What an awful day to put Lucy to sleep, but I can’t make her wait another day for my sake. She’s clearly uncomfortable, sometimes even cries out in pain. She occasionally still eats with enthusiasm, but only her favorites. Everything else is just sniffed and rejected. She’d rather just put her hand on my finger and sniff while I scratch her head. She still has that. She likes that.

While I’m typing this, Geoff is looking for a shoebox so he can take her to the vet. He’s bringing her home. We’ll bury her in that box. I couldn’t stand the idea of her going in the trash. She deserves better than that.

There aren’t many who would understand the pain I’m feeling over losing Lucy. They’d understand a dog or a cat or a rabbit. Maybe even a hamster. She’s not even a fancy rat, though since we got her, I’ve told people she was, thinking they might be more accepting of our strange pet. She and Ethel were feeders, rats meant to feed snakes.

With her tan and white spots, Lucy was fancy enough, and her intelligence and personality charmed me immediately. She was what’s called a “shoulder rat,” one that’s content to sit for hours on a person’s shoulder and never venture (or poo). While Ethel is shy, Lucy loved everyone, except our rabbit, who got more attention than Lucy approved of. (Lucy was greedy where my attention was concerned.)

My long experiment to find music both Lucy and Ethel liked provided me with much entertainment. (Lucy liked Karen Carpenter but despised Kenny G. Ethel liked Frank Sinatra and Kenny G, but not the Carpenters or Patsy Cline. Both approved of Christmas music. Neither liked Country.)

The girls had many arguments, and Ethel was always the peacemaker. Lucy held grudges. She’d move out of their box at the slightest misunderstanding and haughtily make a nest in the bottom corner of their three-story cage.

When her tumor got so large that she had trouble finding a comfortable way of sleeping, she figured out on her own that sleeping on a roll of duct tape, putting her tumor in the center, would give her the relief that she needed. How could someone not respect that level of intelligence?

Sure. She was “just” a rat. Not even a fancy one. Not technically, anyway. I found her to be lovely. Beautiful, even. Knowing her raised my opinion of rodents.

And Ethel and I are going to miss her something fierce.

It started in 2002, with just seven participants. Each boarded the New York subway car dressed normally on top, but missing their pants. Each pretended not to notice their own pantlessness or that of the others as the subway proceeded through seven stops. At the eighth stop, a man entered the car carrying a loaded duffle bag and calling out, “Pants for sale! Get your pants here!”

Though the pants salesman part was discontinued several years back, the group that started it all, Improv Everywhere, has grown the annual event to over 5,000 participants in 44 cities around the world.

Although I’ve been familiar with the no-pants stunt for a while, it wasn’t until recently that I learned there are many organized groups of urban pranksters not just in this country, but all over the world. Groups whose goal is to host quirky pranks that surprise total strangers with bits of insanity.

Improve Everywhere hosts about ten  “scenes of chaos and joy in public places” each year, such as an impromptu wedding reception for an unsuspecting couple getting married at the City Clerk’s office in Manhattan or an elaborate surprise birthday party for a random bar patron. 

I love stories about those who enjoy a good prank, like the family who was leaving the zoo and impulsively decided to race past those who were entering the park screaming, “Run! Run! It’s right behind us!” O the man who, after spotting a dead deer by the side of the road one winter, went home and put on his Santa suit, then laid down next to the deer. 

Interestingly, there’s commercial value to be had in companies willing to show their sense of humor, and many have learned how to work it. A bit of well-thought-out silliness can provide an invaluable marketing opportunity for those clever enough to pull it off.

For instance, Taco Bell once claimed to have purchased the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Public outrage was such that the phone lines at Philadelphia’s National Historic Park were clogged for hours, until Taco Bell revealed the joke, everyone had a good laugh, and the company received a tremendous amount of free publicity via news coverage.

Burger King had some fun of their own when it announced a Left-Handed Whopper with a full-page ad in USA Today that claimed the burger’s condiments were “turned 180 degrees to benefit left-handed consumers.” Burger King was swamped with customers wanting to order the special new Whoppers.

One of the most prolific pranksters is the BBC, which has featured news stories about flying penguins, spaghetti being harvested from trees, and redheads being infected by Dutch Elm disease, among many others. National Public Radio has featured stories about maple trees exploding from not being tapped and ad space being sold on the moon.

It seems like our area could benefit from a local prank group to distract us, even momentarily, from the stresses of water damage and a trying economy and potholes large enough to be drawing tourists away from the Grand Canyon.

I, for one, am craving some silliness, and would love to join in with others to do something fun, like perhaps dressing in garments of mourning and walking en masse to place flowers and wreaths before the plane wreckage in front of the Clay Center.              

“Turn around! Turn around!” my husband yelled from the passenger seat.

I yanked my foot from the gas pedal.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“You missed one,” he said, pointing behind us.

“Missed one what?”

“One pothole back there,” he said. “You got ‘em all but that one, but if you swing around, I’m sure you can hit that one, too.”

The sarcasm of passengers is not appreciated by those positioned behind the wheel — which is, I might add, a working position — as opposed to those who merely lounge elsewhere in the car.

