Thanks for Reading!!!! : )
Let me start by saying Steve Soto swears he coined this phrase… and I’m okay with giving the sassypants credit but, if someone has a “beef” with it… take it up with Soto… he’s somewhere in Europe right now hosting a “sausage fest” (his words…. not mine) as Punk Rock’s favorite nice guy in his band The Adolescents.
I wish I had coined that phrase…
NOT “sausage fest…”
but “Dramatacus.”
I really do.
Steve was brilliant to think of it and now… it is one of my favorite non-words, that HAS become a word, and I pray that someone will add it to Webster’s Dictionary next to GIANORMOUS… and SWAG.
Now… I’m sure we can agree, that we have all been guilty of being a “Dramatacus” at some time in our lives… yes that’s right people…. each and every one of us… don’t even try to deny it.
And…anyone that knows me… knows… that I can definitely be the BIGGEST “gladiator” of dramatic play when provoked…
or sometimes… just because I’m bored.
Being a high school teacher alone cranks the drama-meter off the chart on a daily basis:
“Ms. Wood, so-and-so… told so-and-so… that I was pregnant with so-and-so’s baby.”
Or…
“Ms. Wood, so-and-so… likes so-and-so… but I’m SO in love with so-and-so… I don’t know what to do.”
Or…
“Ms. Wood, so-and-so… told so-and-so… that I was the one that crapped on the floor in the locker room and now so-and-so won’t ask me to Prom.”
See what I mean?
Drama.
Now, add in a daughter that likes to pick up dead bodies for a living…
A son who is a cross between Phil Spector and Brian Eno…
An X who is working on years of recovery… (a Dramatacus in his own right) that’s at the house once a week playing music in the garage…
Throw in a couple of band projects, book projects, and a few sober bad boys in need of reform… and you’ve basically got yourself a “Circus Maximus” of Dramatacus fun.
Now at times… I really like being a Dramatcus… it amps up life…. and adds to the excitement…. but when you are in a relationship with someone… it’s really not a good thing.
You basically go from being their beautiful statue on a pedestal, their reason for living…. to a ROYAL PAIN IN THE ASS in a matter of minutes.
And the worst thing is… you just can’t stop yourself…
It’s like you’re possessed…
You know you are acting like a total idiot…
That you are making the situation worse…
That you are the engineer of your own train wreck….
But you just keep going…
People could be running from you… screaming in terror… looking back over their shoulder at you as if you are GODZILLA about to destroy them… and yet you will still chase them on and INSIST that you MUST EXPLAIN WHY YOU ARE BEING A DRAMATACUS… which only makes them run faster and further as they pray to God that he will “EXIT” you from their life FOREVER.
Sigh…
So it was while Steve and I were both dealing with major emotional upheavals in our worlds…. and trying VERY hard not to both go into Dramatacus mode at the same time… that we started having our “late night” phone conversations.
Problem is… “late night” to me is around 9 pm, especially on a school night…
And “late night” to Steve Soto is somewhere around 3 am.
We fixed the problem by meeting somewhere in the middle with Steve texting around 11 pm with an “Are you up?” message and if I was… I would call and we would chat.
Now I have known Steve for years… and he has always been able to make me laugh… but one night when I was on the phone howling over someone who I felt had “wronged” me and reading him an email from this person that had caused me to be terribly upset… he stopped and asked,
“Wait… was their sex involved in this relationship?”
I paused……
“No,” I said quietly.
“You guys weren’t like going out right?”
“No,” I said quietly again.
“Well, that seems like a LOT of drama for a non-sexual relationship.” He paused for a moment and then said, “What a Dramatacus.”
It stunned me…
He stunned me…
What a wordsmith.
I was impressed.
I knew that he was speaking about the person in the email… that they were being a Dramatacus in writing… but it stopped me long enough to recognize how DRAMATIC I was being about the entire situation as well.
I was being totally ridiculous.
Someone expressed their feelings to me in writing… That’s it.
I didn’t need to get all bent about it.
Maybe I could for once just bring it down a notch… which I did… waited to respond… and the friendship survived the episode.
The next day I was out walking with my friend Margie when I told her about Steve’s word and the event that lead up to it.
The day after… I was a bit late arriving to her house for our daily walk…. and as I pulled up…. the text alert beeped on my phone and I saw “McLate-acus” flash across the screen.
