A Pie in the Face

Friday, July 22, 2011

Page 11

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

A Pie in the Face

By J’AMY PACHECO

Much has been written lately about Wendi Deng, tiger wife. Deng, you’re probably aware, is the spouse of media giant Rupert Murdoch and is now famous mostly for the smack seen ‘round the world.

I have to admit that I’m impressed by the speed and aggressiveness with which she went after the protestor who attempted to shove a pie in the face of her 80-year-old husband while he was being grilled by members of Parliament. Although I, too, would relish smacking someone so rude, I’m not sure I could have processed the information and formulated a response quickly enough to succeed at deflecting the pie, as she is reported to have done.

I think the real question here is how the guy managed to get his pie fixings into a hearing attended by so many public officials. Judging by the looks on their faces in the photos I’ve seen of the smack-down, those officials were wondering the same thing.

I noticed something else, besides the surprised faces in the photos of the event. There’s a woman in a gray suit who, as far as I can tell, actually responded faster than Wendi Deng. It looks to me as though she responded first, and that Deng knocked her over in her quest to smack the offending pie man.

Deng has become an Internet sensation over the action, but I haven’t seen anything written about the lady in the gray suit. I hope somebody thanked her, and offered to pay her dry cleaning bill.

Now, I find the whole hacking story involving parts of Murdoch’s media empire appalling, just the way I find the behavior of celebrity paparazzi appalling. But I don’t for a minute think Murdoch sat up in his tower and put his stamp of approval on the hacking plot.

So it boggles my mind to think that somebody thought it would be a good idea to shove a shaving cream pie into the face of this 80-year-old man to make a point. Or a statement. Or just to make Twitter history.

I find that behavior appalling, too.

Regardless of any of this, I could have used someone like Wendi Deng a few days ago. My daughter and her dog were on the couch and I was approaching the family room when our own intruder made its appearance—a tiny mouse ran across the floor.

It didn’t carry a pie—or anything else—but its presence still was a huge shock to me. I reacted so opposite of the way Deng might have that I’m actually embarrassed to say what I did. But the prospect of public humiliation has never been much of a deterrent to me, so I’ll admit that I turned and walked in the opposite direction, went up the stairs and woke my overworked husband from a sound sleep.

“There’s a mouse in the house,” I cried. “And it’s not Mickey!”

It’s not surprising that we should occasionally have a non-human visitor. We live just two blocks from miles and miles of undeveloped state park land, and are surrounded on all sides by undeveloped hills. We hear coyotes at night, and I once saw a deceased raccoon lying on the side of the road.

There’s no question about it—we live in the middle of Wild Kingdom. But we also pay an exterminator to visit our house regularly and make sure we don’t get any visitors. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot you can do about field mice until they arrive.

My daughter nearly gagged at the idea of mousetraps, and begged me to figure out how to capture it and let it go.

You know that old saying, “Be careful what you wish for?” Sometimes, it actually works out in your favor. Before the traps were set, we heard a scratching sound coming from our two-sided fireplace. We assumed not-Mickey was in the fireplace, trying to scratch his way out.

I ran off to bed, leaving the problem in my husband’s hands. When I woke up the next morning, I learned that not-Mickey had not been in the fireplace, but instead had fallen inside a large silver vase that sits on the hearth and was unable to climb out.

My husband took the vase outside and down the street, shook it out and watched not-Mickey scamper off—in the direction of Disneyland, oddly enough.

It wasn’t really a Deng-like response, but it all worked out. I guess sometimes you need a tiger-spouse (or a lady in a gray suit), and sometimes, you just need dumb luck.

But nobody needs a mouse in the house—or a pie in the face.