Harriet the Spy

In all the hullabaloo about female heroines these days, it's refreshing to pull from the past and find examples that actually get it right. Ellen Ripley in the Alien movies. Sarah Conner from the Terminator movies. Dr. Ellie Satler from Jurassic Park. Jodie Foster in Contact...etc. And that's crazy because it's not something that should be so hard to begin with, especially these days, this whole idea of a "strong female character" who is also human, maybe even flawed, but still gets the job done. That's like, an everyday thing. If anything, it should be harder to write emotionally deep and complex male characters who are also "heroic" (indeed, 'tis much more rare). Harriet the Spy though accomplishes both feats, and for that and many other reasons, it may not only be a defining movie of any 90s childhood, but an important movie for our current times of Twitter take-downs, "savage" hot takes, and "call out culture." Harriet knows why none of this is good. She blazed that trail, and we would do well to learn the easy way what she learned the hard way. And no, it's not just that "a good spy never gets caught."

I may be biased because when I was growing up and first saw this movie, I had a childhood crush on Michelle Trachtenberg, who plays our titular heroine Harriet. I was familiar with her as Younger Pete's tit-for-tat girlfriend on The Adventures of Pete and Pete, one of my favorite shows back then. Her antics were what made the later season of Pete and Pete worthwhile, and it was downright awesome that they saw her potential and gave her her own movie to boot. And as an avid Nickelodeon watcher, I was well aware of the fact that Nickelodeon was pumping their "first ever movie!" all over the airwaves, starring none other than "Pete and Pete" star Trachtenberg. Since then we've gotten used to Nickelodeon movies being sure bets of trad Nick properties (Rugrats, Good Burger, Jimmy Neutron, Hey Arnold, Spongebob, Wild Thornberries, Spongebob, Last Airbender, Spongebob...etc), or big dumb "boy movies" like TMNT, TMNT: Out of the Shadows, TMNT: Return to Ooze ... and 2017's Monster Trucks. Eek. With that track record, it's surprising to think that Nickelodeon once took a risk on their first movie and decided to do both a coming of age dramady, an adaptation of an old children's book... and one starring... a GIRL!? That just goes to show you how... far?... we've come since 1996? *shrugs*

(Okay... Snow Day was a hoot, I'll give them that. Not a good movie, but still a hoot.)

Which brings me back to Harriet. "Hoot" is not how I would describe this movie. Matilda was a "hoot." Harriet is what we would describe these days as "deep," or at least "woke AF," but that could just be because we're dealing with a girl for a change, and a particularly precocious one at that. She dreams of being a writer. She keeps tabs on people in her life, her school friends and enemies, and everyone she runs into in her neighborhood, including the family who owns the Chinese food restaurant in town, and she writes everything down in her "private" notebook. She's kinda spoiled, but headstrong. She's got rich parents who don't spend much time with her, so she bonds mostly with her nanny, Rosie O'Donnell, a wisdom-spouting Obi Wan Kenobi. Yeah. Speaking of Twitter gods, Rosie O'Donnell plays Rosie O'Donnell in this movie. It's amazing. Anyways, Harriet's other best friends include this boy named "Sport" who is a kind of "domestic goddess" in his own house because he's poor and his dad's a drunk, and a girl named Janie who performs dangerous chemistry experiments in her bedroom. See what I mean? Not only can girls do science, but boys can cook and clean house with the best of 'em! *mind blown*  1996 ftw!

Harriet's life changes one night when her nanny Golly brings a date over for an evening meal at the house, leading to the absolute funniest and most inexplicable "stare off" between any two characters in any movie ever. (If you're reading this, you know the scene!) Anyways, Golly burns the meal and three of them decide to go out to the movies instead. They have a great time and come back late. Too late. Harriet's mom and dad are home from their high class business lifestyle or whatever, and FLIP the F@%K OUT for no other reason than they're two snobby buttholes who object to Harriet bringing tomato+mayo sandwiches to school every day (and other stuff, but that was always the take away for me). They fire Golly on the spot, and then immediately beg her to stay. But Golly's got some pride and decides to leave anyway. And right there. That's some real shit. Golly could return and stay a part of Harriet's life, but she decides that it's better to be a good role model for Harriet and leave on her own terms and allow Harriet room to grow on her own terms as well. Right there ladies and gents, is a strong female character. Anyways, Golly tells Harriet to never give up writing and to channel all of her observations about people into a novel... so that she can one day buy an autographed copy. Then Golly rides off in a yellow taxi, in a scene that is WAY more heartbreaking than that little dickcheese Simba losing his dear ol' buttfart dad.

And so, in the absence of her mentor, Harriet goes full-tilt into the "spy" role she loves so much, which means suiting up in boots and taking along spy gear such as cameras and scopes, and for some unexplained reason a bright yellow trench coat (conspicuous much?). She even sneaks into a mansion at one point and spies on some old lady from the inside of the house's dumbwaiter in a scene as tense as anything you'll see in a Mission Impossible movie (and much more funnier when she's discovered). In all her travels, she records detailed notes on what everyone she's interested in is up to... and you can kinda see where it's going...

Harriet the Spy branded "spy" merch! Hell yeah! Back in the day there was a call in sweepstakes on Nickelodeon where kids could call an 800 number for a chance to get an exclusive "Harriet the Spy Kit" ... presumably a belt with a binoculars, a magnifier, a flashlight, and one of those black-and-white school notebooks with the word "PRIVATE" written on it. Awwww yeah. Needless to say, I was not one of the lucky few. Not like I couldn't make my own kit... which apparently many kids did... and I'm sure none of them got busted for "super sleuthing." Nope. I sure didn't. "A good spy doesn't get caught!"

So Harriet gets caught. As is the case with most coming of age girl movies, the main villain of the movie is a stuck up bitch ... I mean rich girl in their class, Marion Hawthorne, who seemingly spends every night and day plotting ways to torment our main cast. In doing so, the movie really sheds a light on just how mean and vindictive girl bullying can be, and also how accurate. There are scenes between Harriet and Marion as this thing progresses that get so real that you almost wonder how these characters are going to survive the movie without throwing a toaster in the bathtub (and this was before Mean Girls!)! Well, one day in the park, Harriet is playing with her friends and gets a little careless with her private notebook where she's been talking trash about everyone behind their backs. The notebook goes missing, only to be found in the hands of one, Marion Hawthorne, who proceeds to read Harriet's "observations" about everyone in attendance right from the page. Suddenly, everyone knows Sport is poor and his dad's a drunk, that Janie's science ambitions are strange, and that Marion Hawthorne's parents are never around or something. Indeed, no one is safe from Harriet and her pen! Immediately shocked, they all turn on her in probably the most played scene in the movie.

But this reveal is only the beginning. What really makes this movie interesting now is that Harriet knows she done goofed, and yeah, she sulks and apologizes and tries to do the right thing and move on. She even tries to give people space and give them time to get over it, but no one lets her live it down. She's pariahed. She's ignored. And just when she accepts her fate, they all start conspiring against her to make her life a living hell at the school and abroad, even starting a "Spy-Catchers" Club and dousing her with blue paint during class in the basic "tar and feather" routine of every angry mob in history. She slaps Marion in the face, and is immediately under the Gestapo as her desk is now checked daily for "notebooks."

