Dog Beans

When I was four years old, I did a thing which would live forever in infamy.

This is not fair, of course; most people, at age four, are not actually people, but in fact a sort of monkey which is managing language, politics, and cause and effect relationships in a very rudimentary fashion.

One should NEVER really be held responsible, in adulthood, for things one does when one is four years old, but apparently, this was among my most hilarious years, and my parents never grew tired of telling about how the neighbor lady called up one afternoon to tell them that I was peeing off the front porch, or about the time I attempted to escape punishment, only to discover to my tremendous shock that Mom knew how to climb trees, TOO......

...and worst of all, the time I tried to get Cydney to eat the durn green beans.

My parents hadn't been parents for very long when I was four; they'd only been doing it for four years, and had had no elder children upon whom to make mistakes and test pet theories. This made me the guinea pig. And among the things they wanted me to do was eat green beans. The kind that come in the can.

Now, I was not a fussy eater, I am told; Mom was astonished that I would eat carrots in any form, that I liked to eat peas, LOVED lima beans, and that I could even be counted upon to eat broccoli, given sufficient cheese atop it. Meat was never a problem -- I apparently enjoyed liver and onions, and still do. And very few vegetables slowed me down.

But I did not like green beans. So naturally, they had to be served with every frickin' meal. I'm not sure why. Apparently, a certain amount of gustatory torture is considered to build character in four year olds or something. I dunno. I raised one of my own, and I never saw any point in forcing HER to eat things she found disgusting; there were plenty of other foods containing the exact same nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and amino acids that she would eat with pleasure; why, then, would I come after her with a can of spinach cooked to the consistency of slime, ready to force it down her with a plumber's helper?

I did not. For which she is no doubt grateful. But, regrettably, in the mid sixties, parenting had not yet reached the enlightened state, and it was considered necessary to find something your child hated, and then make him eat it. I'm sure there's a parallel between this parenting behavior and the state of modern politics... but I digress.

I had an ally, though, with this particular issue: Cydney, the cinnamon boxer dog. She'd been part of the family for a year longer than I had, and we were fast friends as long as I could remember. And she could pretty much always be counted on to hang loose under the table and accept anything I did not care to eat. I had to be CAREFUL, of course; I wasn't supposed to feed the dog scraps, and I certainly wasn't supposed to feed her anything just because I didn't want to eat it. But I was a clever monkey; at age four, I'd learned the art of deception, which I think bolsters my point about politics. But I digress.

Cydney didn't like green beans any more than I did. This presented a problem. How the hell was I supposed to fake the eating of green beans if Cydney wouldn't eat the damn things?

Apparently, I was not the clever monkey I thought I was. I made a point of hiding the beans in my pants pocket, and then, rather than simply disposing of the beans in any number of other ways, with no one ever the wiser, I tried to get the dog to eat the beans elsewhere, where I had more time to work, and didn't have to look like I was using my politest table manners. Which led to my dad walking in on me in the bathroom, muttering, "Eat the beans, Cydney! Eat the beans!" while I tried to stuff them down the reluctant dog's mouth.

This was 45 years ago. And to this day, if you bring up the subject of green beans around my father, he will launch into the tale told above. He couldn't have the decency to go senile or anything and FORGET about it, oh no. To this day, he will cheerfully spin the tale of Cydney and the green beans with all the relish and hilarity to which he told it to my first girl, my prom date, my college roommates, my first wife, my only daughter, and any number of people I'd just as soon hadn't heard it. Oh, yeah. Thanks, Dad.

**************************************************************************

I've gotten used to dogs again this past year. I haven't had a dog since high school, but Berni has dogs, and we all got used to each other. And I find that dogs are rather conflicting creatures. On one hand, a dog is a sweet, loving, affectionate creature who adores you with all the love in her little doggy heart. On the other hand, that same dog will follow Henny the Cat around outdoors waiting for her to poop so the dog can scarfle down the turds like chocolate bonbons. Dogs are faithful, loving, and true, while often being remarkably gross, as well.

This afternoon, I celebrated the three day weekend by barbecuing and smoking a variety of meats. Mmm. Orange beef, brisket with beer vinagrette marinade, beer chicken fajitas, several pounds of hamburger which will become dinner at various points in the week to come.... oh, yes. I like grilling and smoking outdoors very much....but at one point, I made the mistake of dumping a foil wrapper's contents over the rail into the yard... a hot mix of meat grease and orange marinade and beer and vinegar and so forth.

