Out In The Mountains : Columns

This is it, pumpkins: the last column of my twenty-something career. How fitting the last one falls on the same month as my birthday. I was born July 10, 1970, in a Greek hospital in downtown Athens… well, maybe downtown and a little to the left. I was born around noon, nurtured by strangers until my mother came to and my father came by. What does that mean? Well, if you’re an astrology buff, that means that I am a Cancer born in the Year of the Dog, and my Tarot card is the Chariot. You want to find out more on me, do the research.

I leave you with one last story from my childhood that has stayed with me always. Picture it. It was the my sophomore year of high school, and my parents decided to send me to Iowa, my father’s home state, for a “Christmas Tour” so I could see the family. I got off the plane looking like I just came off a Ralph Lauren shoot in which Norman Rockwell was Artistic Director. Walking into the Des Moines Airport is sort of like walking onto a CMT (that’s Country Music Television, for those not in the know) video. I was 15, and clad in a pink Polo button-down and gray flannel trousers, mind you, while the rest were in denim and kickers. I think I had more products in my hair than existed in the entire state, and many, if not most, were… well, as my mother says, “God didn’t spend that much time on them.”

So, needless to say, I was a mix of nervous conceit and terrified arrogance. I sauntered, looked preoccupied, and tried not to get the L’Oreal kicked out of me by acting like the love child of Joan Collins and Richard Simmons. I played pool, tried to keep score for my cousins as they played basketball, and went to a skating rink and held hands with a girl to a slow song while trying not to take her down with me every time I tripped. Of course, it didn’t help that I had never been on skates – or that I had no interest in holding hands with a girl.

Anyhoo, one of the shopping excursions that I was taken on was to a Super K-Mart. I had never been to a K-Mart, let alone a Super K-Mart in the Midwest. When the news was broken to me that morning, I was nervous. Now, this is pre Rosie O and Penny doing the witty “K-Mart is cool” thing. This is when K-Mart was known for the actual flashing blue-light special. In my head, I pictured the red-light district, but blue, and instead of hookers, America playing Keno in the lawn furniture section while feasting on pig’s feet they picked up in the snacks section, dressed in faux poly pant sets in Chernobyl hues. I know, pumpkins, terribly judgmental for a kid who grew up in rural New England.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I was pigging out on anything I could get my hands on. To make matters worse, it was everything that my system had never experienced. Pigs in blankets, hush puppies, slush puppies, fritters, and banana splits. I mean, if it was greasy or sugary, I was all over it. I was like Roseanne at a buffet – I just couldn’t stop myself. So by the time we get to the Super K-Mart, I was in desperate need of a restroom. This presented two major problems.

The first problem is that I had a huge phobia of public restrooms, especially if what was required was squatting and squeezing (forgive the frankness). I hated it, and I would be mortified for days if anyone could hear me, and invariably someone did. At the pinnacle of my phobia, I would have the good fortune of people, typically truckers, commending me by way of claps or rowdy cheers on the gastro-symphony I emitted – true story pumpkins, not a shred of exaggeration.

The second major stumbling block was my classist disdain for having to defecate in the likes of K-Mart. What can I say, it was the eighties and I was a mess, and somehow thought that the porcelain thrones at Lord & Taylor’s were more acceptable. Not that my rural hometown had a Lord & Taylor’s, but that really isn’t the point, is it?

So my younger cousin, acting like my reluctant bodyguard, escorts me to loo a la K-Mart. I spend a good bit of time laying the sandpaper they passed off as toilet paper all over the seat like my mother taught me. I then engaged my thigh muscle as I hovered over the potty, making sure that I didn’t even come close to the sand paper – we’re talking bungee-jumping height. Well, pumpkins, if I can get a tad graphic, in was like toxic dumping put to a Metallica soundtrack. It was horrific, and there sat my cousin taking it all in, ready to report that, indeed, my crap did stink. I was nervous and mortified, not to mention humiliated, and just wanted it to be over. So when the coast was clear, I pulled up my undies and began to pull myself together, thighs a-quiver and all. During this process, I still felt a little gassy. I was too exhausted and beside myself to undo everything to simply pass gas, so I let it rip.

Well, next thing I knew, I had Hiroshima in my pants. Oh, pumpkins, it wasn’t gas that I was passing. Panic strikes, off go the pants, and let’s just say it was beyond damage control. I do the best I can, and then tell my cousin we must leave Satan’s lair at once, convinced it was the curse of K-Mart. I order my cousin to find the rest of the tribe and discreetly explain my situation.

We walk out of the bathroom and my cousin spots the family across the store. He then screams out, “Ma, Tommy shit his pants and we have to leave.”

All of Iowa turned to see the little New England priss, in his freshly stained trousers, shell-shocked and paralyzed. I had to then do the walk of shame past everyone, most of them trying to assess the damage. In the dead of winter, we had to drive 45 miles in an overcrowded car with the windows rolled down because I “stanked.”

The point you may ask? This true story, and I mean every degrading letter of it, is my metaphor for my twenties. The biggest lesson that I learned in my twenties was the same lesson that I learned that day. You spend enough time shitting on everything, and eventually you’re going to get shit on, and more than likely it is going to be far worse and memorable. That is the sick, endearing humor of the universe. Be true to yourself and life will be true to you; you reap what you sow, and mistakes always occur when you’re in a hurry and not paying attention to details. That’s right, pumpkins, you should look for my poster coming to a store near you, “Everything I learned in life I learned in a K-Mart bathroom,” and I don’t mean sexually, Mary. (No, that I learned in a Target bathroom. Much more hip.)

One Final Note

Thank you for these last two years. I have had an incredible time writing these columns, and hope that it brought you as much joy as it brought me. This has been an amazing experience that has given me so many gifts, not to mention a national award, and I hope the next columnist takes as much from this experience as I did.

Pumpkins, remember, you are all superstars with the power to change lives daily. Never doubt your rights, your responsibilities, and the power you have to make this world and your life in it a better experience for present and future. Thank you, and thank you again.

Thomas Henning lives in Burlington.