Smells Like Brownies

(or How to Spend $600 After Almost Killing Your Dog)

First, a little bit of background. Our dog Buzz is a 50-pound Australian Shepherd mix. We think he’s about our daughter’s age, so that would have made him seven or eight years old when I almost killed him. He was named after Buzz Lightyear, but we didn’t do that. He came with that name when we adopted him six years before from a local no-kill shelter. We decided to go for a mutt this time, seeing as how Buzz’s two predecessors (one disobedient inbred AKC-papered Lab after another) brought us nothing but grief.

Our first dog, Boo Radley, was a 100-plus pound black Labrador Retriever, who found it necessary to bust through our fence and get hit by a truck on the highway before he reached the age of two. His remains are supposedly resting comfortably in a pet cemetery in Lubbock, Texas.

Our second dog was a yellow Lab named Rex. Soon after we brought him home, at the age of about eight weeks (even though his parents were what they call “hip-certified”), one of his hips popped out of joint. The vet said it was the worst case of hip dysplasia he had ever seen. After losing Boo, we were not about to give up on another dog. (Mind you, this was before we had kids, so we had no perspective about how the value of an animal’s life declines dramatically once you have a human child’s life to value.) So of course we took Rex to a special orthopedic veterinarian who charged us about $3,500 to fashion and install some new and improved titanium bionic hips. Not long after Rex healed up, he used those damn hips to run away from us at every opportunity. As soon as we would let him out of the house, he did nothing but try to dig under the six-foot fence, climb over it, gnaw his way through the wood, or tear away enough boards to squeeze through. The puppy Prozac we dosed him with did nothing to make him realize that he owed his powers of locomotion to us, not to mention his life. The electric fence wire we installed acted as more of a challenge than a deterrent. Then he would simply howl as he gnawed at the fence with a mouth full of splinters, leaving his signature bloodstains behind. Anyway, after the kids came along, Rex took a back seat and was none too pleased with the lack of attention. When our daughter was a baby, right before we moved out of state, I had occasion to meet quite a few of our neighbors when they would return Rex to our door thinking they were doing us a favor. Most of them would say, “You missing a dog?” “Not really,” I would always reply, “but thanks anyway.” After we moved, I tried to give Rex away, but I forgot to include a no return policy. It wasn’t long before the first victims brought him back. The next time I gave him away, I removed his tags, left no forwarding address, and promptly took off. If Rex were still alive, which he surely isn’t, he would be about 20 years old. I only know this because he was born the night that O.J. Simpson (allegedly) got away with murder. June 12, 1994. I’m sure Rex’s remains amount to nothing more than a couple of titanium hips that some Boy Scouts will find one day while hiking through the woods of East Texas.

This brings us to dog number three. Our daughter was two years old when we went to pick out a dog. She was terrified of every one we put in front of her. We were about to give up when they told us, “Well . . . there is one more dog you might consider.” They told us Buzz had been there for about two years and no one wanted him because he was so standoffish. (And I think also because he has one brown eye and one blue eye, so people thought he was either defective, vicious, or just hard to make eye contact -- and therefore communicate -- with.) As soon as we put our daughter on the ground, she ran up to him, put her arms around his neck, and said, “This is my dog.” My husband and I looked at each other uneasily, verified that there was a return policy, and decided to give him a try. When we brought the dog home, he was terrified. He acted as if he had never set foot on carpet before. He rejected treats as if he felt unworthy of them. It was obvious that he had been abused. (He would tremble at the sound of thunder, gunshots, and fireworks, and at the sight of -- of all things -- fishing poles.) So it took a while for him to warm up to people. But once he did, he was the perfect pet. He would rarely bark, never sniff crotches or chew on things. And he was too smart and grateful to run away. He would usually curl up in a corner and sleep most of the day. The only problems we had (aside from the time he brought me a bloody headless rabbit carcass), were his odd habit of throwing up in our daughter’s bed, and the few times he found it necessary to leave a big dump in our son’s floor. We solved that problem simply by shutting the kids’ doors every time we left the house.

So, long story longer, here’s the story of how I almost killed Buzz at a most inconvenient time:

Most military wives know the obscure Murphy’s Law that encourages all household hell to break loose every time the husband goes away. In accordance with Uniform Code of Military Injustice § 13.666, events such as this are required to take place during every deployment of any duration. This code section mandates the following:

(a) Each child must suffer moderate to severe stomach bug or flulike symptoms over the course of at least two consecutive weeks. (This is standard operating procedure.)

(b) Some sort of kitchen mishap is required to occur. (In my case it was a dripping faucet and replacement thereof.)

(c) At least one large appliance must malfunction. (This time, it was a water-heater-over-flow incident and its attendant $100-extra water bill.)

(d) One more dramatic and costly event caused by any seemingly innocuous act that in hindsight appears to be quite negligent must occur.

My military-wife friends can rest assured that I began working tirelessly to repeal this archaic law as soon as I returned from an extended spa vacation that I took not long after my husband’s jet landed somewhere in the contiguous United States.