This kid is so 90s it's funny...

The emotions get so raw here that Harriet then begins lashing out at everyone else in retaliation for their attacks on her, and the movie actually starts taking a dark turn. She spreads the fact that Marion's father doesn't love her to everyone in attendance in that most sacred of gossip areas... "the girls room." She sabotages Janie's science experiments to disillusion her friend. And then the worst: she spreads leaflets all over school to emasculate Sport, picturing him in a dress and a duster under the moniker "Man of the House!" Yikes. She is sent to one of those new-agey sycophant child psychologists who get paid 100 bucks an hour to play board games with kids, so nothing comes of it.

And that's it. It's over. And she spirals into a deep depression and probably contemplates suicide in the bathtub... But then, just as every bridge is burned... she gets her notebook back and Golly comes back into her life (now on good terms with her parents) and gives her some sage advice: "Beauty is truth, and truth, beauty." Basically, maybe the truth about people doesn't have to hurt them. Words can destroy, but they can also build, and Harriet has to learn to use her powers of observation for good. "I want to know everything" she says, but for what purpose if not to make the world better?

So despite the fact that her relationship with her friends seems shattered beyond repair, the only thing more factual is that Marion Hawthorne turns out to be an even worse star for all of Harriet's friends to have hitched their wagons to, suddenly realizing that they've all been turned into her little pets. They decide enough is enough one by one and sever their loyalties to the rich girl, but back to Harriet they still dare not tread, not until Harriet gets her opportunity to use her observation skills for good. She recounts to all of them in the class paper all the good things she likes about them, and that certainly chalks one up for her side. But she really gets her chance to shine when a series of fortunate events leads to a performance of the typical "healthy eating" school play becoming ground zero for a good ole' biohazard stink bomb blowout that her and her friends wage, all while Marion Hawthorne is playing the signature role! Woobah! I guess you could say, it's "curtains" for her!

So all is well that ends well. Harriet learns her lesson, her friends are back in her column, and we are all the better for it. So yeah, pretty important stuff for the "call-out" culture we are living under. Learn the lesson that Harriet  M. Welsch has to teach us, that if you can't say something nice about someone, don't... er... well, see, gossip spreads like a proverbial stink bomb in the wind. Let him who hath not been a douchebag cast the first blue paint... m'kay? Someone please get the message to Twitter users. Oooh snap!

Forgotten 90s Kids Movies III

We watch a lot of movies as kids, the good, the bad, and the forgettable, and they all kind of just exist as facts of life at the time. We don't know any better, or maybe we do, but we don't care. I've said it before and I'll say it again, kids aren't as dumb as they look. They can discern trash from gold, they just don't always care and usually find something to like in anything. I guess that's where I come in, because I actually remember being disappointed by a few movies even as a kid, and that's got to count for something, even if it was rarely for grown up reasons. Here I'm going to look at some kids movies I spent hours of my life parked in front of back in the 90s, some of which I remember liking and some of which I remember being disappointed by, but still coming away like "eh, it exists, so it couldn't have been bad." Most of these are of the "inspirational" variety. You know, the ones with lots of title cards and stock movie scores in the trailers and deep-voiced men saying "Paramount Pictures presents..." very slowly. That's the kick I'm on now.

Andre - I was massively disappointed by this as a kid. First of all, the movie bills itself as based on some inspiring true story about a seal named Andre that got adopted by a family in Maine in 1962 and then kept returning to shore every year or something and went on to a life of fame because of it. But all of that "inspiring true story" I wanted to see seemed to be condensed to the last two minutes. The rest of it was Free Willy, happening before all that took place. It was instead the touching story of a girl and her seal doing stuff together like blowing copious raspberries and getting into mischief, until the big bad fishermen try to put an end to all the shenanigans because shenanigans shouldn't be had and they got fish to catch. I think it suffices to say that I don't remember anything much about this movie, and so it probably is truly forgotten. And just doing a little reading reveals that the animal in the movie is a sea lion, not even a seal! "He's just a friend!" "A bad-smelling, fish-eating, raspberry-blowing friend??"

Fly Away Home - More girl power. Yay? On the flipside to Andre, when it comes to "girl and her animal" movies, this one I saw with the lowest expectations, even laughing at the premise, and then actually came away much impressed with. I mean, the story sounds ridiculous: a girl becomes mom to a bunch of geese chicks that grow up and need to do what Canadian geese do (fly away home...), so she gets her dad to build a giant flying goose to lead the way for them north or at least back to their homeland Canada before their visas expire. Despite that, this film actually works as a story. The characters are pulled together in this common cause, this girl and her dad become closer during the experience, she learns what being a mom is all about (I don't think she had one, or something), and we even get these spectacular flight scenes. Overall, not totally forgettable, except that it was largely forgotten. And now thanks to the wonders of the internet, I no longer have to feel crazy for calling it "Flying Wild!" Apparently that was its original name. I KNEW I saw it in the commercial once! It took me 20 years but I finally won that argument! "You are risking your daughter's life for a bunch of geese!" 

Angels in the Outfield - This movie could not disappoint, because it was exactly what it seemed. A young foster-care boy longs for the affection of a father who pins his entire acceptance of parenthood on whether a baseball team will win the pennant. So said boy doesn't just wish for this to happen, he prays for it: "God, if there is a God, do you think you could help them win a little?" And because it was a prayer and not just a wish, God responds to it by sending "angel Christopher Lloyd" to do just that for the team, and they do just that, but wouldn't you know it, the kid had a family all along! This movie actually wasn't that bad, and even had some funny bits involving the slapstick physics of the angels ("There was an angel in my Coke!" and the gut-busting scene where a guy sits down on one!), but it also had a heart in there somewhere. Not too many kids films deal with foster care, although maybe Free Willy also had something to do with that. You also don't see too many mainstream kid movies actually deal with religion, even if this is about as saccharine and non-denominational as it gets. I still liked it. Little known fact: Joesph Gordon Levitt had to start somewhere! "Even though you can't see us, we're alllllways watching!" 

Balto - This movie really disappointed me, but only because I was so looking forward to it. The trailers made it look like this epic, mature, beautifully made adventure film based on a true story of the Idig-a-dog snow teams and how they saved Nome Alaska with a shipment of "antitoxin" during an epidemic. Imagine my disappointment when all those beautifully animated scenes in the trailer weren't so amazing in the context of the story, like the trailer's "aurora borealis scene" which turned out to be just... broken glass shining on snow wall... that kind of thing. While there is quality animation at times and the real life story elements are treated pretty well, I wasn't expecting just how much of the film was going to be so "kiddied-up." I didn't care for the live action parts, although I suppose they explain all the fantastical elements, and I actually didn't care for all the slapstick for once, which normally would've been my thing, but maybe I just expected more from Balto... although I did end up loving the polar bears just for being funny, despite their uselessness. "Wolf-dog! Better get back to your pack!!" 