A moment later, I saw Sunny cheerfully eating the grass I'd dumped it on. Mmm, sauce! "NO, dammit!" I shouted. "DON'T eat the dratted dirt!" And Sunny jumped back, looking guilty; apparently Daddy didn't mean for that delicious, wonderful smelling thing to be a doggy snack... but why?

Sigh. Am I just unlucky? Today, I live with dogs that will eat dirt, grass, and cat turds... but as a child, I had one that wouldn't eat green beans?

The Profane Drift

When I was a kid... as now... there were words you weren’t supposed to say. Words that, if spoken within hearing of one’s immediate ancestors, would result in unpleasant consequences.

I heard about “getting your mouth washed out with soap.” Never had that happen. Hell, I WISH I’d had that happen; how much worse could it have been than getting smacked upside the head? And when I was a kid, getting smacked upside the head was considered quite mild as far as parental disciplinary techniques went; presumably, my own parents suffered beatings, their parents suffered Spanish Inquisition tortures, and I’m guessing that my great grandparents were subject to loss of extremities and facial features for spilling milk at the dinner table.

So there were words that were not used. Not even to discuss what they meant, much less as an expletive, verb, noun, adjective, or interjection. GROWNUPS could use these words, but kids would suffer a swift consequence if they were so much as to be heard to BREATHE any of these linguistic tidbits. The F word, the S word, the D word, none of these were to be countenanced.

This included the H word, a parental decision that I didn’t much agree with. I mean, the word itself, “Hell,” is pretty mild as swear words go, and was even in the ancient days of my youth. What’s WRONG with it? Admittedly, it’s the final repository of sin and wickedness and the home and prison of Satan, Prince of Darkness, but if “Satan” isn’t a bad word, why was “Hell” unacceptable in schoolyard or driveway?

Didn’t matter. Even discussing the word itself or its acceptability was risky. And so I avoided using this word and the others previously discussed, as my parents wished it, and then I left home and went to college and discovered that I and everyone else I knew could barely get a sentence out without a goddamn fuckin’ sonofabitchin’ cuss word or three in there, goddammit!

Today, I work with elementary children. The word “crap” sometimes is heard on the playground; it is considered an acceptable euphemism for “shit,” and bears no consequence from the Ancient Ones, other than a sharp glance and a snarl of “Language!” from the playground monitor, who might well be me.

And it’s been so long since anyone hit me upside the head for saying, “Aw, hell,” that I’ve long forgotten the reflexive reaction, the whoopsie, the clampdown, the slapping of one’s hand over one’s mouth should such a malediction escape into the free air.

Some words just don’t have the power they used to. Some words aren’t considered cussin’ any more, and haven’t been in a while.

But sometimes, I see something that reminds me that not everyone got it all out of their system back in college.

Nine Pairs Of Slacks

I got issues.

Haircuts are one of them. I was forced to wear John F. Kennedy’s haircut from the time of my first haircut until the day I left home, because JFK was the ultimate human being ever produced, and nothing he ever did could ever go out of style. To this day, haircuts make me irritable and twitchy, despite the fact I’ve been the boss of my hairstyle since I was seventeen.

Shoes are another one. Shoe shopping was an ordeal when I was a kid, because we’d go out to buy me shoes, and then Mom would stop and shop for shoes and I’d be ordered to sit there in standby mode for three hours while she tried on shoes, and when she finally finished, then I’D have to try on shoes for three hours until Mom found something she liked on ME, and six hours is an eternity when you’re eight years old. I STILL don’t like shoe shopping, and tend to rush through it as quickly as possible.

But all of this pales before the issue of polyester.

I grew up in the Age of Polyester, the seventies, a time when man grew proud and insane, because we apparently felt that wearing clothing made of plastic was a good thing. And, naturally, I differed with my kin on this. I liked polyester BLENDS, because 100% cotton jeans weigh a metric ton and take forever to break in, but clothing made entirely out of polyester struck me as much the same as wearing the bags the clothing CAME in.

Dad loved polyester.

He loved polyester because it never needed ironing, and the trousers held a razor sharp crease. You could wash it all in the washing machine, no dry cleaning necessary. You could slap a plate of Italian food in your lap, and it would wash out effortlessly. It was light, it breathed, it was the ultimate form of clothing ever invented since ancient man tried strapping live sheep to his back to stay warm. Polyester was IT!

And I still remember the time in ‘75 or so when he decided I needed a leisure suit.

