American Thighs (15 page)

A
t nearly every wedding I've attended in recent years, I've been struck by a recurring theme in the prayers. Somewhere in one of the prayers in all of these different ceremonies, there has been a humble entreaty that the Almighty bless this union with children. At the most recent wedding we attended, the plea was issued at the rehearsal dinner, during the wedding, and again at the reception—and the ante was upped in that MANY children were requested. I was nonplussed.

But then, I was having a before-church conversation with my good friend “G.” Having just returned from visiting his finally-grown-up-and-happily-married son, he was beaming and going on at some length about the rapturous joys of Grand
parenting that can come to one when one has survived the childhood and often overlong adolescence of one's own children.

He waxed hysterically sentimental about the charmed and charming teen years of his precious daughter, “N,” compared to the way, way overlong adolescence of his way wayward son, “T.” Truth be told, son T liked to have driven G plumb over the edge many times—many, MANY times. If we want to be completely honest about the whole thing, G got to looking with great longing at that edge before T met and fell way off into love with a darlin' girl, and that little girl got hold of T and inspired him to grow the hell up.

In the years before her arrival, G quite often received those dreaded middle-of-the-night phone calls that NEVER bode well for anybody concerned. He would frantically fumble for the phone and try to focus his eyes on the clock and his mind on the call, eke out some groggy semblance of a “Hello,” only to be greeted on the other end by an inappropriately chipper T who hailed his dad with a hearty “HEY, DAD! HOW YA DOIN'?!”

To which G would logically respond, “T, it's two-thirty in the MORNING. Why are you calling me—what is wrong—what have you done?” T would answer with a happy, oh-gosh-darn tone, “Well, Dad, I'm in Tupelo and I was in this bar…” (It should be noted that T nearly always went at least three hours away from home to commit these infractions, making it even
more unhandy to go and extricate him from whatever circumstances he had gotten himself mired in. In this case, he was a good four hours away. The calls ALWAYS involved “a bar” somewhere, naturally.)

So, T says, he was in this bar and he got in a fight. “Are you in jail?” G naturally asked. “Well, no, Dad, I'm not in jail but I am bleeding and I was just wondering what you thought I ought to do?” “T, just go to the emergency room and see if you need stitches—do you think you need stitches, son?” “Well, I might, Dad, it's kinda SQUIRTIN' OUT everywhere—what do you think I ought to do?” “T—GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM, NOW!” G hangs up the phone and lies there in the dark, staring blindly, wondering if there is any possibility of sleep returning to him this night, and the phone rings again. “HEY, DAD! Say, are you coming to take me to the emergency room?” “T—I'm FOUR HOURS away—YOU ARE IN TUPELO—YOU'LL BLEED TO DEATH IF YOU WAIT FOR ME TO COME UP THERE—just hold a towel over whatever it is that's bleeding…” “It's the top of my ear, Dad.” “Hold a towel over your EAR and GO to the emergency room, T. Do NOT call me back until you have done that.” “Uh, okay, Dad.”

And then it all became crystal clear to me—the reason for the kid prayers at the weddings—(which, clearly, vengeful parents are slipping into the service)—and the reason for G's sparkling disposition that Sunday morning after his visit with T and his wife. T's wife had just presented them all with a brand-new
BABY BOY and G is now praying to be around for at least another eighteen years.

Grandkids are the definite upside of Geezerdom. They are precious beyond words when they're little—and it brings to mind the good old days when your own kids were babies—and then, when they turn into Teenage Mutant Hounds from Hell—you can just laugh and laugh from the soothing sanctuary of your own home, far, far away. Vengeance may indeed be His, according to the Lord, but ain't it swell when He shares just a little bit of it?

T
ravel has certainly changed a good bit for me over the course of my life. As a child, terrified of nearly everything in the Universe with the one remotely possible exception of my own shadow (maybe, I don't really remember—coulda been scared of that, too—prolly was), I never went anywhere—ANYWHERE—without one—but preferably both—of my parents.