I looked up to see Margie… giggling from her front porch.
Steve and Margie really know how to make a point when they want to… in the best artistic sense of the matter.
I hope they add McLate-acus to Webster’s as well.
I’ve always wanted to go to Yankari National Park!!!! :))))))
A good friend of our family, Bobby Sepulveda, worked as a Removal Driver for several years.
What is a Removal Driver you may ask?
Well… it’s a person who picks up dead bodies.
From homes.
From Nursing homes.
From the hospital.
From the beach.
From the store.
From parked cars at the football stadium.
Really… wherever you decide you want to punch your final ticket you’ve got someone to take you on that “last call” cab ride home: A Removal Driver.
Now… if you have a problem with dead people or removal drivers… please don’t read any farther.
Trust me.
You won’t like it because it’s about to get good… in a really, really bad way.
Bobby always had great stories about people he picked up.
He called me once from the morgue… and I said, “Where are you? The phone connection is really echoing.”
and Bobby said, “I’m with Donna Reed.”
“Donna Reed?” I asked… a bit confused… not “getting” the big picture…
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “She passed away today and I’m with her at the morgue.”
I felt my face drop.
I had always really liked Donna Reed… ever since she played Jimmy Stewart’s sweetheart in It’s a Wonderful Life, and I wasn’t really sure I wanted my last memory of Donna Reed to be “hanging out” with Bobby Sepulveda in the morgue.
If you knew Bobby Sepulveda… you would understand… I swear you would…. but since you don’t… just picture this…. one of the guys from Jackass in the morgue with Donna Reed.
See what I mean?
It doesn’t really seem right now does it?
Sorry Bobby… but you KNOW it’s true.
So… anyway…
Lexi, my daughter, was very interested in working in the medical profession when she graduated high school.
She wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted to do at that time… and so she decided to talk to Bobby about becoming a Removal Driver.
“Why the hell do you want to do that?” I snapped at her, my own fear of being a Removal Driver getting in the way of my child’s one true dream.
“Because I want to know if I can handle being around dead bodies,” Lex said. “I don’t want to go all the way through medical school and find out I don’t have the stomach for that type of work.”
It was a good answer… A reasonable answer and so… I backed her choice.
Our friend Bobby was happy to get her a job… in fact, I’m sure he was amused… he probably thought an 18-year-old who looked like a Victoria’s Secret model and was often mistaken as a show girl when we went to VEGAS… probably wouldn’t last a day picking up dead bodies… but he was wrong.
Lexi got the job, and reported to her first day of duty wearing a nice tailored black suit.
She looked stunning… a TOTAL GLAMAZON on a mission to care for the dead.
I waved goodbye to her, proud as I watched my daughter drive off to her first job… so excited to meet her “Removal Driver Trainer.”
But later that afternoon… Lexi called me on the phone and sounded a bit emotionally distraught.
“Mommy?” she said.
“Yeahhhh?” I said a bit hesitantly.
“I want to come home and see you for a minute is that okay?” She asked.
“Yeah, sure,” I said even though inside I was really saying, “Oh Jesus God please don’t come home because you’re gonna smell like a dead body or something and I’m gonna freak out.”
But… when you are a parent… you have to make sacrifices and if that means you have to support your child by smelling dead bodies all over their clothing… then so be it.
She rolled in about 5 pm with a good looking young man named Tom, from Boston, and his accent killed me.
I love that South Boston accent… I’m a PUSH OVER for a “Southie” I really am… a guy could be the biggest tattooed criminal from the East Coast and walk up and say something to me all flirty like “Ah Dee…. you’re wicked smaaaart.” And I would probably BEG him to marry me… and run off to be a little toonie… living with my townie… somewhere down around Charlestown or maybe Dorchester hiding assault rifles in my dresser drawer and wildly in LOVE. (East Coast Irish boys being my fatal weakness of course)
Tom and Lexi were just adorable together you could absolutely feel the “spark.”
Their conversation popped back and forth with witty banter that could’ve given Kate Hepburn and Spencer Tracy a run for their money back in the day… and I couldn’t help but pray that these two would end up together just so I could tell people how they met….
Tom, sweetheart that he is, had brought Lexi home to see me because unfortunately… the first dead body Lexi ever saw… was a pretty bad one.
