When Ya Gotta Go

I first met a jellyfish off the shore of the Turkish Black Sea in August of 1973. I was encamped there on a beach near the village of Akcakoca with my fellow backpacked wanderers, Paul and Dan. I had seen jellyfish from boats or washed up dead from the ocean, but never met one face to face.

The night before, we had gotten drunk on wine while dining on swordfish kebabs at a local restaurant. We then stumbled back to our secluded spot on the sea and laid out our sleeping bags for a long summer's nap. During the night heavy winds blew in and the lovely lap, lap, lap of the waves crescendoed into a violent crashing of cymbals. At dawn, Paul, Dan and I woke to find ourselves submerged and pulled out to sea. We dragged our soggy selves and saturated bags to higher ground and laughed our hungover asses off. Paul, though, got pissed when he learned his sandals were swept away forever. While our sleeping bags lay in the sun that day to dry, I had the greatest day of bodysurfing in my life.

When one wanders for weeks, out and about, come what may, it's can be hard to find a good place to poop. On the Black Sea that day, with all that bodysurfing and great portions of swordfish the night before, I worked up a mighty need to go. You didn't find friendly facilities off the beaten path (or in Turkey at all generally) so I cast my eyes out to the harmless sea. I decided to do my business beyond the breakers and swam out some fifty meters.

As I treaded water there, with the swells lifting and lowering, I removed my underpants and prepared to purge. I noticed a translucent umbrella of white floating a ways away, right on my path to shore, and knew that I had better get to it fast as jellyfish give off a nasty sting. So (forgive me) as I was pushing and forcing the issue, I noticed another translucence a ways to my left and yet another to my immediate right. They seemed lazy and unhurried, but by God, they were closing in. I did an immediate about-face out to the open sea to surmise an escape route, out and around, but five or six more were easing in to greet me. Completely encircled, I panicked and released my underwear. Viewed from high above, I would have looked like the yolk of an enormous egg frying and shrinking on the Black Sea surface.

With a huge gulp of air, I dove down, straight down, in twenty feet of water. With saving adrenaline coursing through my veins, like spinach to a cornered Popeye, I swam under and away from that horrible siege, breaking water speed records en route. I believe I could have swum underwater all the way to Istanbul. And soon after my harrowing escape, I sat naked on the beach, hunkered under my sleeping bag, teeth chattering.

That, I'm afraid, was not my first brush with disastrous shitting. Five years before when I was sixteen, my family went camping at Lake Abant which lies in beautiful forested mountains a hundred kilometers west of Ankara. True to Turkish form, there were a few rustic campsites but no restroom facilities at all. By the second day I couldn't put it off any longer. I really had to go.

Armed with a roll of toilet paper, I sought a spot of seclusion. We were tented near the lake with campers around and all solitary paths only led up. So off on a vertical hike I embarked, straight up the mountain, crossed a sidewinding dirt road, then further and further up I climbed, just me and my toilet paper. Finally out of breath, I arrived at a fine spot on the slope which afforded a magnificent view of crystal blue Lake Abant far below. As I stood there in the open sun, I knew I had found pristine privacy. No eyes could spy me way up there. I had worked hard to seize this reward and felt quite glad.

I dropped my drawers to my ankles (forgive me yet again) and with careful adjustments, I managed to squat. My feet became somewhat footed as my left hand grasped a pine sapling while my right held the toilet paper. I was ready to roll. Just then, I noticed some movement on the dirt road a hundred meters below. Three Turks escorted two slow water buffalo that pulled a wagon loaded with logs. I panicked that I might be seen in this embarrassing state and tried to right myself, but in so doing, I accidentally dropped the toilet paper.

As I squatted there, the toilet paper began to roll down the hill. And as it rolled it picked up speed and the paper unfurled and in its unraveling painted a white stripe straight downwards right at the loggers beneath me. Strange, but I mustered the memory of being at Purdue football games and how the fans would throw toilet paper rolls after Purdue scored a touchdown and how a hundred paper streams made a glorious show of celebration there in the stadium, like fireworks.

But there was no papery celebration that day. My toilet paper, now descending at top speed, hit the road in front of the man in front, bounced a time or two in the crossing, then continued like a meteor on its way to the bottom. The logging crew came to a halt and stood there slightly stunned. In unison three heads slowly and silently followed the white line upwards to its original launching pad.

Nothing prepares you for a moment such as this. As I squatted there, my pants around my ankles, I had no words. I suppose I could have shouted, "Iyi gunler arkadashlar! (Good day, friends!)" But I just waved a sheepish hello. They didn't respond, but finally spoke among themselves. Rural Turkish people were not familiar with the concept of toilet paper, let alone the sight of a fair-haired boy so strangely disposed on the side of their mountain. They gawked for an interminable time until, finally, onward they trudged. But I kept my position as it was, awkward as it was, because they looked back at me as they made their exit from sight.

Now five years later my comrades and I hiked back into Akcakoca to catch a bus for Ankara. Along the road, we saw women in brilliantly colored bloomers raking out hazelnuts on flat roofs to dry in the August sun, the Black Sea in the background spread out to the northern horizon. Paul was excited by the scene, and while Dan and I waited, snapped dozens of photographs. Sitting there in the shade of a tree, I noticed that my chest was scraped and raw from the constant pounding earlier when crashing waves beat me dizzy against the grey sand. The pain arose and yet I felt fully glad. No jellyfish had punctured me.

Atlanta

My family lived on the northern frontier of Atlanta in the late 1950s where my father taught at a small college. I went to Jim Cherry Elementary School a few blocks off of Peachtree Street. I could have walked to school through the woods and made it there in ten minutes, but like all children I rode a yellow bus to school through neighborhoods shaded by towering Georgia pines. The school was located across the street from a dirt poor African-American neighborhood, and of course, none of the children from there attended all-white Jim Cherry. I never saw the people who lived there.

My second grade teacher, Miss Moore, was an ancient, unsmiling, skeletal woman. Our desks were arranged in perfect alignment and there were portraits of Southern generals on the classroom walls. She kept us cowering with slaps and by threatening that the principal would remove his belt and lash us if we disobeyed again. She always draped herself in black and even shaded herself with a black umbrella during recess where she presided over the playground with grim disinterest.