I was just hoping that his deployment to Iraq in 2008 wouldn’t bring on the scorpions, rodents, injured children, electrical or cable outages, car problems, or major appliance malfunctions. Of course, worrying about them all but ensures that they will happen, even if you knock on wood. Or worse yet, something you never could have imagined happening threatens to make you question, for example, where one could find an exact replica of your pet so as not to arouse suspicion in your spouse when he or she returns from an extended time away.

Again, long story short (by the way, I hate that phrase because it really just makes the story three words longer—so does the phrase “by the way” by the way) when no one was looking, Buzz ate four huge bars of dark chocolate. I had always heard that chocolate was like poison to dogs. He did not seem the least bit ill, and if my daughter hadn’t found the wrappers, we may not have realized that this had happened that night until he tossed it up in my daughter’s bed or left a pile of chocolaty diarrhea in my son’s floor.

I immediately called the emergency vet. They gave me an 800 number for a pet poison control advice line and told me I needed to follow their instructions first before bringing him in. After sitting on hold a little bit longer than forever, a veterinarian answered the phone, and, after asking what the problem was, told me that there was a $60 charge for their service. So of course I gave her my credit card number so I could get information that I probably could have Googled myself if I hadn’t been in such a panic. She told me that the amount of chocolate he ate for his weight was probably less than half the dose that definitely would be lethal. But I certainly wasn’t going to take any chances. She told me to give him three tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting. She said that he should vomit in about 10 to 15 minutes. Well, I got tired of waiting for him to throw up. I even gave him more peroxide, and stuck my finger down his throat. After all the vomiting this dog has done, I never dreamed that I would want to see him toss his cookies as much as I wanted to see him toss his cookies that night. I even went so far as to consider guiding him to my daughter’s bed where he would feel most comfortable about puking -- but I didn’t. I decided to go ahead and start heading for the emergency vet hospital. I lined the back seat with towels and hit the road.

The clerk and the technicians seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole thing, as if dogs overdose on chocolate all the time and they always see overreacting owners. Well, as I checked him in, they informed me that there was a $300 charge just for walking in the door. What was I going to do? Say “Oh, well then, nevermind,” and leave? They took him to the back to check his vitals and do whatever they needed to do. My head was spinning, and I thought I would be the one to throw up first.

After I had waited for about an hour, they said he still hadn’t thrown up. I started raising hell when I realized that they hadn’t given him anything else to induce vomiting, and had just been observing him all that time. Holy shit, I thought. I could do this at home for free. I insisted that they make him throw up immediately. I wanted my money’s worth after the $300 cover charge. The vet told me that chocolate camps out in their stomachs for a long time blah blah blah and does not travel into their intestines blah blah blah and into their systems for several hours. I said, “I don’t care; I paid $300 to walk through the frickin’ door. The least you can do is make my dog puke!” After another half hour or so, I sent the receptionist back to check on him. Apparently, as soon as they gave him some injection, he barfed all over his kennel. They said it looked like gallons of chocolate syrup. The receptionist came back smiling and laughing. I thought, well that’s a good sign. She said that someone came in the back door and said, “Smells like brownies. Who brought the brownies? Where are they?” The vet and another tech confirmed this story later and said that it indeed smelled like someone had just baked a fresh batch.

They then told me they needed to give Buzz some IV fluids, some activated charcoal, and monitor his heart rate. Overnight. The vet said that his heart rate was a little elevated when we first came in. I told her that his heart rate always goes up when we bring him to a vet or kennel or even to the groomer. I explained that he’s a bit skittish and shaky even in non-emergent situations. After he vomited, she said his heart rate increased further. I said “Well, maybe that’s because he just upchucked.” She said that in terms of absorption time blah blah blah, we brought him in very early, and considering how much he threw up blah blah blah, and that he hadn’t had any diarrhea, the majority of it had not hit his intestines and spread to his system. I said, “Then it should be safe to take him home, right?” She said that there was no way we would be able to replace his fluids with just water at home, and that she would be uneasy about letting him go without monitoring his heart rate and blah blah blah for a few more hours. I was thinking, I wouldn’t even go through this crap for my kid, much less a dog. Of course the vet said that if it were her dog, she would leave him there. (I thought, well yeah, you work here, hello?) So she brought him in to the little examining room to see us, where he seemed perfectly fine, wagging his little nub of a tail, a little bit shaky, because of course he was in an emergency veterinary hospital.

The next morning, they said the only problem was that he would not urinate for them even though they knew he was full of fluid. I told them that he could hold it for days and that he doesn’t like to pee when he’s nervous or on a leash or when anyone is watching. They finally agreed to let him go with a full bladder. The final bill for the pet E/R came to about $400. They had faxed his records to our personal vet, and told me that he needed to finish his IV bag there. Holy shit, another bill for this.