The Indian in the Cupboard - Politically incorrect title aside, this movie was kind of the same as Balto in that it promised much and delivered little. The whole thing is full of strange scenes, like a kid getting a cupboard for his birthday for one. I don't want to see that. I was embarrassed for him! Then there's the long scene where the older brother steals his precious cupboard only for it to be found in the crawlspace two minutes later, and, oh now the key is missing, so now we got to get the key, and it's just goes on and on. Mostly the movie just underwhelmed me. If I had a magic cupboard that made my toys come to life, I'd be bored with a little Indian real fast. I'd be sticking my dinosaurs in there! Let's get some toys to eat the other toys and then we'd be talking. I wanted this cupboard to become a threat to civilization, but no such luck. I don't even remember what the plot to this was. But I will give it credit for depicting dorks in a true and positive light, because this kid and his circle of friends could've easily fit in with my friends back then, real horror-show. "You should not do magic you don't understand!" 

So there we have it. Until next time, wait for next time.

Killing a Tamagotchi

I never owned a Tamagotchi back in the days when kids owned these things as pets. I still don't know exactly what they were supposed to be, coming in those little plastic egg things and blinking around the screen like a little Digimon whathaveyou, but I certainly killed my fair share of them.

The girls used to play with them in school and would often conveniently leave them behind at their desks for mischievous dorks like myself with nothing else better to do but unleash a little mayhem for shits. Something about sabotaging a girl's tamogotchi always felt like sweet payback for something, maybe just for outsmarting us all the time perhaps. Sure, we had the "Talk Boy" and the "Game Boy"... so how dare girls play with their own techno-toys! I mean, think of it as us just picking on something our own mental size! For the record though, I don't think I personally was brave enough, or mean enough, to do the dirty and (moderately) hilarious deed myself, but I do remember at least instigating it, consenting to it, and perhaps aiding and abetting the real perps (my best friend Nick), and getting bitched out for it. Either way I plead the fifth. In my defense, I knew it would be totally worth it.

Now the easiest way to kill a Tamagotchi was to press that button on the back (which would "reset it") and leave it behind for the owner to figure it out a half hour later when the thing wasn't crying for even just thirty sustained seconds. I think we were doing the school a favor, actually, taking these things out. The other way was usually more time exhaustive, but a lot more fun, and involved feeding it like a nervous eater on a roller coaster. Keep pressing feed until it's wallowing in its own waste (and believe me, these guys really are little machines!). It won't take long after that. Then you put it back on the desk or in her drawer where she left it, and wait. Oh, the wait was palpable! And then she doesn't notice a thing until... "Wait a minute, my Tamagotchi is dead!!"

The pure enjoyment of "Hey! You killed my Tamagotchi!" was so brief, but then the chase was on. Hell hath no fury like a Tamagotchi owner scorned, and I don't think I have to tell you whose life they considered more valuable. They weren't just out for blood. Heck, my old friend Nick (wherever he is) probably still can't have kids because of it! (Sorry Nick!) But you know, still worth it. It's ironic too, seeing as the typical Tamagotchi died at least a couple times a day anyways... heck, you could accidentally kill it. Just sit on it for a long time. It's got to suffocate eventually!

These days, there's probably an app for it.

Old Pizza Hut Ad

For me and probably anyone else who ever owned the original Land Before Time in its first run on VHS, this ad for Pizza Hut was emblazoned into our very soul and some of our earliest memories, watched repeatedly every time we popped in the first five minutes of the Land Before Time. It's about this fat mom stopping to give her son advice about being a "polite little boy" before sending him off to a "birthday party at Pizza Hut," intercut of course with scenes of how literally he takes her advice, doing everything his own way while still making her proud of her "little angel." Yeah right! we think.

It's not an exaggeration to say that I have this thing memorized to this day, and yet I haven't even seen it in years. That old red car pulling up, the plucking piano melody, the kid's bunny and bowtie, that rocking "PARTY!" soundtrack, the haze throughout... all burned somewhere into the neurons of my brain forever, sizzling like hot cheese. It's a completely accurate portrayal too of a very familiar problem, being a boy and getting that invite to some girl's birthday party at a cool location. There's always that decision to be made going in: "If I go, I get to eat pizza. But then again, she's a girl. How is that fun?"

From there on out, everything he does makes perfect sense: stay cool, stay away from the girls, and amuse the other kids who, like you, were also pulled into this by the lure of free pizza. Poke holes in your napkins and wear them as masks, pig out, stretch your pizza cheese, hang a spoon on your nose, construct a straw aqueduct around the table, become the life of the party, and if your antics win you a certain little admirer, wipe her kisses clean off when you get back out to the car! All in all, a day well spent, a problem averted, and even your mom is none the wiser. "Yuchchk!!"

I'm lucky to still have the old VHS, so I can see this thing the same way I grew up seeing it (yes, I actually still have a working VCR).

Ring Pops

If it's going to be the last one for the year, it may as well be about Ring Pops. Why Ring Pops? First of all, they were far more beautiful than any jewelry I ever saw, particularly the red ones, and they were sweet! You have to admit, these things even make actual gemstones look sumptuous, and way underdone. Don't even bother showing up with anything less, I mean, just look at the size of those stones! To borrow from Titanic, you'd go straight to the bottom!

On the flip side, the cheap plastic rings supporting those bulbous half-carat jewels (at best) were never made to fit anything bigger than a pinky, and that's if you had a small pinky. If you were ever masochistic enough to get it on your ring finger, chances are it's still there or you still have the scars, especially if you got it past the knuckle. Am I right? I know I'm right.

Secondly, this is the only jewelry a guy can wear without being a grunge-rocker or a goth, and therefore, the only jewelry I'll ever come close to wearing without feeling wrong. Actually, I think I've been accidentally married to a girl for the last 20 years because of one of these things. I think I threw it out 20 years ago... how insensitive of me.

With this ring, I be tooth-decay. See you in 2012!

School Floor-Time Farts

Me, probably mid-fart.

I tell you, all that time on the classroom floor is a killer on your body, and boy did we ever spend a long time on the floor at school. From K to 4, we'd be down there for small group instruction time, reading time, easel time, project time, movie time, auditorium time, song time... any time they needed to call a "time." All that time, I'd just be looking up from under the tables and chairs and wondering how that vantage could've come to dominate my day, and, who stuck that gum up there? Seriously, what were they thinking by subjecting kids to this?

Anyways, you read the title right, so here it goes. Aside from the sheer uncomfortable yoga positioning they were forcing us to do on those rock hard carpets, spending so much time on the floor has its other follies such yoga stuff is known for. It also turns out that when you spend a lot of time hunched over sitting Indian-style, sprawled out, or bent over on a hard rug...etc., any disturbance or show of force when coming to a stand can cause unintentional and unexpected internal "shifts" (especially true after eating anything they served in the cafeteria). This knowledge comes from personal experience.