Those were the years of nuclear attack drills, and when the sirens sounded, we ducked under our desks and crouched into fetal positions until the sirens sounded the all-clear. I had a friend named Jerry Craddock in that class, a hyperactive boy with rotten teeth, who loved the bomb drills. One time when the drill ended, Jerry looked out the window to across the street and shouted, "Them niggers is gonna get blown to smithereens!" Miss Light rushed over, grabbed his shoulders with both hands, and shook him like his neck would break. She scolded him, "It's NEEgroes, Jerry. Say, those NEEgroes will get blown to smithereens! NEEgroes."

"Yes, ma'am," sounded Jerry, his eyes wild and wet.

Courtesy and Southern gentility were stressed at all times. Miss Moore always said that we should grow up to act as "fine ladies and gentlemen", and a deserving boy and girl were designated each week as the class's "master and mistress." It was a great honor on a Monday morning to be thus dubbed as masters and mistresses got to be first in line, were seated first at the cafeteria table, and led the prayer at lunch. Masters and mistresses monitored proper table manners and if a classmate failed to wipe jelly from their mouth or laid an elbow on the table, the masters were entitled to deliver a sharp rebuke. No one could rise and leave the table until their masters did so. Jerry, of course, never became a master, but was often left alone after lunch to scrape trays into the garbage.

Whenever I witnessed a teacher hitting or shaking a child, as in Jerry's case, my face flushed hot and I became sick to my stomach. Sometimes I couldn't hold it and would puke on the classroom floor and be sent home after a visit to the nurse. With time I learned that vomiting could keep me safe. Every morning after breakfast, I would retreat to the bathroom and gag myself into regurgitating breakfast down into the toilet and call for my parents to witness the evidence of my illness as scrambled eggs or oatmeal floated there.

For several days, I was able to stay home until that fateful morning when my father walked in on me with my fingers down my throat. He dragged me off to school in spite of my screams and I took a seat at my desk with my face buried in my arms. Jerry soon acted up, and Miss Moore sent him out into the hall. She grabbed her pointer stick, exited the classroom door, and a beating echoed down the hallway. Later when her back was turned, I slipped out the classroom, exited the outside door by the cafeteria, and ran all the way home through the woods, gulping tears. I burst through the front door where my mother was having coffee and a cigarette with our neighbor. 

My parents were able to put two and two together, and in a few days I was transferred to the other second grade classroom where the kindly Mrs. Howe never raised her voice. During recess from then on, I would see Miss Moore under her black umbrella, staring at me from across the playground without expression.

I was seven years-old. In those woods between home and school, the Cohen twins and I would strip naked and smoke cigarettes two or three at a time and dance around like marionettes with our butts sticking out. In summer, cicadas screamed bloody murder in those woods, an unyielding background noise when we got chigger bites and ticks and tore up our hands picking wild blackberries. We built lean-to forts from pine limbs, dug holes in the red clay dirt, and stabbed at bugs with sticks. I don't remember feeling oppressed by that southern summer heat, although I do recall huddling by the window air conditioner after emerging from those woods, filthy and parched.

One afternoon, I encountered an enormous snake slithering along a fallen log. I hadn’t realized it was a rat snake until after I barged through our front door hysterical with fright. My father took out the "S" volume from the World Book Encyclopedia and my family gathered around the pages showing pictures of different snake species. I recognized the bright yellow rat snake as the one I saw, but I stayed silent after my father said that the rat snake wasn't poisonous. But when we came to the copperhead and he identified it as very, very poisonous, I announced with a shriek that I came a few feet from that very snake, the deadly copperhead, which had come at me. My little lie was worth all the attention and allowed me to tell a tale about a close getaway for weeks to come.

On a summer day when I was six, I was following the lead of my older sister and brother as we marched through the woods at our yard's periphery. Those were piping hot and eye-squinting days, and my custom was to play the day away in a pair of baggy shorts, barefoot and shirtless. We marched along entranced by my sister's directorial imagination when we came upon a large box turtle which startled and withdrew into its yellow-checkered shell.  The turtle became somehow incorporated into our play's ever-changing narrative, and I, Tommy at the Rear, was commanded to hold it, keep it captive, and whatever I did, not to drop it.

I was staring down at this peculiar box when its hatch opened and its nose appeared. I had not known that I was carrying the animal in reverse, that its tail now pointed forward with its eyes taking an interest in my navel. I supposed that was natural. My belly button is an outie, and to a turtle, it must have resembled a curled worm poking from a hole. The head withdrew and began to extend. Its neck stretched from its shell as slow as warm tar and the head got closer and closer. The thing had me mesmerized and as I stared down, the head now extended by a full four inches, it came to face my bare stomach skin. The beak began to open and with a sudden lunge and snap, bit into my belly with all it could hold.

I howled from the bottom of my lungs and a red trickle ran down to my pants. The beast would not release. My sister flayed about in a frenzy, my brother stood agape, I pulled and shrieked, and yet the beast would not abate. With the shell in my outstretched hands, and turtle jaws anchored to my gut, I ran across the yard and up stairs onto our porch. My father bolted out the door and for a moment stood bug-eyed and helpless at the sight of his hysterical child with reptile attached. He grabbed at the mouth and he squeezed at the neck, but the turtle was cemented in its lock. He dashed back into the house and returned with a pair of pliers which he applied to the head, but what could he do? He couldn't twist or squeeze or yank without tearing away a chunk of flesh.

He withdrew again and this time returned with a screwdriver. He jammed it between the animal's jaws until finally, as his wedging force pried apart the crackling grip and with blood drenching the surgical site, the turtle surrendered. And with a thunderous grunt, my father hurled it high from that elevated porch and it bounded in slow motion like a ball into the tall weeds down below.

A nuclear strike never blew Atlanta to smithereens, but I fled the violence at Jim Cherry School. I learned the rat snake is benign but not so the jaws of the box turtle. 