So I dutifully took Buzz directly to our vet’s office. He ended up spending most of the day there “under observation.” The doctor did some sort of test and decided to flush him with one more IV bag. He said it took that dog forever to finally pee, but when he did he peed forever. They were able to get him to eat and then make sure that he didn’t have any diarrhea. So I guess that extra day of vet care was worth the $130 I was popped with. Doesn’t everyone want to pay $130 to know that their dog doesn’t have diarrhea? Really, a bargain at twice the price.

Those damn candy bars cost me about $600. If my husband hadn’t been deployed at the time, this probably never would have happened. So really, I should blame him for being off in Iraq. Come to think of it, it was really George Bush’s fault. But the president gave us a tax rebate that year, so I guess he actually did pay for it.

The next time our dog ate chocolate (in the form of three boxes of Girl Scout cookies) I just looked the other way and crossed my fingers. I figured the money we saved could pay for a pretty fancy funeral.

War Bride vs. The Yard

Before my husband left for a deployment to the Middle East, he fully briefed me about all the things he does outside while I am in the house watching A&E or Bravo marathons and pretending to do laundry. The only indoor item I needed to worry about was the humidor. Apparently, it needed watering not unlike my thirsty houseplants. One spring day, he spent what seemed like four hours or so giving me detailed instructions on the use and/or maintenance of: the riding lawnmower, the gas-powered Weed-Eater, the leaf blower, the septic tank, the water softener, the sprinkler system (which I incidentally had theretofore been unaware that we had), the propane tank, the soaker hoses, the Miracle Gro plant feeder, the weed killer, various insect killers, and, of course, the humidor. He checked me out on all of these as I took notes in hopes of remembering what should be done twice a week as opposed to what should be done every two weeks.

After I tried out the leaf blower, he kindly took it out of my hand and offered, “A smart person would do it like this…” Apparently, one should get behind the blower’s targets rather than mill about aimlessly in the middle of it all. (His remark reminded me of what my brother told me they say in Minnesota when someone displays lower-than-average intelligence. According to him, certain mild-mannered Midwestern pasty yet somewhat redneck Lutherans will say, in that charming Minnesota accent, “Y’know, a lotta guys’d done it this way…” But I digress.) When my husband was training me on how to feed the plants in the garden, he must have picked up on my anxiety about the whole thing. He said, “Don’t worry; this will be a lot less stressful after I leave.” (No shit, I thought.) So then I just had to make sure I kept everything alive and in working order so I wouldn’t have to pull some Lucy Ricardo stunt and go out and replace all of our landscaping and the entire garden before he came home. And God forbid I let those Cuban cigars dry out. As I like to have a contingency plan in the event that I do fail (because I like to remain cautiously pessimistic about my ability and care level) I wondered if he’d notice if I were to put the Cuban labels on some Dominican Republic replacements.

So my husband went off to war. I was less worried about his well-being than I was about that of our lawn and garden. And the cigars. He sensed my anxiety as we said goodbye. As he hugged me, he said, “Don’t worry. You took some good notes. Everything will be fine. Oh, and I’ll be OK, too.” The truth is, I’ve never minded being on my own and I’ve never felt helpless when he’s gone. I had a full calendar, a full Netflix queue, and a full wine cabinet. No worries.

I mowed the lawn all on my own for the first time. Our Craftsman riding mower had an amazing turning radius. And the horsepower (whatever that is) was impressive as well. Here’s a tip: You can cut the grass better if you engage and lower the blades. I covered half of our small front yard before I realized I wasn’t cutting anything. Also, fill up the tank while the mower is still near the gas, so you don’t have to lug the gas can across an acre and slosh it all over yourself on the way. Here’s the mower casualty list from Day One: one sprinkler head (that I’m aware of), one large rock that I turned into gravel, a garden hose, an Otter Pop wrapper, a small frog, my right thumbnail, and my left cornea.

While mowing was a learning experience, weed-eating really stirred my soul. Aside from the fact that one should never use a big Weed-Eater in a small garden, here is a list of things you should not weed-eat and why:

(1) big fat honking dandelion or dollar weeds, because they are juicy and will splatter all over your bare and probably already itchy shins,

(2) any size pile of dog crap (especially fresh), because it tends to spray (again, all over your shins, but also an errant speck can hit you in the face at which time, you will be literally shitfaced),

(3) any small oak saplings or recently-planted (unbeknownst to you) petunias your husband may have wanted you to spare,

(4) the black foam air-conditioner-compressor hose cover, because you might inhale and choke on the particles or get a piece stuck in your eye (so I’ve heard),

(5) deer (or other vermin) pellets (especially the hardened ones), because they can smack you in the kneecaps, and

(6) ant beds, spiders, or small salamanders, for the obvious reason that you will either get stung, scared, or simply grossed out to the point of dry heaving at the sight of chopped lizard.

Some additional gardening tips:

(1) You may want to keep your iPod headphone cord at a safe distance if you choose to leave the Weed-Eater running while you squat down to pick up your sunglasses if they fall off while you try to rub gasoline out of your eyes.

