Thomas the turkey broke his wing.

I found him on his back, stunned and not able to turn over. He was holding his head at a funny angle, and my first thought was that he might have broken his neck.

I helped him roll over, and he stood right up, but his wing was hanging oddly.

I’d seen him earlier, standing on top of the water heaters that have been waiting on the porch to be installed now for a year. (I had enough money from the tax refund to buy them but not to install them. Then when we had money, the plumber had a waiting list we never got on. This spring I said I’d either get them installed or bake them a birthday cake.) We’d been storing the 50-pound bags of sweet feed and laying pellets on top of the boxes to keep the chickens and turkeys out of them. Thomas had never jumped up that high before.

The boxes are at least three feet tall and the porch is about that high off the ground, so Thomas fell six feet and landed on his wing. Since he weighs about as much as those bags of feed, that was lots of impact on those little bones.

All the vets’ ads in the phone book said they were closed, but I called their offices anyway. Most referred me to the emergency vet in Chesapeake. I’d called them about goats before, and they seemed clueless about farm animals. Finally one vet’s answering machine referred me to a pager number, and they returned my call to say they were still open and could work us in.

“How did he break his wing?” the woman at the vet’s office asked.

“I’m pretty sure he fell off of the porch,” I told her.

“How could just falling from a porch break his wing?” she asked.

I had images of myself being led away in handcuffs, screaming “I didn’t do it! I never pushed him!”

I thought of how clumsy the turkey was, how we threw food out into the yard just to watch him galumph over like an ostrich with one short leg, how we laughed at the way he fell over when he got into scuffles with the roosters over those laying pellets. Maybe this woman wasn’t too familiar with domestic turkeys.

We loaded the turkey into a pet carrier. He’s so big that we had to take the crate apart and reassemble it around him. It took both my husband and me an “oof” and bent knees to lift him into the back of the Jeep.

At the vet’s office, a bird in a cage grabbed a strand of my hair through its cage, but wouldn’t speak. A little fluffy dog on a retractable leash trotted over to a giant chocolate lab lying in the floor with its head resting on its double-jointed paws. The lab lifted its head, which was bigger than the fluffy dog, and scared it back into its owner’s lap. The office dogs lorded over the tethered ones that they were naked and leashless and dove after the treats the office workers tossed to the yappier patients waiting to be seen.

It was easy to spot my accuser among the office staff. She was older than the other perky young women in smocks with kittens on them. She barked short commands to the worker she was training, and snatched a file folder from the hapless woman’s hands, flipped it over and sighed heavily, as though preventing her trainee from labeling it incorrectly wore her completely out.

As I filled out forms for Thomas, she nearly spit at the new employee as she corrected every keystroke the young woman entered.

I felt great sympathy for the trainee, and smiled at her with my eyes wide when the older woman turned her back, hoping to convey a silent “hang in there.” She didn’t notice and kept her mouth tight as she tried to create the turkey’s new patient file. The drill sergeant grabbed the stapler out of her hands to show her the RIGHT way to attach a form to the inside of the file.

I imagined high-fiving the trainee as she entered the paddy wagon with me, watching through the back doors as the paramedics wheeled the older woman’s sheet-draped body away. I would have testified on her behalf.

The vet said that Thomas had arthritis. And gout. She wrapped tape around his wing and taped his wing tight to his body and said he needed to keep that on for about a month. Seventeen dollars on the credit card, and we were done.

Thomas is kept in a pen now and is back to his old ways, stealing feed from the rabbit that shares his pen and gobbling at us when he thinks we should feed him again.

I haven’t seen any news items about a veterinary assistant going postal, but I expect it any day.

I think too much.

This occurred to me as I scanned radio stations in the car the other day. I stopped on “Flashdance” and the line “and she’s dancing like she’s never danced before” gave me pause. So, she’s dancing as though she’s completely without experience? She’s that bad?

I’d just perused an entire rack of greeting cards and had thought twice about one that cursed the recipient with “No one will ever love you more than I do.” Yikes! You know this? This is the best I’ll ever have it? How creepy.

It happened again when I went to the car dealership. “You’ll never get a better bargain” sounds more as though the salesman is casting a hex on me than promising me a good value.

Maybe I’m expecting a level of sincerity that just doesn’t exist. When I followed a coffin manufacturer’s tractor trailer down the interstate, I didn’t quite buy the company’s concern for my welfare when I saw “Please drive safely” painted across the back in a sarcastic font.

That led me to wonder how many other things we say sound nice on the surface, but are really veiled insults.

Suppose you run in to a friend you haven’t seen for a long time, and she gushes, “You’ve never looked better!” Is that a good thing?

