When I was six I lied about having to pee JUST AS my dad and I were going to board a scary rollercoaster.  He was furious. The ride was one called “The Turn of the Century.”  It was a steel track coaster with double corkscrew loops and two “air time” hills that would cause people to lose hats, sunglasses, stuffed toys, and small children.  OK, I’m kidding about the small children.  The ride is at Six Flags Great America (which was then Marriot’s Great America or just “Marriot’s”) and it’s since been re-built as The Demon. In it’s newer version, they took out the air time drops and replaced them with two vertical loops and a tunnel with crazy disco lights that moved toward you as you went through to give the illusion of acceleration.

Anyway, back in 1976, when the coaster was still The Turn of the Century, I’d never been on a looping coaster.  My dad had just managed the year before to sucker me into riding The Screamin’ Eagle at the Six Flags near St. Louis, Missouri.  While I didn’t mind the Eagle once I was on it, the wait in line was a hellish anxiety trip.  I felt like I was waiting to be punished in a severe, physical way.  My stomach turned.  My head raced.  The freak out I experienced in the line by far eclipsed any joy I felt by riding the coaster.

As for The Turn of the Century, we waited in line probably twenty minutes, and just as we were ready to board the coaster, I told dad I had to pee.  He was furious.  He asked me if I could hold it, and I said no.  It wouldn’t seem to make sense if you think about it in light of my Screamin’ Eagle experience, if the waiting was the hard part.  You’d think “the hard part is over, now enjoy the ride,” right?  But this ride went upside down!  Not wanting to deal with a nine year old with urine soaked pants, dad yanked me past the trains and through the exit in a rush.

Later that day, I actually rode the coaster and liked it.

I noticed lately that there are no ads on the front-page version of my website.  Individual posts have ads in them.  Old versions of the page (previous posts pages) are fine too.  I know that if AdSense considers a site too edgy it won’t show ads.  Perhaps it’s the past few articles featuring nuts that go by racist names, my hidden periodicals, and my dad’s bathing activities.

During my sophomore year in high school I pretty much ate ten Burger King cheeseburgers a week.  I was given $2 a day for lunch, and with that I could buy 2 cheeseburgers, fries, and a medium coke.  That’s 1120 calories in a single meal if you’re wondering.    I would easily eat that many calories in a sitting at breakfast and dinner too.

After my sophomore year, my high school prohibited students from leaving the campus during lunch.  That’s when I started eating in the cafeteria; usually pizza or french fries.  This was about the same time my high school installed soda machines in the hallways as well.

Anyway, during my BK days, I never varied the menu.  There was a McDonalds, a Steak ‘n’ Shake, a Taco Bell, and a Pizza Hut equally close to the school, but the comfort of those char-broiled meat patties surrounded in sugary white hamburger buns with ketchup and “processed cheese food product” was my favorite draw.  Strange, ’cause I LOVED Taco Bell… perhaps it was because I preferred to eat eight to ten Taco Bell tacos in a sitting and couldn’t afford that on two bucks (if that the was reason it was a subconscious one).

In my twenties, I still loved Taco Bell, but much preferred Hardees (that’s Carl’s Jr to you west coast people).  My favorite?  The biscuits and gravy.  I would eat two or three servings at a time (410 calories and 1370grams of sodium PER SERVING), and I would chase it down with a big orange juice.

I really can’t remember the last time I went to a fast food place besides Starbucks.  I’m sure it had to be In-n-Out, a place we Californians like to trick ourselves into believing is “healthy” fast food even though a cheeseburger packs 480 calories, fries are 395 calories, and they use the same soda syrup as every other fast food place (that 1094 calorie meal is mostly sugar, by the way).  I pretty much never go to McDonalds, Burger King, Carl’s Jr, etc… and by that I mean I haven’t been in several years. 

Because of this avoidance of fast food, I can sometimes trick myself into thinking I eat healthily.  That denial pattern is something I’m very well aware of, but still I fall victim to it.  Anyway, regardless of the quality of the food, it is completely possible to get fat eating too much healthy food.

When I was little I once walked in while my dad was masturbating in the shower.  I thought he was dancing while holding his junk.  I really didn’t know any better.  Of course, now that I’m an adult, I know what he was doing…

At the age I was at the time, I wasn’t a shower taker, I was “bath only.”  Showers were for daddies only, and the shower was kind of a mysterious place, although I wasn’t that curious about it.  For all I knew, dancing in the shower was perfectly normal.