(2) Don’t forget to use bug repellent and sunscreen. I discovered, after spending some time outside, that outside is where most bugs and UV rays hang out and tend to conspire against those of us who try to interfere with the natural order of things while we would rather be in the air conditioning sipping tequila and watching reality TV.

(3) Leaf blower caveats:

(a) If you have allergies, be sure to take your medicine first. Snot and tears make for a sure-fire way to get all manner of clippings stuck to your sunburned face.

(b) Keep your shorts from getting sucked up into the air intake, otherwise it can give you an inconvenient and embarrassing (even though you are alone) frontal wedgie, and

(c) If the wind is blowing, it is futile to work against it.

As for the septic tank, I found out that it has its own sprinkler system. Apparently, at random intervals, it will spray sewage water in a somewhat circular pattern in your back yard. Sometimes while you are in its radius and bent over to pull stickers out of your shoelaces. You will then wonder why you smell like a latrine the rest of the day.

The water softener and propane tank gave me very little trouble. One needed salt poured into it periodically, while the other just needed a check placed under the lid to pay the gas delivery guy. I hope I didn’t get them mixed up.

I managed to maintain the grounds fairly well without having to hire a team of illegals who would have done a much better job in exchange for some Taco Bell. I only had to replace one squash plant, one water hose, and one set of earphones.
It seems that all my outdoor efforts left a little to be desired inside the house. While laundry and dishes piled up, houseplants died, and toilets grew mildew, the humidor was, not surprisingly, neglected (actually ignored completely) and several irreplaceable and/or expensive cigars found themselves dried out beyond recognition. Soon after my husband’s return, I tried to suggest that the humidor was defective or that the cigars were expired or that the water I used was not wet enough, but he didn’t buy it. He took off to the cigar store for replacements before he even unpacked. I was so relieved to have him home from the war that I planted myself back in front of the TV and pretended to do laundry again.

Why Does Everything Always Happen to Me?

This is a text exchange I had with my sister yesterday. (Almost verbatim, with irrelevant or incriminating comments redacted.) We like to act like we have it so hard. Some people don't get our sense of humor. I pity those fools.


Me: Been tryin to write all day but laundry n correspondence n shit keep interfering. It sux!! Jst now gonna start writing n I bet mike will ask me to go get grocs. Ugh. Why does everything always happen to me?

My Sister: No kidding! Lily keeps barking, she wants back in the house but I’m on the couch watching BRAVO channel, stuff like this always happens to ME. I hate it I feel like I just wanna kill myself.

Me: Life is so not worth living under these conditions. Lol

My Sister: Ikr

Me: Its like a concentration camp over here. Esp when my phones fb app wont work right. Whats this world coming to?

My Sister: No kidding. I can totally relate to how the slaves felt.

Me: Lmao!! This exchange is postworthy.

My Sister: I feel like Nelson Mandela when he was jailed.

Me: I feel like anne frank.

Me: Or joan of arc

My Sister: Me too, only worse.

My Sister: Post burning.

Me: Zactly.

Me: I am in tears laughing rt now.

My Sister: Me too

My Sister: I’m even feeling like Jaycee Dugard. This house is such a mess

Me: Lmfao times ten. I feel like a jeffrey dahmer victim. All dead and cannibalized n buttfucked.

Me: Shoot me now.

My Sister: No kidding. I hate feeling this way. Just think how much harder it will b if Romney wins

Me: We will truly be enslaved and screwed then. Im going to put a plastic bag over my head now.

Me: And cinch it

Me: With a blingy belt

My Sister: Great idea. I think I’ll do the same. Only light a match at the end of it.

My Sister: I’m gonna go cut for a while

Me: Good call. And maybe drink some drano first. Gotta go tend to my family. Damn them.

My Sister: Damn them to hell.

No Time for a Nervous Breakdown

Maybe it’s bad karma. Or a disability. Or raging pre-menopause hormones. Maybe it’s my meds or lack thereof. Or this unnecessarily dramatic midlife crisis I nurture. Maybe I should consult an astrologist or a hypnotherapist. Or a pharmacist. Either I am easily overwhelmed, exhausted, and spent, or I just whine about it more than anyone else does. Others seem to manage life so much more deftly than I do.

I will start a day with the best of intentions. A solid, ambitious plan. And more often than not, the plan goes out the broken window and everything gets swept up into a shitstorm. Like every item on my to-do list becomes a turd that gets thrown one-by-one into an oscillating fan. A whirlwind of clusterfuckery beyond my control. I feel pulled in 73 different directions and all I want to do is go back to bed until I desperately need to pee. I juggle candles that are burning at both ends. I bite off more than I can chew. And fight off more than I can do. I have too much on my plate and no dog under the table willing to help me eat it. Like I’m driving drunk with no steering wheel. In reverse. Blindfolded. Every once in a while, I will remember to breathe. Other times, an involuntary gasp reminds me. Not only do I have no time to wipe my ass, I have no time to take a shit in the first place. I know I am not alone. My girlfriends and I often share the Thelma and Louise escape fantasy. But with my luck, if I were to go for a flying drive off a cliff, I would survive in a persistent vegetative state until my family put me out of their misery.

