The Poop Diaries Volume II "How to cure embarrassment"

So in creating the first of this series, I was challenged by some readers that believed that I have better shit stories to tell... that I may have been holding back some of my more seasoned anecdotes many have heard me tell in reference to this subject." What's holding you back?", cried the masses.  Well after many sleepless nights spent tossing, turning, pacing, I am now able to put down on paper a story that has frequently fallen from my lips amidst tears of laughter (my own mostly) . You asked for it Derek.

As an 8 year old my family and I used to frequently visit my grandparents house on weekends. Their residence was situated approximately 1 1/2 hours journey away on the north shore of Boston, so when we would visit, there would more than likely be relatives that lived in the more immediate area dropping by to let the cousins hang out while the adults visited with on another.

My grandparents' house was built into the side of a hill that allowed for some pretty kick-ass sledding  and  "king of the Hill" competitions right in the side yard. Many a day was spent on that hill as a child laughing and playing with my cousins regardless of the season. Their neighbors were like family and often their children would join in whatever shenanigans were going on with their dog "Mickey".

Now Mickey was a monstrous 160+ lb male German Shepard that was sweet as pie and loved playing with children. He treated us as his pups and guarded us as fiercely. There were many times that I used to go over their house just to see if the dog could come out to play because he was always ready to have a good time and it was like I was rollin' with a gorilla as my posse. He was clearly the alpha male regardless of what neighborhood he was in or whatever species came along and he was watching my 6.   So as an 8 year old boy hanging at my grandparents house my cousins and I didn't have to worry about shit. Well... most of the time.

As you can imagine, an animal that consumed life in the manner that he did, also deposited the remnants of such a lifestyle, in toddler-sized deposits around the back yard. Lest you not be confused I mean that he left piles of shit the size of a toddler not the size that a toddler would leave. To the layman wandering into that yard and merely witnessing the scat alone, I could easily understand how they could assume that the owner possessed a domesticated a polar bear or baby elephant. I know, I was 8, everything seemed bigger then, but I remember that being the only time in my life that I ever heard adults, in a group, standing and marveling at the enormity of a pile of shit. 

"Jesus, You could get your car stuck in that".

This particular story took place on a crisp, overcast, October New England afternoon.  The maple trees were bare, and the leaves left but a few green patches of lawn to be seen amongst the layers of  the red, orange and yellow quilt now laid out before us on the ground.   Normally we as children, on days like those, could coerce hot-chocolate and a little television time as long as we didn't interrupt the adults by fighting amongst ourselves, which was usually a one-way pass to play/do chores outside for the rest of the day depending on 1. the level of the interruption -usually measured in seconds of required adult participation. For "problem solving"of over 20 seconds it was chore time, over 35 seconds and there was a distinct possibility of the paddle coming out then no-one was safe, and 2. if there was blood involved then it was sore-assed chore time for the ones not bleeding.  It wasn't an exact science, as a matter of fact there were some horrifically unjust flaws in this system which when pointed out were usually greeted with the conversation ending statement of "life isn't fair kid", the 80's version of today's commonly used phrase "deal with it".  Suffice it to say, the hard lessons in immediate conflict management in the face of iminent danger have stuck with me, although that particular detail has absolutely nothing to do with the story.

This day had blessed my brother, sister and I with the presence 30 lbs of pure hell, in the form of our 4 year old cousin, Derek.  It is because of the love, respect, and admiration for his talents that I have today for my cousin, that I can say, he used to be 90% percent pure making stories up/tattle-tailing little asshole at that point in his life, who left a Tasmanian devil style wake of disaster wherever he went and yet was treated with Golden-child kid gloves by the authority figures while we were consistently blamed for whatever he had done. It represented a conundrum for us cousins that were used to a more traditional heavy-fisted punishment style, to see him treated this way, especially for the level of mayhem and pure passion of destruction that he encompassed.

Derek had arrived, to my recollection, on one of a handful of days that my brother, sister and I, were actually sitting quietly watching tv, all getting along and agreeing on the shows we watched. We could hear him as soon as the kitchen door slammed. Squeals of delight, and the sound of frantic little steps that only someone jacked up on sugar with tiny legs could produce, quickly increased in volume as he raced through the house to lunge onto my lap from 6 feet away for a "hello" knee to the nuts.  From there it was climbing all lover something or everything in between intermittently running to the grown-ups with some grossly over-dramatized fabrication of how recent events unfolded and how unfair it all was. We were  harshly reprimanded for not treating him in a manner that no sane, un-medicated person could have had the tolerance to execute after 10 minutes with this hellion. In short his energy was quickly too much for the room and  then the house which led to all of us being kicked outside. To add insult to injury we were shown the rakes and told to rake up the leaves in the yard above the hill into piles to keep us busy. After about 45 minutes of watching through the kitchen window at myself and my siblings shoveling shit against the tide and the futility, of us trying to rake faster than my cousin could obliterate the piles, growing ever more present. The authorities then gave us the new marching orders to make a scarecrow for Derek.  It was a particularly harsh sentence to choke down for the three of us who had been peacefully co-existing not an hour ago, for like the first time, ever.  To go from warm couch to cold chores, then to run around and do the bidding of the very person who had so rudely interrupted your relaxation while watching the efforts of your chores undone before your eyes to the amusement of those handing out punishments. Life isn't fair...or that's what I thought in that moment as they tossed some old clothes out on the porch railing and I grudgingly retrieved them for what was to be the next round of anarchy.