In the summers of my twelfth and thirteenth years, my best friend, Rhonda, and I would go on business trips with my daddy, who was in the insurance industry. He would need to meet with his agents in various and sundry little towns all over Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, and Rhonda and I thought it was just THE best thing in the world to ride along with him—for hours upon hours on highways, byways, and narrow, rutted two-lane roads—stopping at many roadside mom-and-pop stores—and
every single Stuckey's—along the way to restock on sugar and stupid souvenirs, both of which we could never get enough of.

I remember the first time I became aware of the existence of Stuckey's. Can't tell you where we were traveling to or from but I can tell you that somewhere along our route, I suddenly saw, outside my backseat window, a sign proclaiming that it was only 153 miles to STUCKEY'S. In just a minute, there was another sign advising me that we had moved one mile closer to STUCKEY'S—and so it went for the subsequent 143 miles. There was a small roadside sign at every single mile, feeding my frenzy for whatever this mystical thing called “Stuckey's” was. On these signs, there were no words or graphics offering me so much as a hint concerning the nature of this too-slowly-approaching wonder—“144 miles to Stuckey's” was all I got until “143” came up. It was like “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” only slower and not to music.

I couldn't imagine what could be so all-fired important about this thing called Stuckey's as to require so very much consistent advance notice, but I knew that, whatever it was, I did NOT want to miss it.

At about ten miles out, Stuckey's increased the pressure by erecting huge billboards with mentions of what all I would find in plentiful supply when I finally arrived at Stuckey's. Each mile we traveled brought me that much closer to “PECAN LOGS!” and “DIVINITY!” “CLEAN RESTROOMS” at least got some
response out of Mama, who declared that she would believe THAT when she saw it with her own two eyes.

She's a Potty Animal

A clean public restroom was the Holy Grail for Mama, and it was just about as elusive, as far as I can recollect. I can't actually recall her ever, even once, walking into one and breathing a big sigh of relief, delight, or satisfaction at what met her gaze. My memory banks are overflowing with her most common reactions, which included but were not limited to horrified breathing—on both the inhale and the exhale—which gave you a shocked, fainty kind of gasp on the front end and a sharp, disgusted puff on the finish—accompanied by eyes that were at first bugged out as wide as possible with eyebrows yanked up around her hairline, followed by the squintiest possible squint, eyebrows lowered and drawn together tight in the middle of her much-furrowed forehead. Due to the horror of the sight before her, words would often escape her momentarily, but when she did find a few, the first couple were most likely to be “MERCIFUL HEAVENS!” (Never once in my EN-tire life have I ever heard my mama express shock or dismay with a resounding and well-earned “HOLY SHIT!” which, as you oughta know by NOW, is one of my most oft-used epithets. I can't recall right
off where I learned it, but I can tell you for sure, it was most assuredly NOT from Mama.)

At any rate, my seester, Judy, and I would hear that “MERCIFUL HEAVENS!” as Mama led the way into the privy and we would know pretty much what we could expect to see when we rounded the corner. Mama always went in first, to survey the territory and devise a plan. A plan was needed to ensure that we somehow managed to relieve ourselves in the blighted facilities available without actually touching ANY surface in the area with ANY part of our anatomies. We could not touch the doors, the walls, or the receptacle that held the toilet paper—only the paper itsveryself.

But first, Mama would go into the stall and cover every visible surface with miles and piles of toilet paper. I wonder how many acres of timberlands were deforested because of her papering proclivities. Often, by the time her work was complete, we could not even see the water in the toilet bowl. Once the entire toilet and surrounding area were completely swathed in its protective toilet paper armor—then and only then would one of us be allowed to enter the stall and assume the rigorous posture of the Female Attempting the Torturous and Very Delicate Process of Endeavoring to Urinate While Standing. (I am certain this must be one of THE most advanced yoga postures of all. I bet there are ancient Sanskrit scrolls with drawings depicting it as one of the last postures to be mastered before transcending this world entirely.)

