Dear Diary,

I’m almost ashamed to recount the following, which is a rather ridiculous conception, considering the many shocking exploits I’ve shared with you over the years. (Note to Self: Burn this thing should you suddenly develop a dry cough and a high fever. Some of these passages can never see the light of day, especially the bits about, well, you know.)

But a certain event transpired earlier today, and there is a slim possibility that I may end up in a courtroom, on the wrong end of legal proceedings, with a rudely loud lawyer accusing me of unsavory behavior. I thought it best to chronicle my memories whilst they were still fresh, as lately I’ve noticed that my mental faculties are not quite as dewy as they once were. As one accumulates years, thing just stop functioning according to factory specifications. It’s a wretched and terrible thing. Not as bad as needless poverty or baseless right-wing conspiracy theories, of course, but it’s up there.

In any case, I had just arisen from one of the many naps I now take during a given day, mostly out of boredom, as there is little left of entertainment value in my domicile. (I essentially ran out of festive, home-based activities on Day 3, when I re-organized the cutlery drawer and finally threw everything away in the fridge that had attained petri-dish status.) I briefly turned on the TV, but I quickly assessed that I had already seen every episode of every program that was airing on all 300 satellite channels. No gold, there.

Out of mildly-manic desperation, I threw open the curtain on the front window, and it was at that point when I spied the tableau I have captured in the photo which I have stapled to this entry. (Sorry about the crude metal-piercing of your hallowed pages. I’m out of glue and so, apparently, is the corner market. I grasp the toilet-paper shortage, although not the mindless hording that resulted in such, but glue? What does one do with glue in a pandemic? What are some people doing in their houses that local authorities might need to know about?)

As you can see, I spied an odd vehicle that one does not normally expect to spy, shaped as it is like a tumbled milk bottle. (Well, the old kind. Not the new kind, the plastic vessels that idiots throw into landfills by the millions, pissing off Mother Nature to the point that She, I don’t know, creates a virus?) Standing just outside the tumbled jalopy, in a perceivably protective manner, is Macaulay Culkin. (The old kind, just after he catapulted to stardom with the “Home Alone” movie franchise. Not the new kind, where he gives weird interviews and has that odd personality that most former child-stars have, wherein it’s clear that they missed a chapter or two in the Book of Life.)

As I studied this detailed scene, something snapped incorrectly, and I skipped a few chapters of my own, with the book in this case being “How to Behave in a Manner That Is Not Considered Sociopathic”. My erratic thought process went something like this: Hey, he has milk. I think I need some of that milk. Sure, I have plenty of milk right now, but milk does not play well with time and I will eventually need more. And if the corner market is out of glue, they could easily be out of milk. And if they’re out of milk, then I’m out of milk, because I’m too lazy to walk further than the corner market. And I might end up dying from milk-deprivation, a demise I haven’t fully researched but I would assume is a terrible way to go. Aside from the Covid-19 thing, of course.

So, because my filters are faulty (my factory-guarantee expired decades ago) and I apparently need to prove to the entire world that insanity is a quest I seek, I took action. I threw open the front door, marched onto my charming front porch (I might fail in some areas of proper deportment, but I keep a clean verandah) and found myself hollering thusly: “Give me some of that milk, boy!”

I know. I should have committed myself to a stern rehabilitation facility right then. But I did not.

Macaulay eyed me for a beat or two, apparently contemplating my degree of difficulty as well as my erratic couture (bathrobe, hair with no noticeable product, and only one house slipper, not sure where the other one was) and then he chose the path of most-resistance: “I don’t have any milk.”

Me: “Yes, you do. You’re driving a truck shaped like a milk bottle. Which means you have access to cows and bovine byproducts. The game is up, slick-haired little man.”

Mack: “The truck is not shaped like a milk bottle. It’s shaped like a… suppository. I’m a doctor.”

Well, that was undeniable crap. “Nobody would shove something like that up their recycling bin.” (Yes, dear diary, I went there. Clearly without a map.)

Mack: “Well, apparently you’ve never been to Hollywood.”

He had me with that point, but I wasn’t about to relent. “And there’s a fresh bottle of milk on your running board.”

Mack: “You know, a phrase like that could get you marked for death in certain Eastern European countries.”

Oh. I didn’t know that. He was probably lying, because all actors do, but since the world is now filled with ways one can innocently perish just because they’re breathing in the wrong place, I thought it best to minimize the threat potential and try cut directly to my ill-defined chase. “Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot.”

Mack: “And which foot would that be? The one with or without the house slipper?”

Damn, he was good. And damn the internet. Children were so much easier to deal with before they could Google. “What will it take for me to score some lactose?”

Mack: “I don’t know. But I do know that I have never scored before. That’s a bargaining chip you can flip to your advantage, if you’re smart about things.”

Me: “You’ve never scored? You mean… you’re a…”

Mack: “Yep. Me, myself and I, that’s the extent of my conjugal conquests.”

Me: “Hmm. But still, you’re just a…”

Mack: “Child? No, that’s just for my Screen Actors Guild profile. I’m actually 52. And I was 27 when we filmed my first movie. It’s all about the special effects. Back in those days, it was called “computer-aided design”, or CAD. Now it’s known as ‘everything you are seeing in this movie was actually created on an iPad by somebody named Bungie Jumper in the basement of his parent’s house’.”

Me: “Oh. So, you’re a consenting adult and all that?”

Mack: “Of course. As long as you are. How badly do you want the lukewarm milk on my running board?”

And it was at that point, Dear Diary, that I found myself home alone with Home Alone. He’s in the kitchen right now, binging on one of the 7 cherry pies that I baked on Day 6 out of sheer boredom. We haven’t tripped the light fantastic, and we probably won’t, because the awkwardness is overwhelming. But I do appreciate the company in these uncertain days when none of us knows when normalcy might return, if it ever does.

Please don’t judge me. Even if you should.

Sincerely,

Eleanor Roosevelt