Bohart Seeks His Powder Puff Reward

(Author's Note: Much of what follows is true. Some of what follows is partly true.  And some of what follows is outrightly false. All of what follows is intended for entertainment purposes only.)

By IRV HANSEN, JR.

WENATCHEE, WA -- Robert "Bobo" Bohart sat alone in a darkened corner of the Big Apple Bar and ordered another White Russian. He had summoned this reporter, he said, "to set the record straight and get my just reward."

Bobo lifted his Zippo, lit a Marlboro, and blew smoke at the tabletop. "I'm a patriot. And I'm a competitor. I grow sweet American cherries. I'm an ordinary guy. I pay my taxes. I don't need to stand on a pedestal. But when a man serves his country as I have, he deserves some recognition."

He had not made eye contact and stared at the ashtray, lost in thought or lost in images from long ago.

Bobo is 63, a slender, strikingly handsome man whose voice has dropped on octave, he said, from all those Marlboros. When told that he bears a strong resemblance to Dick Van Dyke, he responded, "Oh, please, I've been told that a thousand times. Once when I was walking down a street in Seattle, an old lady asked for my autograph. She said, 'You were so wonderful in Mary Poppins!'"

It was long ago in 1969 when Bobo attended the American high school in Ankara, Turkey, where his father, a colonel in the Air Force, was base commander at a military installation there. Some 400 American students attended the school, mostly dependents in military families.

Bobo said, "Before we went to Turkey, I went to school in Spokane where I was a standout wrestler and played football. I loved it. I weighed 125 pounds and played tackle. But there was none of that in Turkey. Kids just hung out at the base, usually at the snack bar, listening to music and playing pool."

Bobo was a senior at the American school and had a classmate by the name of Debbie Sapenter. They were friendly if not close friends. They rode the school bus together from their homes in the city out to the secure military base several miles east of town.

One morning, as he tells it, the bus stopped at Debbie's apartment building per usual, but she was nowhere around. The driver waited, but no Debbie. The bus pulled away and soon was barreling down Ataturk Boulevard. Bobo was sitting at the back and happened to look out the back window.

"I'll never forget it," he said. "Debbie was chasing the bus and gaining on it. I swear we were going thirty miles an hour, but still, she kept gaining on us. Man, she was fast! The driver wouldn't pull over, but when we finally stopped at an intersection, Debbie caught up and started banging on the door, mad as hell. I had never heard a girl swear like that. She never missed school and she wasn't going to miss that day either."

Bobo allowed a slight chuckle and shook his head. "Man, she was fast."

You might wonder where this was leading. What relevance did a fast-running classmate have to "setting the record straight?"

Bobo made eye contact at last. "Powder puff, man. Powder puff."

By the fall of 1969, Colonel Bohart and his subordinates had become concerned that the teenage dependents on their watch were overly bored, sedentary, and disillusioned as they sat for hours in the snack bar, smoking cigarettes, and listening to "Hey, Jude" on the juke box. While life in Turkey provided fantastic opportunities for travel and learning, many Americans considered Ankara a "hardship post" and counted the days until they were transferred out. And it was widely rumored that American kids were increasingly involved in drugs, especially buying and smoking hashish, a very dangerous activity in that foreign land.

Against these worries, the brass decided that a football field should be built behind the high school. Equipment was ordered, lines were chalked, goalposts were raised, and aluminum bleachers were erected. Boys were divided into four teams, and clad in their helmets and pads, made Saturday battles on the gridiron as the American community cheered them on.

"I didn't play," Bobo explained. "My best friend talked me out of it. His name was Tom Bohnhorst. In looking back, I can see how disturbed he was. He thought the spectacle of a bunch of Americans playing football behind a barbed wired fence on a Turkish hillside was an insult to the natives. 'An obscene gesture of American imperialism,' he called it. Bohnhorst preferred to poke around in old Ankara alleyways and drink tea with the locals. For some reason I loved the guy, but he was a crackpot."

Bobo drained his drink and lit another cigarette. "Bohnhorst started the student sit-down strike when the moon astronauts failed to visit the school during their world tour. He made me write something for a so-called "underground newspaper" which was secretly distributed to the student body. Full of left-wing nonsense. It was called RIPT as a siren call to all the American kids who were always getting ripped on dope, and believe me, there were a lot of them."

"I was torn," he continued. "I wanted to play football but I didn't want to betray my friends. I was no radical. Bohnhorst cast a manipulative spell on me. But then one day at school, while Tom was out changing the world somewhere, it happened: Debbie and her friends collared me in the hallway."

Bobo's dour mood lifted. He extinguished his cigarette and fiddled with his lighter.

"The girls were pissed," he continued. "They said the boys had everything. They had a basketball team and now they got to play football. The girls wanted to play. They wanted to play in a flag football game, seniors against juniors, on a Saturday just like the boys, with everyone there watching. Most of them didn't even know the rules, let alone how to throw a football. They wanted me to show them how to play, to be their coach. And that's how a Powder Puff football game came to be played in Ankara, Turkey, in 1969.

"We had a practice beforehand, and I showed them formations and the basic rules, gave them positions. I must say, they were quite enthused. So, we get to the big day, the bleachers are full, and everyone's excited, a lot of noise. We get the ball after the kickoff and my team huddles up. And stays huddled, and stays huddled. They never broke for the line of scrimmage, and they're arguing, everyone talking at once. I called timeout and ran out onto the field.

"My quarterback was a short girl named Nancy Bilderback. And when I got to the huddle, all the girls were intense and got quiet, staring at me. Nancy's was the lone and scared voice. She looked at me and asked, 'What do I do?'

"It was then I remembered sitting at the back of that school bus when Debbie Sapenter sprinted across the city to catch up. So this is what I told Nancy: 'Just hand the ball to Debbie. Get the hike, and just hand the ball to Debbie. Every time, every hike. Just hand the ball to Debbie.'"

Bobo's eyes widened. "And that's exactly what Nancy did. Debbie grabbed the ball and shot like a bullet around that cluster of girls and became a blur all the way to the end zone. The world was on pause while Debbie was on fast forward. The bleachers sat in stunned silence. It seemed like a mass hallucination. And on every possession, Nancy gave Debbie the ball, and every time, Debbie ran like a demon possessed all the way to the end zone. The crowd went nuts. She must have run for 800 yards with nary a finger touching her. Not even close. We never had a second down. I don't remember the final score, but we, or should I say, Debbie, beat the juniors by a hundred points.