But we were expected to master it and assume it WHENEVER we used any restroom that was not in our own personal home or that of someone we were either related to or knew so well we were practically related to them. I mean, if we weren't allowed to touch the DOOR HANDLE of the stall—lest we contract some hideous, painful, disfiguring, deadly, and, of course, socially embarrassing disease—do you imagine for one second that we were allowed to have the slightest whisper of a brush with the true epicenter of worldwide nasty germiness—the actual COMMODE itself?

I can't really fathom what Mama would have done if this had ever happened—either by accident or design—the thought of defying Mama's Restroom Edicts never occurred to us, and our youthful THIGHS never failed us—quiver though they might, they always held our Precious Private Parts well in the clear of those beshrouded bowls. Faced with failure, I suppose she would have had no choice but to have us shot on the spot—as the only humane solution. “John, hunny, bring the pistol—the girls sat on this nasty pot, you're gon' have to put 'em down!”

The touching taboo, of course, also extended to the flushing handle of the toilet. No matter how high above the floor it might be situated, we were commanded and expected to reach it and somehow push it down with our foot. This feat alone explains the amazing high-kick prowess of Southern dance troupes and cheerleaders. We—all of us—have been working
on that move since we were potty-trained. Don't think for one second that this stringent bathroom ritual was peculiar to just my own Yankee mama. No, indeed—it's ALL of 'em. Certainly no female born and reared by a mama who was born and reared south of the Mason-Dixon has EVER sat down on a public toilet OR flushed one with anything but her foot.

If you accidentally dropped something—ANYTHING—Hope diamond, the actual tablets containing the Ten Commandments, your little brother, what-EV-ER—it was gone—into the trash it went—and no amount of tearful pleading could spare it from the waste bin—IN it MUST go—BUT NOT WITH YOUR BARE HANDS!

If Mama happened to be preoccupied with her own THIGH-throbbing, hiney-hovering peeing performance and was therefore unavailable for personally handling the disposal of the floor-sullied article, she would holler instructions to you on the proper method to be employed. As if she could see you reaching bare-handed toward it, she would bark an echoing preemptive “DON'T TOUCH IT!” from inside the stall. No, you must first roll off approximately 2.75 miles of toilet paper (she could tell from the repetitive sound as you spun the roll of paper when you had amassed a sufficient quantity to make an effective germ barrier) and ball it up, over, and around the now-ruined-beyond-reclaim item on the floor and then pick up the entire mass, with your hand extended as far out in front of you as physically possible, and carry it over to the garbage pail, the
swinging door of which you must also somehow NOT touch with your naked hand as you make your deposit. Your high kick would get yet another workout and you would have achieved an aerobic state from the absolutely futile sobbing you'd been doing ever since your Prized Possession first slipped from your grasp and landed with a telltale whump, thump, jingle, or swish on the floor. Whatever the sound—Mama heard it and knew in an instant what it represented—and you knew it, too—whatever it was—it was a Major Loss to YOU. And not only would Mama not relent on her iron-clad rule in this regard but there was also a very high probability that there would be further personal consequences for you as well on account of didn't she just finish telling you to leave that in the car? And rest assured, whatever it was, you were NOT getting another one—EVER—and maybe NEXT time you'd MIND her.

As I think on this, I see that there could be substantial savings available to any and all persons and businesses in the South that provide public restrooms for women—savings in water, cleaning supplies, and labor utilized in the sanitizing of those facilities. There is really no point to cleaning them because nobody's ever going to come in contact with anything in there anyway. Just make sure you've got about eight gajillion rolls of toilet paper in stock at all times.

Dubious Championship Brings Out Yankee-Style Snark

One restroom stands out in the deepest recesses of my childhood memories as the #1 Nastiest Place on the Planet. Since attaining adulthood, I have traveled the world a goodly bit and I have seen some Nasty—but no matter what, no matter where, there is one place that has not and will not, in my opinion, ever be surpassed for its utter, complete, and constant state of indescribable filth. It was the ladies' restroom in the Texaco station in Kosciusko, Mississippi, and desperation dictated its use on occasion when we passed through there on the way out to my grandparents' house in Ethel—which, as you know, is a suburb of Kosciusko. Urgent calls of nature drove me to it many times in the years from about 1956 until around 1965, and I don't think it was ever cleaned before or during that time. Furthermore, I think that before we could enter it, they had to run out the dozen or so wild hogs that apparently dwelled within, if one could believe what all one's senses were telling one.