Wouldn’t simple gratitude be a more appropriate response from those being transported from Point A to Point B by a driver who obeys most laws of the road? Isn’t it greedy to also ask to get from A to B without concussion or chipped teeth caused by pothole ka-thumps?

Since Charleston generally gets less snow than other parts of our state, some of us aren’t accustomed to driving on crater-laced post-arctic roads. Despite hours spent dodging mushrooms, penguins and the like with Super Mario and friends in Wii world, it turns out I’m not so good at dodging actual potholes in the real world, even though they don’t dart away at the last second or splurt ink at my car.

Actually, I need to apologize for all the snarky comments I’ve made over the past few years about those who drive Land Rovers and Hummers, and how those vehicles probably never do the off-road kind of driving for which they were designed. These days, those who drive them are getting that off-road experience while still on the roads.

It seems there are few stretches of road that don’t have a section that leaves drivers feeling as if they’re auditioning for some kind of extreme driving reality show.

Lest we believe potholes are strictly a West Virginia problem, I recently read about two Canadian artists, Claudia and Davide Luciano Ficca, who were inspired to assemble an art exhibit based on the many uses for potholes. Among the beautifully staged photos in their exhibit were shots of potholes being used for doing laundry, for christening a baby, for practicing high-diving skills, for stomping grapes to make wine, and as a serene pond for a duck.

It seems like a “New Uses for Old Potholes” contest would be fun to host, and it’s something a car repair shop might want to sponsor, if not for that pesky liability issue they’d risk. Imagine the reaction some lawyers might have upon hearing that, while staging a shot, the contest-entering hopeful ended up inadvertently becoming fill material for one of the potholes.

While we’re on the subject of lawyers and potholes, did you hear the one about the truck driver who was passing through West Virginia when he decided to stop at a bar for a beer? Before long, a man walked in wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. The bartender asks the man, “Are you a lawyer?” The man says, “Why, yes. As a matter of fact, I am.”

Without another word, the bartender pulls a gun from under the counter and blows the lawyer away.

“What was that about?” asks the stunned truck driver.

“You must be from out of town,” the bartender says. “It’s lawyer season in West Virginia this time of year. You don’t even need a license.”

The truck driver, having recently lost everything in a nasty divorce thanks to his wife’s lawyer, loves the idea.

Shortly after leaving the bar, the truck driver hits a huge pothole, which causes him to blow a tire and crash his truck into a pole. While trying to get out of his wrecked truck, he sees a crowd of men and women, all wearing suits, crowding around his wrecked truck, waving business cards in his face.

The truck driver reaches into his glove compartment, pulls out a gun and opens fire on the scattering flock of attorneys. As the trucker stops to reload, a policeman arrives on the scene and puts him under arrest.

“But they’re in season!” the trucker protests.

“Yes, they are,” The policeman says. “But it’s illegal to bait them.”

I drove with the radio off Friday night as I traveled up I-79 to stay the night with my friend, who is losing her battle with cancer. I hoped the silence could help still my mind, could at least calm my thoughts into forming a line rather than joining hands and rushing forward at once.

So many people have helped this particular friend. Her hard times are the stuff that legends are made of. Of that she’s aware.

“People tell me I’m amazing,” she has said. “But what choice do I have? I have to go on. I can’t curl up and die, even if that’s what I’d rather do. I can’t seem to make that happen.”

But now her body is doing that for her.

I doubt many have celebrated a recurrence of cancer before, but for my friend, I can understand why the news of its return was something of a relief. She’s blind and tired and alone and in pain. She lost her only child last year. Seven months later, her husband died. Even her loyal guide dog, Amos, died last year. And now, 24 hours a day, she hurts both inside and out.

She doesn’t want to be a burden, and no amount of reassurances can make her feel that she’s not. Instead, she’s handling the business of dying in that same plugging-along way she’s always had for getting things done. She’s wrapped up loose ends, made all her plans, designated who gets what and gotten rid of unnecessaries so others don’t have to. She’s even doled out a few after tasks to friends and relatives so no one gets overwhelmed.

And while doing all this, she also managed to complete her novel, have it edited, arranged to have the book’s cover designed, and is working out details with a local printer to have the books published, with the proceeds going to a fund set up to honor her late son by helping others with his type of glycogen storage disease.

All this she’s done over the course of just a few months.

When I was driving home Saturday afternoon, I turned on the radio for much the same reason that I’d earlier wanted it off — I hoped to crowd out the thoughts. Instead, one of the first songs that came on was Tim McGraw’s “Live Like You Were Dying.”

Unlike the man in the song, Becky isn’t going to get to go skydiving or Rocky Mountain climbing or go 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu. She isn’t even going to get to visit the ocean, since those things take more than just desire to do. They require funding and health. Yet my friend, who hasn’t had an easy day since I’ve known her, doesn’t complain about what she’s missed.

I admire the tough, no-nonsense way with which she’s handling herself, doing it as right as she can.

And I dare anyone to try and convince me she should’ve fought more.

I’ve learned so much from my friend.

I only wish she hadn’t had to suffer in order to teach. 

Becky died Monday, March 15, 2010, at her home in Orlando, WV.