The Poop Diaries Volume III: "Fun With Fudge... Fight the Power!"

Way back when I was a child, or as my kids would call it " 3 days before dirt was invented", the American society was participating in a heinous mass-indoctrination of their youth. Children of the 70's and 80's were forced to use something that didn't require batteries to entertain ourselves, called... imagination. Daily we were exiled into the elements, usually uncomfortably overdressed, to entertain ourselves and seek out other wandering miscreants to pack up with. We used to call it playing. This repetitive exercise of our brain and body, the constant assault of fresh, clean air, having to interact and problem solve with groups of peers on such a constant basis lent itself to an unconscious need, no, a inexplicable passion, to use this tool we had developed, this imagination thing, whenever we could. We weren't in control of it, we were pawns...slaves to it.  We were consistently  programmed by authority figures with statements like "I'm not here to entertain you. Go find something to do, I don't know, use your imagination" or "you better go find something to do or i'm going to start imagining you out mowing the lawn".  After the years of abuse that we endured, it is no wonder that there would eventually be some blowback on our oppressors for creating these monsters that thought for themselves.

It was December 27th. Mike and I were lounging in the living room experiencing a post-holiday energetic hangover, Dad was working, Wendy was at a friends' house, and Mom was perhaps over-caffeinated but in deep-clean mode in the family room. We had run out of batteries for whatever head-to-head, hand-held video game we got that year, and so we sat looking at the random clothes that we had received for presents two days before, scattered under the lit Christmas tree. We were eating fudge and avoiding trying on new clothes for size, while listening to mom race over the olive-green carpet with the vacuum. We weren't just eating any old fudge though, it was our Grandmother's homemade fudge. She would bring at least four pans every year for to our holiday celebration and we were just lounging around munching on some of the leftovers.

The weather had been switching back and forth, from rain to hail to sleet to snow and back again, so we got a pass from the authorities to be indoors for the day. It was late-morning in the middle of school break. Any enthusiasm for using our brain was carefully stored in our respective book-bags and not scheduled for re-emergence until school started the following week. Mesmerized by the shimmering lights, Mike and I sat there daydreaming. We were consciously avoiding the impending feeling that the cleaning-tornado, currently ravaging the other half of the house, would eventually make its way into our little bubble. Our subconscious forecast was correct.

"I told you boys that I wanted you to try on those clothes and then clean up under the tree then find something to do. I don't want you just siting around wasting your day." Mom said while breezing through the room gathering things for the dishwasher. Then the programming came out, "you can either find something to do or I'll find something for you to do". The subtext of that statement being  "either you use your imagination or work".

Mike and I  grudgingly dealt with the mess under the tree for the next 5 minutes. Thoroughly exhausted from such grueling torture, we grabbed books to put on our laps as we resumed our previous positions staring at the tree. The books were excuses in case the storm approached again we could use the "but we're reading" trump-card that superseded most parental logic by insinuating that you were interrupting our intellectual pursuit with trivialities. It worked like a charm when hurricane Kathy came raging back into the room and noticed that not only had we done what she had asked but were quietly expanding our minds. The storm left as quickly as it came but I could see that the programming had taken hold of my brother as he could seemingly no longer embrace the proper slothfulness that the day required.

He was looking at the fudge in his hand and rolling it in between his fingers, when I actually witnessed the programming take hold of his brain. His eyes widened and his pupils dilated, seemingly emitting a sparkle, as a mischievous smile grew across his face. I was witnessing the imagination take hold right before my eyes as though Mike were a werewolf and the full moon just came out. I was helpless to do anything about it. I was afraid to run for fear of him turning on me but also afraid to stay for fear that it was contagious.

"Make sure that Mom stays in the other room for a minute", he said through a crazy grin. Given permission to leave, I ran to the other room with hopes that I didn't get any of this brain altering affliction on me.

While I was in the other room pretending to be interested in the fine art of dusting, Mike was helplessly fighting with the overwhelming force that took control of his body. Fudge in hand, he raced into the spotless bathroom that had just recently been victim of such a thorough scouring I'm surprised the tiles weren't bleeding.