"Debbie was carried off the field on her teammates' shoulders and when she was set down, she ran to me, and grabbing me by the shoulders, cried, 'I couldn't have done it without you! I didn't know I had it in me!' She embraced me and cried. Never seen a happier person my whole life.

"It may have seemed like a small and sweet thing at the time. But how was I to know that my short-lived career as a powder puff football coach would change lives and American history forever?"

After graduating from high school in Ankara in 1970, Bobo wound up a cherry farmer near Wenatchee, married with two small children. "I was sitting on top of the world. Literally," he mused. His orchards, in the Bohart family for generations, grow atop a mountain overlooking the Columbia River valley.

Harvest comes in July when workdays extend from dawn to evening. The harvest in 1976 was no exception.

"I remember the night like it was yesterday," Bobo said. "I was dog tired, and I sat down in front of the TV with a cold one to watch the Olympics in Montreal. As the Fates would have it, it was the night of the women's track and field events. It came time for the 4X400 relay finals and they introduced the teams. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I spewed beer across the living room and nearly shit myself."

There, running for Team USA, stood the one and only, Debbie Sapenter.

"Actually, I think I did shit myself," Bobo recalled.

The East Germans were the prohibitive favorites, and they set a new world record by coming in under three minutes and 20 seconds.  But the Americans, with Sapenter running the first leg in 51 seconds, grabbed the silver.

"She shot out of the blocks like a greyhound," Bobo continued. "The whole world was watching. But my memories filtered the TV screen. All I could see was Nancy Bilderback handing Debbie the ball, and Debbie making the long turn around the juniors and racing for the end zone again and again and again. And her crying on my shoulder, 'I couldn't have done it without you. I couldn't have done it without you.'

"And then there she stood with her teammates on the podium, with their silver medals hanging from their necks, and the flags hoisted in the air -- oh, my God, the flag! -- the whole world watching, the U.S. coming in second, way up there, wedged right there between East Germany and the Soviets. What a moment in my life.

"And okay, let's just say it for the record: The USA should have won gold. Those East German women had five o'clock shadows and sang baritone. Testosterone, man. Hormone injections. But hey, what a moment."

The Big Apple Bar had become quiet. The regulars had left and the juke box was silent. Bobo blew smoke at the ceiling.

A minute passed before he asked, "Does it really matter whether you're running for your country or running for the seniors in a powder puff football game? The emotions are the same. Tears of joy are tears of joy.

"I will carry to my grave these questions: If Debbie hadn't missed the school bus on that morning in Turkey, if I hadn't settled the confusion in that huddle that Saturday, if Nancy didn't do what she was told, if I hadn't broken free for a few days from bad influences… well, would history have turned out differently?"

Couldn't Bobo acknowledge that without his tutelage and powder puff prowess, Debbie would still have come to discover her God-given talents for herself, that it was her discipline, dedication, and hard training that paved the way for an Olympic triumph?

"Impossible to know," he said. "Debbie deserved all that she got. But I wonder when she takes her Olympic medal in her hands and remembers the glory of those days, that she might also remember how it all began, on that glorious day when the seniors routed the juniors on a plot of fresh grass just outside Ankara, Turkey. And if it occurs to her to whittle a small shaving from that silver and send it my way, well, I would understand why."

Counseling! Get your counseling here!

There are a lot of worried and dejected people out there who carry inner demons the size of large capacity refrigerators.  There's anger and confusion.  There's an epidemic of teeth grinding and sales of antacids are through the roof.  Antidepressants are mere fingers in the dike against a sea of despair.  Inner peace is in short supply.  Let's face it:  we have bred a new generation of narcissists whose images in the mirror long for impossible complexions.  We are spoilers and we have spoiled them.  Yes, the American world has become a wicked place where the emotional wiring short-circuits and our modern goddess is perfection.

Therefore, armed with an advanced degree and a stack of unexpired certificates, I am striking out on my own, to start a new counseling agency.  My aim:  to iron out the wrinkles of bad behavior, to puff up the sags of deflated egos, to instill hope to those with expired parking meters, to eradicate the mold of poisonous thinking with my therapeutic power washer.  When people walk out of my agency, they will feel empowered, like they just mowed down a herd of zombies in The Walking Dead.

But what to name this new beacon of hope?  What to scrawl on my shingle?  The brand should jump out from the counseling crowd like a Hooters ad on a billboard.  I have some thoughts about therapeutic approaches and jazzy names, and so far, I've narrowed the possibilities to these contenders:

Tom's Counseling and Live Bait   Many clients feel more comfortable when minnow tanks bubble in the waiting room and crawlers cool in the fridge.  Our shiners and chubs are sure to grab the attention of smallmouth, walleye, and steelhead alike, cheap at $3.99 a dozen.  Our night crawlers come handpicked from Canada.  Before heading out to the lake, clients can catch some counseling with our angling staff who are well-versed in talk about the local fishery.  Serious "issues" are to be avoided at all costs.  Relationship "issues" can walk the plank.  Whining and blaming can take a hike, because, and let's face it, there's no better therapy than to be outside with a line of hope in the water.

Awesome Therapy  How did the word "awesome" ever gain such widespread traction over such a long haul?  I remember way back in 1969 when I told a high school friend that I managed to swipe a joint's worth of dope from my older sister's stash.  His response: "Totally awesome, dude."  (And now that I think about it, it did turn out pretty awesome.) That was nearly fifty years ago and "awesome" since then, in this age of attention spans as short as the first line of Moby Dick, has become the go-to describer for everything mildly positive to mildly interesting to news of fairly good fortune.  Moreover, "awesome" has become the consummate conversation finisher as it encapsulates all that has preceded it.  When a listener finally responds to a happy-ending story with, "That's so awesome!"… the discussion is officially closed.   Besides that, no one ever second-guesses a proclamation of awesomeness.  Once something rises to the quality of awesomeness (which seems like most everything), it becomes an edict from God. Therefore, when my shingle is out there on the street, swinging like a pendulum in the wind, and proclaims that this is the place, right here, where Awesome happens, well, people will flock in like sheep, sheep of every cloth and mental health diagnosis.