Now… maybe you think all dead bodies are pretty bad… but I think I would prefer someone who was fresh and had died in their bed over what Lex had to witness.
She walked in to meet Tom, her trainer and soon to be “love” interest, and found him in the morgue with an old guy they had just brought in…who had been dead… for over a month.
He had died about 30 days prior, had been laying out in the backyard naked decomposing… until one of the neighbors peeked over the fence and got quite a bit of a shock… and so when Lexi got her first look at him she said that she actually thought he was wearing a plaid bath robe and then felt like she wanted to vomit.
“He was naked,” she said….
(and I wondered what the hell he was doing out in the backyard naked… but I didn’t ask)
“but his body was all red, blue, and green… with these weird patterns on him from where the blood pooled,” she cried before running over to me, begging for a hug.
I swear to GOD I almost pushed her away.
I wanted to run to my bedroom door and shout, “It was nice meeting you Tom… but Lex is ALL yours now! You two have fun with your dead bodies! Mama needs a nap and a valium!”
But I gave in… holding my breath the entire time… before she pulled back and smiled at Tom while I tried to get a good gulp of air… hoping that their little flirtation would keep my antics from being obvious…
And then watched as she batted her eyes at him and said, “Thanks for bringing me to see my mom.” And I loved it.
I knew right then and there… that Tom was a good man.
Later that night, Lexi returned home… excited and chattering on about how she couldn’t stop looking at Tom… how even over the dead guy’s body she couldn’t help but flirt with him…
and that after their shift was over, he had taken her upstairs to his apartment, which was of course, over the morgue, and they had shared their first kiss.
It was SO romantic.
The two of them… over the dead bodies and the refrigerated body drawers… having a moment while everyone lay there…. waiting… doing nothing really.
And I thought…Ahhhhhhhh…. young love… Nothing can distract it. Not even dead bodies.
Tom and Lex became quite the “serious item” for awhile and I can only imagine how many fond memories they’ve shared retrieving dead bodies together…
But… young love is young love…. and often doesn’t last…
Tom is back on the East Coast now… running his own funeral parlor… while Lexi of course is still out here working on her medical training…
And though Lex claims they are both now “just good friends” I pray often that someday they will end up back together… working as a team… Lex helping people to live… Tom taking care of all the ones that got away…
And me…. sitting on the front porch swing… their children on my lap…. telling them the story of how their parents “Meet Cute.”
Glad to have you…. : )
To this day, Tim Grobaty tells his daughter, Hannah (Who happens to be one of my favorite students and so… as my little educational minion… has no problem spilling all of her father’s secrets to me) that… Mr. Grobaty, columnist of the Long Beach Press Telegram, refuses to admit, yes actually DENIES, that he ever tried to break both of my legs after hanging out with me on the porch, one summer evening, many moons ago… while dicking around behind the wheel of his car.
But I am here to tell you… that he did.
Of course… If I were Tim Grobaty… I wouldn’t admit that I almost tore Ms. Wood’s legs off in a freak accident either.
Ms. Wood, Beloved High School English Teacher maimed by Beloved Long Beach Newspaper Columnist… it would just be bad all the way around… worse for Tim because he may have a shit load of readers following him but I have a veritable Dumbledore’s Army at my command…. 20 years of teaching… averaging over 1,000 interactions a year, with young adults who have pledged their loyalty to their favorite teacher until DEATH (mine obviously) and you can see why Tim would be in trouble.
Serious Trouble.
If Grobaty HAD actually taken both my legs off… and left me as a little bitter stump of a woman… I would still be able to roll around… (much like Johnny Eck in the 1932 film Freaks)
barking commands…
bossing people about…
controlling my young adult army
and basically making sure that the rest of Tim Grobaty”s life was h*ll.
Lucky for Tim… my legs are still intact.
So…
Back to my story…
Tim and I had become fast friends after meeting accidentally during a bar show at the Blue Cafe.
I still remember when I first opened my mouth to sing… Tim turning around slowly on his bar stool and watching me quietly. I think I was the only member of my family he had not seen perform or written about…
We didn’t talk that night… but the next day in the newspaper… I opened the entertainment section and saw that he had written a full page article titled I’m in LOVE with D.D. Wood…
Thankfully, Jane… his wife, better half, and definitely the most reasonable person in the relationship, was not bothered that Tim titled his article this… OR that he decided to post this on the date of his actual wedding anniversary…
Jane, as always… takes these things in stride and I love her for it… I really don’t know how she does it.
