The clearest memory I have of the event was that damned iced tea spoon being thrust at my face while, with pursed lips, I threw my head from side to side in a vain attempt to avoid having it shoved down my throat.

My Aunt Marnie loomed over me. "Stop moving."

I continued squirming.

"You have to stop moving so I can use this spoon to see if it's stuck in the back of your throat." (This, incidentally, was the stupidest fucking thing anyone had ever said to me.)

"Mmmpphhhh."

"Stop it. Open up. Daphne! You have to open your mouth."

Oh, no, I don't.

It was the mid-seventies. I was five or six, and I was spending the weekend at my Aunt Marnie and Uncle Jim's house in Youngstown, Ohio. Aunt Marnie was the bomb. Being eleven months younger than my dad, she was the baby of the family and the coolest aunt in the world. She was married to my Uncle Jimmy, who drove a 1965 GTO hemi (still does), had sideburns (still does), and was obsessed with Elvis (still is). They had yet to have their three kids at this point, so every once in a while I was carted across state lines for a weekend of surrogate, fun-filled havoc. Those weekends were some of the best things I remember about my childhood. I so loved the time I spent with them. They spoiled me rotten and had two dogs who adored me: Boo-Boo and Rags. Aunt Marnie was the type of person who would stand up at 11:30 at night and say, "Daphne, let's go get some Vanilla Wafers." Then she'd put me in my slippers and carry me to the passenger side of her dark green 1967 Mustang, drop me in, and off we'd drive into the night to find junk food. Life was good in Youngstown in the mid-seventies.

Oh, and did I mention my Aunt Marnie is a critical care registered nurse?

At the point when she'd finally pried my mouth open with the help of my gramma, who often stayed over at the same time I did, nurse Marnie was freaked: she'd just discovered I'd swallowed a penny.

So many things are blurry about the events leading up to that iced tea spoon, but I'll try to be as accurate as possible about what I do remember. There was a heavy, dark, round table in their kitchen surrounded by four matching chairs. They were shaped like semi-circles, the ones you might see at a country/western bar or at the Ponderosa -- a little person could climb up into one and feel hugged by enormous wooden skeletal fingers of stained oak while continually slipping into butt prints that have been carved for bigger bottoms. On this particular night, someone had dumped a large mound of pennies into the center of the table. Maybe my aunt and uncle were rolling them into fifty-cent sleeves to exchange at the bank. Some were shiny, some were dull and bronzed. Most were in a pile in the middle of the table, but some, some had rolled towards the table's end. And one of the errant ones caught my eye. So, like any normal kid, I took one and put it in my mouth. What else would I do? Look at it? Hold it up to the light? Put it in my pocket?

Nuts. I swallowed it.

As I was ingesting the small brass disc, my gramma grabbed me from behind and said something like, "Do you have money in your mouth?" I'm sure I must have mumbled "no" or something equally worthless, but I don't remember. At this point she most likely gave me the Germy Money speech we all got as children and then told me to spit it out.

And there, we had a problem.

Gramma grabbed Aunt Marnie and said, "Daphne swallowed a penny. You better do something." This is where the aforementioned tea spoon came into play.

They corralled me in a comfortable, quiet bathroom at the end of the back hall, one with interesting beige, rust, and black tiles on the floor that were fun to count while in the bathtub. I was trapped between an elderly woman aghast that I'd eaten dirty money and a trained nurse who was probably worrying about how she was going to explain this to her brother and sister in-law. I was less than four feet tall and cornered in this small room with only one entrance -- an entrance that was blocked by a stout Slovak woman in polyester pants and orthopedic shoes so her equally-stout daughter could gag me with seven inches of round, stainless terror.

I was fucked.

The comments made as I thrashed to and fro were something like the following:

"Can you see anything?"

"Mother, I can't see anything unless you get out of my light."

"We should make her vomit."

"Sandi and Tom are going to be pissed."

"Do you have any castor oil?"

It was madness. Never in my life had I felt so violated. This was worse than the time Dr. Stypula used a rectal thermometer and I had to be held down by a nurse. This was worse than long car rides, than boiled dinner night, than having to wear a dress to school. This was worse than having to pose for Christmas pictures with off-the-mark presents, than having to smile even if I hated them. I uttered the only thing I could think of that might make a difference.

"I want to call my mom and dad."

No dice.

What happened next is lost to me. There was quite a bit of pressure for me to throw up. I think I cried.

