This Is What My Truman Show Looks Like

John Hughes Was Here

Underpants, tube socks, and a shaggy lost dog story

My hubby and I were running late yesterday because every red light in town was conspiring against us. There was also the itty bitty matter of the school lockdown that was blocking many streets in our neighborhood, which meant we had to find an alternative route.

What a day. The swat teams needed to frisk every student in the high school because eight of them had been caught smoking pot in the lounge and two of the smokers were carrying guns. I know what you’re thinking. Your high school has a lounge?

By the time we got home, I was 20 minutes late for my cupping appointment. I drove into my garage and ran up the stairs to change into my bathing suit shorts, sports bra, and tube socks.

I know what you’re thinking. Get a job.

You’d be wrong though. This is my uniform to prepare my suction cup/cupping torture. I have a frozen shoulder that resulted from a bike crash in ’97.

I was in the Tour de France and that druggie, Lance Armstrong was so high, he crashed into me. That would be a better story. In real life, I fell down a cobblestone hill. Yes, I live in the 1800s.

Now, I have titanium in my elbow. I don’t beep at airports, but when I do, it’s because I’m carrying a gun. A stapler gun, to keep my elbow on.

I’ve tried everything to unjam my frozen shoulder, but everything I do is temporary. My new cure is Eastern-influenced cupping physical therapy. A physical therapist comes to my house and puts suction cups all over my body to release my fascia. That’s what she said.

Cupping is extremely painful because it sucks up my skin until it leaves dark circular bruises. The first time my PT cupped my back, my mom said, “You look like a Marimekko quilt.”

Once my cupping began, my husband immediately left to go run more errands. Cupping makes him want to vomit. He says it’s like watching me get beat up but a small woman in yoga pants.

I didn’t notice when all this was happening that our little dog, Ewok, was not around. Usually, she attacks my physical therapist upon arrival. Her instincts are similar to my husband's. Why are we letting this lady beat up Amy with mini plungers?

After 20 minutes of being voluntarily tortured, someone started repeatedly ringing my doorbell. Sometimes UPS does the incessant ringing because we live on a street where packages are often stolen. It’s UPS’s way of saying, “Come and get it or it’s on you.”

I told my PT to look out my window because I couldn’t move without screaming. She said there was an auburn-haired woman at the door and I shrugged, subdued by cups. Auburn hair is beautiful, don’t you think?

Then someone started banging hard on my glass door. I asked my PT to run downstairs and tell them she didn't live there, but to ask what they wanted.

I heard a voice yell, “Your dog is out!”

I immediately jumped up and started ripping the suction cups off my body. Pop pop pop.

My PT pulled off the ones I missed. I grabbed a sweater and ran outside.

“She went that way!” yelled the auburn-haired woman and a group of teenage girls, pointing north. They looked at me like I was nuts, but like I said, they were mostly teenage girls. Anyone over 18 looks buts to them and they’d be right.

I started racing north yelling “Ewok!” and clapping loudly. In retrospect, running down the street yelling “Ewok!” and clapping looked crazy. Who can contemplate retrospect at the moment other than a psychic?

I was only wearing a bathing suit bottom which looked like underpants and tube socks pulled up to my knees. There was also the matter of large black welts covering the backs of my legs.

When I saw someone, I would stop clapping, and ask them if they’d seen a dog. A lot of people turned away. Shit, I thought. The next time I see a crazy person, I’m gonna think twice. They might be less crazy than I think.

Had there not been a school lockdown, and every cop in our town was surrounding the local high school, I might have been thrown into a police car — for questioning or public indecency.

Thanks to gun violence, it was just me running down the street in my underpants and the civilians judging me.

No one was making eye contact except one workman in a neon vest. He couldn’t decide whether to whistle or laugh.

“Have you seen my dog?” I yelled in his face.

“A little red one?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“I saw it run across that street ages ago.”

Let me stop for a second to discuss my outfit. I know it breaks up the story but it feels like an important detail I need to address.

Like most people, I don’t feel like my insides and outsides match. However, at that moment, when I was running down the street in tube socks and underpants, my insides and outsides were aligned. I couldn’t say ‘that doesn’t sound like something I would do.’

