“Almost ready to go?” my Mother called down the hallway to me.
We had been at my Aunt’s house for hours, and I was just about insane with boredom. My Aunt and Uncle had three daughters, all in their teens, and their house was absolutely void of anything I could find interesting. To make matters worse, my Mother and I we were visiting my Aunt and cousins with another one of my Aunts and her daughter. The odds were stacked against me. I was the only dude. I made do as best I could by playing with My Little Ponies with the girls, but secretly I was pretending they were Battle-Steeds. If you’ve ever looked into the face of a My Little Pony, however, you’ll know how hard it is to make them seem tough. It takes a pretty good imagination to create a Battle-Steed out of a seafoam-green Pegasus with pouty lips and little hearts tattooed on its ass. Anyway, I played with my cousins' toys until I started to feel nauseated with myself, then I had to stop.
My mother and two Aunts had been sitting at the kitchen table, pounding back pots of tea while they talked about parenting, mortgages, banking, people who had died, and people who were about to die, and on and on with all that kind of shit that’s like Kryptonite for a little kid to have to listen to.
I wanted to go HOME.
“Well, I suppose…” said my mother.
Sweet! That was another of my Mother’s preparing-for-departure lines. She was getting ready to stand up. This was it, we were totally about to leave. But then one of my Aunt’s spoke up and said something like, “Oh, did I tell you about so-and-so’s surgery?”
“Nooo,” my mother said, clearly interested and re-settling into her chair, “What happened?”
If I had been old enough to know the expression, “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”, I would have used it. As it was, all I could do was sigh as loudly as I could and sit down on the floor right beside the table. I sat there for a few minutes, shoes on, waiting for one of the ladies to end this torture. Once I was certain they were doing this to me on purpose, I stood up and made a move for the door on my own. Screw it! I would just leave. My Mother would have to follow me: that was the law. I grabbed hold of the door leading outside and stepped through it.
Now, I’m not sure why the designers of this house would put two identical doors side-by-side in the kitchen, one leading outside, the other leading down the staircase into the basement. Maybe they figured it didn’t matter. After all, it’s not like anyone could get hurt unless someone was to, ohhh, I dunno, let’s say, remove the basement staircase altogether?
Now, I’m not sure why my uncle would remove the basement staircase altogether. Maybe he figured it’s not like anyone could get hurt unless the grown women who were supposed to be watching the kids were, ohhh, I dunno, let’s say, too wrapped up in their marathon-conversation and tea-drinking to notice one of them heading for the wrong door.
I stepped out of my aunt’s bright, cozy kitchen and into an abyss.
I don’t remember much of it, but I do recall that when I stepped through the door I got that stomach-drop feeling you get in an elevator when it suddenly descends. You know that sickening feeling when you realize you’ve just become gravity’s punk? After that, I remember laying face-down on the rough basement floor, feeling numb in the darkness, not knowing what happened. There was a little window high up on one of the basement walls, and I remember seeing my Aunt’s little legs running past it as she came to my rescue.
I’m not sure of the details, this all went down when I was really young, but I’m pretty sure we went home, as you do after a child has a serious accident, and it wasn’t until about a week later that I started to die or something. My parents took me to the to the hospital because I was having horrible gut pains and I was all pale and shit. Because I was so young, I really only remember being put on a table, being surrounded by nurses and doctors and having things shoved into my butt. Then a whole lot of pain. It’s a cherished memory to be sure.
I’ve since been told that when I slammed my body into the basement floor that day at my Aunt’s house, I drove one section of my intestines into another. “Intussusception” is the scary medical name for it. Basically, I collapsed my organs down inside themselves like a closed telescope. Just one of those horrible things you didn’t even know could happen until you do it to yourself.
In case you don’t think I had suffered enough, let me tell you about the “procedure” they came up with to fix this issue. What they do is shove a hose up your ass and pump you up full of air until your organs inflate and pop themselves back into place. Go ahead, take a moment. Let that sink in. I’m not sure what kind of doctor suggested this procedure, but my guess is that he had a big red nose, crazy-oversize shoes, and he probably carried, and frequently honked, a bicycle horn as he pedaled around the ER on a unicycle.
“You say his internal stuff's all messed up, huh? Hmmm, well, I’m near-stumped, but I’ll tell you what: we could try shoving a rubber hose up his asshole and blowing him up full of air like a goddamn balloon. I mean, it probably won’t help him at all, but it’ll be funny as fuck to see the look on his face! Am I right?! [squeezes bicycle horn, HONK-A-HONK-A]”
What kind of idea is that? Fill someone full of air in order to pop them back into place. I’m a little boy, you sadistic lunatic, not a cartoon!
Anyway, apparently, my parents agreed to let Dr. Butt-Balloon perform his trick on me. So that’s where my memory of all the doctors being around me shoving things into my butt comes from (I hope, anyway).
As some form of great cosmic joke, this ridiculous procedure actually worked. My intestines popped back into place [God squeezes a bicycle horn, HONK-A HONK-A]. No doubt people shook Dr.Butt-Balloon’s joy-buzzered hands and congratulated him on his brilliance in medicine before he had to race off on his unicycle to replace someone’s diseased lungs with rubber chickens.
Anywho, so that’s the story. Take or leave it. That clown-around procedure fixed my ruined insides. My organs went back where they were supposed to be, I wasn’t dying anymore, and my Mother and Aunts got to avoid “Criminal Negligence resulting in Death” charges.
Everybody was happy.