It was the 4th grade. I was ten. Probably around the same time as my other, far more impressive physical feat (man I was on a roll that year). The floor group thing was over and we were all to go back to sitting in our chairs like people. I forced myself up, and from out of you-know-where (and without even checking with me first), as if just to say "hi!"... out blurped this low and sputter-y "bluRRRp!" Yes. It was a real tumbler rumbler, a real beefer, a real bullfrog croaker, a real butt blunderbuss, a real... you know what? It was just a fart... not very loud, but just loud enough. I just froze. It was a pure "whoa!" kind of moment, and I didn't even know it was me for a half second. I did a mental damage report. All systems were go. Butt was a go. Jeans were a go. Awesomeness was... definitely a go! At least I could be thankful it was deployed from a half stand position because if I had been still firmly planted it probably would've launched me at least an inch into the air. "Houston, we have liftoff." But let's not exaggerate. I'm not taking Apollo 13-style liftoff, I'm talking more like Apollo 13-style explosion. "Houston, we have a problem..."

I wouldn't have thought much about it from there (well, I probably still would have...), but these two girls (who didn't like me much already) were sitting just a few feet behind me on the floor, and I tell you they had front row seats to that performance, both forced to weather the storm. One quickly remarked to the other, "ugh, Mark just farted." Now I didn't know if I should've been ashamed or extremely pleased, but I got to admit that one minute of embarrassment for 16 years of "ah! gotcha!" pride is pretty good in my book, even though it's always more of a deal breaker than an ice breaker. At least it's never a mystery why chicks break up with me. 

Frisbee with a Girl

To this day it never ceases to amaze me how mindless I was as a kid, so gung-ho about having it my own way. But one thing doesn't surprise me anymore, just how mindful everyone else was. Especially girls. They towered over my understanding. I was like a worm, mentally crawling through the dirt, absolutely sure of the ground, and they were somewhere in the clouds, saying "aww, that's adorable." But what do boys got? "You throw like a girl!" (Yeah, those famous last words.) Screw The Sandlot. At least, that was the wisdom of the era, but prepare to come back in a body bag. So naturally, I could always count on girls to blow my mind, or if not, to kick my butt.

The summers I had growing up usually meant I was stuck at daycare on the days my parents worked, which meant long afternoons of heatstroke in the blazing backyard of the sitter's house with nothing but the occasional tube-Popsicle or hard plastic kiddy pool with more grass in it than water to give us some relief. Each day after lunch we were all just stuck out in the backyard like dogs to while away the hours with the clouds and the ants, and that was all there was. In any case, you can imagine why we might start getting on each other's nerves out there in the heat.

So there I was, about 9-years-old, scuffing the grass like a rearing bull, upset with this girl there because she had no intention of going along or playing off the arm of whatever grand make-believe movie I was trying to make with her, and at some point a Frisbee entered the equation. We tossed it back and forth at each other for a few minutes or so, but she just couldn't throw the thing right. It'd always end up rolling back somewhere toward the bushes and the trees, and I'd always have to go fish it out "because I was closer." This happened time and time again, so I began purposely throwing it wrong at her just to get back at her for her lame "girl-tosses"... just to make her have to run after it for a change.

A bit of a shouting match ensued, and I'm sure I flung out the inevitable "you throw like a girl" line, from which there is no return. I was a dead man. And sure enough, on one of her turns, she winged that thing with a perfect precision there-before unseen... and on target too, right between my eyes! Clonk!

It hit my face so hard I fell over backwards on the ground. My eye and nose stung for a few minutes, and she couldn't help from cracking up. Sure, it had been an accident, but a very well timed one! Almost too well timed. And so there I lay on the grass, emasculated, which got me so enraged I stormed off to "tell on her." Here we go, I thought, let's see how she likes this! I really played it up too when I got to the sliding glass door: "she hit me on purpose!" I may have even tried to shed a few tears. But that sitter did the right thing. She said, "Oh don't be a crybaby. You're not hurt." And I swear the second she said that, the "pain" was gone.  

If only she'd been good at it, I thought, then I could say it was on purpose! Something told me she knew what she was doing all along.

Here's the lesson kids. This is why it's always a good idea for girls and boys to play together, because that's how valuable lessons are learned. That day I learned that when it comes to getting even with someone by hitting them with a Frisbee on purpose, two words reign supreme: plausible deniability. Girls know this by birthright. We boys learn it the hard way, if at all. We think we're hot shits, but in fact, when it comes to girls bulls-eyeing grumpy boys, it's always 5 points for the arm, 20 points for the head!

I'm just lucky she didn't want to play the game of splits! 

Pretty Sneaky Sis...

Let me drop some knowledge on you. I'll be honest (that's what this blog is all about after all), I'm an attention hog and always have been. Anything that could get me some attention, good or bad, I was down for. Whether I ended up everyone's hero (like the time in gym class I was a goalie and stopped a hockey puck with my CROTCH!), or was heralded as the best kid picked to lead the class in the "pledge of allegiance" ever (yes, I said "one naked, undergarment, in-the-visible" ...),  I was desperate to prove myself worthy of the stuff of legends. And of course, legends are usually built on fibs. So like most kids, I was very good at fibbing, and at being stupid... and for having a groin of steel. It came easy to me, and now it's no surprise to me why I never knew why.

All kids are pretty dumb... (heck, so is everyone...) and I don't think I'll find much argument there. Another statement I'm probably not gonna receive any argument about? The fact that, even among kids, girls are (and always were) little EINSTEINS ... compared to the average boy.

Yes, growing up male makes you dumber. That's science talking. I don't make the rules, I'm just a hapless crotch-scratching victim of them. We can be genius level IQ and still be pretty darn limp-brained where it counts. If we're not dumb in the classroom, we're dumb when it comes to relating to "fellow humans." If we're not dumb when it comes to book-reading, we forget to bathe, but if we remember to bathe, we don't know how to tell if we're using too much cologne. It's always something! We either struggle to read a book, or we read a book and struggle to remember our names when a pretty girl asks us. We can either recite the periodic table, or all original 150 Pokemon. We can either put our pants on the right way and flunk math, or we can ace math and forget how to zip up. We simply can not do both. And this is one area where I can say I don't just speak for myself. This was settled a long time ago. Girls can be mean or conniving or bitchy, sure... and sometimes not... but they're definitely not as dumb as the average boy. 

And not only is this not a problem, it's actually the best part of being a dude. We get to say that the opposite sex is smarter than us! It's the only thing we can do that girls can't. Can girls say that? Nope! Like being called a "moron" or a "dumbass," and a whole slew of other words for "idiot" (you never hear these things said for chicks)... it's the ultimate "boys only" thing! But forget what science says about how "girls mature faster" and "get better grades in school" (and other things that are actually true), because as many a dude has said before me: I got one better than science. I got 90s movies to be my guide in this. 

