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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
« Random Thoughts After a Hard Day's Work | Main | You're Late... and Why Do You Smell Like a Heineken Brewery? »
Well, that's just frickin' peachy.
After two days of relatively sweltering twenty degree weather, the New England area has once again been plunged into sub-Arctic levels of frigidosity. Or freezyhood. Or cold-as-ballsness. Whatever. You know what the hell I mean.
So far -- and I'm knocking on wood over here; no, not that kind of wood, ya pervert... damn, you people never stop, do you? -- ... wait, what the hell was I saying, anyway? Let's try that again.
So far -- and I've got my fingers crossed over here -- none of my body parts have thrown up their hands and just fallen off in frozen disgust.
(And if you're about to point out that my body parts don't have hands of their own, well... how the hell do you know? You haven't seen a lot of my body parts -- I might have hands in all sorts of places that you don't want to think about while you're eating dinner. Little, itty bitty body part hands, twiddling their thumbs and snapping their fingers and rubbing -- no, no, massaging -- nooks and crannies in places that would make your toe hairs curl. Yeah. You ever think of that?
Or... it could just be wishful thinking, as usual. Seriously, wouldn't it be cool to have an extra set of mini-digits or two around the ol' body, to take care of scratching itches and pulling stuff out of certain places -- or putting things into other places, come to think of it. I think that'd be pretty damned cool, myself.
Like earlier today, for instance, I had an itch. Down there, in the worst possible spot. Not really among the bumpy bits in front, but not in the, erm, 'landfill' out back, either. Just right... between, at the very bottom -- that little no-man's land that isn't really 'crotch' or 'ass' or 'inner thigh', but lives right next door to all of them. You know -- there. I don't know what the hell it's called, but if people came with zippers, that's where they'd be. Right there.
Now, I ask you -- how in the hell does one scratch that particular place and retain any shred of dignity whatsoever? 'Cause I haven't found a way. The crotch, I can manage -- just drop a pen or something on your lap, and surreptitiously spend a little extra time picking it up. And ass-scratches are easy -- face away from everyone else and pretend to check your wallet, or *scootch* in your desk chair just the right way. Problem solved, and no one has to know.
But that dark, dank place underneath? The very depths of the nethers? There's no way to get to that without putting on a show. If you're sitting, you've got to slouch down in your chair, lean your ass forward, and spread your legs like a drunken cheerleader at a 'Girls Gone Wild' kegger, just to get to the area. Never mind actually reaching down there with your hand and getting busy with your bad self.
And standing up is even worse, if such a thing is possible. That little bit of skin was just never meant to be easily accessible. If it happens to itch while you're on your feet, walking around, your only path to relief involves hiking one leg in the air, like a poodle pissing on a poplar tree.
(Or a wolfhound whizzing on a weeping willow. Spaniel spritzing a spruce, maybe? No? Oh, you people.)
Anyway, none of those options were really open to me today, seeing as how I was sitting in a conference room with a dozen people at the time. And I think several of them saw me twitch when I felt the first tickle, so they were keeping a close eye on me -- there's no way I could slip a few fingers down there and do the deed unnoticed. So, I fabricated a coughing fit and quick-stepped out into the hallway, where I could spread out and get down to business. Ahhhhhh. That's better.
Of course, I got busted. The janitor came around the corner and saw me, with both hands jammed down there, scritching and scratching like crazy. I thought he might blow the whistle on me, or at least give me a funny look. Instead, he just kept walking, and said, over his shoulder:
'Hey, if you're having trouble, I've got some dirty magazines in the broom closet. Door's always open, cuz.'
Ouch. Not only did he have the wrong idea, but now I can never go near the broom closet again. Or stay late in the office, or look him directly in the eye, or touch any of the cleaning supplies. Who knows what he's doin' with those broomsticks and dustpans in there, anyway? Jeez, no wonder we can never get a box of tissues around this place. Yuck.)
Wow. Where the hell was I before that came out of me? Damn. That's one hell of a tangent, even for me. I'm all spent and shit. Whew!