I would love to schedule a nervous breakdown, but too many people depend on me. Maybe I could call it a vacation, but who has time for a vacation when there is so much minutiae to take care of? I have to be a part-time mom, de-clutter in time for the housekeeper’s visits, sometimes feed the dog, and keep the pantry and fridge alphabetized. There are toilets to plunge, spiders to kill, plants to water, dishes to wash, laundry to fold, kids to yell at, a husband to nag, errands to run, and shoes to buy. Then there’s all the household paperwork management. It is a fire hazard. In this digital world, I am amazed at how much paper crap still comes at me from every corner of my life. Daily. I dread going to the mailbox for fear of getting yet another piece of paper I don’t know what to do with. Sure, the junk mail goes right into the trash, and magazines and catalogs are set aside to read at my leisure (which is why that stack is four feet high and the clothing advertised in the ones at the bottom are already out of style). Then there are birthday invitations to respond to (and get a gift for), bills (to pay or dispute), insurance forms (to get the new liability proof from then file away somewhere), health care questionnaires (to consider filling out only to trash them later), receipts (some to keep, some to throw away, some to record in a register somewhere, some to look up online so as to figure out which account that money came out of and what the hell it was for even though it is dated yesterday), septic maintenance notices, post office “package to pick up” slips, Amazon packing slips (for things I may need to return but most likely not), kids’ school notices to read and calendar, order forms to fill out and write a check for, assignment sheets to review and sign, progress reports, report cards, Boy Scout and Girl Scout forms to fill out and e-mails I printed out for whatever reason that I never look at again, permission slips, reminder notes (that I always forget to look at), story ideas on scraps, songs to remember to download scribbled on Starbucks napkins, songs to remember to delete from my iPod scribbled on business cards, oh, and business cards (either mine or someone else’s), work ideas on Post-Its, letters to respond to, client-related forms, potential-client paperwork, board-member agendas, printouts, spreadsheets, ads for summer camps, forms for basketball sign-ups, salon or spa brochures, coupons, coupons, coupons, phone message notes, to-do lists, grocery lists, newspapers, newsletters, quasi-newspapers or newsletters . . . These are just the things that dropped out of the side of my head in the past five minutes.

Where do I put this or that so I can prioritize and be efficient? Who has time to get organized? I once wasted four hours online looking for a good time management program. I get e-mails from some website that is supposed to help me stay organized, but do I even open them? Hell no. I hardly have time to delete them. And don’t even ask about how disorganized and overloaded my three different e-mail accounts are. At least those are virtual. Getting on top of any workload is not easy when you have no organizational or time-management skills. This deficiency is compounded when adult-onset ADD makes me want to go shoe shopping rather than buy groceries because I can’t find the damn list that I scribbled on the back of a receipt that I just spit my gum into before it fell into the chasm between the driver’s seat and the center console to meet an errant French fry. (And because, well, I always want to go shoe shopping.)

No single thing is ever daunting on its own. It’s the cumulative effect of one nagging task on top of another. Things that should be at the top of the totem pole are mixed at random with things that would probably take care of themselves if I just left them alone. (And you can bet I will.) I am forced to put things on the back burner (if they are even on my figurative stove) while I want to stick my head in the oven. It’s like suffering from hemorrhoids or diarrhea while riding a rickety roller coaster. (Mind you, I have never had hemorrhoids, but I liked using two ass-related words that contain the rare “rrh” sequence of letters. Hemorrhage is another “rrh” word, but I chose not to use it in relation to the anal area, for obvious reasons. [Insert gory visual here.] But I digress.)

Some people make things happen. Others let things happen. I, however, get paralyzed and make sure that nothing happens. (Unless I have a deadline with consequences. Or unless it will make me some money.) The striving for intestinal fortitude and mental strength weakens me. (By the way, intestinal fortitude can get painful.) Perhaps my character is building and one day, I will be able to use my energy to keep everything together rather than use it to pretend I have it all together. I would clone myself to get things done, but I’m afraid the other me would really get on my nerves. She’d always be one-upping me and insulting me in her clever yet caustic way. Plus she’d want to borrow my clothes, my kids would like her more because she’d pay attention to them, and my husband would want to sleep with her. Bitch. Then again, maybe she could get me organized while I go on that vacation.

Dirty Words

In 1972, George Carlin’s Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television was a scandalous hit. Even though most of the words can be heard regularly on many cable TV channels now, they are still considered inappropriate. Why certain combinations of letters that make certain sounds are deemed “bad” has always concerned me. But as a writer, I know that words are powerful. Especially words like the original seven: Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits. He also mentioned Fart, Turd, and Twat as contenders. I capitalize them to give them the authority they so richly deserve. I have a few to add as well. Mostly because I have stories to go with them.