The Truman Show was important to me. I suspected I was a television show. At that moment, I finally felt like Truman. I knew someone somewhere was watching this, eating popcorn and guffawing.

It wasn’t Jim Carrey’s Truman Show. It was mine and in my Truman Show, my mornings began with me running past my neighbors wearing underpants, a cashmere v-neck sweater, and tube socks.

“G’morning, Amy!” They’d wave as I passed.

“Have you seen my little red dog?” I’d ask them.

“Not yet, but we’ll keep an eye out,” they’d all say, smiling.

Sorry to digress again, but I’d like to explain why I am my truest Trumanist self when I am running down the street in tube socks, underpants, and a cashmere sweater. It’ll help you understand my main character better.

When I was little, my dad used to pick me and my sisters up from the South Side of Chicago and bring us to a little town named Miller, Indiana, on the outskirts of Gary, Indiana. I know, fancy.

We weren’t great packers. My sisters and I shoved random items from our floor into plastic bags. We always forgot something or everything. On the Indiana toll road, dad always asked us, “Does everybody have their underpants?”

We answered. “No.” We’d stop at a hardware store and get bags of tube socks and Hanes underwear, size irrelevant.

When my life is The Truman Show, the director would open the movie with me and my sisters in the hardware store, buying tube socks and underpants. Then, the movie would flash ahead 40 years to me running down the street in my underpants and tube socks searching for my dog.

It would all make perfect sense. My character’s backstory should clear it up for you.

I live in the Northern Suburbs where John Hughes made Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Home Alone. People don’t run around in the streets in their underpants here unless maybe they’re filming a John Hughes film and it’s the 1980s. Otherwise, it’s all Burberry and Brooks Brothers.

Fortunately, for me, I’m sort of a combination of Sophia Lauren and Gilda Radner so I can almost pull it off. I tell myself my outfit is a little sexy and a little John Belushi, pre-SNL. Stupid abbreviation.

About six blocks into my underpants-tube sock sprint, a shiny black Audi pulled up.

“Hello,” an auburn-haired, ivory-complected woman said, leaning toward me. “I am Natasha. The house manager of — “ I nodded.

I recognized her as my neighbor's house manager and the woman who had earlier knocked on my door. Yes, house manager, that’s right. I live in a John Hughes’ movie.

Natasha said, “Get in. We’ll look for your little dog.”

I said, “Sorry I don't have a mask but I’m boosted.” I didn’t say, “Sorry to sit my sweaty underpants ass in your beautiful leather interior.”

We drove around the neighborhood, not finding Ewok, yelling out the window at passers-by. Unlike when I was doing the underpants shuffle, people stopped to talk to us because we were in an Audi, and they couldn’t see my outfit.

Natasha also looked like someone you wouldn’t mind bumping into in a dark alley. Unless you were afraid of Russian spies.

Finally, Natasha said, “You need to go home and activate your dog’s chip. Call your vet.” I wanted a house manager.

I called the vet and asked them where my dog was. They said, “The chip is not a GPS device. If someone turns her in, we can identify her.” Well, that’s stupid, I thought. I should have gotten one with a GPS device.

Then, my son and husband came home. I had already put on pants for another run around the neighborhood when they walked in the door, I said “The dog is gone.”

We all scattered. My son and me one way, my husband the other. My son and I ran for ten minutes, screaming her name when we got the call.

“I found her,” my husband said.

“Alive?” I asked.

“Yes.”

We ran home. I held back tears. My son and I hugged.

When my husband spotted her, she was getting ready to run into a busy street. She had been gone an hour. She weighs twelve pounds, and doesn’t wear her collar inside so it wasn’t on when she escaped. She has zero street smarts. She’s a stuffed animal with a heart. Losing her is more like losing a Gucci purse in a tornado. It doesn’t find its way back.

Ewok’s being alive is nothing short of a miracle. But this is the holiday season and I have watched enough Christmas movies to expect a Christmas miracle. That, and if this is indeed my Truman Show, which I am certain it is, I get a happy ending. Before I walk off the set that was my life, I plant a GPS in my dog and EXIT-screen right in my underpants as I yank up my tube socks.

Thanks to Holly J See for reading my shaggy lost dog story, adding commas and apostrophes and, dotting my necessary i’s.

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