Relax, Ex-Lax

My dad, when he was a kid, was a prankster and full of mischief. He got into gobs of trouble, and no doubt he was the reason for most of the gray hairs on my great-grandmother’s head. He was raised by her, poor woman. His mother shirked her mothering responsibilities, leaving her two sons to be raised by her mother. Her one daughter was raised by her ex-husband’s new family after he remarried.

My dad’s mom boarded a ship one day and joined the merchant marines in Argentina. Abandoning responsibility and children is not a recent anomaly. It is eons in the making.

With the merchant marines, she traveled the world, had adventures, and got to be selfish. Her mother, on the other hand, got to raise a second family in her later years. This is not that story; I just wanted to give you some background.

Dad and his brother grew up poor in Buenos Aires, Argentina. My dad was often left unattended and left to his own mischievous devices because his grandmother was just too old to keep up with his antics.

My uncle was a sickly child and required the attention that Dad probably would have benefited from a little.

Dad’s mom was gone for most of the year. When they made port in Argentina, she would come to visit her children. She would bring trinkets from her travels and give them to her children.

On one particular visit, she came with American gifts. There were things here that were not readily available in their country, so it was a treat when she showed up.

This time, she came with these bars of chocolate. American chocolate. Argentina makes chocolate too, very good chocolate, in Bariloche, but this was American chocolate. At the time, Argentines were enamored with all things American.

Dad was handed the bars and told by his mother what they were for. They were not ordinary chocolates. They were Ex-Lax chocolates. I don’t think they make them anymore. Anyway, back then, it was how we Americans took laxatives. It was probably more appealing to a child to have one of those than an enema for regularity.

I tried one once as a child and distinctly remember its bitter taste, so I don’t know how anyone could have enjoyed them.

Have I mentioned that Dad was a mischievous prankster? I did.

A few days later, after his mother once again left them to traipse around the world, she was gone, and my father was back at school. It was show-and-tell day at school. No, it really wasn’t; they don’t have that as we do here. But Dad brought his gifts from America to show his friends what amazing things came from here.

He showed all his friends the Ex-Lax chocolate bars. Then he distributed the bars to them. He failed to mention what the bars were or how to use them.

Yup, you guessed it. They all scarfed them up like pure Belgian chocolate treats. Dad sat back and waited. How he managed to do that without falling to the ground in tears of laughter, I will never know.

Before the end of the school day, there was an unusually urgent, recurring need to use the bathroom among many children at the school. The bandit struck again. Dad was known for his antics. And yet they trusted him. Big mistake.

He spent the rest of the day laughing his head off. No one suspected the chocolates were the cause of loose bowels across campus.

My father went home and told his brother the tale, and they both had hearty laughs. His brother was often home because of his illness. Maybe Dad did this kind of thing to entertain him.

My sister and I heard this story many times when we were young. We cracked up every time. It was innocent fun back in the day. We have lost that in modern culture.

The chocolate Ex-Lax pieces were very mild. No posterior ends were damaged in the making of this tale. But many kids got to experience regularity, American-style.

The story still makes me laugh. Boys and mischief go hand in hand. Fair warning, moms.