Then a cartoon devil appeared on my shoulder and said, “You know, a person could have fun with this.”

“Oh, pshaw,” I told her. I rolled down the car window and let the wind suck her out.

“I’ve never seen you behave so ethically!” she wailed as she flew away.

But I’m weak. I gave in.

I’m generally a polite person. I never say rude things to people when they’re actually present. I save the barbed quips for my retelling of the story later.

Then again, I grind my teeth and get monster migraines. Maybe saying things that sound polite but really express how I feel will let me blow off a little steam without offending anyone.

When the teenager behind the counter at the deli finally stopped twirling her hair and took my order, I smiled brightly and said, “I’ve never had better service here.”

She narrowed her eyes and thought a minute, but that seemed to hurt, so she stopped and said, “Um . . . you’re welcome?”

I think all of us women who were raised to keep our knees together when we sit and to smile and be gracious could make great use of this technique. There are so many practical applications.

When overlooked for promotion, a person could tell the boss, “I’ve never seen you make a wiser decision.”

When a condescending coworker brags about his accomplishments, you could say, “You’ve never seemed more capable.”

And when I use one of these on you, feel free to tell me, “You’ve never been so polite.”

I can’t tell you how happy you’ll make me.

I have a confession to make. When I was nine, I misrepresented myself
to a United States congressman and profited from it.

I should preface this by explaining that in those days I was the odd
kid talking to the trees at the edge of the playground at Ingleside
Elementary. I was what polite adults would call "bookish" and what
not so polite classmates would call "weird." So weird, in fact, that
I conducted extended club meetings with fictional characters in the
cabin of my father's boat drydocked in the driveway. So weird, in
fact, that these meetings were conducted in strict accordance with
Robert's Rules of Order with me serving not only as parliamentarian
but also keeping elaborate minutes as recording secretary. So weird
that these minutes sometimes had to be amended when a fictional
member of the group refused to approve them as read.

The mission of the club was hardly an original one. I co-opted a few
tenets from the SPCA, the Humane Society, and the Animal Assistance
League. (PETA was founded a few years later.) The name of the club
was pinched from the efforts at the time to bring home prisoners of
the conflict in Viet Nam. In this case, however, POW stood for
"protect our wildlife." Members of the club were characters from
books I'd read including a pair of children who had formed an "SPCR"
to protect a stray dog named Rachel. We were a like-minded group.

Aside from the occasional squabble over accuracy of the minutes, POW
meetings were uneventful until the club voted to announce our
existence in a letter to Congress demanding that Something Be Done to
further our mission. As president of the club, I wrote a heartfelt
letter about the plight of endangered animals, the horror of wearing
fur, and the need for more space in local pounds and animal shelters
on orange stationery with paisley Sock It To Me stickers. When my
brother saw the sealed envelope addressed to US CONGRESS, he
suggested that I add “ATTENTION: G. William Whitehurst” because he
thought our local representative might be sympathetic to my cause. My
family knew the basic content of the letter, but not that I had
described the efforts of a group of imaginary children in an
imaginary club.

A package from Rep. Whitehurst arrived a few weeks later. In addition
to a letter praising the initiative and dedication of POW members,
Whitehurst included a book from the U. S. Department of the Interior
about endangered species in America. By this time, I had joined a
real junior garden club with nonfictional members. The package came
on the day members of the junior garden club were turning in
scrapbooks to be judged in a statewide competition. Terrified that my
family would discover that the letter praised my make believe group,
I hid it in my scrapbook, Endangered Species in Virginia, and took it
with me to the meeting.

You can guess the rest. I forgot to take the letter out of the
scrapbook when I turned it in. The letter praised the club without
naming it, and judges assumed I had scored a congressional
endorsement for the junior garden club. I won big. I wanted to hide
in the cabin of the boat.

The shame of what I did has stayed with me ever since. Following a
nearly vegetarian diet (shrimp don’t have eyelashes) and taking in
stray cats doesn’t seem to ease my guilt. If Mr. Whitehurst can find
it in his heart to issue a retroactive congressional pardon for me,
maybe my conscience can finally rest.

When I went back to school and started trying to find quiet places to
study, my suspicions were confirmed: There is no quiet place on earth.

My first attempt to find a quiet spot was in the university library
on the silent study floor. I spread my books and coat out over a
whole unclaimed table to discourage squatters and left to collect the
books I needed. When I returned, two students wearing blue scrubs had
moved my notebooks and were sitting at the table looking for articles in medical journals. One flipped noisily through the volume in front of her, dragging an index finger (her own presumably, but I don’t trust anyone who spends so much time with cadavers) down a column of text saying, “pulmonary . . . pulmonary . . . pulmonary.”