I’ll address each word in order. A lot of parents forbid their children from using what they call the “S” word. Stupid. In our house, the “S” word is Shit. Much more expressive. (With our kids, we have so many other words worse than stupid to contend with, we tend to let that one slip by. We’ve told the kids that it’s not so bad to refer to a thing as stupid, but you shouldn’t call a person that. Unless it’s true.) Shit is one of my favorites. I like it because it is one of the few words whose meaning changes simply by putting the word “the” in front of it. If something is called Shit, it is just that: Shit. However, if something is referred to as The Shit, it is great. Note the difference: “This pie is Shit, Mom.” And “This pie is The Shit, Mom!” Shit is also a great synonym for the word “stuff.” I overheard my daughter and a friend of hers talking about how much they miss their bus driver and that they hope he’ll be driving their bus again the next year. I thought, Isn’t that sweet… Until my daughter said, “Yeah, he was nice except for all that foul language…” So I asked what she was talking about. She didn’t want to say the word. I said, “It can’t be any worse than what you have heard your dad and his friends say.” She said, “Or you. But hello? He’s a school bus driver.” She decided spelling it would solve the problem. She told me that one day he yelled at the kids to get their “S-H-I-T” out of the aisle. Good for him, I say. I am also fond of Shit because it is especially entertaining if I hear it uttered by a child or an elderly person. Years ago, a friend’s son (I think he was about six then) got into trouble for saying something relatively harmless like butthole. His mother’s punishment of choice was to put Tabasco sauce on his tongue as he stood in a corner. His response from that corner: “I guess I can’t say Shit either.” Brilliant. After my grandmother had a stroke, she lost her ability to speak. But she could still say “Shit!” Goddammit. I would too, if I had a stroke. I’d be pissed.

That brings us to Piss. It just means urinate, for Christ’s sake. Like pee or tinkle. But for some reason those four rather onomatopoeic letters make it a so-called bad word. During a rather trying visit to a truck stop restroom, I overheard a mom who was potty training her son. As I waited for an available stall, I heard this hillbilly meth-head say, “Come on, Li’l Earl, take a good piss for your mama.” Now, I’m not sure if she was indeed a hillbilly meth-head, and I also wonder if that description is a bit redundant as many hillbillies are probably meth-heads, but of course, not all meth-heads are hillbillies. They just look like them, what with the toothlessness and all. I’m also not sure if the kid’s name was Earl, but it was something redneckish like that. But I digress. I had never heard an adult say that word to a kid before. It was oddly refreshing. But poor little Earl didn’t have a chance. I venture to guess that learning a bad word was the least of his problems.

The next word on the list is probably everyone’s favorite. Fuck. So fun to say, right? So fucking handy. There are few things funnier than pre-schoolers using foul language that they clearly picked up from their parents. When my son was about four years old, after frantically searching the house for his little cowboy boots to don with his Pull-Up and hat, he looked at his grandmother and matter-of-factly in all his naiveté, asked, “Gabba, where are my fuckin’ boots?” He knew that that’s how you describe something you’re looking for in our household. When my nephew was about three years old, he told my mother, “I was going to say Fucking hell, but I didn’t.” We kept asking him, “What did you say???” And he kept repeating it, with a straight face, in his sweet soft little toddler voice. I swear, the Q & A went back and forth a good three or four times before we realized that indeed that was what he was saying. Then we kept asking him repeat it several more times because it was so damn funny. What else can you do with that? The word Fuck is the most important part of one of my favorite expressions: Bum-Fuck, Egypt; more commonly known simply as BFE. It is my generation’s parlance for “far away.” When I tell someone that we had to park way out in BFE, and they don’t know what I mean, depending upon whom I’m talking to, I either feel young or old. Usually old. The first time I said it to my daughter, I had to explain not only that Egypt itself is far away, but also that any place called Bum-Fuck, anywhere, is, by definition, far away. Therefore, Bum-Fuck, Egypt is doubly far away. She seemed to understand. Or else she was simply mesmerized by my saying the word Fuck to her when she was only seven years old.

The next word is arguably regarded as the worst combination of four letters ever put together. The “C” word as we call it. I personally like to say it anytime I get the chance just because the sound of it is so shocking. And it fascinates me that a short one-syllable word can arouse such angst, especially in women. I own that word. That word is my bitch. I learned to own it when I went to see Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. There is a short monologue called Reclaiming Cunt that really spoke to me. It is short enough to quote here:

I call it cunt. I've reclaimed it, “cunt.” I really like it. “Cunt.” Listen to it. “Cunt.” C C, Ca Ca. Cavern, cackle, clit, cute, come--closed c--closed inside, inside ca--then u--then cu--then curvy, inviting sharkskin u--uniform, under, up, urge, ugh, ugh, u--then n then cun--snug letters fitting perfectly together—n--nest, now, nexus, nice, nice, always depth, always round in uppercase, cun, cun—n a jagged wicked electrical pulse—n [high-pitched noise] then soft n--warm n--cun, cun, then t--then sharp certain tangy t--texture, take, tent, tight, tantalizing, tensing, taste, tendrils, time, tactile, tell me “Cunt cunt,” say it, tell me “Cunt.” “Cunt.”