Not only did it never fail to rate a “MERCIFUL HEAVENS” from her, that restroom actually could and did bring out the Yankee in my mama. As I said before—my own personal mama is a Yankee. Well, she could be and probably is. She was adopted, and no matter where she may have actually come into this world, she grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and thus,
no matter how long she lives in Mississippi, there are just some Yankeeisms that WILL come out now and again.

The one to which I am referring now is the way she would talk when she wanted to say something snarky to SOME-body but not necessarily EVERY-body in the room. Now, in this situation, Southern women will sort of drop their heads down and to the side and put their hand up sort of in front of their mouths and then say whatever awful thing it is they want to say in that most piercing whisper peculiar to them while they raise their eyebrows and roll their eyes in the general direction of whomever it is that they are talking about who's not supposed to hear them. Mama, on the other hand, being the product if not the offspring of the meanest little German-Yankee woman who ever drew breath, would talk out of one side of her mouth—while not moving the other side—at all. She could—and still can—turn her head just ever so slightly off center so that the side facing the victim shows her lips to be motionless and silent while the side facing the one she was snarking to would have a mouth moving and spewing venom in an only slightly lowered and somewhat guttural tone. It's like half a German ventriloquist.

For example, let's just say a woman walked in whom nobody'd seen in a spell and she had maybe put on a pound or thirty in the interim and she was perhaps moving in a slightly less-than-graceful manner, due, in part, to that additional
weight, and possibly her hair, and makeup were not looking especially fine that day either—well, her Southern “friends” might be observed thusly: adopting the head and hand posture earlier described and saying in the aforementioned knifelike inhaled whisper, “AHHHH, would you look at HER…bless her heart!” But Mama—and her German-Yankee mother before her—would do that quarter-turn with their heads and out of one side of their mouths they would utter one word: “Hunyuk.”

Now, do not ask me what language that is or what the actual translation of it might be—but to hear one of those women say it out of the side of her mouth was enough to make me NEVER want to BE IT, whatever it is. If you've heard the word before and know anything about it—PLEASE e-mail me at [email protected] and 'splain it to me!

Anyway, that nasty restroom would make Mama talk out of the side of her mouth every time. How in the world did I end up here? I was talking about me and Rhonda traveling with Daddy in the summer and then I got off on Stuckey's—oh, yeah, and that got me off on Mama and her quest for a clean public restroom.

 

I'll never forget when Mama and I went to Japan and Taiwan. Suffice it to say, Mama not only failed to find a clean public toilet over there—she failed to find a TOILET in most places. Them folks favor the ole hole in the ground over your porcelain throne. Talk about your excellent THIGH workout—after a month over
there, I swear I could squat two hundred pounds! And if and when perchance you should happen upon an actual terlet, you will find that most of the natives prefer to STAND on the seat. I don't know why that undid Mama so—since she was only gonna cover the entire thing with toilet paper and hover over it anyway, what difference did it make?—nonetheless, she did get evermore wound up over it, let me tell you. But I continue to digress—big surprise—let us return to the Tale of Stuckey's.

But first, could I just say a brief word about Porta Potties and how I would just about rather PIMP (isn't it great that, thanks to text messaging on our cell phones, we now have an actual acronym for “peeing in my pants”—so much to thank technology for) than have to utilize one—preferring the storm to this particular port, but that's just me. Anyway, Queen Lynne told me that she and her friend Queen Jules had attended some major fund-raising event—part indoor, part outdoor—for which they had regrettably worn cute outfits and complementary cute shoes as well, so it was that they found themselves fairly well impaled on those old dilemma horns—having to choose between walking, in their cute and correspondingly UN-comfy shoes, ALL that way back to the main building in order to stand in the lines for the inside cool and clean restrooms OR taking the few steps over to stand in the lines for the outside un-air-conditioned, far-from-sanitary portables. Tortured tootsies yelled the loudest and so the short hop to the hot-and-nasty won.