The picture here shows a typical polyester leisure suit of the era. It is somewhat like the one my father bought me, except that mine was in a rich forest green, and had lapels that were MUCH bigger than those shown... I’d swear that my lapels were roughly the size and shape of the sails on a sloop.

So I was fashionable. For a time. Kind of; rather than the dashing seventies haircut the model in the picture has, I had John F. Kennedy’s haircut, which make me look sort of anachronistic.

“You ought to LOVE that thing,” my father said. “You don’t need to wear a TIE with it. You HATE ties!”

He was right. I hated ties. I also learned that I hated wearing trousers that felt like they were made of heavily starched burlap, and having lapels that when they caught the wind felt like I was about to go airborne like the Flying Nun.

Fortunately, within a year, puberty hit with a vengeance, and within a couple months after that, I couldn’t fit into the thing any more. This pleased me immensely, and irritated my father to no end. “Can’t you just, you know, let it out a little?” Dad wheedled my mom, and was told NO in no uncertain terms because leisure suits were not made with alterations in mind.

Fortunately, my old man had by then fixated on something else: the black polyester suit coat and matching slacks. Shifting trends and fashions had rendered the loose, coarse weave of the polyester leisure suit obsolete; NOW, we had the tight, fine weave of the black polyester office ensemble!

Dad loved it. “You don’t need to iron them! They don’t need dry cleaning! They don’t wrinkle, no matter HOW you treat ‘em! And you can dunk ‘em in tomato sauce, and they clean right up, no stains! Man, clothes just don’t GET any better than this!”

And he believed it. Because I remember him going to work in those black polyester slacks in ‘77. I remember him wearing them at Christmas in ‘83. I remember him wearing them during Thanksgiving in ‘86. And Ghod help me, I remember him trying to talk me into accepting them from him in that horrible holiday season of ‘90.

By 1990, disco was deader than disco, and polyester formal wear was as gone as the Roman chariot races. My father did not care. The fashionistas did not dictate to HIM what was acceptable, and apparently, neither did anyone at his office, and when black polyester work slacks went out of style, well, that just made them easier and cheaper for him to acquire at garage sales and Goodwill stores. And by that holiday season of 1990, he realized that he had way too many pairs of black polyester slacks.

My father was not a salesman, but he might have been. Or perhaps not; you can just walk away from a salesman, or close your door, or threaten to kill him. I couldn’t do that with my old man, and his technique was the “Wear Them Down Until They Give In Or Die” school. He’d done this to me before in my youth, because after he learned that forcing me to do a thing was to teach me to hate it, he decided that simply talking me into it was somehow better. And when he started leaning on you to do a thing, he Would. Not. Stop. Ever.

When I came home for my birthday that year, he started leaning on me about the damn slacks. “They never get wrinkled, ever! And they keep a crease without ironing!”

“Dad, I would sooner go to work naked with barbed wire wrapped around my dangles and a KICK ME sign on my back than wear polyester slacks to work.”

“But you could dump a bowl of gazpacho in your lap, and they’d launder up in one wash! And no dry cleaning!”

I wound up leaving early. But I came back for Thanksgiving.

“They keep a crease, no matter what, no ironing! And you could dump a lasagna in your lap and it machine washes right out!”

“Dad, you have already successfully reproduced. If I started wearing those slacks around, it would pretty much finish any hope I ever had of matching that feat. The time of polyester is over and done. I will not wear your slacks.”

“Aw, what do those fashionistas know? They look great! And they never wrinkle! No ironing!”

I left after breakfast the next day. He’d brought the slacks to the table to demonstrate while I ate my scrambled eggs.

But then there was Christmas. I’d come up a couple of days early to see my grandparents, and my sister was going to be there, and had I known the cruelty of that Christmas, I’d have gone anywhere BUT.

But now he had me where he wanted me. For two days, he could talk about nothing but the glory of the goddamned black polyester slacks. Even Mom was starting to get a little irritated. But while his only son held out, he Could. Not. Stop. “You could dump a whole chocolate mousse in your lap, and it washes right out in the machine! No dry cleaning! And you don’t even have to PAY for ‘em, son! I got ‘em right HERE!”

On and on and on. For two days. What finally tipped me over was the idea that he might sneak off on the 24th and wrap the goddamn things and stick them under the tree with my name on them. And I realized: I don’t have to wear them to work. I don’t have to wear them at ALL. I don’t LIVE here. He will never know. I could pitch the damn things out the car window on the way out of town, and he would never know.

