I Call it Maize

Over Columbus Day weekend, the kids, Husbandrinka and I went to a corn maze in the Catskills. I was fairly certain that I would never come out of it alive, and yet, here I am. I did my favorite corn maze joke where I walked past a corn stalk and wrapped part of it around my neck to make it look like it was attacking me and pulling me into its depths. The kids asked, “What are you doing?” and Husbandrinka didn’t say anything, as though I were a crazy person who does shit like that all the time. Whereas I do it only when I’m in the corn maze. I certainly never do that in the produce section of Whole Foods. At least not if it’s really crowded.

And speaking of crazy people, I started to think about what if someone in the corn maze was insane and was about to kill us all, especially me. Incidentally, this is not a great thing to think about when you’re in a corn maze because I guarantee you, the second that you think of it, you will see that one of your co-mazers does indeed look homicidal. (By the way, since I’m lecturing on things that you should not think about, let me add “the possibility of a power outage while getting an MRI”. That’s another post, but please trust me on this.) So I tried to make eye contact with Husbandrinka to relay to him that we were in grave danger, but it was difficult, mostly because he doesn’t have eyes on his back as he was walking ahead of me. I do think I turned around to look at the insane murderer one too many times because he started looking at me pretty intensely. The only thing that could have made it better is if he had been carrying a McCain sign.
“Do you know where you’re going?” he asked me finally.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” I said, walking straight into a dead end. I did not want to appear vulnerable in any way.
“Great,” he said, “I’ll follow you, because I’m getting claustrophobic and I’d like to get out of here.”

Just my luck to find a murderer with a phobia. And besides, claustrophobia is my signature phobia, and I didn’t even realize that I could be enjoying it in corn hell, because I was too worried about being, you know, killed. But fortunately, the claustrophobia got the better of him and he never got around to killing me. Although after following me around to every dead end of the maze, he did appear anxious to never see me again. “Why did you say that you knew where you were going?” he asked, mid-hyperventilation. There was no good way to answer that question. “Well Columbus didn’t know where he was going, either, and looked what happened,” I explained. He did not seem reassured.

After we all made it out of the maze, I asked my kids if they had been scared. “Why would I be scared?” my daughter asked. “What’s so scary about corn?” my son asked. Oh, excuse me, your Mental Health majesties.

One year ago ...

• Thank You! - 2011