Well, let's see -- somewhere way back there, I was mentioning the eye-freezing, hair-whipping, testes-chasing cold weather that we've been having. Again. But the only reason I brought it up was to tell you that while the various bits of my body have been troopers so far, and stayed firmly in place (or softly in place, as the case may be -- hush up!), my car has not been so kind. The single-digits temps finally got to old Betty yesterday, and she developed a three-, maybe four-foot crack right across the windshield, nearly from door to door. This, my friends, is what the ancient Sumerians called a 'bad thing'.
And it's not just that I have to call some crooked schmo to get the damned thing fixed. No, no -- that would be bad enough, and I'm sure I'd be annoyed if it were a cracked fender or broken tail light or some critical issue with the fuzzy dice on the rearview.
(Hey, don't laugh -- the dealer charged me sixty bucks to have those babies 'refluffed' last time I was there. Frankly, they looked about the same to me afterward, but they did smell quite strongly of cigarette smoke. And ass. So I'm not sure how much fluffing really went on. I was looking to recapture that 'Vegas feel', but came away with more of an Atlantic City vibe. Damned lousy car dealership, anyway.)
But the problem with the windshield is not one of cost. Rather, it's a question of dismemberment, or the possibility thereof. I've got to continue driving the car for a day or so -- to work, to the vet's office, to home -- before I can clear my schedule out to get it fixed. And in the meantime, I'm living in constant fear that some bird is gonna shit on it in just the wrong way, crack it all the way through, and the windshield is gonna cave in on me while I'm cruising down the street. And on the list of 'Things That Would Make Me Squeal Like a Happy Piggy If They Fell in My Lap', 'two jagged sheets of broken glass' are way, way, way down at the bottom. Somewhere below 'a vat of battery acid', and just above 'Tom Arnold after a chili cookoff'. That would be way down the list.
(For the record, 'a million bucks in crisp, new hundreds' and 'Christa Miller' are up there near the top. You know, just in case you have my lap in mind when next Christmas rolls around. I know I will.)
So, I'm stuck driving around the city at nine miles an hour, cringing at each pothole and bump and pedestrian I hit, thinking that this one might be the one that finishes off the windshield and sends sharp glass careening at my midsection. Oh, and don't get me wrong, by the way. Normally, I try to avoid many of the pedestrians that scurry in front of my car. But I know what sudden heating and cooling does to glass, so I'm afraid to turn on the defroster, for fear that that will break the windshield in half, too. So it's a bit tough to see out, with all the fog from my breath, and what's left of my body heat steaming up the windows. I tried rolling down a window to see out, but my left ear tried to crawl into my head to protest the blast of cold air, so I just went with it. I'm sure none of those folks were hurt badly, anyway. Hell, I was going slower than they were, and none of them impacted hard enough to finish breaking the windshield. How bad could it be? Buncha babies. Bah.
1) I have also heard the "taint" called the "chode." Might be a regional thing.
2) I'm told that windshields, when they shatter, are designed to break into a bunch of little non-sharp pieces. So when that bird craps all over your whip (er, car, sorry), and the windshield lands in your lap, supposedly it won't be two jagged pieces slicing off your wang, but instead, many smaller pieces that will merely maim the aforementioned wang.
nef: Thanks, dude. Oh, and I got your transversus perinæi superficialis right here. (Okay, that one needs work.)
Jon: That actually happened once -- I spent three and a half weeks inside a set of parentheses. It was weird -- kinda foggy and moist and hazy. Very disturbing.
Hearn: Man, where the hell were you when I was naming this blog? I mean, I'm happy with my choice and all, but 'The Aforementioned Wang'? Dude, that's genius!
Vanessa: Only three times? Man, I shuddered much more than that while writing it. You must have a higher 'squeam threshold' than I do.
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The term for 'no man's land' as you put it is the taint.... as in 'taint nothing there'. It is also known as the grundle. Now, mind you, these are the slang terms. If you want to get technical it is the perineum. And that line... Transversus perinæi superficialis.
You should bust that out on your homies: When caught scratching just state: I was releiving a surface dermal irritation in my transversus perinæi superficialis by way of manual abrading.