Big Mike finally has time to start teaching Ricky the basics of audio engineering, but his first lesson is interrupted by a call from his sister Becky demanding Ricky drop everything to take his very demanding nieces to ballet class.
Podcast Script (not including ad-libs):
“Livin’ the dream, man… living’ the dream…”
That’s what Big Mike always says when things are going wrong. Well… I guess you could say last Wednesday was an exercise in livin’ the dream for me.
See, it was a kinda low-key day at the studio, with a client Big Mike don’t really care about ’cause they got money but no hits, so he promised me on Wednesday afternoon he was gonna teach me a few things about ProTools and signal chain. Y’know, so I could start learning the whole engineering thing for when the recording guys are out of town or too drunk or hungover to assist Mike with clients.
In other words, I was gonna be moving up in the studio world.
So, I was there on Wednesday and Big Mike was explaining things and I was taking notes and then at 1pm my phone rang.
“Ah, shit, sorry, boss.”
Big Mike looked at my phone. “Who’s Becky?”
“That’s my sister. Um… I should probably answer it ‘cause she never calls me during the day. Is that OK?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
So I answer it and Becky tells me I need to drop everything and go fetch my nieces from kindergarten ‘cause Becky was working and filling in for Wayne Rathko on the five o’clock news (y’know, on the goofy weather segment) and Mama Rat was supposed to be taking care of the kids but Marvin had an earache so Mama took him to the doctor and wouldn’t be back in time to pick up Sherry and Susie and take them to ballet class.
“Um… I’m at work, Becky.”
“So what? Your idiot boss isn’t even going to notice if you slip out for a couple hours!”
Well… I mean, normally that would probably be true, but, see: in this case, my “idiot boss” was sitting right next to me and overheard the whole thing and glared at me while I had this “oh shit” look on my face.
He rolled his eyes and waved his pudgy hand towards the control room door and I said to Becky, “Well, I mean, I can’t just leave like that. I gotta ask Big Mike if it’s OK for me to leave for a couple hours and—”
Big Mike rolled his eyes again and then—real loud so as to make sure it picked up in the phone and Becky could hear it—he told me, “It’s fine, kid. Go pick up your idiot sister’s kids.”
“OK, thanks Big Mike!” And then I grabbed my keys and headed out the door.
Becky for her part started yelling about “Who does that pig think he is calling me an idiot?” but I’d split already as so as to minimize the amount of that sorta thing Big Mike could overhear.
So, off I went to Susie and Sherry’s school, where I had once been an inmate myself. And when I was waiting in the school office for them to come down, the old vice principal Mrs. Swiss came out of her office and glared at me.
“Richard Rateriff? What the Hell are you doing here?”
“I’m picking up my nieces, Susie and Sherry Ratkowski.”
“Hmph… and here I thought you’d come to finally clean up the grafitti you left on the back of Portable 9.”
“Now, ma’am, like I told you back in sixth grade, that wasn’t me that wrote that dirty limerick about the gym teacher. And I ain’t no snitch so I ain’t gonna say who it was but it wasn’t me.”
“It matched your writing and typical spelling errors.”
“Oh, as if anyone can spell ‘Nantucket’… pfft!”
Well, fortunately, the girls came in and short-circuited that whole fight, squeaking, “Uncle Ricky! Take us to McRat’s!”
“Uh… your mama told me I have to take you to ballet class and then she wants you to get a proper dinner at Grandma’s house when she’s back from the doctor with Marvin.”
“We wanna go to McRat’s!”
And they shrieked at me about McRat’s all the way from school to home to fetch their ballet bags and get them to get changed into their ballerina outfits and then they kept shrieking all the way to ballet class.
Now, Becky doesn’t mind if the kids go to McRat’s on occasion, but she’s very strict about snacks and whatnot before dinner. I knew from getting yelled at previously that I should only offer the girls granola bars and apples—especially since, unlike their brother Marvin, there was a very low chance that I would get bit for holding out on them on the McRat’s front.
Still, by the time I got them to the Balleratina School of Dance, I had a pounding headache from all the screeching and that wasn’t helped by the scowling lady at the front desk who wouldn’t let me pass.
“Name?”
“Uh, I’m Ricky Rateriff and these are my nieces Sherry and Susie Ratkowsi. They have class here.”
“I know Sherry and Susie. I don’t know you.”
“Like I told ya: I’m their uncle. Becky Ratkowski is my sister, but usually my mama Margaret Rateriff brings them to class.”
