When I was younger, which is a very ambiguous statement to make considering that it could refer to a time as recent as one nanosecond ago to anything as distant as the night my parents drank DMT milkshakes while smoking opium and thought that air would make for a great contraceptive, things happened around the Blyth household.
And I’m talking about a long time ago. I used the example of “one nanosecond” earlier on, but I was being careless with you, dear reader, the way I might be careless with, say, the lives of millions of orphans.
That didn’t come out right.
What I mean to say is that something happened way back in the day. Back when I was so young that I was still eating my cereal with the same spoon my mother had just used to cook her heroin (and, before you pass judgment on my mother, consider that the spoon was quite well sterilized by the cooking process – I was usually a little drowsy by the time I got to school, but at the same time, the analgesic effects of the residue of the powerful narcotic that I ingested with my Frooty PuffsTM took a lot of the sting out of the beatings I received each morning as punishment for just waking up and being myself).
Actually, it wasn’t quite that long ago. I have, again, been careless. And I hope you’re still reading, because I would have ditched this post, like, so many careless lies ago.
I’m thinking more about the twelve to fourteen year old time frame. That’s when most of the action took place. Back when my father was still drinking on a regular basis, and I had just discovered paint huffing. My dad and I would watch sitcoms together – him, totally blown over by an entire box of Gallo, and me, basically a zombie from having inhaled Rodda Paint #7230 (also known by its name “Flirty Fran,” it was a much smoother, mellower high than #7459 (“Swim Team”)) – and we’d laugh. I think. I mean, I don’t remember, but that’s probably what happened.
We had a hot tub out back in those days. I don’t remember why exactly, since there’s not a lot of use for a hot tub between a “Flirty Fran” abusing son and his cheap, drunkard father, but that didn’t mean we didn’t care about the thing. Never mind that nobody ever went in it. It was a status symbol. Having a hot tub is kind of like living in a trailer and keeping a 97 inch plasma television against one wall and surrounding it with a pleather sectional couch. It was a way of saying, “We are a people of luxury and means” to anybody who might happen to come over.
“Oh, hi,” we’d say to people who came into the house (like the repo man). “This is our house, and our HOT TUB is out back. In case you’re wondering, it was THOUSANDS of dollars, and we bought it with our CREDIT CARD that the bank gave us because they know we can afford to pay it back. We don’t use the tub. There isn’t even any water in it. It’s a decorative hot tub, meant to compliment our razorwire fence. That’s how rich and powerful we are. We keep an empty hot tub and had to erect an electric razorwire fence dotted with defensive Tesla coils to keep our jealous neighbors away. OK. You can go now. We feel good about ourselves. Thanks for visiting.”
This kept the Blyth family self-esteem afloat for months. The iceberg which sank our Titanic, if you will, was an odor. A stench. A…
Hang on. I’m getting out my thesaurus.
OK:
– A stench
– A reek
– A whiff
– A Smell
– A disgusting odor
– An unpleasant smell
– A pong (UK informal)
– Antonym: perfume
It was this that prevented us from boosting ourselves on the high pedestal of our greatness whenever our friends came over, which was never since everybody universally hated us.
But something had to be done in case we ever made any friends, so we inspected the area around the hot tub for anything that should be emitting such “a reek.” What we found was a raccoon which had taken its last few steps in our back yard. We found this a strange sort of behavior for a raccoon, and it raised questions:
– Who was this raccoon?
– Why did it die here? Why not, say, over there?
– Did we build the hot tub on an ancient raccoon burial ground? Did raccoons flock from miles around just to die at the foot of our seven jet wonder of whirlpool magnificence? Or was this merely a coincidence?
– How did it get here? Did it walk? Or…
– Was this raccoon our very own Pheidippides? Had it run a distance long and difficult to deliver us a message of great import, only to collapse at the foot of our kingdom’s door and be delivered unto the gates of heaven after dying of cardiac arrest?
– If this raccoon really was our own Pheidippides, and if, unlike Pheidippides, it had been unable to deliver its message before dying, then was it actually more like our very own Jacques Saunier from The Da Vinci Code? Did the raccoon deface itself and leave its message behind in the form of a series of cryptic snippets that would lead me on a journey across Europe, only to eventually wind up back at my own door where the answer was hidden all the time?
– Also, how were we going to get rid of it?
My father is a practical man and didn’t care at all about the first few sets of questions. I was halfway through explaining to him the significance of Pheidippides when he said, “Get the shovel.”
Hm, I thought, that’s odd. It isn’t time for my regular beating yet. Dad never beats me with the shovel before watching The Wheel. He always beats me afterward to compensate for his feelings of inadequacy after ranking up a pitifully small score on the show (which he always played from the couch, of course – he was never actually on The Wheel, although it was certainly a dream of his). Something’s up.
Out of curiosity, and also fear (mainly fear), I ran and fetched the shovel. I knew where it was because I fetched it on a daily basis, and also returned it to its display case on a daily basis after which I would apply cover-up to my new “spring-time hot-air-ballooning accident” (the counselors at school were concerned with the regularity with which my face was being disfigured, and I had worked out the clever “spring-time hot-air-ballooning accident” story to cover for my father’s display of affection with the shovel – he told me that I was his greatest work of art, and that I was the medium, while Pain was his muse (hey – I buy it – but, then, I’ve been hit in the face with a shovel a lot)).
I handed it to my father, and he, ever the pragmatist, used it to lift the rigor moritsed beast from off the ground and then fling it approximately thirty feet to the south, up and over the razorwire fence, which landed it directly in the neighbor’s petunias where it was promptly targeted and vaporized by our Tesla coil defense system.
And I’m not lying.
And if you think I’m a liar, then I’ll fight you to the death within inches of your life. Just leave your name in the comments if you would like a swift and decisive loss to the Fists of Me.
Thank you.