The evening ended with Aunt Marnie checking on me in bed every couple of minutes until I fell asleep, hoping, probably, that I would upchuck the penny.

I awoke next morning to wonderful aromas of coffee and eggs, the trauma of the previous night fading from my mind. Then, after breakfast, Gramma drove me back to Sharon, where I was to stay for a few hours until my parents came to get me. During the ride she kept asking me if I was ready to have a BM.

"No, Gramma."

"You need to have a BM so we can see if you pass that penny. Do you want to have that penny to stay inside you? It could block you up."

By the time we got to Gramma's house in Sharon, she was almost certainly in rare form. Like many older people, my gramma enjoyed discussing health issues. And, like many older people, she enjoyed excitement in the family. Unfortunately, my gramma likes her excitement in a dysfunctional, crisis form. The fact that this particular incident might very well have ended in two of her children going at it over a child who had eaten a penny -- and who would have to poop a penny -- because she wasn't being properly supervised might have been prime material for her.

I was oblivious to this issue thirty years ago. As far as I was concerned, the crisis was over, averted. I'd eaten a penny. I got yelled at. I got away with it. My gramma hung the moon. Case closed.

As we walked through the back door of Gramma's house, she told me not to flush the toilet if I had a BM. I agreed and went into the living room to watch cartoons. While her remark seemed weird, I don't remember being alarmed by it. I just figured she wanted to look for the penny. Besides, if I did happen to poop it out, it would be visible on the outside surface of my poop so we could see it, right?

Right?

I know I had to poop an hour or so after we arrived, but I don't remember the actual act of pooping itself. Nor do I remember any apprehension when I went into the kitchen and told her that I didn't flush. And I don't remember sensing anything amiss when she went into her bedroom, opened the closet, took out a wire hanger, and began to unravel it. She stood by her dresser mirror, fashioning the hanger into a straight line while leaving the hook part intact. I didn't mind this, either, because my gramma always had a Cover Girl compact on her dresser; and this gave me an excuse to sniff it. Her room always smelled like Cover Girl compacts. Regardless of Proctor and Gamble's perversion of testing on animals, to this day I love the smell of their compacts and blushes as much as I love the smell of cigarettes in a car for the same reason: these smells remind me of older women who love me, of times when I was secure and small enough that I didn't have anything to worry about as long as they were near.

Uneasiness began to creep into my mind as she took her crudely-fashioned tool and headed for the toilet. No. No way. Was she going to? Oh my God. She was.

I watched in shock as my gramma leaned over the commode full of my latest fecal creation and began to hack at in short, choppy strokes. She became immersed in the task, oblivious to my disbelief. She continued whacking at my log with the curved part of the hanger, the part that had previously hung from a cool, ancient dress rack. She hacked with a hanger that had once soothingly clanged against other hangers when the dress it held brushed against my small shoulders during times my brother and I were bored enough to attempt to play hide-and-seek in her modestly-size home. A hanger that had hung in a tiny closet built in the twenties, constructed of solid wood, lacquered with a depression era carpenter's pride and filled with hat boxes. A closet that had been a play place of mine, a haven that smelled of lavender sachets and Dr. Scholl's foot inserts. A closet that had once harbored the hanger that was now chopping up crap before my horrified eyes. She was using this hanger to reduce my dook to a soupy mess, and I couldn't look away.

It's an interesting thing to see a mother figure in your life -- one that has always represented not only comfort but quaint stability -- chopping your shit into pieces in a controlled frenzy with a mangled coat hanger.

She ceased hacking after it became apparent that I hadn't passed the penny, but the damage was already done. I had been sufficiently traumatized for one day, even by my family's standards.

What became of that penny, I do not know. I don't remember passing it. I don't remember hearing it plink against porcelain during the next few days, nor do I remember any shiny material catching my eye as twists of organic brown material floundered in the pull of our commode towards inevitable ends. What I do remember is the feeling that Gramma had gone over the edge, committing a verifiable crime against nature when she chopped up my own poop in front of me. Why is that? Why would a five-year-old feel that poop was not to be desecrated, wrangled, or molested, especially by Gramma? Was it the pressure of acceptable social standards? Or was it something more? Was it that grammas represented the best to us when we are little ones? Or was it the concept of a comfort figure in my instable life battling a turd that left me unhinged -- a garbled mess that only PoopReport could untangle? Are our Nanas often the organic fodder from which we, the modern-day Poopers, sprout, spiritually fed with myth, folly, and hysteria?

I leave it to you to decide.