Her companion was a few feet away in the stacks calling out “Did you
find anything?”

She called back, “Not yet. How about you?”

“Maybe,” he called, “Come look at this one.”

“Right now?” she asked.

This is when I discovered the depths of my own cowardice. What would
Dixie Carter do in a situation like this? Deliver a withering
monologue about otherwise bright people who are unfortunately unable
to read the very large signs that said SILENT STUDY FLOOR in six-inch
letters? Not me. I smiled at the students who would one
day keep people waiting interminably in paper gowns and made three
trips carrying my books to a new table.

Public libraries were no better. I love that libraries are
active, busy places that aren’t necessarily silent. But I would
expect other adults to remember that libraries are places where
folks might expect enough quiet to do a little thinking.

At my area library, I chose a table where no one else was sitting,
far from the giggling teenaged couple tickle-fighting on the couch
and nowhere near the children’s room. I spread out my belongings
to claim space, and watched, wimpy and amazed, as a woman pushed my
coat aside and chose my table over all the other unoccupied ones,
sighed heavily and took her cellular phone out of her purse.

She made a call, talking at full volume about a grant she was
researching. Then she stood up and walked to the shelves to look for
more books, her rubber thong sandals slapping against her feet with
every step. After several trips to and from the stacks, sandals
slapping, with the phone conversation continuing throughout, a
library employee approached. Maybe the librarian was going to ask her
to keep it down, I thought. I watched over the top of my notebook.

Instead the two women discussed the grant research at great length
beside me as I tried not to look as though I were about to scream.
And again, I smiled a weak little smile, stacked up my books, and
moved on.

At home, a locked bathroom door worked for a little while, but real
studying requires upholstery. Eventually I learned that sitting in my
car in parking lots was my best bet. I could park at the far end of
the grocery store parking lot, lock all the car doors and have the
quiet I needed to study.

Once as I sat in my car in the parking lot of a public park, trying
to decipher post-deconstructionist French feminist literature, a pair
of deer dashed past, looking for a place where they could read
quietly, I’m sure. I yelled after them, “Good luck! You might try
sitting outside Food Lion!”

SOME FRIENDS of ours just moved into a new home. We went to visit and were awestruck by the hardware on the drawers and cabinets (all of it matching and present), the sunken garden tub, the pristine painted walls, the smooth, clean glass with no fingerprints and the coordinated window treatments.

It was tough to come home, where our windows have not responded to treatment. Our bathtub is sitting beside the barn waiting for us to get the room ready for its installation. It might not even fit through the door. One drawer in the bathroom opens with a butterfly clamp. The stairs need to be refinished, and the living room floor is half covered by the particleboard that used to be under the carpet we pulled up last spring.

The floor in the kitchen has a decided tilt— put a ball down and it rolls to the corner.

But there’s a picture hanging on the wall of a young man who was born under this roof, and lived in this house before dying of the wounds he received in the Battle of Shiloh. Next to it is a framed copy of his father’s will, leaving belongings to the 11 children who lived here.

That original hardwood floor that we’re slowly uncovering dates from the 1840s. By the front door, where the oval of glass is wavy and distorted, we hung another photocopied picture, this one showing the road in front of our house as it appeared more than 100 years ago, when it was called the broad path.

This house has fulfilled my Olivia Walton fantasies. I have visions of being a grandmother sitting on this porch waiting for the kids on Sunday afternoons. This house has inspired me to bake bread, paint chickens on the boards that fall off of the barn, and dream of making this a working farm that grows something so unusual and lucrative that I can spend whole days here instead of commuting to a job that pays enough to cover the mortgage.

We don’t have a garbage disposal or wall-to-wall carpeting or French doors. But we have an incredible view of tobacco, corn, soybeans and cotton stretching nearly as far as we can see. And we have a story of a couple named Henry and Permelia, who built this house in 1829, and added on to make room for those 11 children. The graves we can’t quite see from the window are likely theirs. I’d like to think they’re happy this house has little kids to abuse it again, with parents doing the best they can to keep up with all that the place needs. I’d like to think that Permelia stood in the yard and threw bread to chickens and geese the way we do, and that she walked the hall at night, checking on the children before she went to sleep herself.

No offense to my friends.I think they bought a beautiful home in a nice neighborhood where fancy coffee and exotic groceries are five minutes away. They’ll be happy there, and their children will probably achieve higher standardized test scores than ours and get into the right fraternities.

But we bought more than a house. We bought a story.