“Now listen, folks,” the tour guide said, trying to hush the excited men, one whose cane and composure had become unhinged. “Don’t bother to attend unless you are physically fit and can keep up with the group. Also, the bicycles will run over you. I repeat, they WILL run over you. And absolutely no cameras. These women have day jobs, and they don’t want their bosses seeing pictures spread everywhere.”
The next day, shortly before 6 PM , the lounge was abuzz with passengers awaiting the Mother of All Hussy Tours.
“Something was missing,” Mama noticed, scanning the room. “All the medical aids. No walkers, no canes. These ailing and immobile people who’d been slow as snails all week had come alive, mostly the men who hobbled to the front of the line.”
Once there, they descended farther and farther into the recesses of hedonism. “It was an alley with a canal running down the middle of the street,” Mama said, describing the district. “Buildings on both sides housed the girls, and all had huge, wide picture windows like stores. The women compete trying to entice you to come in. They had on underwear, no nudity.”
My father saw something out of the corner of his eye. He whispered into Mama’s ear.
“Are you thirsty?” he asked.
“Yes. Matter of fact I’m parched.”
“There’s a water fountain over there,” he said, pointing to a man’s thingamabob spewing water.
Mama gasped and Daddy roared. She decided to remain in a state of thirst.
Up until that point, Mama said she hadn’t worried too much about the working girls’ plate glass come-ons.
“No decent man would want them,” the Great Hussy Eradicator said. “I actually heard some of the men say, ‘No Way!’ That is, until we got to the Window Washer. Oh, no, this girl was knockout gorgeous. She was standing in her window looking all innocent in her white lace underwear.”
As Miss Lace O’ Matic saw the tour group approaching—men who looked more like deacons than customers, women who looked more like missionaries than madams—she cranked up her show.
“She starts spraying that window all over with her Windex,” Mama said. “The group was now gazing in at her.” There was a dead silence. Mama wondered where the woman’s paper towels might be hiding.
“No need for them,” she said. “Why, that girl stepped up to her foaming window and dried it with her bra and the back of her panties. I’ve never seen such motion and shimmying. Can you imagine that?”
As Mom and Dad were walking back to the cruise ship, Dad reached for her hand and pulled her in close. He knew she’d had Hussy Overload. He knew it was all too much for his sweet bride.
“Tomorrow,” Mama said, “I’m hoping for a cathedral. You’ve seen your T&A and now I need to see sweet Jesus and Mary.”
How can a decent man argue with that?
Career Day Including a Skull in a Stomach
O ne of my literary heroes is Laurie Notaro, a former Gannett columnist turned best-selling author who admitted in one of her delightful books she was almost a flop during Career Day at one of the area schools.
As a columnist and writer, lots of schools have asked me to join in Career Day, that chance for elementary-and middle-school students to see that there are jobs out there besides wearing paper hats and spreading mustard and mayo or cooking up some meth in a singlewide in the hills.
A bunch of so-called respectable types with careers that come with major props (a big draw with the kids) are always setting up their fancy booths and gadgets at these things, but what does a writer have? Well, we have pencils, newspapers, paper clips, sticky notes, laptops, cameras and other office staples no child in his or her right mind would jam a booth to get their grubby hands on.
If the writer is on friendly terms with the Prize Patrol Promotions employee at the office, she might be able to snag a few water bottles, litter bags, small footballs and whatnots with the newspaper logo imprinted upon them.
I BEGGED the prize lady at my office for some giveaways but she flat-out ignored me, bless her heart, the precious evil thing. I told her if she couldn’t even cough up a few pens, I’d be a huge flop at Career Day, but I think this may have caused her great glee. That darling and adorable woman who gave zilch to pass along to greedy kids is no longer with the company. The fact that all those potential prizes probably went home in her trunk matters not.
A woman must rise above such things. While I may not have material goods to attract children and teens to my booth, I had a big mouth and a mind full of wild and mostly true stories. Embellishments aren’t just for outfits and window treatments.
If only I hadn’t said that the poor prize-patrol woman had that unfortunate mole hair resembling that of the pubic area, and if only someone hadn’t overheard me and told her, then maybe she would have sprung for some nice prizes like the foam-rubber footballs she joyfully handed over to a male columnist when he did a Career Day gig.
As it was, I had nothing but a booth and some charm, though at 7 AM it’s hard to rouse up a grin and energy discussing my job. This is where great, whopping fibs come into the picture.
Don’t get me wrong. In Career Days past, I played it straight and showed the bored-to-tears kids the newspaper and all its sections and explained how one could get a job as a journalist covering all sorts of exciting things others would never have a chance to cover.
“Like what?” asked a boy not too embarrassed to pick his nose and flat-out eat a booger.
“Well, like going to the city council meetings and hearing about new fire codes. Or maybe learning before anyone else how the city is planning to annex a portion of Allendale Road so as to increase the tax base.”