If my husband had written an article about Jane on our wedding anniversary… I probably would have crumpled the piece up with fury… tried to stuff it down his gullet, before walking outside and beating his favorite 59 Ford Fairlane with a bat…
You could say… that I’m a bit of a hothead.
My mother of course showed the article to everyone and I figured… it would probably be a good idea to get to know a man who was supposedly “in love” with me… and so Tim and Jane, me and my husband started getting together for dinner, or a visit on my front porch swing, on a regular basis.
These were lovely times….
Great music…
Great company…
We spent summer evenings laughing together… our children all very small… Hannah actually just a baby then… Dylan and Ray still little enough to be into toy guys and camouflage… until one night Tim and I were alone on the front porch playing guitars…
My husband must have had a show… because he was absent from this scene… and I’m sure Jane was already in bed… all cozy and comfy reading a good book… all of our children fast asleep…
While Tim and I were jamming away until our 10 o’clock curfew came around… and it was time for me to go inside and for Tim to go home.
Neighborhood rules.
Tim and I packed up our guitars before I walked him out to where he had parked his Jeep…directly behind my car…
and for some reason…
I decided that I needed to grab something out of my trunk. Now, to this day… I can’t imagine what I obviously felt I HAD TO HAVE out of the trunk of my car at 10 o’clock at night but, that isn’t important.. what is important… is THIS is when all of the trouble began…
(Although some would argue that the trouble began when Tim Grobaty wrote that he loved me in a local publication.)
I walked between the space of the two cars as Tim waved goodbye and climbed into his Jeep.
We shared a quick smile as he pretended that he was going to put his car into gear and run me over.
I laughed the “ha ha ha you’re so funny” obligatory laugh, then turned back to pop the trunk when I heard Tim’s car lurch forward and felt a sudden hard hit to the back of my legs…
My spine pitched towards the trunk, my knees buckled and pinned beneath the rear bumper of my car, and if I had been just an inch or so taller, Tim would have snapped both of my legs right then and there… and this story wouldn’t be quite as funny as it now is…
My hands slammed onto the hood of the trunk as if a police officer had just knocked me down and told me to “spread em”… the pain was intense.
I looked back at Tim in utter horror.
His face was one of shock… and I could see him fumbling to shift the gear stick and free me from my misery when we both had a moment…
A “cosmic” connect I guess you would call it…
A moment where Tim suddenly knew exactly what I was thinking….
Me: Please God don’t let Tim shift it into another forward gear and break my legs.
and I knew exactly what Tim was thinking…
Tim: Oh my God, what if I shift it into a forward gear by mistake and break her legs?
I freaked out.
“Tim!” I shouted. “Jesus Christ, what are you doing?”
Now… this probably didn’t help the situation but I have to admit that I was under duress and not thinking clearly…
Tim shifted the gear into reverse and backed up about four feet as I felt my legs release. I took a moment before letting go of the trunk and trying to stand full weight on my legs afraid of what I was left with and wondering if they would even work.
I looked down… no blood… no protruding bones… I was fine… a bit agitated… but fine.
I hobbled over to the driver’s side window and leaned in… “Are you insane?”
Tim was already laughing…. laughing as he ignored me and turned the wheel tight before peeling out for home….
I watched as he screeched past me… his tail lights heading into the night…. and I thought about getting into my car and chasing him down to make him acknowledge his part in this fiasco and demand an apology but… I didn’t …
10 o’clock curfew had come and gone….
My husband would be home soon…
Jane would be waiting on Tim…
and our confrontation would just have to wait until another late night jam session on the porch… or maybe on stage, in the middle of a set, the audience witness to our brawl.
I’m sure Tim will post a rebuttal to my tale… maybe an I HATE D.D. WOOD article will appear in the paper some time in the next few weeks but I doubt it… we share a love of writing and music… and that is a bond that can withstand anything.
So great to see so many countries jumping into the blog… thanks so much for reading : )
D.D. Wood
Something you must know about people who swim or play water polo.
We tend to get naked a lot.
