vituperation

October 3, 2003

I was asked in the comments section from my last entry –

That’s right, I said the comments section. I found something neat, you see, something called HaloScan, and it lets me add comments (so you guys can share your thoughts, if you’re of a mind) to an entry. Pretty kick-ass stuff.

– if I’ve ever picked cotton (yes, as a kid, for fun. Never as a chore.) and how cotton is picked these days. Here’s the answer.

It was a beautiful afternoon late that summer, without a single cloud in the sky. Smoke from the sizzling burgers on the grill some ten feet below us on the driveway drifted up, weaving thin tendrils through the boards of the deck where we were gathered. Jay, a good friend of my parents, was in town for business, and he’d spent that Saturday at our house hanging out and visiting with us. My father was cooking hamburgers to be eaten at a future dinner; we would be having steaks later this night.

I was fifteen years old then, still living with my parents. We lived in a rental house, a sprawling old thing smack dab in the middle of Jones Valley, while the house my parents live in now was being built. Built into a hillside, the rental house looked like a rancher on the front and a two-story on the back. The deck we were on extended out from the kitchen over the driveway, and a wooden staircase led from the end of the deck down to the edge of the pavement below.

“Cindy,” I said to my stepsister, a year older than me and in possession of one of the greatest things ever: a driver’s license. “Can you take me down to the used bookstore for a while before we eat?”

The used bookstore, one of my favorite hangouts, was just a couple of miles away at the intersection of Airport Road and Whitesburg drive. It remains there today, still open and serving the public, having only closed once for a few months in 1989 when the tornado destroyed half the strip mall it’s in.

She was amenable, and I went inside to change clothes and get my wallet. There were new paperbacks out by Stephen King, John Saul, and Dean Koontz, just waiting to be bought. As I stood in front of the dresser, preening in the mirror, my stepsister ran by the door. She was crying.

“We can’t go to the bookstore,” she wailed on her way past.

I ran down the hall and into the kitchen, where my father stood at the counter, flipping quickly through the telephone book. He was grinning.

“Why’s Cindy crying?” I asked. “What happened?”

While I was in my bedroom getting ready to go to the bookstore, a stray dog — a big German Shepard — wandered around the corner of the house, most likely drawn by the smell of the heating grill. This, of course, drew the attention of my father, who wanted to make sure the strange dog didn’t help himself to the tasty burgers on the grill. The stray also caught the eye of my stepmother’s dog, a yappy little kickdog Peekapoo by the name of Mopsie. Mopsie scurried to the edge of the deck and stared down at the much larger dog, growling.

The dog on the driveway paid neither of them any mind, far more interested in the burgers he smelled. He stepped closer, right up to the edge of the grill, and reared up onto his back legs. My father clapped his hands sharply and loudly, intent on scaring the dog away. The clap had an unintended side effect, however.

With a single short yap, Mopsie leapt from the edge of the deck like Superman, paws extended both fore and aft. Her long floppy ears spread gracefully, lifted up and out by the breeze created as she sailed through the air. She was silent as she flew, and from time to time I wonder what might have been going through her mind.

She belly-flopped onto the concrete in plain sight of everyone except me (I was in my room, remember?). According to my father she bounced one small bounce, like a stone skipping on the surface of a lake. Her breath was knocked out, and she lay there making a sort of whooping cough sound. My stepmother screamed. My stepsister burst into tears and ran inside. My father ran down the deck stairs. Jay, the family friend, sat in his patio chair holding his drink and trying to take in everything he’d witnessed.

Mopsie whooped.

“I’m calling the vet,” my dad said, looked up at me from the phone book. He tried unsuccessfully to supress his grin. "Mopsie jumped off the deck."

I walked out the door and onto the deck to find my stepmother holding Mopsie in her lap. She was curling around like she wanted to put her head up her ass — Mopsie, not my stepmother — and she shook violently, presumably from fear over her recent rough landing. My stepmother petted her with one hand and wiped her own tears away with the other.

“I cannot believe she did that,” she told Jay, “she’s never done anything that idiotic before.”

Jay scooted forward in his chair and reached out to pet Mopsie.

“I’m sure she’ll be…”

His eyes fluttered, and he looked confused.

“I…”

Then, without a sound, his eyes rolled back in their sockets and he passed out. His drink slipped from his lax fingers and dropped to the deck, spilling bourbon and water everywhere. I heard it spattering like rain on the driveway as it ran through the spaces between the deck flooring. The crotch of his pants darkened as he peed himself, and he started to pitch sideways.

My stepmother didn’t bat an eye. She reached out and caught Jay around the neck with one hand as he fell, and guided him so that he ended up with his head on her lap, butted right up against Mopsie. Mopsie moved over a little, making some room, and continued to shake and twist her head around toward her ass.

“Jim,” my stepmother called, “get out here! Jay’s fainted!”

I started giggling; I couldn’t help myself. My dad came through the door, also laughing. After several seconds of glaring at us, my stepmother began to laugh, too. She sat, stroking Jay’s head with one hand and Mopsie with the other, until the man woke up and the dog calmed down. Jay straightened, and caught sight of the dark splotch in the crotch of his pants.

“Hmm,” he said, “I guess I spilled my drink.”

No one ever told him otherwise. We just laughed.

Mopsie was fine.

Look, ma! –>