“Do you have authorization?”
“Yeah, ma’am. Becky called and yelled at me to pick ‘em up ‘cause our Mama had to take their brother Marvin to the doctor.”
Well, the scowling lady was relieved that Marvin wasn’t there that day, but she seemed to not believe I was a relative and not some sort of weirdo kidnapper or whatever who was gonna steal the kids but still bring them to ballet class anyway, so she called Becky. Becky told her it was fine and then the scowling lady got all pouty and sighed and said it was OK for me walk the girls back to the actual dance studio, but I had to sit in the waiting room during class and not watch nothin’.
Man, I hate waiting rooms. Whether it’s the doctor’s office or the DMV or the courthouse, the waiting is the worst part, and it’s only made worse by a room full of scowling moms and grandmas glaring at me and not even saying hi.
Finally, one old biddy piped up. “And whose father are you?”
“Um, no one’s. But I’m Susie and Sherry’s uncle.”
“Oh… so you’re Margaret’s ne’er-do-well son who’s wasting his life working with druggie musicians… we’ve heard all about you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I’m wasting my life, ma’am. I’m gonna be a record producer someday.”
The old biddy nodded slowly in that way that old ladies do when they think you’re completely full of shit but they don’t wanna come right out and say so. And that was the only conversation for the whole hour long class as all the womenfolk glared at the man intruding on their private girl space.
Not gonna lie, I thought it was kinda bullshit that I couldn’t watch the class. I mean, aren’t we supposed to encourage little kids and cheer them on and stuff? You can’t do that from out in the waiting room.
Whatever. Eventually the class was over and Susie and Sherry came out. “Uncle Ricky! We learned how to plié today!”
“That’s awesome! I bet you did a real good job of it!”
“Wanna see?”
“Well, sure!”
“You’re gonna have to take us to McRat Burger first!”
“Oh. Well, I gotta run that by your mama ‘cause she probably wants you to eat a proper dinner instead.”
“We don’t care. Take us to McRat’s!”
And then the screeching began all over again, but I managed to get them out and into the parking lot without too much of a big scene and called Becky, who didn’t answer the phone.
I did manage to get a hold of Mama Rat, though, who told me to meet her and Marvin at McRat’s, Becky’s proper dinner plans be damned.
Poor Marvin… I could tell he really was sick with his earache because he didn’t want to do his usual thing of being a terror in the ballpit. Instead, he just curled up in the booth next to me, cuddled up under my arm, while Sherry and Susie did enough terrorizing for the whole family.
“You’re not feeling too good, huh, lil’ man?”
“Owie ear, Unka Wikie.”
“Yeah, that’s rough, man. The doctor gave you some medicine, though. You’ll feel better in a few days.”
Marvin just grunted and started sucking his thumb.
“Did you get the banana-flavored medicine? That was my favorite when I was a little rat.”
He nodded and yawned. I guess he hadn’t had his nap earlier, which meant he was probably gonna be miserable for Becky when she got home from work a couple hours later, so I encouraged him to doze off and he did. Then when Becky called Mama Rat to find out where we were, I carried Marvin out to his car seat in Mama’s minivan and helped her move the girls’ booster seats from my car to the minivan. Once she had the girls wrangled, too, they headed home.
I could have used a nap myself, but I thought it wisest to text Big Mike to see what he wanted picked up on my way back to the studio, which was sushi and beer.
“Well, aren’t you gonna give us a demonstration?”
“A what?”
“Show us what you learned!”
“Oh, um, lemme get my notes from this morning… so, for signal chain it’s microphone to XLR cable to—”
“No, no, no. We wanna see a piroutte.”
“A pirate? Um… OK… Yo ho ho, arr… where’s me rum?”
Well, the guys all laughed and Big Mike said, “Didn’t you learn nothin’ at ballet class today?”
“Oh, that. Well, I learned Mama Rat’s been telling all the other moms and grandmas in the waiting room that she thinks I’m wasting my life, sir.”
Big Mike grunted. “Pfft… they all say that. Mine didn’t shut up ’til I got my tenth Grammy.”
“Oh.”
“Tell those old bags to fuck off.”
“Well, I was real tempted, boss.”
Big Mike then growled and squinted his beady eyes. “Your nieces go to Balleratina? Gawd, they’re all such stuck up snobs there; my ex sent our girls there for ten years. Next time you’re there, tell ‘em Big Mike said they can blow me!”
