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AUG 19, 2006
NOTES
ON CAMP, AMONG OTHER THINGS
Hey, remember that song? We used to sing it on
the bus ride to Camp Kici Yapi (“Kici Yapi” meaning “Suburban Land
Somehow Untouched By Sprawl, But McMansions and Cul de Sacs Coming
Soon, No Doubt”). We used to sing lots of songs on the way to
camp. One about your ears hanging low. Another about your
chewing gum losing its flavor on the bedpost overnight.
And, of more relevance right now, one about a cat that just wouldn’t
die. All together now:
Oooooh . . . The cat came back the very
next day
They thought he was a
goner
But the cat came back
It just couldn’t stay
awaaaaaay
So much better than “Kumbaya,” and with a very important message for
the kiddies about the kitties: Those things are a) crazy and b)
indestructible. Don’t go torturing animals. They’ll outlast
you, and they’ll come back to get you.
He gave it to a man going
up in a balloon,
He told him for to take
it to the man in the moon
The balloon came down
about ninety miles away
Where he is now, well I
dare not say.
See what I mean? Don’t mess with animals, kids. It’s not
worth it.
Now, then, let us apply these lessons to our own species, shall
we? Let us consider, for example, me, because this blog is about
me, and if you couldn’t care less about me, then you should just stop
reading this already.
I’ve felt like a bit like an unwanted but determined cat of late.
Not in the sense that someone has loaded me into a burlap sack and
dropped me into the Mississippi. Not in the sense that I’ve had
my tail pulled by a sadistic toddler or my tummy rubbed to death by a
better-intentioned but no less deranged self-proclaimed “cat
lover.” But in the sense that I feel like I’ve lived several
lives over the last two months, and I’ve been tortured to no end: poked
and prodded and drained.
And remember that abscess and fistula I mentioned last month? The
one that was starting to heal? Well, get out the guitar.
Oooooh, the fistula came
back the very next week
They thought it was a
healin’
But the fistula came back
It just wouldn’t stay awaaaaaay!
Actually, it was worse There was a new one. I was farting
in three-part harmony. One more and I could market my skills as a
one-man barbershop quartet. At first, though, I thought it was a
relapse of the first one. There was a new lump. New
drainage. New pain. All the indignities I thought I’d left
behind (Ha! Get it?).
So I went to see Dr. Suave,
who told me that, no, the old one looked like it was starting to get
better. But it had cloned itself, producing a tributary
offspring, as a parting gesture of gastrointestinal malice. The
new guy was the problem. And so, after injecting me with a rather
ineffectual amount of local anesthetic, he started poking around to
have a look-see and investigate the nature and depth of fistula v.
2.0. I kept yelping in pain, and he would always reply, with a
measure of surprise in his voice, “This hurts? It shouldn’t
hurt. I don’t want to hurt you.” Well, it does, it does, and you are.
When he was done, Dr. Suave
told me what he’d seen and held up what looked like a chopstick that
had been dipped several inches into a red broth. I wasn’t sure if
he was just finishing up a takeout lunch or what until he gestured to
the crimson hue and said that this was the depth of the fistula.
No doubt he took the alarmed look on my face to mean that I suddenly
understood the seriousness of the problem. And, as a measure of
depth, his demonstration was compelling and disconcerting. But
even more than that, I was thinking, “You just shoved a chopstick three
inches into an open wound? And you wondered why it hurt??”
Back at Camp Kici Yapi, there was a quasi-ghost
story the counselors
used to tell us, a PG-rated way of giving us the goosebumps we desired
without the lawsuits the camp’s lawyers feared. In the story, the
unnamed protagonist has a golden screw instead of a navel. He
doesn’t
know how or why or when this happened; it’s just always been
there.
But what will happen if he unscrews it? He needs to know; it
becomes
his life’s mission.
Insert all manner of hypotheses about family
curses, industrial accidents and so on to explain why it happened, with
the gore and fright tailored to the audience. Embellish.
Add ghosts
and demons to his quest for Bellybutton Enlightenment as needed.
And
then, eventually, build up for the end, in which our hero at last finds
the great guru who has all of the answers.
“Oh great guru,” says he, “What will happen if I unscrew my belly
button?”
Pause to examine audience’s wide-eyed faces, clenched fists and shallow
breathing. Place flashlight under chin to create spooky
effect. Pause
some more.
And the guru said . . . “YOUR BUTT WILL FALL OFF!”
If you are a prepubescent boy, you will, I can attest, find this to be
hilarious. Best. Joke. Ever.
But if you are a twenty-something with an ass that seems very much to
be falling off, the idea just isn’t quite so funny.
99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer . . .
That was another fun camp song. It killed a lot of time on the
bus.
Oh, but I think we had to use the word “pop” instead of “beer.”
’Cause
otherwise we might have, I don’t know, surreptitiously filled our juice
boxes with vodka.
And now I have a new song, but the counting goes the other way.
One fis-tu-la on the
butt [pause] one fis-tu-la on
the butt,
You heal one up
And then your gut
Makes two fistulas on the
butt
We’ll see where this goes. Last time I saw the doctor, yesterday,
he
seemed to think things were looking up. I’ve heard it before, too
many
times, but we’ll just have to hope that this time it’s true. My
gastrointestinal tract is still better than that of that old lady who
swallowed a fly . . . and a spider and a cat and, tragically, a
horse.
And for now, no one’s singing “Kumbaya” around a hospital bed (i.e.
with me in it). So that’s good.
A pain in the butt beats a hole in the gut. Catchy, huh? I
think that’d make a nifty chorus. . . .
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