So the next  hour was spent trying to make a scarecrow that repeatedly, morbidly lost in the throws of battle with the pint-sized destructor, usually about half-way through assembly. Derek knows that the last orders we were handed was to make him a scarecrow, so he figured that as long as he kept ripping it apart mid-assembly then we would have to keep making it. He knew, as we did, that there was no possible way of even broaching the subject of going back indoors with the authorities until we had completed the task at hand.

Little fucking punk...or at least the eight year old equivalent of that was going through my mind as I grudgingly stuffed leaves into a shirt with its sleeves tied in knots at the ends for the 11th time. Derek bounced around gleefully at play( while his subjects were hard at work fulfilling his whims) with little jumps in the air and squeals of delight at the majic of it all. All I knew was that this little kid had us over a fucking barrel and he knew it which led him to use every trick in the book to continue this attention grabbing behavior. He wasn't yet wise to the fact  that it was the opposite of attention we were looking for and he was fucking up the whole plan.

Mickey had been out when we were bounced from the house but had since gone back inside his own house, probably to take a nap after the effort it must have taken him to shit out what looked like a sleeping baby deer, still steaming, at the bottom of the hill. I had noticed it after the smell had assaulted my nostrils, but didn't tell anyone due to the potential future hilarity that it represented, regardless of the fact that it was surely some sort of record-breaking size, even for him.

And then it happened.

Derek in one of his little tyrannical leaps of joy, lost his balance and disappeared over the side of the hill, He was on his feet when I caught my final glimpse of him before his date with destiny, but I wasn't confident he would be for long.

He vanished and all went quiet...for about 5 seconds.

We had all taken falls down that hill too numerous to count. The hill's very nature was to provide us cousins a place to experiment with gravity in one way or another. Basically what I am saying is that none of us were really worried for his safety when he went over the side, it wasn't the first time.

Then we heard the scream. It started with  a confused gurgly sound in a pitch reserved only for children under 6, then developed into a full-blown, blood-curdling, "the world is coming to an end", scream of horror.  The origin, however, was not coming from directly at the bottom of the hill which we could not see from our vantage stuffing leaves away from the edge, but from across the yard somewhere. It was far away and seemed to be coming toward is a at rapid rate. We scrambled to the edge of the hill to view the carnage.

Granted, I did not actually witness it with my own two eyes, but when your hear a crash and turn around to see a car wrapped around a tree and skidmarks leading up to that crash, you can make some reasonable observations that a crash occurred and while you may not be a physics professor you can tell by the skid-marks usually whether or not the person driving the car was going fast. Based on that rationale alone the scene was horrifying when I got to the edge. My mouth fell open as the overwhelming realization of what happened dawned on me. Down at the bottom of the hill where there had been previously a pile of shit that would have made Sasquach proud. there was now merely the beginning of a 60 foot long brown stripe across the backyard and running back toward us was what looked like a furious little oompa-loompa. I quickly realized that he had basically taken a head first dive into an enormous pile of shit and shot across the lawn as if out of a cannon. He had single-handedly, and out of season I might add, beat the sledding long- distance record owned on that hill, with his improvised vehicle.

Still somewhat in shock, and marveling at the sheer magnitude of what Derek had achieved on his little ride, I hadn't closely observed until he came running up to me wanting me to carry him the remaining 20 feet to the house, the extent of his ordeal. From the tips of his finders to the tips of his toes and all points in between were COVERED in shit. He had shit in his nostrils and stuck between his teeth. His hair was matted down and there was no discernable color on the front of him but brown and the smattering of orange from the occasional leaf now stuck to him. Looks like you are going to have to walk the rest of the way to the house kid because I'm going to be here trying not to piss my pants with laughter.

Most adults would find it difficult not to chuckle at this scene... some didn't even bother trying. My brother,sister and I still got bitched out for somehow allowing this to happen, My logic was that I didn't crap at the bottom of the hill nor force Derek to dive in it so I didn't see my culpability. The fact that we were  still laughing uncontrollably I'm sure didn' help things out. I thought that if anyone were to blame for this then it ought to be those that chose put us in charge to watch him while knowing clearly that even if we could've stopped it from happening, the indecision as to whether or not we wanted to, would have rendered us ineffective at stopping it anyway. The men laughed, the women did not, except my sister who had the same fit of giggles that I did.

Long story short, a quick 10 minute prison-shower in the back yard with the hose  followed by an 1 1/2 hour long bath with several tooth brushings later and Derek was back to being the rambunctious punk he always was.

Oh yeah I almost forgot, I was going to teach you how to cure embarrassment. Ok so when you have a cousin who blushes excessively whenever even slightly embarrassed, and that cousin has taken a head first dive into a giant pile of shit, the way to cure his embarrassment is to tell the story of him taking a dive into a pile of shit to any and all crowds of people you find yourselves together in,always. Worked like a charm. 20 years later nothing can make that guy blush.

You're welcome Derek