Now, any casual viewing of the medium will probably confirm this thesis easily, and the only thing you might have to say about any of what I've said is "well, yeah." As in, the "the sky is blue," "grass is green," "boys are idiots"... so what of it? However, some dudes out there might hop off their seats exclaiming "nuh-uh, that McCaulay Culkin kid from My Girl was pretty smart!" And you'd be right, when it came to school there's no doubt he had book smarts. The glasses tell you that. The hole in the theory? He died! Here he was actually getting a girl to like him, and I mean, really like him... and then he decides to just go and die one day. Not too bright if you ask me. And then he was too dumb to even keep his glasses on at the wake! I mean, come on. He can't see without his glasses! 

No. For this battle of wits, I realized I'm going to have to pull out the big guns, the two most intelligent movie kids from the 90s: Kevin McCallister from Home Alone, representing all boys, and Matilda Wormwood from Matilda, representing girls. Now, granted on the surface they are both "smarter than average." Kevin is practically a small adult who can manipulate anyone, not to mention rig a whole string of houses with traps to thwart bad guys across multiple movies. His drawback (besides, you know, not being psychokinetic... we'll get to her) is that he's very good at luring particularly indestructible bad guys into his traps! No matter how many electrocutions, sticky floorboards, paint tins, or toilets filled with explosives he hucks at them, there's always going to be a point where he's out of traps and the bad guys are still coming. And who's fault is that? Besides, how smart could he be if he's constantly getting left behind by his family?

Matilda Wormwood on the other hand is a math and reading savant who doesn't even need school to function in the genius level, and she can even move shit with her friggin' mind! Now that's "GIRL POWER" for you! Both Kevin and Matilda are very capable of taking care of themselves, as Matilda is basically self-taught in everything and Kevin does all his own chores and shopping. BUTT... Matilda also reads profusely, everything from classic literature to tax law, and absorbs everything, so she can figure out more "mature" and "grown up" ways to bust an opponent than silly little dumb boyish Matchbox cars on the stairs. And what about Kevin? He reads Playboy and watches gangster movies. Matilda's downside though is that she needs to get emotional before she can use her powers to their fullest extent, and it takes quite a torrent of Danny Davito parental abuse to charge up that battery!

So basically, you know where this is going...  In a battle royale between Kevin and Matilda, I'm still going to have to give it to the Matil-dog. She could easily out-maneuver all of the Kevlar's ingenious and psychopathic traps with just her mind, and also chuck heavy objects at him as well, without any preparation, so it's no contest. Girls rule. Boys drool. Case closed.

(And don't even get me started on Minkus vs. Harriet the Spy... She is a spy after all, she can sneak up on that obnoxious dork! Case closed.)

But fear not, being dumber is not necessarily a bad thing guys! All those nutshot challenges and off-the-roof trampoline jumps may look dumb, but it just means we take more risks. For some, it means you go off and build the first airplane or invent the first jetpack. For most, it means you get your head stuck in a chair in the 1st grade. All those idiot jokes we make? That just means we aren't so self-inhibited. For some, that means we're unafraid about what people think of us. For most though, it means that when you raise your hand in class and get called on, you will then proceed to let out a looooooong burp... loudly. Maybe we need all that brazen, reckless, death-defying, annoying stupidity so that eventually nature will randomly produce the one (and only) male Einstein. 

Me. Jr. Executive.

Don't worry though. I hold myself out as the archetypal example for the entire thesis about why's it's actually rad to be part of the dumber half of the populace. At school, the 8-year-old me had this "class clown meets Jr. Mr. Executive" thing going on, which is like, the epitome of showing off. Around the boys I wanted to be cool with, I was a rebel, a kid who'd eat the classroom fish food if it would cause a couple laughs (I don't know how fish eat that stuff). Around boys who already thought I was cool, I'd suddenly become more mysterious and entertain them with tales of the Cub Scouts I'd never witnessed (I made it sound like recruit training... like any of those all-time great war movies like Full Metal Jacket, swearing included!). I once wore an elastic band around my leg and claimed it was to show where "I'd lost a limb" in the "war games." Lies! The closest to war I'd ever come was to sit through all 90 minutes of Major Payne. ... (8yo me loved it, by the way.)

And no, it's no excuse for douchebaggery, I know. Around girls at school I liked, I basically just answered all their "what is your favorite animal"-type questions and watched them swoon whenever I randomly interjected "dolphins" (all the girls back then wanted to be marine biologists after Free Willy). What did us boys get out of it? "Haha... "free the willy!!!"... HAHA!... But that's no reason to be a douchebag, obviously. The point is, I had some sensitive sides... but I assure you, all my girl cousins got to see was the Ace Ventura part of me whenever my brother and I were around regardless. And, try as I might, I just never understood why girls weren't as impressed as I was about how I could make zany animal noises, stick things in my nose, crack good ole' penis jokes, and bend over and "talk" with my buttcheeks... 

Oh well. Their loss.

Around girls at school I didn't like, I was still eating the fish food, but for the opposite reason (although the little marine biologists among them might have dug my "sensitivity" for the fish). I guess the girls liked them because dolphins, like girls, are also animals that are "smarter than boys." And they are probably right... 

But what would I know? 

Girls are Smarter

You try being cool in that room!

Girls are not always obviously smarter than boys... just most of the time. The rest of the time they are still smarter than us, but it just isn't as obvious. I can say this because, firstly, I have extensive experience with being a boy, and secondly, I was a "smart" one at that, and thirdly, I liked girls. And trust me, all the good being "smart" ever did me (when it came to girls) was alert me to the fact that they are definitely smarter than us... or at least, that we are dumber than them... and that the sooner we all just accept it, the better off everyone will be, amiright fellas?

Don't get me wrong, brain power has nothing to do with it. We could be genius level but still forget our own names when in the presence of a girl we like. We can get all A's but still put our shirts on inside out. It's one thing or the other. Regardless, girls always have a way of deflating a boy's head, no matter what could allegedly be in there. Besides, if you asked the 8yo me, he'd agree.  So let me speak from personal experience and the hope I'll get on the smarter half's good side by telling them what they want to hear... (hey ladies!).

See, my elementary school triad (all boys) was absolutely convinced that the girls were plotting to get us (and who do you think gave us that inkling?), so we'd huddle around our lunch table dispensing plans to counteract their sneak attacks. Theys be up to sumptin! Being boys, we foolishly believed that if we put our heads together, we could outsmart them (I know, our first mistake). So we'd sidle up on their conversations. We'd torment them on the playground with our inane questions to confuse them. We'd act dumb just to annoy them. We'd even bug their lunch table if we had to! But one thing was certain, we'd stick together. We couldn't let even the nice ones lead us astray and thinking they were nice because that was their trickery at work for sure. After a few weeks flaunting our paranoia, we'd successfully given them all the more reason to contend, indeed, that "boys... are... stupid..." which was exactly what we wanted them to think. Duh!