Randolph Street Collision and Counseling   Many of today's businesses have discovered that fiscal survival depends on partnership.  It turns out that my favorite body shop has a spare storage room and the owner would be willing to merge our interests on their signpost.  There is no better counseling venue than the body shop waiting room, where motorists traumatized by fender benders and exorbitant repair bills convene.   Many suffer through grief issues as they witness their favorite Buick or Mazda getting sandblasted to the bone.  These people need a sympathetic ear and a good heart to heart.  There's hope in surviving the near-fatal crash.  Clients' self esteem can be bolstered as they gaze at their images reflected in a shiny coat of new paint.  Besides, all those body shop fumes medicate customers' frayed edges and prime them nicely for therapy and willing payments for services.

Hair o' the Dog  Two words:  Labrador retriever.  Nothin' says lovin' like a devoted Lab. And let's face it: the great mass of the emotionally afflicted, deep down, just need a hug, just need to belong.  Every human being bursts from the womb in need of a prolonged embrace, and somewhere along the way, at the most crucial time, what they needed most they didn't get.  A Lab, of course, knows nothing about broken pasts, only that she wants to lie next to you with her head resting on your knee.  At Hair o' the Dog, the corridors swarm with therapy dogs, all Labs, canine companions, who will spend two solid hours per session with the depressed, the angry, the fearful, and the lonely.   Treatment plans are simple:  Goal 1 - Take dog to lake with stick.  Goal 2 - Recline with dog on couch while watching TV.  Goal 3 - Introduce dog to family and/or friends.  In the therapeutic relationship, human beings always fall short.  Labs always exceed expectations.  They are incapable of anything but unconditional positive regard.  The only reason clients would leave treatment is they wind up getting their own dogs.

Innovative Therapies, Inc.  My agency would offer a smorgasbord of helping tools. Imagine the sufferer walking into an office for the first time and being handed a glossy, plastic-shrouded menu by our smiling receptionist.  Take your pick from an assortment of therapeutic "entrees" at very competitive prices.  For example:
     
          Meep! Meep! -- A great antidote to chronic fear.  Our tattoo therapist will inject into your forearm an inky image of Road Runner.  Then every time the sufferer encounters a fearsome situation, a glance down at the arm will remind him of exactly what to do:  Spit out a road runner "meep" and run like hell.

          The Noogie -- When you're having a good day or, say, you remembered to take your meds, come on down to counseling!  Nothing extols a personal triumph like a therapist's supportive knuckles scrubbing across the scalp.  No appointment necessary.

          Turn the Tables -- You're not alone.  Let's face it:  deep down, everyone's a douchebag, including, yes, your therapist.  Especially your therapist.  Our staff stands ready to provide you a full inventory of their annoying character flaws.  Give 'em hell about their anal retentiveness, how they pad expense sheets, and their porn addictions. Let 'er rip!  You'll walk out feeling you're not so bad after all.

          Keep It Simple -- For the drug and alcohol dependent, talking is counterproductive. Walk into your therapist's office and try to get a word in edgewise.  It won't work.  Every time you open your mouth, your counselor will glare into your eyes and cut you off.   They always say the six magic words:  "Shut up and go to meetings."  Sessions last the full fifty minutes.

          The Laughing Buddha -- Nothing cries out in the present moment like a noisy fart. Your counselor will equip you with a recording device and a diet rich in legumes. Homework consists of recording your gaseous expulsions, one by one, as they thunder along in the days to come.  Every two weeks, play back the tape in session and see what happens. Your life, and the life of your counselor, will be filled with joy.  As you develop a keen awareness of your body's gaseous movements, you become encamped in The Now. After a year with The Laughing Buddha, play your "musical" tape whenever men and boys gather, and you'll make friends for life.

Season's Bleatings -- 2014

All I need for Christmas is a bib.  When you spend your waking hours in a recliner, as I do, odds are good you will drip various food substances on your shirt.  Last night, a forkful of Stroganoff wound up in my lap.  But it's happening, all this spillage, at an alarming rate.  The washing machine is going non-stop.

At least that's what Sue tells me, that I need a bib.  Let’s face it: A bib is just a few inexorable phases from a droning drool circle.  Now that I am officially SEMI-RETIRED, I must accept that my life as a spring chicken is over.  In the mirror, I see a molted rooster.  But think not that I mock old people.  When he was an old codger, my father went through a ream of bibs, and I loved him just the way he was.  I take heart that some of our greatest citizens wound up with colorful foodstuffs dribbling off their chins.  Groucho Marx, for example, wore a bib.

There’s more decrepitude:  I can't put a sock on my left foot without splaying on the floor.  That's because when I twist a certain way, the sciatic nerve on the left side of my butt screams bloody murder.  Coincidentally, Sue has screaming sciatica on her right side, so that when we both hobble around, we hobble with reciprocating limps.  We found that if we stand side by side, her on the left and me on the right, and bind together our sciatic legs with tight rounds of duct tape, we can walk three-legged without any pain at all.  Effective togetherness!

Sue creates beautiful quilts. Day after day, up to the sewing studio she climbs, where hour after hour she toils away with thread.  She could make a fortune on Ebay or at art fairs, but insists instead on GIVING HER TREASURES AWAY, like a thimbled Johnny Appleseed.  I urge her to practice the essence of the season -- make as much cash as you can!  But it's no use… the land is blanketed with her generosity.

Brendan and Jodi are thriving in Grand Rapids. Brendan is an investment banker at Fifth Third and Jodi looks after grants at Spectrum Health Center.  They thrived their way into buying a big old house on Hall Street which their two dogs have commandeered.  Brendan remains principle tuba for the Holland Symphony, with his dogs’ blessings of course.