See, if you say it enough, it starts to lose its power. A girlfriend of mine coined a word for her belly. Gunt she calls it. When your gut extends down to your cunt to form one continuous body part. A gunt is a lot like cankles or even thankles. But again, I digress.

This brings us to Cocksucker. Saying that word just makes your mouth feel good, doesn’t it? Repeat it: COCKSUCKER. It is best said in all caps when you are especially angry. My 70-year-old mother recently announced that she plans to take up frequent use of the word Cocksucker. She figures that at her age, she can finally get away with it. I tried to explain that I have been getting away with it for years, but she is from a kinder, gentler generation.

Next to COCKSUCKER, Motherfucker is near and dear to my heart. You can describe people, especially men, as Motherfuckers, and you can describe other things, such as pain via the employment of a simile. Like this: “My sunburn hurts like a Motherfucker!” It is highly unusual to describe a woman as a Motherfucker, but she can be described as, for example, a Motherfucking Cunt. (I also like to use the word Asshole for women just because it is so unexpected. I think it adds an extra dimension to the insult.) Motherfucker can also be used as a term of endearment if spoken in the right tone. One night as I walked with my husband and another couple down Sixth Street in Austin, a dreadlocked, Rasta-beret-wearing, patchouli-scented dope smoker cruised between us on his Pee-Wee-Herman-style bike. As he weaved between us, he looked us up and down, smiled broadly, and asked, “Whassup, Muthafuckas?” It was epic. Men use it as a compliment as well. Especially when referring to another man’s machismo. As in: “He is one tough Motherfucker. Don’t Fuck with that guy.” It’s quite a versatile and poetic compound word.

Why Tits is on the list is beyond me. Another powerful four-letter combo. It makes boobs pornographic. And I’m all about porn. I have always liked the phrase Titty Bar for those euphemistically-termed Gentlemen’s clubs. Excuse me, gentlemen, but you are being bilked one dollar at a time by some clever women who are capitalizing on the fact that a large portion of this nation’s population of gentlemen is willing to part with a significant portion of the paycheck they just cashed to see some bare Tits. Unlike most of the other words on the list, Tits or any derivative thereof is a word that a child should never say. It is one thing for a kid to say Motherfucker. Now that’s funny. But something about the word Tits coming out of a kid’s mouth is just wrong. Maybe it’s the fact that they probably just finished breastfeeding. At least I hope so, if they are able to talk about Tits. If they are still breastfeeding, and I hear them say, “Hey, Mom, I’m thirsty. Gimme one of your Tits!” I might throw up in my mouth a little bit. Speech impediments can come in handy for some unintended inappropriate words coming out of kids’ mouths. My daughter had a playmate who could not make the K sound. She would replace it with a T. So Hello Kitty became Hello Titty. And she sure did love Hello Titty. I know because we asked her about it all the time just to hear her say it. She would also use the D sound in place of the letter G. One time I heard her say, “Dod-dammit,” and I wondered if God would hold that against her even though it wasn’t really his name.

Carlin’s last three words were extras. Fart, Turd, and Twat. Fart? Seriously? My mother-in-law calls Fart “the F word.” I don’t have the heart to sit her down and tell her what the real F word is. The word Fart doesn’t usually sound nearly as bad as the Fart itself. What’s worse is Shart. When Shit and Fart combine, that’s where the real bodily function magic happens. Shart sort of brings us to Turd. Turd is a cute little word for fecal matter. If Shit is the adult word for feces, Turd is the kids’ version. When I hear the word Turd, I always picture one floating in a punch bowl. In my lexicon, people who invite drama are known to “Stir the Turd.” Turd-stirrers piss me off, except for the fact that it gives me an opportunity to say, “Stop stirring the Turd, you dumbshit!” Turd is also used to describe a difficult person in a more lighthearted way. As in: “My grandmother won’t take her medicine. She is such a Fucking Turd.” The last word, Twat, in my opinion, is worse than Cunt. Erotic women have Cunts. Slutty college girls have Twats. A Twat is more likely to have an STD. Scientific fact. Because of this, calling a woman a Cunt is one thing; referring to her as a Twat is indeed much more highly offensive. Keep that in mind for the next time you need to insult a woman.

I have a few more “dirty” word stories to tell (along with any related tangents) so here they are:

Bitch is not necessarily such a bad word, but it is frowned upon in many social circles. And frowned upon when kids say it. Because our son was such a cowboy when he was little, my husband thought it would be nice to watch John Wayne’s The Cowboys with him. For the most part, it was kid-friendly. There was only one line we had a little trouble with, but we thought he didn’t even notice it. We were wrong. The next day, our sweet little cowboy lost his temper with me. He looked at me and in all seriousness, said, “Mama, you son of a bitch!” He cried when I laughed at him. Years ago, a teenage friend of my brother said his mom was yelling at him and called him a son of a bitch. In all of his teen wisdom, he looked her up and down and responded, “You got that right!” Ouch. I think he missed an Iron Maiden concert for that one.