The only bathroom with a shower in our house was in the basement, the upstairs bathroom only had a tub.  The basement bathroom was a tiny space with just enough room for a toilet, a small sink, and a shower stall.

I don’t even remember why I went in there.  I know I was trying to get his attention for some mundane reason.  I opened the door saw him “dancing” in front of the shower head through a partially-open shower curtain through the fog.  As soon as he saw me, he grabbed a towel off the rack, covered himself at the waist, and chased me out of the room, giving the excuse that my opening the door let all the warm air out of the room.  He warned me not to come through the door again because I’d let the cold air into the bathroom.

It was an event that many might say would have shaken up their childhood quite a bit.  Me?  Not so much.  I didn’t even think about it again until I was in my early 20s, and I never really told anyone about it.  Well, I might possibly have told my brother at some point but I don’t remember.  Anyway, now you know… so congratulations!

So yeah, today I’m just not feeling the “Doomed Childhood” extrapolation thing.  I thought about writing about how ineffective I think the “Occupy” protests have been, but I’m not really feeling that either.  I need to get out of bed and ride my bicycle, I’ve slept in long enough as it is.  As I probably won’t get time to write later today, this is my update.  Just a lazy “I’m not going to update today” update.  Back to “Doomed Childhood” tomorrow.  Laters.

When we were really little, mom used to make my brother and me take baths together. I might have peed a couple times.  But you know what?  He was the younger brother.  He must definitely have peed.  Damn.  What a weird thing to think about, right?

The idea of a bath is kinda gross in the first place.  Sure, it’s relaxing to kick back in a tub of warm water, and if you’re a “grown up” it’s even better with bubbles and an alcoholic beverage.  Come to think of it, as an adult, it can be nice to share a bath with the right person.  As a kid, sharing a bath seems like no big deal ’cause it’s likely your sibling.  But it’s still gross.

Every nasty bit of anything unpleasant that bathing is supposed to remove from your body ends up in the bathwater.  After the bath, you step out of the tub still wet from the nasty water.  You towel that nasty water off, leaving the nastiness on your towel, which, unless you wash your towels after every use, will wait there until your next nasty bath.

Think about it.  When you wash your dishes, do you run a sink full of water, plop in the dirty dishes, and then pull them from the greasy, nasty water to immediately towel them off and put them away?  Well… maybe some of you do, there’s at least one in every crowd.  Likely, though, you rinse them off before drying them and putting them away.

Does your clothes washer fill with water, which rinses the nastiness from your underwear into itself, surrounding all your other clothes, maybe including your tee shirts a scarf you like to put over your face in winter, just drain out the icky water and stop?  No.  It has a rinse cycle, several rinse cycles in fact.

When you wash your car, do you spray on the soapy water and go?  No.  You rinse the car.

So why in the hell has it become just fine not to have some sort of rinse cycle for your own body after a bath?

I believe there’s been a Hustler magazine hidden in the eaves of my mom’s garage for almost 30 years.  I got it from a kid named Ray when I was about eleven or twelve.  I liked it because the pictures weren’t blurry or obscured with lens effects and camera angles.  Nope, everything was shown in amazing clarity.  It was a veritable encyclopedia of external female anatomy for me.  I referenced it frequently.

I used to keep it in our backyard shed, but eventually moved it to the garage above some storage cabinets.  The thing is, some of the other neighborhood kids got wind of my hidden treasure and our garage wasn’t the most secure place in the neighborhood.  I needed to find a hiding place that none of them would think of.  I enjoyed climbing in the rafters of the garage and I remembered that I could access the eve spaces from inside the garage between the rafter trusses.  I picked a spot in the northeast corner of the garage and deposited the magazine there.

Shortly after hiding that one, I scored a few more decent magazines, I believe from a friend named Tony.  One of these new magazines had Bo Derek in it!  I guess I kind of forgot about the original Hustler and never went back for it.  It stands to reason that it’s still there waiting for me.

Of course, at 44 years of age, I’ve become significantly more familiar with the external anatomy of the female, and in this age of internet connectedness, I can find a reminder in seconds should I forget.  I don’t currently own any printed material as such, and don’t really need it, but I’m curious to see if my Hustler magazine has survived all these years.  Later this month I’m going to be visiting my mom’s house.  We shall see then.