“Well, OK, sir.”
So, that was kinda how that went. Obviously, I’m not actually gonna pass on that “blow me” message from Big Mike if I have to take the girls there again, but, also, I ain’t gonna tell him that.
And I guess Marvin’s feeling a lot better now ‘cause Mama Rat said Becky took all three of them to the mall to see Santa on Saturday and Marvin was running laps around Santa’s Enchanted Wonderland trying to catch one of them pimply teenagers they have dressed up as elves ‘cause I dunno why but I guess the teenager said Marvin could only have one candy cane and that pissed him right off.
Apparently, the teenager had to run and hide in the janitor’s closet down the administrative hall in behind the Rat Navy store to get away from Marvin and probably that only worked because Marvin got distracted by the Sugar Factory candy store… it was a whole thing.
Anyway, I told Baby all about the whole ballet and McRat’s ordeal on our Saturday night date and she thought it was real sweet that I took my nieces to ballet class. Then she went on and on about how much she loved taking ballet classes at Balleratina when she was a kid. She didn’t have anything nice to say about Big Mike’s girls, though: “Wait, are they the Ratenko sisters? Ewww… they were so nasty! Spoiled rotten stuck up bullies!”
Well, that was when Myles (who was on unwilling chaperone duty yet again) looked up from the stocks section of the newspaper and muttered something about the pot meeting the kettle… dunno what that was about, but him and Baby had a big ol’ row about ballet and bullies and something about a nutcracker and whether the Mouse King is a hero or a villain and I got the sense that it was best if I just kept my mouth shut and didn’t interrupt them.
I mean, I didn’t know the mice had a king over in Mouseton, but I don’t pay no attention to what goes on over on that side of the canyon. And I didn’t think Baby paid attention to politics either, other than taking voting selfies, but she was real firm on the Mouse King being evil, and Myles was real firm on the Mouse King being the real hero of the ballet, and none of it made any sense to me.
I guess the gist of it was that Myles had taken ballet when he was little, which seems weird to me. Finally, curiosity got the better of me and I blurted out, “Wait, so you were a ballerina? Or ballerino? I dunno, whatever they call a dude who does ballet.”
Myles gave me the same sorta stinkeye that that old ladies at the ballet school gave me. “So? What of it?”
“Well, nothing… I mean, if that’s what you’re into. I mean, I just never heard of a dude who did ballet unless he was… y’know… French or something.”
“Ballet is one the epitomes of civilized society and a perfectly respectable pursuit for a refined gentleman.”
“Oh, OK.”
“It’s also a great way to get to bone ballerinas.”
“Ah, gotcha.”
“My old man always said, you gotta plow where the fields are ripe. Which is why he put me in dance classes from a young age… and also jiu jitsu to deal with anyone who had a problem with a dude who knows how to dance.”
“Uh huh.”
“Didn’t your father ever put you in classes to learn useful life skills?”
“Naw, he just sent out to go adventuring with my cousins.”
“Hmm…”
“This one time we rode our bikes out to the sandbars at low tide and got trapped on that little Cow Island for three days and had to figure out how to start a fire with sticks and then we had to get rescued by a fisherman when the grass caught fire. I guess that was sorta useful, but after that we always just made sure we had Zippos ‘cause it’s way easier to light a bowl with one of those.”
Myles just stared at me and shook his head.
Baby was real impressed, though. “Ooh… I didn’t know you were a survivalist, Ricky.”
“Well, y’know… um, not really.”
Anyway, I guess Baby got an idea from Myles… I assume it was the bit about dudes dancing ballet being an OK thing rather than that whole bit about boning ballerinas, because she called me the next day to tell me she signed us both up for Balleratina’s adult ballet class on Monday nights.
“Oh my gawd, Ricky: this is gonna be so much fun!”
Ugh… gross… er, I mean, “livin’ the dream, man… livin’ the dream…”
I just hope word doesn’t get back to Big Mike through the ballet grapevine and his daughters, because I ain’t never gonna live this down if the guys at the studio find out my girlfriend is making me take ballet next year. Not the kinda New Year’s Resolution I had in mind, no sir.
Livin’ the dream sucks sometimes.
Links
Follow Ricky on Facebook: Ricky B. the Rock n Roll Rat Facebook page
And on Instagram: Ricky B. Rat on Instagram
And on Twitter/X: Ricky B. Rat on Twitter
But also on YouTube: Ricky B. Rat on YouTube
Podcast: Play in new window | Download