It was a living, breathing, He-Man Woman-Haters club, I kid you not, and with all the same problems the Little Rascals had. Firstly, I knew a few very nice girls who didn't seem to be such a threat, and it made me second guess the whole scheme. Secondly, the plans would always backfire anyways. I know, right? How could that happen? Well, here's how it started. When it came time to form groups, I was always the one boy who ended up with a girl group (I was a dork and rarely got picked by my fellow kind), so I know firsthand what that group dynamic is like. When it was an all-boy group with the one girl, and the project was to paint a picture of a certain weather pattern, her "bright and sunny day" was no match for our impending hurricane. The boys called the shots and the girl just had to sit and soak. She'd insist: "But...but... I wanted the bright and sunny day!" To which my friend would rebut: "Oh don't soak about it!" Girls 0, Boys 1.

Little did we know that that little event would spark a little war, an event so insignificant that we'd long forgotten about it, but enough evidence to prove... once and for all that... girls can't help but make us look like dumbasses. Soon the tables were turned, and now I was the only boy in an all-girl project group, and the girls realized their chance to get even. The project was to go out and find all the kinds of life you could drag out of the woods, and I knew I'd be lucky if they even let me hold the bag. That's just the way it goes. Suck it up, get over it, play fetch, and be the one called on to do the digging and touch anything slimy or covered in dirt. Whatever you do, don't say anything. You're on thin ice just being the smelly boy. And that's usually fine with me because I'm generally okay with being pussy-whipped, but then they just gave me a marker and blank paper and told me to draw. They weren't even going to cut me in on the cool part and take me along out in the woods with them, but just make me sit back and draw whatever they got to find. Ouch. That was just cruel. The emasculation made my genitals implode into my body.

Normally you'd think this would've been any boy's paradise. Sit back, put your feet up, and let girls do the work for you, because you're literally the third wheel in this assignment, and just hope that they do a good job on it because your grades are now in their competent female hands. But no. I had to work too because despite having no say and no role in the project, they threatened to go tell the teacher that I was not "doing my part" just because I decided to scribble random lines all over the page when they told me to draw their leaves and sticks. I remember I scribbled a big bunch of lines and they got so mad they ran over to the teacher to tell on me, so I quickly turned those scribbled lines into something that looked like a "tree" ... like "here you go teech, no, I wasn't scribbling, I was drawing a tree." My genitals popped back out after that.

So you see, them girls were out to get us after all, no question about it. And what was a boy to do in that situation? Obviously, sit there like a bump on a log and answer a "whatever" to any show of niceness or peace offering. I told on them to the teacher, said they were treating me like I didn't have any part in their project, but what did I possibly have to show for it? Sure, they'd been a little funny by making me the useless appendage to their little team, but everything else I'd done on my own... the rudeness, the obnoxiousness, the wasting time, the furious scribbling all over my project sheet ...etc. The teacher asked them to apologize and they did.

Then what? I was asked to stop whining and participate. It seemed the only one really out to get me was me... (which is exactly what they wanted me to think, of course!), so I went from being the "stupid boy" of the group to being the best artist in the group, and drew a few scenes from the woods to compliment our project, and the girls even started treating me a bit better. All I know is, the moment I decided to do my part, let the girls lead, and play along, we all started to get along. And what can I say? I'm a guy. Our brains take time to compute the obvious.

Sometimes I wonder if the other boys ever smartened up too. 

Snow Writing at the Sled Hill

Let me just stop and say it should be no surprise by now that I am endowed with one of them "things that shall not be named." It's not anything special to be honest... and rather hideous to me (as all of them are)... but it works. (What chicks have down there is sooooo much nicer.) But yes, I do use it. It's a cool gadget to have, I got to admit, even if having one makes you stupid... which it does. And I would know. In fact there are precisely 2655 ways to have fun with it by yourself, and they're all devilish and naughty, especially the... very fun things... but number one has still got to be the most basic. The fact about this boy is that anywhere he went in the great outdoors, whenever he'd come to a high cliff, his first thought always went back to the ole: "This would be a great spot to pee off." 

I know I am not alone in this... at least 50% of the population will concur with this truth invariably. The other half will forever turn me down after reading this. But see, arms and legs just ain't like this appendage, oh no. This one really does have a mind of its own. That may have been why writing your name in the snow with it was always more work than it may have looked... at least to anyone who ever tried it. BUTT then again, if you never tried it, you probably weren't born with that particular drawing tool, and so therefore you never suffered like we guys do. All guys have done this, either to practice our writing skills (or aiming skills) or just out of giddy curiosity and fascination with whatever comes out of us (you know, birth envy and all). But here's the thing, if The Lost World: Jurassic Park taught me anything, it's that when you go off to take a leak in the woods, make sure you don't end up stranded out there by your girl cousin.

It was on an after-Christmas sledding trip and my same-age girl cousin came along with us. She was only related to us by marriage, so I felt safe having the huge crush on her that I had. She and I rode the wussy slope a few times together on the same sled, but I insisted we try the steeper and icier one... the so-called "big kid ride." She refused of course, but I won the day because it was all to easy to push her off and down in the sled by herself. I got a kick out of terrifying her until she landed us both in the ditch at some point. She applied the breaks so hard we skidded on the ice and flopped over sideways into the snow-covered stream bed. Though she had put us down there, I was still the one who had to get the sled out. That sucked because the snow was as hard and slippery as ice. It was ice!

The whole time I became aware I had something to take care of though as I worked to pull it out, and holding it in was not an option anymore! I was even wetting myself a little, which sucked because it was effin cold! So when I'd finished hauling that sled up the hill, I ran off without a word and left her alone there in the white field to die. Though she was curious about what I was doing back there in the trees she didn't wait up for me at the top. She took the sled down again on her own, unbeknownst to me, leaving me stranded. At the time though, I didn't care. I really, desperately, had to squeege. But first, I had to find the "perfect" spot in the snow by the trees (because Marks like me always like to "make their mark"), and then had to coax that turtle out of his shell in the freezing cold for a solid minute (You think it's easy? Try it!). Then finally, finally, I could let it go!

"Come on! Come on! Can't! Hold! It! Stupid zipper! Come on! ...Oh-oh-oh!!!
...ahhhhhhh-ohhhhhh-ahhhh!!... ... ohhhhh yeeeeah.... finally... "

Oh man what a feeling that is! But then I got this "inclination" half way, so it  became a stop-n-go adventure for a good thirty seconds on. It came out all bent, crooked, and disjointed like chicken scratch (because a squirt here and a squirt there does not a straight line make), and I couldn't even work up enough to finish! "M... A ..." Come on, just a little more... just a little more... Nothing doing. Dead stop. Oh well.

I soon abandoned my sloppy "pen...manship" and emerged back into the sun and the blinding snow at the top of the hill only to find my girl cousin waving to me from the bottom, having just enjoyed the steeper "big kid" sled run by herself. I guess it was easier to steer without me, since she'd made it to the bottom this time with no problem. But she wasn't about to leave the sled, much less lift a finger to drag it back up the slope to come back for me. I told her "no way" to helping her, and she never let me back on that thing, even though it was mine. She was carrying that thing all over the place like it was hers, and I don't even remember if I ever got it back. So yeah, I learned why girls don't do any of that stuff in the woods. I don't know what they do.