Elizabeth continues to lasso stray cattle in Texas.  Which is to say, she is still in Austin working as a personal assistant to an heiress.  Which is to say, if Elizabeth plays her cards right, she could end up as a monarch for a small island nation.  Meanwhile, her dog likes to bolt out the door and launch like a rocket for the Austin city limits.  This, however, keeps our daughter in good physical shape.

My father took his last breath on June 28.  My sisters and I were there and beheld his exit out the bedroom window.  He was grateful to finally take his leave, and bestowed upon his family, his friends, and his students, lives with richer hearts. 

While I was crawling across the floor last night, I noticed a rubber bone under the sofa. It belonged to Darla, our sweet and beloved yellow Lab, who died in August.  Neighborhood squirrels now run amuck, cocky with their new-found freedom. We can't get used to coming home to an empty house, absent of the frenzied welcomes that spanned 12 human years.

So, we count our blessings -- heating pads, Ibuprofen, duct tape.  My fantasy football team, the Squatting Dachshunds, is in the league championship this weekend.  I'll be in my recliner, drooling without bib, egging them on.  Wish me luck and, by the way, Merry Christmas!

Post-Midterm Report -- The ABCs of a Disemboweled Liberal

A is for Appendicitis -- Behold the Republican horde.  Oh, how the pain pierces.  I have a bladder infection and my pyloric sphincter valve acts up.  My heart hurts.  The lungs hyperventilate and the pancreas won't pancreate.  My nose doesn't smell and the tongue is numb.  Don't be merciful -- disembowel me, draw and quarter me.  Deliver my body parts to the feeding trough of Fox News.  I am tarred and feathered and publicly humiliated.  The spleen is the worst.  It ruptures with anger.  Bring on a rusty scalpel, scrape it out, and lay it at the feet of Mitch McConnell.

B is for Bubonic Plague -- I was bitten by a flea that lived on a rat that infested right wing radio.  Stupid me, I tuned in.  I am coming down with a fever, my lymph nodes ache, and my rash resembles roseola.  The epidemic spreads through the bodies of liberals and is borne by alienation.  My doctor advised me to turn off the 24-hour news cycles, but the voices persist.  I have resorted to wearing a flea collar.

C is for Clone -- See the victors behind their Pepsodent smiles propped in a line behind a microphone.  Listen to their hollow paragraphs in their perfectly vetted sound bytes.  It's the well-worn party line uttered by plasticine faces in uniform ties.  Each head above its stuffed suit is interchangeable with the next.

D is for Demarkation -- The Berlin Wall was bound to fall.  The people on both sides longed for each other.  It was only a matter of time.  But the Wall which runs down the Congressional aisle is a mightier thing.  How unanimously opposed are the blue and the red regarding every proposed idea.  Each filibuster and obstruction solidifies the chasm and no one tunnels underneath to reach across.  Don't be deluded by all the back-slapping.  Knives are concealed in those palms.

E is for Elizabeth Warren -- There are a few brave and clear voices in the cacophony, two or three, like oases in the desert, that speak from the heart with common sense.  They are not afraid to say "corruption."  They are not afraid of hatchet men.  They do not prostitute themselves to corporate johns.  Elizabeth is an untarnished voice for fairness, as though fairness somehow matters.

F is for Father Knows Best -- What family homes need fundamentally are lovely staircases with lovely bannisters.  And wives and children should pause there with Father and exchange familial cheer.  Ozzie paused at the steps with Harriet,  Robert Young with Jane Wyatt, and Ward Cleaver with Wally.  Ward gave The Beaver some awful good counsel on those first few steps. I bet the dashing Ronald Reagan paused there too, set down his briefcase, and asked Nancy about her day.  Can't we just go back to TV's yesteryear, to a time when white fathers knew best, when everyone knew their place? 

G is for Gas -- Another of my ailments.  As my breakfast regurgitates, I bloat.  I've been bloated since November 4th.  I get by on massive handfuls of Tums and watching Stephen Colbert.  But if I chance upon a Limbaugh or a Hannity or an O'Reilly a-bloviating, I swell up like a balloon and require a puncturing.

H is for Hemorrhage -- About three years ago, I was working at the Antrim County Courthouse when a commotion erupted.  A middle-aged woman had fallen on the icy steps outside which caused a sizable gash on her forehead.  She was brought inside for some first-aid, but it was obvious as the blood streamed down her face that what she needed was an ambulance.  The noise escalated with her frantic protests. "I'm begging you!" she pleaded.  "Don't call an ambulance!  Please!  Please!  I don't have health insurance!  I don't have any money!  I can barely eat!  I'll be okay!  I'm begging you! Don't call an ambulance!"

I is for Involuntary Exorcism -- Former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, recently elected to the Colorado legislature, once performed a so-called exorcism of Barack Obama because the President was "possessed by demons."  In addition, the chaplain claims to have exorcised homosexuality from a lesbian on the Internet.  Klingenschmitt also said, “You know what, citizens, if you don’t have a gun, I’m telling you – as a Christian chaplain – sell your clothes and buy a gun. It’s time.”  The new state representative crushed his Democratic opponent by a score of 70 percent to 30. 

J is for Jesus -- Would Jesus want the poor to sell their clothes to buy guns?  Ask your nearest Navy chaplain.

K is for Koch --  Eighty individuals on this planet have more wealth than half of humanity. Each one has more stuff than 437,000,000 human beings combined.   What is wrong with these people?  Not the 80 freedom-loving job creators, but those ignorant masses who seem content to have nothing.  There are hundreds of self-help tutorials available in bookstores. 

L is for Lily Livered -- You've got to hand it to the Tea Partiers: they speak their minds and refuse to compromise. They don't kowtow. Democratic candidates should take a lesson.  Instead, they become master sell-out artists, tiptoeing through tough questions so as not to alienate voters. They distance themselves from an unpopular Obama, and take marching orders from the fickle trends of favorability polls. Talk your empty talk and sell your souls, you ballot whores!

M is for Money -- M is also for Monstrous, an apt word for the Supreme Court when it opened the financial floodgates to political influence. Such a sublime name:  "Citizens United". United against what?  Democracy?  Is money the root of all evil?  In American politics?  You bet your sweet ass, it is.

