Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Memories...

I was about 6, maybe 7. I had walked home from school, about half a mile. (see back in those days, I could walk to and from school, and not have to worry about perverts. But then again, it was a small town, and any perverts would have been run out of town by a local mob, had there been a need for it) I got home, unlocked the door, and went inside. I knew I had at least an hour but more like 2 before mom got home from work. Dad would not be home for another 4 hours or so, so I had plenty of time to get into trouble. I pushed the wicker seated dining chair across the brown linolium tiled floor. I still have no clue as to why the predominant decorating fad of the mid 80's was dark brown, dark brown with white checkerboard, dark brown with light brown, and country blue. Ick. Almost as bad as alvocado green and burnt orange of the 70's and early 80's, but when you had a transitional kitchen with the burnt orange fridge, alvocado green counter tops, except for that section of butchers block formica, and then the dark brown doors, frames and paneled walls, well obviously I came from a family of sightless, home improvement challenged procrastinators. But I digress.

So here I was, with the dark brown bentwood and wicker dining chair, pushing it up the the top level of the kitchen cabinet. This was where the goodies were kept. The candy, cookies, Little Debbie snack cakes, all of the things my parents ate after the kids were in bed. But today, I would have mine, thankyouverymuch! So I reach high on the shelf, and grabbed the first thing I found. Actually that is not true, there were probably 20 or 30 of them, and I figured they would not have a true count. I climbed back down the chair, making sure there were no finger prints.

As I ran to my room with my pirated booty, I knew the sheer joy that a jewel thief felt after a good run. I felt the adreneline rush that I am sure most race car drivers felt. It was such a sweet victory to that 6 year old. I unwrapped the little blue square, carefully, making sure not the shred the paper. I knew that if one sliver of paper were left behind, my victory would be short lived.

I took the little brown square from its former home, and carefully popped it into my mouth, and prepared myself for the chocolate explosion I was about to have. Indeed there was an explosion. At first it was salty. Then it burned my tongue, as it began to melt and fill my mouth with whatever god aweful things they had put in the piece of candy. It was gritty, like I had eaten sand. I tried to spit it out, but it was melted already, and only a brown paste came out.

I ran to the bathroom and tried in vain to wash my mouth out with the toothbrush holder full of water. That only made it worse, and seemed like I had just invited several cans of oil into my mouth. I began using the tissue to wipe my mouth out, but the tissue was cheap, and began to fall apart in my mouth. Now I had a brown burning oil soaked tissue paste in my mouth. I ran in circles trying to find a solution that would make the bad taste stop. Nothing worked. I brushed my teeth. Then I tried to drink some milk. Then I had a milky, Crest tasting brown stained mouth.


It was not until much later in life, as I prepared my first Thanksgiving dinner, that what I had actually eaten that day was a chicken boullion cube. I related this story to Mrs. Ninjamunkey last night, and I have never seen her laugh so hard. Hell, I have not laughed that hard in a long time. And as a geek in a new revoultion would say "That is totally going in my blog!"

2 comments:

Ali said...

and it still made me laugh just as hard

SimonZealotes said...

Nate...a note from my wife. "You can tell Nathan his blog cheered me up on a bad day." And indeed it did. She'd had a bad day (her supervisor moved on and she's dealing with two supervisors bickering over what she should be doing right now)...I let her come home and vent, then read the story to her.

So I read the story to her. As a former professional chef, she guessed it pretty close when I got to the 'salty tasting' part.

By the time I got to the end, she was bowled over with laughter.

I, too, found this highly amusing -- good thing I didn't read it at work.