Fairy Order Must Be Restored and a Dispatch from the USS Taylor Swift

I was away for thirty-six hours on a business trip, and when I came home, I found that everything had fallen apart and that’s it every man for himself here at Greenhill Manor. Inasmuch as I am the only full-grown adult man at Greenhill Manor, that means it’s me for myself. The Fairy System utterly collapsed in just those few hours. I walked in around one am and immediately found that the paper towels at the kitchen sink were exhausted and not replaced. I went upstairs, walked into the master bathroom, and found that there were about four squares of toilet paper left and no new roll out. On our walk this morning, I asked Lauren if she had had a chance to order groceries—she hadn’t, which, okay, no big deal because I still had a few vanilla protein shakes left and enough fruit for at least one more morning. Except when I later opened the fridge, I found that someone had eaten all the rest of my strawberries. Worse, we were out of whipped cream, which meant Dobby’s morning pup cup was in danger. Finally, I went to throw something away, and the kitchen trash was overflowing. Pretty sure if I had waited another twelve hours to come home, I would have found some serious Lord of the Flies s— going on here with perhaps Dobby surviving on the dead body of one of the other two occupants.

As an Eagle Scout, I am always prepared. I replaced the paper towels and got out a spare toilet paper roll. When Graham woke up, I demanded that the trash be immediately taken out and was met with appropriate respect when he rolled his eyes after his second reminder in twenty minutes and got up to do it. For my shake, I had to revert to blueberries, a brown banana, and freezer burned mangoes and peaches, but the results were decent enough. For Dobby, I found in the freezer some of those lousy ice cream cups you give to kids at Honor Roll lunches. I dug out the ice cream, put it in his normal pup cup bowl, cut it up, and placed it on the ground. He was very content.

But the world is still mildly off its axis. Every day, I copy and paste my story of the day into an email and send it to Brayden so he has stuff to read during the boring hours on the boat. He writes me back almost every day with some response to my post (and he always ends it with, “love you and tell Lauren hi and I love you and give Dobby a pat on the head and tell him good boy”). In his latest response, he recounted the experience of watching the Super Bowl on-ship with the rest of the fellas, and uh, well . . . here’s the most significant quote:

“I was kind of concerned for the reaction to the camera men showing Taylor Swift every 5 min but I was surprised to see everyone erupted into cheers and screams when they showed her hahaha. You betcha your United States Navy is a bunch of Swifties.”

The US Navy: launching missiles at terrorists, toting the nuclear arsenal, shooting down Houthi missiles, and cheering on Taylor Swift. A generation ago, the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” lied a bunch about John Kerry. Now? The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth just love them some Taylor Swift. Cool, cool. Brayden is not allowed to tell us where he is or even what boat he’s on, so feel free to refer to it as the USS Taylor Swift. Don’t worry, he can take it—he knows he can just shake it off. Shake it off.

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