And even then, I held out. Surely, he will realize that I do not want his goddamn polyester trousers. Surely, after three days, he will relent.

And he did not relent. As we opened presents around the tree on Christmas Eve, he continued. “No dry cleaning, ever! You could wad ‘em up and leave ‘em all night, and they won’t wrinkle!”

And finally, after a large glass of heavily spiked eggnog with rum, I snapped. “FINE!” I roared. “FINE! GIVE ME THE SLACKS! GIVE ME THE GODDAMN SLACKS! RIGHT NOW! PLAINLY, THE UNIVERSE WILL COLLAPSE INTO ENTROPY AND SATAN HIMSELF WILL RETURN TO RULE IF I DO NOT ACCEPT THOSE GODDAMN SONOFABITCH BASTARD SLACKS!!!!”

And as the last syllables left my lips, I was regretful.

Mom did a slow facepalm.

My sister goggled like a koi carp who’d suddenly found himself in a pine forest.

My grandparents blinked twice and did a fine synchronized BIG slug of eggnog each.

But my father beamed like sunlight through the storm clouds. “I’ll run gettum right now. You WON’T regret it. Just TRY them!” And he vanished in a twinkling.

And I looked around at my appalled immediate ancestors. “Sorry,” I said.

They said nothing, but my mom nodded and my grandfather grinned sagely. Dad really had made a point of going on about NOTHING else whenever he and I had been in the same room for three... stinkin’ ... days. At least now it would end.

And Dad came running back in with an armload of black polyester slacks.

And after that, Christmas became ... well, tolerable. Periodically, he seemed to forget that I had accepted the damn pants, because he would burst into lyrical melody about the glories of polyester slacks, but these celestial song cues were short lived, and we could get on with the business of tolerating each other’s company.

And when I left, I stuffed them into a plastic garbage bag. Dad didn’t mind. “Just you wait,” he said. “When you get ‘em out, they’ll be as smooth and unwrinkled as if you’d ironed ‘em. Just you wait.” And I stuffed the bag in the trunk of the car, and departed for the land of sanity. Those kids on TV, I thought, THEY got dads like Hugh Beaumont and Danny Thomas. Me, I got a prerecorded sales pitch on eternal loop...

And I forgot about them. They stayed in the trunk for months. Eventually, they found their way into the bathroom closet in my apartment. I kept meaning to donate them to Goodwill or something, but some small part of me was afraid he’d FIND them again, somehow, if I did that.

The last time I saw them was when I was going to entertain a woman in my apartment on short notice. The sink was full of dishes, and I had no time to wash, and I threw the essentials into the dishwasher, and the nonessentials... shit, shit, shit, where to PUT them... and I found a plastic garbage bag in the bathroom closet, and promptly flung all the remaining dirty dishes into the bag and stuck it back in there.

...and forgot about it.

I’d been married for a few months and living in my new home before I remembered about the plastic garbage bag full of dirty dishes and something like nine pairs of black polyester slacks. I immediately felt bad about the poor guy who’d had to clean my apartment after I left.

But hey, I thought crazily, I bet all the dirty dish sludge washed right out, with no dry cleaning!

And I bet they even still had a crease!

A Scene From Public Education

All because Subway's credit card machine was dead.

It wasn't a bad day at work, as days go, but I just wasn't on my game today. Bleh.

So when it finally came time to exit, I decided I was due a treat. Decided to stop at Subway on the way home, get my favorite: teriyaki chicken twelve inch with sweet onion sauce, lots of baby spinach, bell peppers, banana peppers, olives, lettuce, and triple onions. Mmmmm. Like a salad, but in a sandwich! And I knew disappointment when I pulled up in front of the place and saw the hand lettered sign, CREDIT CARD AND DEBIT MACHINE BROKEN CASH ONLY SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.

Well, bugger. My mouth is set now. Where to eat? I glanced around. Mama's? No, I want something take home. Wendy's? Bleh. Schlotzky's? Neh. Fatso's BBQ?

...mmm... not what I would have thought of... but if I get take out, I can get all the free onions and pickles I want. It's not a salad sandwich, but barbecue's good. And it's cheap! So I swung over and parked.

Ordered a couple of sandwiches and fries. The young lady trotted off to get my order... and left a young black guy standing at the counter staring at me. Weirdly. In a way that kind of weirded me out. Until he noticed my casual day T-shirt and asked, "You worked at Pseudonymous Middle School?"