Why?
Because when you spend a life time running around in a bathing suit… changing behind towels at meets, at the beach, somewhere in public… you stop caring who sees you.
And… back in the day when we were all swimming, playing water polo or whatever…. our bodies had no wobbly bits… no bouncing blobs of fat… just nice sleek tan taught muscle.
It was lovely.
Ryan Ballance and Erik Prosser two of my high school friends, were both polo players at Wilson… I of course was a Millikan girl…. you weren’t SUPPOSED to like the Wilson boys…. but we often did…. maybe because it was “forbidden” fruit… going against school spirit to want to make out with the “red and the gold.” How extremely unsportsmanlike.
It didn’t matter to me… I adored them both.
Erik and I had a friendship that went back and forth from friends to boyfriend and girlfriend for years… and I still miss him today… I hate that he is gone from this Earth… a fluke accident.. leaving all of us to miss the beauty of his spirit…
Ryan… was always my buddy… maybe a casual flirtation here and there… maybe a moment of sexual “wit”… but nothing more than that… and today… I take great joy in seeing photos of him in love and happy in Florida where I imagine he still runs around in speedos, mostly naked, with his girlfriend probably shaking her head as she says to herself: “Christ, everyone must think I’m dating a European.”
Anyways… it was the year of Wilson’s 10 year high school reunion, and Ryan and Erik invited me to a night before “pre-party” at Ryan’s parent’s place down on the Peninsula.
Now… I remember that Ryan was dating someone at the time…. but I cannot for the life of me remember who… but… if you are reading this… I’m sorry we were such complete idiots that night. You must have been mortified and by the way… “Well done you!” for taking the high road and not smacking the shit out of all of us drunkards.
Yes.
Drunkards.
I don’t drink often… I really don’t… but with Ryan and Erik… I don’t remember much of that evening except that we thought it would be a really good idea to strip down to our skivvies and go for a swim in the Bay sometime around 2am.
Okay everyone… listen up….
1. Don’t swim drunk. It is probably one of the stupidest things you can EVER do…
2. If your last name is Wood… don’t swim drunk… do you really want me to bring up the whole Natalie Wood incident? I don’t need people running around Long Beach using me as the butt of their driftwood jokes… I’m sure I’m already the butt of so many Long Beach jokes that we don’t need to add another. And Tim Grobaty… if you are reading this… DON’T get ANY ideas.
3. As you are stripping down to your skivvies don’t prance around and prattle on about your body… and how you STILL have it… you just sound like a COMPLETE AND TOTAL conceited MORON and… nobody likes a show off.
AND…. 4.
Don’t go out in the Bay at 2am.
People will come.
And not in the cool Field of Dreams sort of way…
They will not pay money to watch you play and frolic in the water… as they sit satisfied… content in nostalgic memories of their own high school reunions… no… they won’t…
They will call the cops.
They will have you arrested.
You will be cited for Disturbing the Peace…
Drunk and Disorderly…
Indecent Exposure…
YOU NAME IT…. their ON IT at 2 am when a bunch of yahoos wake up the Peninsula.
The ENTIRE Peninsula.
Now, I do remember Erik went in first and he was half way to the buoy before I shot in after him… we were always competitive so I busted my ass… or what I believed was busting my ass… who knows what I was really doing… probably floundering around in circles believing that I was somehow moving forward and catching up to him.
I looked for Ryan… who started to follow but then seemed to pause and disappear… either he stopped because he had a moment of clarity and thought better of it or his girlfriend grabbed him and forced him to the ground….. either way…. he never made it into the water which ended up being a really good thing for him.
Erik and I frolicked about from buoy to buoy laughing and screwing around up and down the tow line, spitting water at each other, slap fighting waves, until someone turned on their porch light and stared us down…it was a BIG SOMEONE… a hulking MAD MAN SHADOW of a SOMEONE… ready to call the cops… we reverted back to high school…. hid behind a buoy whispering God knows what, until he went back inside and turned off the light, leaving us to giggled as we backstroked our way over to the beach grabbed our towels and headed back up to the house.
We were about to enter the gate when I grabbed the pull string… realized the latch was stuck… pulled harder and watched as the string broke, and the metal washer that had been weighting the end flew straight at me and cut a half moon slash right between my eyes.