The One that Got Away

I have always liked chicks... No... I have always practically worshipped chicks. They could literally tell me to do anything... they could tell me to jump off a cliff... and I'd be a dutiful little male ant drone just following orders. I know because I've somehow found myself doing everything from stealing pens to pealing gum off the bottom a sneaker for girls, and all with a simple, "hey Mark, could'ya...?" Boys are way dumber than girls, and it's sad, but there's no use crying about the laws of nature, since it can't be helped. Somehow though, all that brainless, male automaton groveling around pretty girls has not yielded more than two "girlfriends" in the bag for me my entire life... but then again, that could also be because I am... technically... engaged, and have been for nearly 20 years. See, there was this girl....

She was awesome. She was cool. She was... using me to carry stuff... but who cares! A girl paid attention to ME! ("I am not worthy... I am not worthy...") And that actually used to mean something coming from me because girls always mystified me, spellbound me, hypnotized me, beat me up, got me in trouble super easy, or robbed me blind. And I was OKAY with it! (Still counts fellas.) I need help... (wait a minute, no! Don't change me! I only feel "right" when I grovel. I likes me this way!!) Anywho, so you can see that for me to say this one girl was "awesome".... well, she must've done something special for me. (And no, I don't mean kick me in the playplace...)

I usually ended up thinking my pathetic groveling at their feet was their fault somehow. Surely girls were better in concept than in reality. On paper, girls were always like some alien species of advanced, exotic, ultra-intelligent, flawless beings of pure will and grace requiring my devotion. They were unstoppable forces of nature. Heck, just watching one do a cartwheel used to splatter my brains! To me, they were more on par with adults while we boys were like, wild chimpanzees or something, just flinging poop at each other. But while that's usually true about us, in execution, girls were really just a more sophisticated cabal of flingers... and actually, when you realize that, it makes it easier for them to... actually like you back. ... As I came to find out.

So with all that build up for this species of radiant splendor and strength and intelligence, and all that jazz, just imagine my additional puzzlement when, after spending time with one for a while, she revealed herself to be just another goofy weirdo like me? Smarter, of course (once again, the laws of nature), prettier, 1000% (guys are gremlin demons compared to girls), but the important thing was she was just as human. We spent a lot of time together playing husband and wife at day care. We slept together at nap time (in the same room at least). We did all that kissy stuff, and got in trouble for it. Heck, we even spent many a romantic afternoon together: lunchtime at the plastic table with our square pizza, summer days poking at anthills at the big old tree, rearranging their dirt "towns," maybe followed by a movie. You know, the normal girlfriend/boyfriend stuff.

She was six ... but don't get the wrong idea! I was around five or six too, and our playtime courtship developed over many months at my daycare into the all-out genuine relationship that it was. We watched the clouds and picked out the shapes, "Ooh, a butterfly!"  "Ooh, a dolphin!"  She lied through her teeth and I believed her... about how on her trip to Disneyland she'd been turned into a frog by a magician, about how she'd reached outside the airplane and tasted one of those clouds (yes, she confirmed they did taste like cotton candy!). We played house in the plastic house, she'd get all mad when I wasn't home at a decent hour. I'd tell her how I got all backed up at the plastic pool office and had decided to go blow a few minutes at the sandbox... you know, the typical husband/wife stuff.

It was all so wonderful, we promised to get married someday. We'd even keep a piece of bark off the tree as a memorial that we were engaged (don't ask). But it was not to be. Shortly before she was taken out of that daycare, we officially broke up. To this day I don't remember how it happened, whether it was something I said or did, all I know is that whatever it was, it was somehow my fault... (that's girls for you). She wouldn't accept my apologies for nothing, and even mocked my desperate pleas. It was pointless to try, we both knew it. Even if she wasn't going away, we could never go back to the way it was. But my heart was broken that summer, for maybe two of three hours.

So Kim, just to let you know, if you're not taken yet, I'm still available. (wink)

(Oh yeah, if you're reading this, sorry about the Halloween party and how I got my plastic fishing pole hook caught in your Little Mermaid outfit... that was... only somewhat funny, and I learned my lesson).

The Great Thanksgiving Beanie Baby Battle

To the 8-year-old me, Thanksgiving meant trips to my gramps with the rest of the family on my mom's side, disgusting carrots soaked in molasses, and of course, the "replica of the inside of the can rendered in cranberry sauce." Add to the plate the driest piece of white meat on the eastern seaboard, and you have quite a mouthful. The drab old-person decor, the stuffy book shelf, the "turntable," the hanging plants in the living room, the television submerged in a wood cabinet resting on the floor (a game of football running as background noise on it), the brown shag carpet, the adults engaged in dull and endless chit chat... none of it would make the experience all that exciting for any kid, let alone me.

So let me start over. Thanksgiving was about running outside of gramp's house with the other kids for a nice game of tag. I always really did love me some sweet, sweet tag. About the only thing I loved more than tag was annoying girls, so how much fun do you think I had when I got to combine those two pastimes into one? Well, such a thing happened that one awesome Thanksgiving my brother and I stole a Beanie Baby Hedgehog from the girls, and it was a temporary victory for boys everywhere because they weren't getting that thing back without a fight! I had to prove my smarts. This was war. Sure, they could think they had me cornered on the porch when I "absent-mindedly" ran into that enclosure, but I knew there was nothing stopping me from hopping the railing five feet to the ground, taking off across the driveway and getting way the heck out of sight. I knew it wasn't a drop they wanted to take, and the time it took to walk the steps and come around the house kept them at a distance. I can't stress this enough, it was all for a Beanie Baby.

Whenever they caught one of us, we always made sure the other was off somewhere with the stolen good, or at least, that's what we told them. And whenever they had me in their clutches, I was sure to do what boys do best... play dumb: "I don't know where he took it, go bother him about it. I'm done playing." In reality, the thing had been tossed over the back fence at some point into the neighbor's yard where they'd never think to go looking, but they didn't need to know that. Also, as a boy, I didn't always need to 'play' dumb, but that they already knew. Needless to say, I had my dumb excuse to get a couple girls to chase me around in circles and impress with my cunning and wits. I still don't know what their excuse was, unless they actually cared about that thing. I sure didn't.

When their head girl had me cornered at the back fence behind the shed, I scaled the wood and hopped it, right into the neighbor's lawn. That's where I grabbed the hedgehog and did a dash across the yard all the way back around and through two rows of very prickly bushes. To my surprise, they chased me. I'd throw it off to my brother in the driveway, only for him to do his signature move of hopping up on the roof of the car. The girls had him surrounded, but he booked it down the hood and cilmbed up on the porch with the thing in his teeth. Luckily I made it to the porch as he was getting torn down and he handed it off to me. I stuck the thing in my back pocket of my jeans, shook my butt at them and said the magic words sure to make any girl cringe: "come and get it nooooow."