They walked away frowning, disgusted and prizeless. They found the military booth and got to hold bombs and weapons. They discovered the firefighters and grabbed their big old hoses and were even allowed to douse small, contained fires!
Even the health care workers had goods: a blood pressure machine, guaranteed to amputate small arms, along with free rubber hearts. The athlete’s booth had a freakin’ climbing wall that took hours to rig up in the gym.
I just sat there alone at my booth drinking coffee and pretending to be awake.
I had taken along one of my Laurie Notaro collections and reread her Career Day story when she was all but upstaged by a little dog that had replaced her column spot for a day, and her experiences with the various PROPSTERS who lured in little kids with their fancy getups and giveaways.
And so there I sat in my son’s middle-school gymnasium, reading passages of Laurie’s nearly failed Career Day story. With her permission and blessings, here’s a portion of her text:
“Here I was,” she wrote, “a guest speaker at a middle school and I hadn’t brought one single prop. Not one. I hadn’t even pulled into the parking lot, and already I was a miserable failure.”
At least, she reasoned, someone thought she had a career.
Which is what I tried to tell myself as I agreed to sit in the gym for five hours while seven-hundred kids armed with the same nine questions tried to pretend they gave a flying rat’s ass about my job.
I mean, come on. Who wants to know about being a newspaper columnist, both of which Laurie and I were/are? Only she has several New York Times best-selling books, and I don’t.
That aside, I knew from reading her Career Day story I needed props and prizes, and that the kids wouldn
’t come near me if they didn’t get so much as a free paper clip, which I managed to pilfer from the supply closet.
Laurie learned this the hard way. As she entered the school, she was dismayed by all the props and extras the others had brought. The pilot—all gussied up—toted a globe. A racecar driver had the gumption to haul in a massive trailer, car and accessories. A woman doing facials gave out glitter and samples. A baker doled out freshly made cupcakes, and a veterinarian appeared with a batch of puppies at his booth.
As the day progressed, the questions flew for Laurie.
“How much do you make?” they all wanted to know.
“Less than half of any male columnist,” Laurie said.
“Which is what?” the kids continued.
“Um, gosh, I don’t know,” she fumbled. “More than selling your plasma, how’s that?”
I knew if Laurie Notaro could survive Career Day unscathed, I could give it a go as well.
The promotions department’s assistant somehow found a giant banner and fifty foam-rubber footballs. I was so euphoric I wanted to invite her to dinner.
The big dilemma was trying to figure out how to stretch fifty footballs into seven-hundred—the number of students who would come thundering through the gym from 7:45 AM until noon.
I walked in with my banner and footballs and set up shop. Then I looked around at the props. Mercy! How could my blue banner compete with the gadget that shot flames—real fire? Or the booth where hammering and construction were under way?
The real sinker was my booth’s placement—directly across from the military man’s, who would raise his many guns in demonstration and rip off a few thunderous rounds.
Naturally, that’s where all the middle-schoolers migrated. I don’t blame them. I wanted to handle the gun, too. I could think of myriad uses for that weapon, but instead, sat there and waited for the clumps of kids who’d heard I had a few footballs hidden under my table. They’d ask the obligatory questions as their little eyes searched for where I’d stashed the loot.
“What helped you most in your current career while you were in junior high?” they all asked, my favorite question.
“Well, I’d say it was being teased about having buck teeth and giant horse ears that helped me most in my current career. It gave me compassion for others.”
They walked away stunned. A lucky few carried foam-rubber footballs. The others stuck up their noses and harrumphed.
My favorite part of the day was when a student fresh from Yugoslavia or the Ukraine, a beautiful girl who knew about twelve words of English, scanned my newspaper, trying to figure out what exactly I did for a living. Her eyes fell upon the ad for Murphy beds.
“You a Murphy bed?” she asked.
I smiled. “Yes. I sure am. I love being a Murphy bed and promise it’s a great career.” I gave her my last football and waved good-bye with a huge smile.
The day ended and I was as crumpled inside as out. I told myself NO MORE CAREER DAYS EVER!
That lasted a year or two until one day a teacher friend buttered my ass up good and I agreed to drive twenty miles to her little elementary school in the country and talk to many different classes of fourth-and fifth-graders who’d rotate from room to room to learn about different careers.
I sat my big butt in a rocker and waited on the little pretties to come in so I could regale them with tales of the fabulous life of newspaper writing. No more boring old stories of land-use disputes and arguments over the new site for the Super Wal-Mart. Since I didn’t have a single freebie to give, I’d have to use what I knew best: humor and tall tales. Plus, a few naughty business cards promoting my PG-13-rated book I’m sure their parents would later love.