Erik didn’t even flinch… he just started laughing at me which of course led Ryan’s father to become involved.
He wiped off the cut, told me I would live and then insisted on me spending the night… and rightfully so… here is another thing you NEVER do after a 10 year high school reunion pre-party:
YOU NEVER… EVER… DRIVE HOME DRUNK.
EVER.
Do you hear me children?
EVER.
I slept on the couch until about 5 am, when I woke up in a Homer Simpson moment and shouted “DOH!” before I rushed home in a plain white over-sized man’s t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans.
I knew I had more clothes somewhere… but I couldn’t figure out what had happened to them.
I drove home at an alarming pace, all windows down, blowing the stink off, praying to GOD that my husband didn’t see me and think the absolute worst because… if he would have seen me… no matter how innocent that evening had been… I would have paid for it over the course of a lifetime.
I looked like I was heading home from a “walk of shame” and you don’t want your wife showing up at home… 5 am… no shoes… another man’s t-shirt on her back and a crescent moon shaped bloody cut in the middle of her forehead… EVER at 5 am… trust me people… it looks bad.
Now, I learned a lot by being sneaky in my youth and I knew that if I cut the engine as I crossed the Cohn’s house… I could coast up to the front of my childhood home (where we all still lived) in complete silence…
I cut the engine at the appropriate time, and let the car roll easily to the front walk.
I jumped out, quietly shut the door before I crept up the steps, into the house and lay down on the couch to wait and see if the coast was clear.
After about fifteen minutes… of shallow breathing and twitching at every little noise… I knew I was safe… no one was awake.
I tip-toed into the back of the house and found my husband asleep with our son…
I went into the bathroom, washed my face, brushed my teeth, cleaned the wound on my head and covered it with make-up before putting on my nighty, that was hanging on the back of the bathroom door.
I was going to have a hell of a hangover day and I had to get some time alone to recover.
I knew what I had to do… I had to find a way to get my husband out of the house and his love for surfing was my ticket.
I went back into the bedroom and shook my husband gently…
“Babe,” I said in my sweetest voice. “Babe?” I whispered again.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“The surf is supposed to be really good today,” I said. “It’s 5:30. Why don’t you get up and go catch some waves… I’ll watch the kids.”
“Okay,” he said as I climbed into the bed and he exited out the other side, grabbed his car keys and flip flops, before heading out for the day.
I’m surprised he couldn’t hear my sigh of relief from the driveway. In fact… I’m surprised he couldn’t hear it from the Huntington Cliffs for that matter.
I slept my stupor off for several hours before heading off to load up my system with a lot of greasy junk food and coca-cola and was right as rain by the time my husband was back home.
I returned to the Peninsula later that afternoon in search of the rest of my clothing… and that is when Ryan’s father informed me that my cowboy boots, my black t-shirt, my jacket and my belt had been strewn in a long path across the bay in front of a block of his neighbor’s houses… and that he had to gather them up, apologizing for our behavior, before he placed them in a brown paper bag which… he was now handing to me… as if it were a bag of something dirty… secret porn… and I took it with my eyes cast down, embarrassed and ashamed, as I rolled the top of the bag over and hurried towards the door.
“Oh,” he said. “By the way D.D….”
I turned back to look at him.
“You and Erik might like to know that the Bay was closed yesterday due to bacteria contamination. So… you were basically swimming in shit. Probably wasn’t such a good idea to go for a swim last night… right?”
I suddenly felt like I was seventeen again.
My face flushed red and my mind flashed back to Erik and I swigging mouthfuls of dirty Bay water and spitting it at each other…
I was sure for a moment… that I was going to vomit… but I didn’t… I just nodded my head slowly and said, “Yes Mr. Ballance. I completely understand Mr. Ballance. It will never happen again Mr. Ballance.”
As he looked at me…. fatherly sternness radiating like laser beams from his eyes… Ryan standing behind him…. laughing his ass off.
Erik and I didn’t get sick from our late night misadventure…it’s amazing really that we didn’t… and I’m just glad that neither one of us drowned that night.
I don’t regret it though… I really don’t… it’s a good story… contaminated… or not and it is one of many great memories I have of Erik and of Ryan…. most of which involve some type of inappropriate activity.