I looked at his face again. He DID look familiar... I glanced at his ID badge: MICHAEL

...and then it hit me: MICHAL.... pronounced "Michael." I'd first heard that name from years earlier. He was one of my first classes of kids, back when I'd first started working Special Ed, behavior unit. I remembered his name, too. At my first Parent Night, Michal's mom had screamed it in my face.

"His name is MICHAL, and there ain't no damn E in it!" she had snarled loudly, all WAY up in my face. "All them OTHER Michaels have E's. This one DOES NOT, and you better RECOGNIZE!"

I had made no issue of Michal's name. Considering some of the bizarre things parents name their children, Michal was no trouble. Hell, the longer I teach, the more I wonder if some of them specifically do that just to fuck with everyone who will have to deal with their child; we get some with names specifically spelled in such a way as to be unpronounceable on the first bounce... I've had kids who had names like "John," but spelled it "Terhorski." But apparently, Mom has dealt with enough people who tried to tell her how to spell "Michael" that she feels a tad hostile in advance to the likes of me.

I was wrong, of course. That's just how Mike's mom dealt with her fellow human beings. With hate, aggression, and a barely leashed viciousness that led most people to back the hell off because she seethed with hate, aggression, and barely leashed viciousness. Oh, she also didn't like anyone calling him "Mike." His name was MICHAL, damn your eyes!

Found out later that she'd discovered he LIKED being called "Mike," and beat the living shit out of him with a belt for it. His name was MICHAL, damn your eyes! And you better TELL those other boys that your name is MICHAL! WITH NO GODDAMN "E!" AND I BETTER NOT EVER HEAR YOU SAY OTHERWISE!

I did fine with Michal. He wasn't really a behavior kid. He was in there because his MOM wanted him there, because he was SUCH A ROTTEN, MISBEHAVING, BAD LITTLE BOY!

When I worked psych, we had lots of kids like that. "He MUST be bad," the parent would say, "because he is ALWAYS doing things that I have to BEAT him for!" There are a surprising number of parents who simply do not understand your basic child. Even worse, there are a surprising number of parents who simply assume that beating the shit out of the child with a belt or paddle or whatever is the default answer to any factor of the child that one does not like. Like making noise, being goofy, acting like a child, or in some cases, having the wrong father, breathing too heavily, having feelings, or simply existing improperly.

We had fun with Michal's mom his eighth grade year. You see, I have to submit periodic evaluation forms on all my kids. When I worked the Behavior Unit, one of the basic ones was "what's the kid done lately?" How has he misbehaved? Michal's problem was that he almost never acted out. Ever. He was friggin' angelic next to the other kids I had. Furthermore, he had no academic difficulties; he was actually pretty sharp. And that made my job harder. I was geared to stupid, poisonous children, or kids with psych difficulties. Much as I liked Michal, he simply did not belong in my class, and there was no reason he couldn't cut it in the regular ed classes.

So I said so. Finally, the department called a meeting, and we pulled him from the Behavior Unit.

His mother about popped an O-ring.

We went through a month long period where me, the principal, the secretaries, and the campus cop literally evolved a drill every time that woman set foot on campus, and she did so at least twice a week. Procedure called for her to check in at the office and get a visitor badge. Oh, HELL no, Michal's Mom could not be bothered with THAT! No, no, she'd wander in the front door and:

(a) Launch a frontal assault on the principal in her office... regardless of who else might be in there. Michal's Mom did not wait. Or make appointments. Or anything but storm the hell in and begin her strident speech.

(b) Hunt through the building until she found Michal, and then drag him out of class to scream at him in the hallway for whatever transgression she'd discovered since he left the house that morning.

(c) Invade the Special Ed office, regardless of who was in there or what was going on, and howl and froth at the department head, secretary, or anyone handy. Including, once, another parent who did not work for the district and came damn close to decking her.

(d) Stride into my classroom like she owned it, terminating any teaching, education, or anything else until such time as her grievance had been addressed, or I had simply listened to her rant for a while.

All of these eventually resulted in a nearby person running to and hitting the nearest panic button. The intercom would come on, the secretary in the main office would immediately realize that Mrs. Mike had gotten in, and the cop would be summoned and sent to collect her. She'd scream and holler and argue with any administrator, but she would actually OBEY the COP. She wouldn't SHUT UP, but she would at least motivate towards the door or the front office, spouting and foaming the whole time.