Not wanting to have to find themselves in any position near that particular end of my body, they just stood there and crossed their arms, and I walked in the back screen door, my appetite slowly returning for whatever food thing they were starting to serve in there. And so, even as we all piled around that kids' table for the feast of horrors (in the china room), on that special day, and bowed our heads to give thanks for what we had (in our possession... stashed somewhere they'd never find it!), a silent war raged. The grimacing girls lost the battle knowing that in just a few hours they'd win the war anyways. We eventually had to give the thing back. After all, what did such a soldier like me want with a cutesy Beanie Baby hedgehog anyways?

It's not surprising the girls won. What's surprising is they actually put up a fight!

"Ink, Stink, Purple Dink, Poop, Fart, Out!"

If you asked me what my favorite music was when I was 8 years old, I probably would have said "Jurassic Park music" (because that was my answer once). But if you had sung the first line of any naughty, dirty, schoolyard song, I would have been able to sing the rest right back to you. I memorized this stuff on the long bus rides home from school, as the girls clapped hands and rhymed them off one after another. Everything from the bizarre "Miss Mary Mack" to the barely-acceptable "Mary Had a Steamboat"  got drilled into my not-so-innocent head.

How this stuff spread all over the country in the decades prior to the internet just goes to show the incredible persistance of kids' appreciation for all that is mucky, yucky, perverse, and anything else they can get away with.

Mary had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell;
Mary went to Heaven, the steamboat went to…
HELLo operator, just give me number nine;
And if you disconnect me, I’ll chop off your…
BEHIND the ‘frigerator, there was a pice of glass.
Mary sat upon it and cut her little… 
ASSK me no more questions, I’ll tell you no more lies:
The boys are in the bathroom, pulling down their…
FLIES are in the kitchen, bees are in the park,
Mary and the principal are [kissing]* in the dark!

*(the word wasn't always "kissing"...)

Of course the girls were smart enough to not sing the really dirty ones full of sex and bodily functions in the proximity of adults...and of course we boys weren't. It was no surprise then why the teacher suggested "one potato, two potato" instead when my friends mentioned to her that "Ink, Stink, Purple dink, Poop, Fart, Out!" was our way of calling each other "out" for a game at recess. And you can imagine that "Man from Nantucket," "Magical Fruit," and whatever incarnation of the "Diarrhea Song" you prefer also factored in, along with my specialty--the ones full of gore and violence: ("Burning of the School" sung to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," or anything involving peer torture or the death of Barney.

Glory, glory hallelujah
Teacher hit me with a ruler
I hid behind the door with a loaded .44
And my teacher don't teach no more.

Joy to the World, Josh is dead.
We bar-be-cued his head!
What happened to the body?
We flushed it down the potty!
And round and round it goes!

(^That one went out to a kid my friend and I particularly didn't like... named Josh!)

And just to rub in the fact that girls were more subtle with these songs, I distinctly remember a girl who teased us with "My My Mother, Your Mother", which includes the famous line, "Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider, girls go to college to get more knowledge." Not one to be put down by a girl, my friend chimed in, "Boys go to Mars to get more candy bars!" It was an ingenious comeback, but it was short lived, and she quickly shot back something about how "boys go to Venus to get a bigger..." [ahem!]. That's when we knew we were outwitted (in more ways than one). Only then did we know shame.

(For more fun songs, visit Milkmilklemonade.com)

Hide and Seek Tag

My allergies!

We used to play this game I invented called "Hide and Seek Tag." When I say "we" I mean the girl and boy next door, and my brother and I. My brother was always a year younger than me (kind of strange how that always seems to happen with younger brothers), and all the neighborhood kids were about the same age as we were. In any case, this game was exactly what it sounds like. First you hide and seek, and then when found, you run for the hills. It's a manhunt, with one on the lam and everyone else "it," like a kind of reverse-tag. The girl was one year younger than me and at least two years more mature (kind of strange how that always seems to happen with girls), and for that reason only, I always seemed to be the one on the lam, forcing everyone to chase me.

And I didn't exactly play fair. Even when hiding, I was constantly on the move. You got to be, because you want them to totally exhaust every potential hide out and have to come calling you out, "okay, we give up!" You want the girl rolling her eyes. After all, it's only fun when you're the only one really having fun, right? Well, that is, until they just left me in the poison ivy patch to go off and enjoy their summer afternoons in other ways. I didn't come out of my calamine cocoon for a week, and nobody missed out on the fun except me.

The neighborhood was a maze of fences, cars, backyards, basements, trees and shrubs, and I found a way to exploit them all for hours onto dusk on many an after school afternoon. The bush beside the front steps of the neighbor's house was a great spot. They could literally stand over you and not see you. This was real jungle warfare, poison ivy or not... allergy to poison ivy or not. Getting caught was worse. Don't give up on me soldier! And yes, clearly we were soldiers because what else would you be if you were carrying around a gun that looks like a Super Soaker?

The girls kind of ruled the neighborhood just because they could get us in trouble, but we boys actually lived in it. We had more fun out there in the neighborhood with our own war games, hopping over fences and stomping on flowers. The Martians had landed! They were everywhere. They were girls in disguise! “Quick men! Kill the aliens!” Oh man, we swarmed that girl next door good once. My brother even soaked her with his squirt gun. Defeated! We exchanged high-fives as she ran off back to her house dripping wet.

“Success men! Let’s get another one!” I used to lead the charge. I always loved anything scifi. So we'd go find another one while she was in her backyard over at Steven's place in her swimsuit. We'd creep along in the bushes beside their house like Rambo, even wearing the bandanas, our guns set to maximum soak. She’d be out there just sitting by her swimming pool in her blue swimsuit, just doing that thing girls do where they lay in the sun. She wouldn’t see us coming!

“Right men, now listen up,” I'd whisper to the next-door boy with the stammer, “this one’s sexy. No lollygagging! We got a job to do! Get in, kill, and get out! Understand?”

“Sir yes sir,” he'd whisper.

“Lock and load. I’ll see you on the other side, on the count of three…” I'd whisper, but he'd just go right ahead and charge her.

AAHHHHH! I ran right up to her that day by the pool and just started soaking her with my squirt gun fully loaded. She jumped up and screamed, “What that! Get away from me!” '

I strand over her on either side and give her a good blast in the face and then take off running. Mike comes up behind and blasts her good in the back. Then the real fun begins. The chase it on!

“Run! Run! Go! Abort mission! Abort mission! Target is not destroyed! Repeat, target is not destroyed! Send for back up! Whoa!” I keep talking into my pretend walkie-talkie on my sleeve as she chases me all around the backyard like crazy. I go after him and try to help but then he goes and hops the back fence, so then she turns on me, pissed as all hell and coming at me like a bulldog!

“Man down!” I yell as I take off for the bushes, only to be yanked back by my shirt collar, kicked in the ass, and then pushed straight down into those thick bushes. Damn did that sting. We got away though. We lived to tell the tale. We took off running down the street, out of ammo. We had to fill up our guns for another round back at the bathroom sink at his place.

“Who next?” he asks.

“Bridget,” I say. Two aliens down. Two to go. That’s always a blast.