After Eddie Avalos mortified me with the “hand farting incident” I spent the next several days thinking about what I had witnessed in my front yard:
He fell down on the grass, put his legs up in the air, grabbed a lighter from his pocket, and I watched in utter amazement, as he cut a huge fart, flicked the lighter and suddenly shot a huge blue flame out of his ass. Then he laughed like a maniac and got up and ran away. It took me a moment to register what had happened. I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe.
I really couldn’t stop thinking about the whole scientific dynamic of the situation and wondered… how many people knew about this and how many people actually participated in it?
I knew I was REALLY behind the times with the “blue dart” when my friend Christy, who would never be as crude as me even on her worst day, said to me, “Lighting farts on fire? Oh yeah… people were doing that all the time at the YMCA camp when I worked there.”
I wondered what it felt like.
A blue dart.
I wanted to explore it but… the only person I could ask how to do it was Eddie and I didn’t want him to find out what I was up to… as we have already confirmed… it was SO unGIRL-like and Eddie was just waiting to bait me again…
“You know when you lit your butt on fire the other day?” I asked as we lay on the bed one afternoon… doing the usual… watching cartoons.
“Yeah,” Eddie said, not really paying attention enthralled with something on the TV that was much more interesting then our conversation.
“Does it hurt?”
He looked at me suspiciously.
“Why?” he asked.
I pretended to pick my fingernail and act bored.
“It just looked like it did,” I mumbled.
“You have to wear Levi’s,” he said as he wiggled his little sock covered toes and patted his jeans. “Otherwise you’ll burn all the hair off your ass.”
I made a face.
I didn’t have a hairy ass… I hadn’t even considered the whole hairy ass thing but that really added another dimension to the story in my imagination… and of course I couldn’t tell him we were talking about my ass…
“Eeeeew” I said as I slapped him and went back to watching TV.
A few days later, my friend Margie and her daughter Lily were over at the house.
I told them both about the whole fart incident and then I said, “I want to try a blue dart.”
Margie seemed pleased.
“Do it,” she said and then giggled.
I was wearing jean overalls that day and so I figured that would be okay.
I dug around in a drawer and found a book of matches.
“You think it will work with matches?” I asked.
Margie and Lily both shrugged their shoulders… they were blue dart virgins just like me… we didn’t know what the hell to do.
I climbed up on the bed and tried to put my legs up like Eddie.
I stayed in position for what seemed like forever but I couldn’t make anything happen.
I felt sweaty and confused.
The pressure to perform was getting to me.
Lily was watching me like I was the Finale at the BEST circus sideshow in the world… and Margie was looking on with quite anticipation mixed with skepticism … not sure if I had the skill to pull this off.
Finally, I felt something going on and I tried to light a match and put it next to my jeans but as soon as my hand got close… I shook the match out and put my legs down.
“Do it!” Margie shouted… it was like I had my own personal blue dart cheerleader and I knew I couldn’t let her down.
I mustered my courage and threw my legs back up in the air.
“Go!” She squealed.
I lit a match, pushed hard and a GIANT fart shot out of my ass.
I put the match directly onto the gas blast and watched as a HUGE blue flame exploded skyward and seemed to brighten the room.
I was amazed by the sheer magnitude of the size of it.
Margie and Lily’s eyes grew into large saucer shaped circles… their mouths tiny ooooooh’s of disbelief and excitement.
I was just about to start laughing when I felt my butt get really hot… scary hot… my face changed from one of total amusement to complete horror.
I FREAKED.
I was so afraid that I was going to catch on fire or explode from the inside, that I actually panicked and pee’d all over myself believing I was putting out the flame.
I rolled off the bed and ran to the bathroom, a large wet circle showing prominently on my crotch, crying as Lily and Margie laughed hysterically at my idiocy.
I slammed the bathroom door and sat on the toilet, my hands covering my face… laughing… as I listened to Lily and Margie giggling and going over the play by plays on the stellar entertainment I had just provided for them… quite pleased with the show.
I don’t think I ever told Eddie about this incident… but of course if he’s reading this… which I’m sure he is… he now knows.
I have never tried a blue dart since… I doubt I ever will again… but the sheer joy of doing something so taboo… breaking the “girl code” this time, by choice… left me feeling giddy with my accomplishment.
THE WILD WORLD OF MRS. WOOD 