One of the more interesting incidents came when she stormed into my room that month to launch into the now-familiar complaint that we COULD NOT simply shuffle her son into any classes we thought appropriate, that SHE WAS THE PARENT AND SHE HAD RIGHTS, and I countered by blocking her way and moving towards the door, maneuvering her into the hall. By now, the kids knew the drill, and Michal got up to go hit the panic button.

"OH YOU WILL NOT!" she screamed at Michal. "I WILL BEAT YOUR WORTHLESS ASS WHEN YOU GET HOME!"

"Ma'am," I said, much more calmly than I felt, "you have just threatened your child in front of a public school teacher. By law, I must now contact Child Protective Services and report this incident."

"YOU CAN'T DO THAT! HE IS MY BOY! I HAVE THE RIGHT TO DISCIPLINE MY BOY!"

"The fact remains, ma'am, that I must contact CPS and report this. If I do not, I could go to jail."

"I WILL SUE YOUR WORTHLESS ASS AND THIS WHOLE GODDAMN SCHOOL INTO HELL AND GONE!"

"That is your privilege, ma'am. But now I must call CPS and report this incident. As well as your entering my classroom and screaming profanity."

If looks could kill, I'd have been powder, right then and there. By this time, I had her into the hall, though, and round the corner came the cop and one of the veeps, at a jog.

*************************************

And here he was, working at Fatso's Barbecue. Nineteen years old. We had a nice little chat. He wasn't living at home any more; crashing on a friend's couch, kicking in on the bills, and saving money. He was most of the way through his degree! "That's right, gonna be a twenty year old with a DEGREE!" he crowed. Just making money until he could afford to jump back in and leap through those last few hoops. It was good to see him. I can't take credit for his success. Only thing I ever did that was any good for him was getting him out of my class. But it still felt good.

The girl came back with my food, and we shook hands, and I paid and left. I noticed on the way out that his badge read MICHAEL.

Not MICHAL.

MICHAEL.

And as I write, I wonder: did Fatso's misprint his badge? Or did he finally tell his mother to go to hell? Kind of wish I'd asked....

The Fizzies Challenge

I ponder Fizzies.

Fizzies were basically flavored Alka Seltzer. The IDEA was that you would put some sugar in water, then drop a Fizzies tablet in the water, and a minute or so later, you would have a carbonated fizzy soft drink!

Fizzies kind of sucked. The drink tasted somewhere between Alka Seltzer and Kool Ade that wasn’t really trying. But they were useful for the Fizzies Challenge.

Two kids would meet, with seconds, on the playground. They would face each other, and Fizzies would be handed to each duelist, and a neutral party would count to three. And on three, each duelist would pop the Fizzies into their mouth, and clamp down.

The idea was to be the LAST one to spit it out. The cherry ones in particular were grueling. Imagine extremely sour Pop Rocks that are foaming like mad and WILL NOT STOP! And when your mouth fills with insane fruit sour foam foam FOAAAAAAM, you simply let it dribble down your chin, because spitting at THIS point could contain the foaming tablet, and you could LOSE... or worse, be accused of TRYING TO CHEAT!

So you stood there clenching your teeth and trying not to cry and spewing bloody red foam out of the corners of your mouth and praying that the OTHER bastard would give up FIRST!

More than two could play, and it was a fine way to prove your mettle to your peers without actually having to beat each other up. The grownups did not care for it, though -- they’d see a ring of cheering children, assume a fight had broken out, and break through the crowd to see a couple or three combatants, standing rigid, bug eyed, with tears streaming down their faces and gory red foam leaking from the corners of their mouths, and they were never sure WHAT to think.

My old elementary school eventually outlawed Fizzies for this very reason. It wasn’t fighting, but apparently required SOME sort of adult regulation for ... whatever reason.

And you know what? It might have been weird, but we sure’s hell weren’t eating detergent pods.

The Idiot Apocalypse

Prologue 1. We were ready to go, but we didn’t want to go near the door yet. The child had picked up a boxed toy off the pile near the doors and was screaming his head off. Mama, oblivious to the fact she was standing in the store’s main doorway, was trying to soothe the child, and he wasn’t having any of that. He wanted his TOY! And Mama finally put him down, took the box and headed for the register to buy it for him.

The child, finding himself uncomforted, unheld, and unattended, howled for a moment. And then he realized that Mama had left him with the rest of the boxed toys. He quit howling. And he picked up another one and proceeded to tear it open...

Prologue 2. “How the hell did he even get out of his CAR?” I asked.