N is for No More Fish --  Republican James Imhofe will become chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  Imhofe believes climate change is a hoax with 99 percent of scientists conspiring.  Meanwhile, the Apocalypse has a new due date: 2048. That's when the world's oceans will be empty of fish, predicts an international team of ecologists and economists. The cause: the disappearance of species due to overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change. Imhofe must abhor sea bass. 

O is for Ostrich --  Our heads are immersed in sand.  Or to be exact, our heads are immersed in screens.  Listen, one in three incoming college freshmen can't identify the two sides who fought in the Civil War. Wow. Is it because they were never taught?  Is it because they never listened?  No, I think it's mainly that most students don't give a shit. And why should they?  In a world where smartphone messages saturate our discourse, the importance of Gettysburg gets suffocated by billions of instantaneous updates in our need for relationships.

P is for Person -- The Supreme Court decreed that corporations are people, too.  Just like you and me.  You know that panhandler down on the corner of Front and Park?  That's Enron trying to make a comeback.  When my daughter was little, she liked to have sleepovers.  She would never ask, "Daddy, can I have Exxon over to spend the night?" She knew the shareholders would never give permission.  While corporations are now bona fide human beings, they don't need to stand in a line to cast their votes.  They simply buy them.

Q is for Queasy Stomach -- I may be coming down with nausea-induced malaria. Or maybe my gut is giving me notice.  It's a feeling that I ride a mule train bound for the canyon's bottom, steered by a team that leads from fear.  It's a feeling that Ignorance and Greed are taking us down. Then again, it could be a tapeworm.

R is for Refugees -- Imagine that Quebec is overrun by a powerful drug cartel that commits atrocities on such a scale that families by the thousands flee to the borders of New York, Vermont, and Maine for refuge.  The Quebecois arrive with gruesome stories of rape, kidnapping, and deprivation. Unless they join the cartel, they will be killed.  Would we open our doors?  I think not. They have French accents. They are not our problem. Send in troops to secure the border.

S is for Sciatica -- I have two pains in my butt.  One pain radiates down my left side and into my leg. Ibuprofen helps. Another pain moves up my right side and into my gall bladder.  These pains have different sources. The one on the left is caused by an inflamed sciatic nerve.  The pain on the right is caused by corporate palm greasing and is known among liberals as The-Gall-of-it-All.  As we witness Congress getting an approval rating of 10 percent but still getting re-elected 90 percent of the time, the right side flares up.  A real pain in the ass. Ibuprofen is of no use.

T is for Twenty First Graders -- The Second Amendment was crafted, some 225 years ago, to ensure that citizens had the right to own a rifle.  But in those days, it took a shooter about 45 seconds to load a single, leaden ball.  I agree with the NRA that we should return to the gun-owning spirit of our founders. Let us return, then, to the Age of Muskets and its implicit rejection of modern gunnery.  It would be impossible for a wannabe mass murderer to expect much success.  For example, a psychopath in pursuit of first graders would have to deal with his ammo pouch, gunpowder, wadding, a lead ball, and his ramrod before he could begin his rampage.  His targets would be long gone by the time he pulled back the trigger.  And drive-by shootings would be a thing of the past. Imagine how cumbersome.  

U is for Umbilical Cord -- I used to have one, or should I say, my mother and I once shared one.  Even though the physical thing was buried in the back yard long ago, the figurative cord still survives.  I remember watching the Democratic National Convention in 1960 on our little black and white when my mother was a backer of Adlai Stevenson for President.  During the nominating, my mother sprang from the couch and cried, "Stevenson!  Stevenson!"  I was eight.  So I also rose and shouted, "Stevenson!"  Mom was always an enthusiastic liberal and I have absorbed her leanings through our umbilicus and right up to this day.  So blame her, not me.

V is for Virulent Disease -- Blessed are the heroic doctors who treat Ebola and initiate policies to contain the epidemic.  Vile are American politicians, with no medical credentials, who prey on public fears for personal gain and try to transform the crisis into us-versus-them  quicksand.   

W is for the War on Christmas -- My brother and I fought this war on Christmas morning in 1958.  Santa Claus brought me a rocket launcher that sprang rubber-tipped missiles in high arcs across the living room.  My brother and I took turns trying to knock the angel from atop our Christmas tree, and in our fun-filled exchange, a dozen ornaments shattered on the floor.  The real Santa was not amused.  Oh, how I wish there were a real war on Christmas.  We could fight to prohibit corporations from three months of product-hyping propaganda and keep right-wing idiots from spewing "War on Christmas" nonsense from their putrid pulpits.  To everyone else, happy holidays!

X is for Xcept One -- Every developed country in the world provides healthcare to all its citizens.  Thirty two countries. Universal coverage. The first was Norway in 1912.  The second was Belgium in 1945.  The most recent was Canada in 1994. Twenty years ago. To repeat, every single developed country provides healthcare to all its people, young and old, rich and poor, everyone.  All countries, of course, Xcept one.

Y is for "You lie!" --  For part of my childhood I grew up in the Jim Crow South with its segregated schools, segregated bathrooms, where bigotry was always in the air.   Fear of African-Americans was masked as hatred, and when a child is imprinted with these non-stop messages, deprogramming takes a long time.  It has taken me a long time.  When South Carolina representative Joe Wilson shouted, "You lie!" at President Obama in 2009, I fear his inner child raged from that Jim Crow imprint.  Racism can dance its way around points of policy and hide behind the economics of fear, all the time unaware of itself.  It's damn hard to pin it down.  But with Obama at the helm, bigotry rises and shows off its true colors in obvious and not so obvious ways.  Even though Republican Wilson was formally rebuked by the House of Representatives, the rebuke occurred along party lines.  

Z is for Zen -- Thank you for listening. I hope you didn’t mind. I feel much better. I really needed to lance the boil.  My double vision has unified. No more visits to the proctologist and no more Xanax. The bubonic plague continues to infect, of course, but I have withdrawn. It’s bad for the health, all this blaming and ranting and pumped up pride, to feel so wronged. I’m off to the ocean now to watch birds.  With waves at my feet, I love to watch pelicans as they bomb the water for fish and then arise to feast like a big-bellied family at Thanksgiving.  I must go down to the sea again. Time with pelicans may be short.

Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?

There are two mysteries in life which seem impossible to solve.  The first is, of course:  Who put the bop in the bop sh-bop sh-bop?  Many theories circulate, but the answer remains unknown.  The second puzzle is this:  At the conclusions of Cialis TV commercials, why are a silhouetted man and a silhouetted woman pictured side by side in separate bathtubs?

For the uninitiated, the medication Cialis can help a limp man restore the lead in his proverbial pencil.  The commercials depict various middle-aged couples in moments of shared activity, such as watching meteors together from their porch swing or watching a football game on TV from their couch.  Their collective eyes meet suddenly in a moment of unexpected rapture, and we imagine that they fall to the floorboards where he goes at her like a nail gun to a roof shingle.  Their happy interlude is made possible by their friends at Eli Lilly and Company.  The dude had talked to his doctor and, well, he was mighty ready "when the moment is right."

To drive his lead point home, the dude took some risks:  headache, indigestion, back pain, muscle aches, flushing, and stuffy or runny nose.  A hangnail could happen.  There's also a chance of vision or hearing loss, but when "the moment is right" the tool bag requires only certain tools, so to speak.  Men are advised to consult their doctors if they get an erection that lasts longer than four hours.  By extension, they should also be advised to stay away from public places.

Which brings to mind a story:  A film buff had been waiting weeks to see a renowned French film.  When the film finally premiered in his city, he rushed downtown and got in line to buy a ticket.  Now, the film buff was an unusual sort as he had a pet chicken who went everywhere with him, including, on this very day, to the movies.  Carrying his hen in his arms, he reached the ticket booth, but the ticket seller took one look and told the man he couldn't come into the theater with a chicken, of all things, and refused to let him in.

The film buff was crestfallen as he was so looking forward to seeing the movie.  But a bright idea dawned and he went around the corner and stuffed the chicken down his pants.  Back in line, he made his way to the ticket booth again and, after the ticket seller looked him up and down, he got a ticket and made his way in.  Our film buff waltzed happily into the crowded theater and took a seat next to two old women.

During the previews, the man's chicken, as you can imagine, started getting restless and made a quiet ruckus.  The film buff concluded that his chicken needed some air, so he unzipped his zipper and the chicken immediately poked his head out, now very content, happy to be getting oxygen.

A few minutes later, the woman next to the film buff turned to her friend and said, "You won't believe this, Martha, but the man next to me?  He has his thing sticking out."

To which Martha said, "Oh well, Agnes, if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all."

To which Agnes replied, "That may be so, Martha, but that guy's pecker is pecking away at my popcorn."

It's a mystery to me how people, after they hear this, can just sit there like a block of cement.  Not even a smile.  Listen, it's one of the great jokes of all time!  If you just sat there like a bag of sand, please see your doctor now.

Anyway, it's a safe bet the film buff had not taken Cialis as there would have been very limited space in his pants for a chicken.  It would be responsible for Eli Lilly and Company to add the caution that persons with an erection lasting longer then four hours should steer clear of bumping into members of an unsuspecting public.  Panic could ensue.

Which brings to mind something that happened to me in Ankara, Turkey, in 1968.  Then French president, Charles de Gaulle, was making a State visit to the Turkish capital, and would be arriving by open motorcade downtown in a great welcoming celebration.  So my high school buddies, Jay and Roger, and I decided to head down for a glimpse of the renowned general.  

There were thousands of people lining Ataturk Boulevard.  As I am a short guy, it was impossible for me to see de Gaulle's limousine behind several lines of street spectators as it slowly made its way along the parade route.  When I complained, Roger, who was a tall guy, invited me to jump on his back.  So I piggy-backed aboard where I got a clear view of de Gaulle as he waved to the throng from atop his back seat, decked out in his fine military attire and his signature French Legion cap.

In that instant, I became distracted by a hard and rhythmic thumping on my butt.  I turned my head and came face-to-face with a Turk who was grinning wildly at me, a Cheshire cat with upper and lower rows of gleaming golden teeth.  Hoisted up on Roger as I was, he had had a direct shot at me, and as everyone's eyes were trained on de Gaulle, he treated himself to an exhilarating and too-good-to-be-true humping.

I coughed forth a profane oath, dismounted Roger, shoved aside my perpetrator, and fled like a track star up the sidewalk.  Jay and Roger raced after me before Jay caught up and grabbed me by both shoulders. With bulging eyes, he stammered into my face, "You. Won't. Believe. What. Just. Happened. To. Me."  Oh, yes I did.  I knew precisely.  With a boner running amuck, panic had ensued.

That was long before erectile dysfunction medication.  I doubt if the gold-toothed humper would have had any need for Cialis.   He took full advantage when the moment was right:  in this instance, when young American tushes stuck out in the crowd like Charlie de Gaulle.  For his part, the unmolested Roger took great delight in what had happened to us there on Ataturk Boulevard, and when he would pass Jay or me in the high school halls, Roger would shout out, "Charlie's comin'! Watch out! Charlie's comin'!"

Think not that I mock those poor men (and their partners) who suffer from chronic limpness.  All lovers need to rub each other.  But back to the original question, what in the world do Cialis advertisers mean with those his and hers bathtubs? 

As we know all too well, medication users are advised to call their doctors if their erections last more than four hours.  And if they are at all socially responsible, they'll also stay home, as I've explained, to prevent public commotion.  But what about that guy whose four-hour clock has not yet chimed, the poor keyed-up sap, marooned at home with his lover, who must somehow manage three hours with his well-sharpened pencil?  What to do with the poor thing before it poops out?  Well, as they say, if the shoe fits…

The only conclusion is that the Cialis bathtubs provide therapy to over-used muscles.  After long and brutal football games, players ease themselves into ice baths to soothe their bruises and mangled muscles.  Football games run about three hours, three hours of punishing attacks and twisted acrobatics and contorted positions, over and over and over again.  Similar, I suppose, to lovers making a three-hour beast with two backs.

Those bathtubs, therefore, must be full of ice.  Case closed.  You're welcome.