Now, please allow me to give a little backstory for a moment because I feel it is pertinent to the subject at hand. Not a week earlier, us children had been lined up in the bathroom and given a obscenely-long, 4-minute speech in which our mother explained in-depth, the finer points of  flushing the toilet after a bowel-movement.  Luckily by that time I had honed my anti-programming-fugue-state sufficiently enough to not have any long-term effects from that specific attempt to brainwash me. Yet since this seminar (complete with actual flushing demonstrations, audience participation, and toilet lid/seat workshops) was still so fresh in our minds, it was the part of Mike's brain that got attacked by the demons that infested him now.

He emerged from the bathroom and gave me the universal "the trap is set" sign, which for those of you who don't speak little-boy, is smiling so hard it nearly rips the skin on your face, with a single finger held vertically in front of it. As he tiptoed back into the living room, I suddenly feigned disinterest in cleaning Hummels, announcing that alas, I was going to return to my book. Passing the open door of the bathroom I saw the horror of what this thing eating my brothers brain had made him do.

Laying on the floor was a piece of art.

To the layman, it would look like a balled up handful of used toilet paper laying on the floor next to the toilet, but to me it had a magical effect because of all the subtlety and attention to detail displayed. 

There were little things that insinuated the brazen carelessness of a child who has only vaguely listened to what their parents said.  1. the fact that the ball of tissue was still attached to the roll on the other side of the toilet. Paper was unrolled over the seat, into the bowl and out, then draped back over the other side to the paper holder in one long line like it was a Family Circus cartoon and little Jeffey had just gone to the bathroom by himself for the first time. 2. While the toilet paper was all over the place, the lid was closed over it and the bowl was clean thus fulfilling the power-points from the aforementioned seminar. 3. Mike had used the fudge with nuts and not gotten overly intricate. One quick swipe was all that was needed to set the scene.

Overall, the picture that I still have burned in my mind insinuates haste. It was as though someone had taken a shit and flushed before wiping. Then realizing that they had forgot, grabbed a handful of tissue,  not bothered to rip it from the roll and then made a less than convincing attempt at cleaning themselves. To compound that,  the imaginary perpetrator had taken the time to close the lid on the toilet,  yet had discarded the used portion of toilet paper with complete disregard on the floor next to it. Which insinuated that in their hurried state this person had, while observing all of the recent lessons, completely missed the underlying hygiene message that governed all of these lessons in the first place.

The brilliantly evil trap was set. There were only two perpetrators possible and we knew it.  I was the youngest and suspected that it was going to be automatically assumed that I was the culprit but I was happy to play my part in this masterwork.  We waited for what seemed like hours but in reality was probably more like minutes.

The sound of the trap being sprung was akin to the sound of locked tires attempting to stop a rapidly moving vehicle. KEVIN!!! MICHAEL!!! GET IN HERE NOW!!! It was time for our game faces. We donned our Sunday-church personas and went to face what we had caught.

WHO DID THIS!?!?!?!? WHO DID THIS!?!?! DONT TELL ME WASN'T ME!!  THERE ARE ONLY THREE OF US HERE AND I KNOW I DIDN'T DO IT!!!! SO WHICH ONE OF YOU TWO WAS IT!?!?!?

That was the signal that my brother needed to enact phase 2 of his plan that even I had not suspected. He had moved into the bathroom with the air of someone intent on getting to the bottom of the mystery.  He picked up the ball of tissue and brought it to his nose, inhaling deeply. "Doesn't smell like mine but I'm not really sure..."

MICHAEL THROW THAT IN THE TOILET!! NO MICHAEL DON'T !! NOOOOOOOOOO! was the last thing she said for hours as here knees gave out and she slumped onto the dryer for support. She was still conscious yet dazed with horror as Mike in an overdramatized performance that I thought almost tipped his hand, extended his tongue and licked the tissue like it was the first lick on a jumbo soft-serve ice-cream cone.  "I think its Kevin's" was all he could get out before my mom let out a little whimper of defeat and I fell on the floor laughing. It was right around the time that Mike was picking out the nuts and eating them off the paper that my mom came to the realization that she was the victim of an elaborate ruse.

The 5 o'clock glass of wine came early that day and Mom had the rest of the afternoon to contemplate how her participation in these brainwashing techniques  had  backfired so horrifically. We got a break from the programming for a while as my parents worked out the technical difficulties, thus leaving us to enjoy the rest of our vacation completely imagination-free.