There was a time that I delighted in Inspector Clouseau’s antics. Even more, I savored Chief Inspector Dreyfus’ swift decline into insanity at same. That was until I became Chief Inspector Dreyfus.
My son was about nine when he discovered the Pink Panther. (Please refrain from telling me that Clouseau was not the Pink Panther.) He loved Cato.
Unfortunately.
My most egregious and unrelated panther-related incident revolved telling a young French exchange student that the welt that grew on his forehead after he struck his head was called a “bemp.” Maybe I said ‘bimp.” Either way he never understood why I was destroyed in giggles every time he told someone how he got the “bimp” (or “bemp”) on his ‘ead.
For my son, the film inspired a series of Cato-emulations.
For the benefit those who have forgotten (or–inexcusably–never have seen) the Pink Panther films, Cato Fong was Inspector Clouseau’s manservant, whose responsibilities included launching sneak attacks on the inspector to help heighten his “situational awareness” and hone his martial arts skills. The attacks were long and violent. Sometimes they were more than a bit awkward, especially when Clouseau was engaging in, or attempting to initiate, amorous activities involving a third party, always, apparently, of the opposite sex.
Another element contributing to the humor was Clouseau’s increasing paranoia as he attempted to anticipate the unanticipated attacks.
Tom’s response to Cato was intense giggling, which should have served as a warning.
One of the most memorable early attacks came in the early morning–it’s always darkest before the dawn–when I was getting ready for work. As is my custom, I poured myself a mug of coffee before doing anything else. It was a winter morning and darkness outside of the windows enveloped the house.
I trudged up the stairs, my eyes fighting to remain at least partially-open until a shower fully raised both lids.
At the top of the stairs, I entered the bathroom, took a sip of coffee, and turned on the bathroom lights, but when I began to pull back the shower curtain, it was ripped from my hand from the
other side, and Tom leapt at me, causing me to scream like a little girl, throw up my hands, one of which was holding said nearly full mug of coffee.
Briefly.
I was startled (such a mild description) and more than a little annoyed, and I began to shout at Tom about his scaring the…about startling me, but his eyes had locked on the wall to my right. Following his gaze I saw, that the contents of said cup had turned the pastel wall to a thin screen of mocha, slowly slipping to the floor where it created a puddle on the tiles.
We stared at it in silence for a long moment before Tom began to–apologize, you think? No–he began to giggle, softly at first but growing in volume until we sat facing each other on the cold tile, both destroyed in laughter.
After a small series of minor assaults I began to develop a slight tic in my left eye when I was getting ready for work. Tom was as happy as a clam at high water. I doubt that many working parents shared the sense of relief, the reduction in stress, that I enjoyed when I made it through the front door for a long day toiling in the fields of academia.
Getting dressed became a matter of locking the door and looking over my shoulder all the while. So it was that I was more than a little surprised after locking myself in my room, when I opened my closet door to find my young son leaping at me from where he had been crouching patiently beneath my hanging clothes until he could spring at me with his banshee cry.
Good cardio workout, by the way.
As I fell backward under the assault, he landed atop me, laughing like a mad thing, and I thought, “What hath Blake Edwards wrought?”
Probably the worst such incident, and the one that still causes me to experience some degree of enduring trauma, was the mid-winter early morning attack that began, as usual, with my awakening at the crack of o’dark thirty. I slammed off my alarm and stretched in the blackness of the early day before dawn.
Finally, nearly ready to face the day, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and….I genuinely wish that my eyes had been videotaped at the moment that…something under the bed grabbed my ankles. The terrors of childhood, the nights of hideous things lurking in the shadows, the moment that Jason Voorhees’ water broke in Crystal Lake at the end of “Friday the 13th,” all the terrors and fears of the boogeyman under the bed and monsters in the closet coalesced as I leapt to my feet and desperately attempted escape while uttering full-throated unholy sounds.
When at long last I was released, the silence was broken only by raucous laughter as Tom crawled out from under my bed. He was unable to control his laughter. Although he could barely talk through his breathless mirth, he did manage to convey between gasps, that he couldn’t believe anyone could scream so long while running in place.
Despite my sternest admonitions, the reign of terror continued. Like Inspector Clouseau, I never entered a room without looking both ways and checking under and behind the furniture. Sometimes the attack came from behind or above. Sometimes the attack never came because Tom was not at home.
Probably the worst times were those when I was gingerly making my way across a room, silently searching for the point of likely ambush, and hearing the beginnings of a giggle somewhere….somewhere…as he watched me scanning for the attack that was not to come.
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