Don't Lick the Car

At my parent’s home, I walked past their microwave, being used as a landing pad for a magnetic hummingbird. Par for the course, it wasn’t just a flat, one-dimensional magnet. It was a full-fledged, close to life size hummingbird with wings in full flight and flaccid tongue emerging from its beak. I was compelled to touch the projection in the presence of my Mom. “You just had to touch it, didn’t you?” were the only words she uttered as she stepped out onto the deck, nary a second of eye contact.

When we returned home that evening from a wine shopping excursion, my dad was a bit more excited than usual about our arrival. Nimbly traversing the stairs to their front door, he found the beacon of his excitement: a box from the Omaha Steak Company.

Taking a trip to a wine store was a step in my dad’s attempt to prove Darwin correct. He was an infant oenophile, which allowed me to enjoy the mature interaction I now shared with my parents while sipping a beverage with an alcohol content above 3.2%.

Our conversations usually hovered around my profession, my dad’s hobbies or my mom’s family. Sometimes, in a moment of reflection, we spoke about my formative years.

Due to my competitive nature and desire to look and act like a boy, I was outside more than inside. I did not have the influence of X-Box and Gameboys and I-Pods during pre-pubescence, hence I made up a brother (Jimmy) until mine was bestowed upon me (Larry). These personality traits also led me to the great outdoors during all weather options: hot, cold, rainy, windy. Mom couldn’t keep me confined by walls or ceilings plus I was the guinea pig for the older neighborhood kid’s ideas that they were too smart to attempt but wanted to see executed, i.e. the idea to see how many girls we could fit on my bike; swimming in a ‘pool’ next to the culvert under a road; how long I could hold a fire cracker before it exploded; the Hot Seat tricycle sent off the 3 foot high ramp after careening 1,000 yards down a 10 degree hill

Because of my over-active imagination, I was also fine spending time alone, especially during the winter.

B.L (Before Larry), I loved the solitude of snow days. For one, in Kansas, it usually meant at least a day off from school. I also enjoyed building, then subsequently, destroying things, and snow offered the best of both worlds. Plus, to this day, even though I cannot stand the cold and wind I now associate with this sort of weather, I can always find solace in the quiet, calm, clean that comes with a heavy snowfall. B.L., good life decisions within the context of snow evaded me.

We had a yellow VW bug. I can vividly recall the noise it produced and the heat it didn’t dissipate during the summer months. I can still feel the comfort of fitting between the back seat and the engine. I will never forget how the snow formed itself perfectly around the front fender, so enticingly that I felt the need to partake of what looked like white cotton candy, the delicacies provided at the Police Circus a short while before.

I was old enough to know that snow is not cotton candy and it definitely has no taste, unless it is yellow. I was also creative enough to know imagination makes your life more lovely, hence the imaginary brother until I entered grade school.

I was outside constructing and deconstructing objects when I became a bit preoccupied with the shape of the Volkswagen residing under its new kaftan. I slowly walked over to the car and with my mittened paw, I gingerly scooped some snow from the hood and licked it off my home-spun yarn mittens. If you’ve ever done such a thing, you will never forget the feeling of polyester fibers in between your teeth and how they stick to your tongue, akin to dried eggs on a non-lard laden cast iron skillet.

Self, I said, why not cut out the middleman and just lick the car? Intuition was obviously my innate strength, so… I took a quick peek. A faint voice harkened deep in my brain sulci. A news flash of a story about a kid, a tongue, a pole, a trip to hospital. For some reason my brain never fixed the bunny ears to clear the reception of the update.

Thus, I licked. And I stuck.

This was not “A Christmas Story” moment; only the little voices inside my head triple dog dared me. I found myself all alone in my reckoning of how to rid myself of the great 2,000 pound beetle attached to the tip of my tongue. Then I heard it… the squeaking sound of the thin, aluminum framed door leading to our home, being opened in freezing temperatures.

I slowly tilted my head, peering out of my left eye towards my Mother, the nurse, standing in the doorway of our home. She appeared amused, more amazed that this moment took so long to manifest, given my other ill-advised life choices.

“Pull!” she called out, “Just pull hard!”

Mothers are supposed to keep us from pain and self-injury so I experienced one of many life’s disappointments bestowed upon me by my Mother, in the hidden name of “teachable moment”. I heeded her advice and I pulled. I felt the skin on the bottom of my feet come through my body to replace the fresh tissue I just eradicated from my tongue, left as a sacrifice to the German car making gods.

I sheepishly trod across the yard, knowing that if I touched the raw flesh with my mittens that I would forever have polyester antennae probing the insides of my mouth. I hopefully walked up the now four enormous stairs of our porch to the waiting arms of the second coming of Florence Nightingale.

Instead, I got a version of Annie Wilkes from “Misery”: “Did you learn your lesson?” she asked, in a non-condescending but non-pacifying tone.

“Ythseh” I attempted to annunciate.

“Good. Now come in and have a cup of hot chocolate.”

Once again, we are taught to have unconditional faith in our mothers. However, this woman was dead set in teaching me a lesson about where to put my body parts if I wanted to keep them intact.

After one swig of that steaming cup of Swiss Miss, minus the mini-marshmallows (the HORROR) I knew I would never lick another vehicle, at least while my mom was around.

As the box of steaks lay on the table of my parent’s kitchen, Mom began looking at the new magazines accompanying the shipment and Dad was putting their haul away. At the bottom of the Styrofoam box, mysteriously shrouded in a thin haze, was a white slab. “Hmm…” I wondered to myself, “what could THAT be?”

With a mother's stealthy timing, I heard: “That’s dry ice.” Without a moment’s hesitation or a brain cell working, I touched the dry ice and felt my thumb, forefinger and middle finger become one with the slab of frozen hell.

“Don’t lick the car” were the only words that came out of my mom’s mouth, head down, as she continued thumbing through the flyer for the next shipment.