The last few posts I have purposefull taken shots at my beloved sisters. Though I love them to death, they have found themselves entertainingly in harm's way, and I saw it as my duty as a brother to report to the world their sad mishappenings in childhood. And while I am still the favorite child (by far), the most intelligent and good looking of the group, I am a also a fair man.
Today, I shall tell of one of my own misfortunate experiences as a young lad. A day of boys, woods, and ticks. And ticks on woods.
I grew up causing much trouble at church. Not because I was a sinner, but because I was a boy attending church with a bunch of boys, and God created boys to be troublesome in order to teach adults discipline, patience, and the best means to bruise boy buttocks (Spare a child the rod...). So, I happened to attend Eastgate Church of Christ with several families, all of which had male demon children the same age. I'm telling you, not a Sunday went by without a pencil stuck in a ceiling, church being interrupted by laughter, or crude things being drawn on the announcements card (though we didn't always get caught). We got to all sit together during the sermon about once every few months, where we always promptly lost the privilege by the third hymn.
Every Sunday, one of us would get kicked out of Sunday school and have to sit in the hall. It's not that one of us was bad that morning; oh no, we were all bad. It was usually who got caught or started laughing first.
I think the most I ever got in trouble came during one Sunday morning when I overstepped my bounds by a few giant leaps for boykind. I wasn't a smart child, so of course the day I decide to be really freaking funny happened to be a day that my parents were teaching class. I don't remember what the lesson was about, but I do remember a big picture of Satan, and we each got turns drawing something on him. Of course, I drew his genitalia. This happened to be a "Children's hour" class, held during service, where all the children attend. Yes, on that day many sweet 3-5 year old golden haired sweethearted angels saw their first depiction of a...uh...johnson. And yam bag. In church. On Satan. I wasn't a good artist, but I sure knew how to draw that. It was awesome for about 3 seconds before my mom figured out what I had done. I don't remember my punishment because I think I blacked out in the midst of it.
Anyhow, this tale isn't of all my mischievousness in church. This is a tale of God saying "Listen up, sonny. You've crossed your bounds. And as a result, I am about to punish not just you, but all of your buddies. Fear the wrath of God, 'cause you done pissed me off. To honor beelzebub with a junk that big is a sin against me." I guess Satan is hung like a gnat.
So, the next time we all got together, God had a master plan of torment. We were all at Jake Shelley's house, my good friend who lived across the border in Colcord, Oklahoma. As is natural for all who live in Colcord, his house was in the boondocks, and he had 4wheelers, fields, forests, ponds, coyotes, and cattle. It was paradise. There was a hollar where the old cow carcasses rotted, and we had bb guns that we could shoot at anything. Particularly sparrows, frogs, and old cow carcasses. Pretty much the setting of "Where the Red Fern Grows" (no kidding, that movie was filmed probably 3 miles from Jake's house).
Since on this particular day we couldn't all fit on the 4wheelers, we went trapesing out into the woods on foot. We hiked through the big field behind his house back to the trees, where we commensed to carving our names with pocket knifes into trees. Our names, and I'm sure other words as well. At the end of the day, we were all exhausted after spending an entire afternoon playing in God's wilderness.
Unfortunately, God keeps his creatures of torment in his wilderness.
And like a time bomb, we didn't realize we had been attacked until it was too late. As we were undressing from our outdoor play clothes, we all started itching. And itching, and itching, and itching. Our ankles felt like they were on fire with itch, and after taking off our shoes and socks, we saw that we each had hundreds of new freckles on our feet and ankles. Except they were raised freckles that itched and stuck to us like ticks. Freckles that, in fact, turned out to be ticks. Thousands of them. It was insane. It was bad, very very bad.
We were ticked (pun intended), and Jake's mom rubbed all our ankles with rubbing alcohol and seemed to have taken the situation under control. It was bad, but we thought it was funny and kinda cool, and made for a good story. We had no idea.
We spent the night at Jake's, because it was his birthday party, and went home the next day. All was quiet on the Shelley front.
After getting home my mom made me take a shower because I smelt like boy and manure. There, in that ceramic tub, I saw that those danged ticks had regenerated and reattacked at my thighs. Lower thighs, thankfully, so don't get any ideas. Yet. This kinda weirded me out, because they were all gone the day before, and now they were all back. They were like tiny tick zombies. Finally, I picked them all off, and convinced myself that I had just missed a few from the day before. This time, though, I made sure that they were all gone.
And then the next day came, and God got his vengeance.
Once again, the zombie ticks regenerated, reformed, and reattacked in greater numbers than before. Except this time, they attacked in full force on my... yes, you guessed it, my...uh... johnson. And yam bag. They were everywhere, and I mean I didn't have a square mm on my boyhood that they hadn't invaded. I freaked out, and was using tweezers to cleanse my pride. Yes, as bad as it was, I even had to enlist my mother's help. Before you think I'm crazy, though, do recall that I wasn't that old (probably 6 or 7).
So there I was, sitting on a 3-legged stool in our kitchen bawling my horrified eyes out with my mama tweezing micron sized arachnids off my schlong, one by one by one. It took forever, and it was miserable. Ticks latch on for dear life, and don't let go. In fact, they will hold on until their heads pop off. IMAGINE THE PAIN. It was like being pinched over and over and over all over my family jewels. Every once in a while mom would miss and tweezer pinch my schtuff. I would scream, and she'd continue on grooming her offspring like a mama chimpanzee. Eventually, she got them all off, as only a mother can do. I think she had God's help.
Luckily, mom got a call from my other buddies moms and they were all going through the same thing. It helps to know your friends are suffering too. And that at least you wouldn't be the only sterile one of the bunch. From then on, we all wore jeans when going to Jake's, and we all used bugspray. Ain't nobody gonna risk that crisis again.
And yes, God got his lesson across. Though I was still a problem child, from that point on I vowed to myself that the next time I drew Satan's anatomy, it wouldn't be visible by the human eye.
"Vengeance is mine, I will repay," Says the Lord.
Romans 12:20
I remember you getting kicked out of Sunday School, all the time! LOL! :)
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