaurant.

At RR, you may eat popcorn from a bowl on the floor, even though you’re 100% going to kick it over, because all things are worth sacrificing to get ABSOLUTELY ANY food into you. Ratty’s Restaurant has the bonus feature of sometimes being harrassed by “Cheffie,” who will yell in a very bad French accent about how you SHOULD NOT, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, steal and eat [her] DELICIOUS ________ from the table for these are for CUSTOMERS ONLY, NOT FILTHY RATS. This way you get to still feel nice and naughty, but— and this is key— won’t actually be punished.

Rat Club in all its iterations has the helpful feature of feeling proprietary— of somehow gently but firmly excluding the worst of the would-be interlopers, such as the deeply grievous category of babies. One can exercise one’s burgeoning sense of what is allowed and what is not at Rat Club, and it is always clear that babies are not allowed. One must have a sense of belonging, after all, and sometimes, one must go ahead and say it, this elusive sense of belonging is best accessed, especially under duress / during turmoil, by way of a mild but purposeful exclusion principle. What can we say? Babies would neither be happy, nor entirely safe, at Rat Club, so it really does feel ok, and helpful, to draw a line.

There are several items I wish to zingle with my laser-pointer as I close, in recognition of the fact that I very shortly need to start the next edition of the Rejected Meals Parade. These items all fall under the blanket-fort of Rat Club:

I wish for you today a quick and comfortable entrance to your own Rat Club.

I wish for you to remember, while there, the infinite possibilities of the server, and the basement vase collection— how every single household item can be a thing of wonder, if treated as such. Old yarn? It can be cut up! Into fluff! That xylophone no one has touched for two years? Front-man’s guitar for the Rat Band!

I wish that inside your Rat Club there are people who understand the power of Rat Club, its sweet and deep resonance of belonging, of interacting in a dimmed, safe space, and that yes— today— there will be no babies allowed. Nothing against babies— well, maybe a little bit against babies, who are often fairly awful— but it’s just really not the best idea.

I wish that while at Rat Club you will make sure to bring snax, even if it means getting yelled at by Mama for emptying both the pantry cupboard and the vegetable drawer in the fridge and indiscriminately mixing all items in a large wooden bowl. Some things are worth it. I mean, look at that Food Soup. It can heal the worst of Chickie’s injuries, if only you are patient with her when she tugs at her leash. Never mind where you got the leash, nor that you tied it around Chickie’s waist, very clearly against the Tying Rules.

I wish for you that Rat Club may bind your wounds with the tender ministries of stolen toilet paper. Let the cooing care of your Rat Club compatriot(s) sink into your fractured bones. You didn’t survive the alligator attack just to give up on flying.

And mostly I wish for you, at Rat Club, All the Blankets in the House. For these are the bodies of care, and calming, and restoration. The Moose Fleece and the Owl Fleece and the Dirty Yard Fleece shall all come together and make a soft and sinking sea of fleece for your tiny face, which is just one of the bright, deliciously naughty, brave and glinting faces in a whole sea of lovely silky pink-nosed ratties— who, when you are ready, will wish very much to resume running the alleys of the town with you, inventing, and stealing, and biting, and loving, and surviving, and squealing in surprise and delight, and being as ratty as rats ever could be— as rats shall—