I have a love-hate relationship with Boner. It is a word that makes a hard penis both funny and threatening. I like Chubber, as well. Chubber makes a hard penis cute and cuddly. Woody makes it splintery. A Boner came up one day in my office. During some light chatter after a serious conversation with a client and another attorney, I discovered that the client had played clarinet in the Army band. After I mentioned that I was a really bad clarinet player, my associate said, “I was a tromboner … er, trombonist.” I have found that nephews are a great source of inappropriate talk. My kids and their cousins were playing in my mother’s hot tub when we discovered my four-year-old nephew sans pants playing with himself in a rather blatant and pornographic manner. My sister told him to stop, explaining that he can investigate his private parts in private, but not in front of people. He threw a temper tantrum that rivaled any I had ever seen in my local Walmart and kept screaming, “It’s my wiener and I want to play with it!! It’s mine and I can play with it if I want to!!” Such a little man. The audience of immature adults could only stifle tears of laughter. It would have been a lot funnier if he had called it his Boner though.

Another nephew came up with this little gem: When we gathered with relatives on a vacation, an 18-year-old previously baby-faced cousin showed up with a goatee. In mock shock, I asked aloud, “What is that on Cameron’s face?” My nine-year-old nephew didn’t hesitate to say, “I don’t know, but it looks like a Beaver!” Of course, one of Cameron’s buddies mumbled, “He wishes.” I am not sure when or why a woman’s external genitalia were named after an aquatic buck-toothed dam-building mammal. I would Google it, but I fear the image results. I pity the man who coined the term, because the woman who inspired it must have had a most unattractive Pussy.

The Beaver incident reminded me of a lovely song I was subjected to at the closing ceremony of my daughter’s Girl Scout camp a few years ago. The event was all very sweet. The flag-raising, the recitation of the Girl Scout Oath and Girl Scout Motto (I will never know which is which), the singing of the Girl Scout signature song “Make new friends/but keep the old/one is silver and the other gold…,” blah, blah, blah, the picnic, then a nice tape-recorded playing of Taps as the flag was lowered at the end. It was entertaining to see so many little girls all happy and dirty in mismatched clothes, laughing with their friends and performing for their parents. (I’d say it was as American as apple pie, but that concept was tainted –in my dirty mind- by the movie American Pie.) Anyway, at some point in the show, the girls lined up to sing and act out another song. This is where (for me) it suddenly became awkward and inappropriate. The cuteness came to a screeching halt and I giggled like Wayne and Garth or Beavis and Butthead:

The Beaver Song

Beaver one, Beaver all, let’s all do the Beaver crawl (pretend to crawl)
Beaver two, Beaver three, let’s all eat a Beaver tree (pretend to climb)
Beaver four, Beaver five, let’s all do the Beaver dive (pretend to dive)
Beaver six, Beaver seven, let’s all go to Beaver heaven (sway with hands in prayer)
Beaver eight, beaver nine, stop
It’s Beaver time, go Beaver, go Beaver (rapper/hip-hop moves)
Beaver ten, Beaver ten, let’s all do the Beaver again!


Beaver dive? Beaver heaven? Really? Oh yeah, do that Beaver again. I then pictured a burlesque team of the grown-up scout leaders (most of them rather burly women) taking it one step further, and I wanted to poke my eyes out. Maybe I am simply immature. There is an adult chip missing that would keep me from attributing dirty meanings to anything that could possibly be interpreted in any sexual way. Sometimes I think I should exorcise this teenage boy who has taken up residence in the basement of my mind, but I like him. He’s hot.

Speaking of Beavers, my daughter, who was probably seven years old at the time, picked out a package of panties with cute little silkscreened animals on them. (Actually, she caused me to accidentally shoplift them, but that’s another story.) When I unwrapped the package to put the panties in the laundry, I was confronted with one pair that said “Absolutely Purrrfect” under a photograph of an adorable kitten. Another pair depicted a cartoon monkey eating a lollipop and saying, simply, “Yummy!” Do pedophiles make these panties or do I just have a sick mind? But I digress.

One of my favorite words is Ass. So versatile. Asswipe, Assmunch, Asshat, Assface, Asshole, for example. My daughter became quite adept at spelling so-called bad words. She told on her brother once by saying, “He called me an A-S-S-W-H-O-L-E!” I gave her extra credit for creative spelling. When my son was about six years old, he called his three-year-old sister a dumbass. When I reprimanded him (even though he was absolutely right, because, let's face it, three-year-olds can make some uninformed choices) he corrected himself and said, “I’m sorry, but she’s a stupid-bottom.” That was the first time he had used that other “S” word. Shit, I thought, I can't punish him, because it was true.