We stood there and looked at our car. There was no way Berni was getting into the driver’s seat. The guy in the next space had backed into his spot, and his wheels were right on the line. His driver’s side door was within inches of OUR driver’s side door.

“I can’t see how he got OUT,” I repeated. “What, was he two dimensional? Or did he just park like an idiot and then climbed out of the passenger side? What the hell?”

And with some stoicism, Berni went to the passenger side of OUR car and proceeded to climb across to the driver’s seat.

Prologue 3. Ever see a zombie movie?

There’s a hell of a lot of them. And in most of the best ones, you get some foreshadowing, some clue that something is amiss. The zombies aren’t overrunning the landscape YET... but in an alley, you see this one guy staggering around aimlessly. Or in a graveyard scene, you see an abandoned funeral, left amid overturned chairs and an empty coffin... a clue that SOMETHING is terribly WRONG...

The first one, Night Of The Living Dead, had this. THERE was a movie that shot the sheriff in the first paragraph, yessirree. None of this character development, none of this Getting To Know Doomed Characters, naw, we go straight from Johnny being a jerk to his sister Barbara while this weird man staggers in the background, to suddenly he’s ON them, and he’s a ZOMBIE, and oh, SHIIIIIT--

Main story. ...and so, I ducked out this morning to run a couple errands. I’d forgotten about the idiot mom and her spoiled child the previous night, as well as the fellow who’d been so careful to park backwards in his spot that he apparently didn’t care if he or anyone else could actually get in or out of their cars...

And while I was out, I encountered an old friend: the person who roars past you well above the speed limit... gets in front of you... and slams on the brakes. Because they wanted to go ten miles UNDER the speed limit, they just wanted to do it in front of YOU.

This was actually a good thing. Because since I slowed down, I was nowhere near the guy who decided to change lanes without looking, and clipped the box truck in the lane into which he was veering. The box truck wobbled, and traffic all around him scattered, and I tapped the brakes and decided perhaps the side streets would be better, and took the next exit.

Errands weren’t much better. At one place, I was unable to approach the product I wished to buy because of a little mob of employees dragging around a pallet jack in such a way as to cleverly block the aisles as they carried on their conversation.

As I shopped for groceries, I encountered a man with no cart who apparently needed to block as much of the aisle as he could with his own body, to demonstrate his bigness. I grew frustrated.

....and out of nowhere... I found myself imagining a scene in every zombie movie. The scene where it hasn’t COMPLETELY hit the fan... but all the signs are there...

And it hit me: what if the zombie virus doesn’t turn you into a zombie? What if it just makes you oblivious and stupid?

It was a staggering thought. As the very large spread out man lurched towards me, I said, “ExCUSE me!”

He noticed me for the first time. He brought his arms and legs back into his personal space. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry.” And he walked past me like a normal human. He hadn’t MEANT to be trying to take up the entire aisle. He’d just been... oblivious. Just like the employees with the pallet jack who had turned hardware shopping into a slow motion adventure. Just like the idjit who’d been so concerned with parking, it never occurred to him that he was blocking others.

Oblivious.

And I envisioned that somehow, the Idjit Plague had been released the previous night, and Berni and I had simply been seeing the first cases, the Patient Zeroes, so to speak... and now the pandemic was underway. The March of the Morons. The birth of a generation of perfect voters. Idiocracy. The death of good customer service and awareness of others around you.

And it hit me again: Just like the employees with the pallet jack who had turned hardware shopping into a slow motion adventure. Just like the idjit who’d been so concerned with parking, it never occurred to him that he was blocking others.

Oblivious.

And I envisioned that somehow, the Idjit Plague had been released the previous night, and Berni and I had simply been seeing the first cases, the Patient Zeroes, so to speak... and now the pandemic was underway. The March of the Morons. The birth of a generation of perfect voters. Idiocracy. The death of good customer service and awareness of others around you.

And it hit me again: if I was right... how would we know?

The Horror Of Repetition

I haven't actually seen "Frozen" yet. Movie's been out awhile, but I've been busy.

But I can tell you chapter and verse what HAPPENS, oh yeah. And the snowman is named Olaf. And it's an allegory for bein' gay. Except when it isn't. And it's a feminist fable. Except when it's an allegory for oppression of women. And best of all, you can have "Frozen" cereal for breakfast, "Frozen" Campbell's soup for lunch, and a "Frozen" frozen dinner for dinner, and in between, you can play with enough "Frozen" toys to recreate the entire movie, before finally going to bed on "Frozen" sheets, pillowcases, and comforter!