It was a day of no props but lots of shocks. I had an arsenal of wild stories and was ready to fire. Maybe I’d tell them about the groundhog I saw cooking in someone’s Crock-Pot. Or perhaps the severed hand in the bucket a coroner once forced me to view.
The first class came in and took their seats, expectant looks on their faces as they searched my rocker for signs of goody bags and prizes. At first, while my teacher friend was in the room observing, wearing her fine churchy clothes and sweet Junior League–like manners, I remained well behaved.
“This is Mrs. Reinhardt who writes for the paper and she’s going to tell you all you need to know about this exciting career, and you may ask her questions later.”
I started off boring and normal, minding my manners. As soon as the teacher felt comfortable enough to leave her charges and head down to the break room for coffee and danish, I switched gears faster than a NASCAR driver does.
“What’s your favorite story?” most of them would ask.
“Well, now. Funny you should ask.” A zillion went through my head: The one about the psycho who squirted semen through a straw at ladies shopping at various stores around town, getting it all in their hair and on their clothing. Or I could tell them about the sicko castration ring going on in the more western part of the county. But even I knew better than to say these things.
Why not, though, tell them about the man who had half his head in his stomach?
I had just met this wonderful gentleman who had grown a chunk of his skull in his stomach for medical purposes and I knew the kids would be overjoyed to hear about Jake and his unusual medical procedure.
“His name,” I said as if telling a scary story, “is Jake Boosinger and he loved playing golf better than anything else in this whole wide world.”
In order to play his best Tiger Woods–like game, he would need a hip replacement. I explained to the kids who wanted to know what that was and I said it’s when they slice you open and blood runs down the floor and doctors take out the old bone and put in a fake one, but it’s OK because you can walk better later.
Oh, I had them enraptured, and kept checking the door to make sure the teacher hadn’t come back.
“This Jake man,” I said, “all of a sudden had a massive stroke and—”
“What’s a stroke?” about five of them asked.
How would I explain? “It’s when your brain blows up, pretty much,” I said, capturing their attention, all eyes wider than a spooked cow’s.
“Anyway, children, Jake wasn’t ready to die. There was only one way on this planet to save his life.”
They waited on their haunches, leaning in for the answers.
“What? What? What?” they chanted.
“This may sound strange but his brain swelled and swelled and kept right on swelling just like that girl in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory —you know, that blueberry girl?” They all nodded. “If something radical and major wasn’t done, his would have exploded, you see, shot straight out of his skull like a cannon ball.
“The surgeon had a wonderful idea and told the family it was a long shot. They said, ‘We can remove part of his skull and plant it in his abdomen—’”
“What’s an abdomen?” half a dozen asked.
“A stomach, you stupid idiot,” answered a boy in the front row.
“They planted half his skull inside his stomach so it could attach to the vital blood vessels and tissues—those are things you need to keep body parts going—so that part of his head wouldn’t die, you see.”
They all raised their hands as if they needed to pee in their pants from the excitement.
“We’ll take questions in a minute,” I said, checking the d
oor again for the teacher, knowing this would get me kicked out of Career Day in a heartbeat.
“They used to put the skulls in the refrigerators during these cases, but it works better to bury them in the tummy, doctors have discovered. It’s the same surgery that saved Roy Horn’s life.”
Eyes narrowed. “Whose life?”
“Roy Horn’s. The famous magician and tiger trainer from Las Vegas who had his skull removed after that tiger got hold of him during a show.”
Oh, they were loving this. Yes, who needed prizes or a climbing wall? Who needed gunfire or puppies? That’s for Career Day sissies.
“How long would he have to have his head down there near his dick?” the nasty little boy up front asked, and others snickered.
“What’s a dick?” a few of the more innocent and properly raised children asked.
“Go home and ask your mothers. Tell them this little boy said it aloud in class and that will resolve the matter.
“Now, back to the story. Once the man’s brain healed, they were able to replace the skull bone. But, you see, for a while he only had half a head. There was a giant dent where the other half went missing, but they covered it with a minitarp or something of that nature.”
You should have seen the dropped jaws and staring.
“This is a big fat lie,” the mean, nasty-mouthed boy said. “You’re a lying bitch.”
Hands flew up. “What’s a bitch?” several chanted.
“Go home and ask your mother. Tell her this same boy that said ‘dick’ also used the word ‘bitch.’” I stared down this hellion child with my meanest look. “At least I don’t say bad words and, yes, the story is true. It’s in the paper this week. I doubt you can read anything but filth and maybe your daddy’s Penthouse s.”
“What’s a Penthouse ?” more children asked.
I was about to give up and tried to stay on course. “The operation is called a hemicraniectomy. Write that down for extra credit,” I said. “The doctors asked the family what they wanted to do and Jake’s daughter thought for just a split second and said, ‘Scrub up,’ and then Jake said, ‘Go ahead and cut off the top of my head.’”
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