I am starting to dislike a movie I have never actually seen.

It's happened before, too. I didn't WANT to hate "E.T." It came naturally, though.

The movie came out in 1982, and I went and saw it in a theatre. I thought it was a bit kid flavored for my taste, but not a bad movie at all; rather liked it. And I forgot about it about ten minutes after I walked out of the theatre. "Star Wars," it wasn't.

For about a month, everything was OK. And then, the happy meal toys appeared.

And the collectible set of glasses. And the marketing tie-in with Reese's Pieces. And the coloring books. And the toilet paper. And the sheets. And the windup toys. And the cereal. And... for something over a year to 25 months, I literally could not go out in public without having ET shoved down my throat in some form or fashion.

Staying home didn't help. They attached ET to anything they thought might possibly sell better with a frog-faced alien on it. Reese's Pieces' sales went stratospheric, and everybody else wanted a piece of the action. I literally couldn't watch a half hour sitcom without seeing some commercial with a clip from the movie in which ET was trying to sell me anything from hair conditioner to brake fluid.

And one day, I turned on the radio, and Neil Diamond of all people sang, "Turn on your heart-liiiight..." and I literally jumped back from the radio in horror. No, NO, NOT HERE, TOO! And the [expletive deleted] song went gold, and they played the fraggin' thing every five minutes, and I literally went out and bought my first Sony Walkman so I could listen to music without having ET stuffed into my poor ears. I wondered in calm horror, did they pay Neil Diamond to sing an ET song, or was he so wild about the movie that he wrote and sang the fraggin' thing out of sheer enthusiasm for the Culture God that was ET?

The phenomenon was that saturated in the fraggin' culture. To live in America was to eat, breathe, drink, and sleep ET. And to this day, if the thing comes on TV, I'll change the channel as fast as I can reach the remote. I've only seen the actual movie twice, but after a couple of years of marinating in the cultural phenomenon 30 years ago, I'm marked for life. Pavlov's dogs drooled, and I flee ET.

I mourn "Conan The Barbarian." I didn't want to dislike "Conan." I really liked it when I went to go see it in the theatre. But later, my roommates and I splurged for cable with ALL the premium channels, and that night, we made popcorn and prepared for the SHOW.

And we clicked on HBO. What's on? "Conan The Barbarian," with Arnold Schwarzenegger. How about it, guys? Meh. Seen it. What else?

Showtime! They try harder! What's on? James Earl Jones? No, Thulsa Doom.... in the middle of "Conan the Barbarian." Ah. Well. What else?

Cinemax! Awesome! The Home Nudity Network! What have they got? Ah. "Conan The Barbarian."

A couple of months later, we had the cable company pull the premium channels. And for 25 years, I haven't been able to watch "Conan The Barbarian."

It's especially bad with songs, though. I don't hate "All About The Bass." Not yet. Or "Take Me To Church." I'm getting there, though. But they haven't been ramrodded HARD enough yet. I don't walk into stores and hear it blasting at me through the sound system yet. And they haven't coopted the song for commericials. Yet. So far, I can escape from it by simply twisting a knob.

Not so "Elvira."

Not the erstwhile Mistress Of The Dark, Bad Movies, and Cleavage. Her, I still like. But the song of the same name by the Oak Ridge Boys, I cannot stand.

Because once again, back in the 80s, something went wrong with reality, and the dumbest song ever written became legally mandated to play on every broadcast medium, nonstop. "Ail-VAH-ruh, ah oom poppa, oom poppa mau mau, Ail-VAH-ruh..."There were days I kept the Walkman headphones clamped on my skull nonstop, to keep the earworms OUT. There was no ESCAPING it. At least one radio station in central Texas played the [expletive deleted] thing four times an hour. I heard it leaking from car windows, in sandwich shops, walking down the street... it Would. Not. Stop.

To the point where I finally snapped, and killed that one guy who was walking down the street singing, "...oom poppa mau mau, oom poppa, oom poppa, oom poppa mau mau..." Yup. Snapped. Shrieked like a banshee with kidney stones, and with strength borne of sheer wrath, I uprooted a STOP sign and beat him to death with it, right there on the street corner.

I'm lying, of course. I gritted my teeth and kept walking. But it was a near thing.

Anyone else got a tale of a thing that may or may not have started out as a good thing... until sheer involuntary immersion in it threatened to make you crazy?