We'd put a man on the moon, but we still couldn't curb our violent nature. The summer of love ended with Altamont and the violence and hostility just seemed to grow. The Kent State shootings had shocked a nation. Canadians were terrified by the actions of the Front de libération du Québec as they bombed and kidnapped to assert their agenda. While television brought the Vietnam War into the home in bloody Technicolor, us younger folk witnessed The Coyote bomb and blast his own way to self-destruction, trying to extract revenge on The Roadrunner. As I played with my friends in those youthful days, it became readily apparent that there were several fine lines between acceptable and unacceptable acts; we would have to learn where one ended and the other began.
As a six year old, I had it all: a big yard, a neighborhood full of friends, trees to climb, an ample supply of dirt bombs, and a creek to catch fish and get soakers in. One thing was not right, though, and that was my neighbor, a ten-year-old femme fatale named Joy. Joy was the gorgeous girl who had everything except friends. Her personality was as repellant as Deet to a mosquito; but what made Joy even worse was that she was a bully. All of you are probably well acquainted with Lucy, Charlie Brown's nemesis. Joy would make Lucy look like Mother Theresa.
Joy had a thing for beating up boys. While I had usually managed to escape her clutches, one fateful afternoon after leaving my best buddies' house -- the twins -- I was not so lucky. Joy cornered me, mercilessly whipped me with her skipping rope, and generally terrorized me. My older brother, three years my senior, witnessed the beating, but he was too scared to intervene -- Joy was that much larger and aggressive. I finally escaped and made it inside, where my mother saw rope marks on my face and heard my tale of terror. As a close friend of Joy's mother and as someone familiar with my hijinks, she wouldn't believe that I hadn't somehow instigated the whole fracas. "A pretty girl like Joy doesn't go hitting boys unless they deserve it."
It was at that moment I decided I would do something that would deserve a beating from Joy. But what, I did not know.
The next day, while hanging out at the twins' place, I mentioned that it was time someone did something about Joy. The twins, Andrew and Chris, had been frequent victims of Joy's torment, so we spent the better part of the afternoon up on the roof of their garage spying on Joy and trying to spot a weak point that we could exploit. Ideas included letting the air out of her bike tires, stealing her skipping rope, or even stealing the Girl Guide Cookies which always resided in the basket on her handlebars. It was after I farted that Chris said what would soon change my entire outlook on life: "We should make her eat poo." Edison had his eureka moment, and now I had mine -- what an utterly brilliant idea! But what was lacking was a plan to execute it.
As we formulated ideas on how to get Joy to eat poop, we realized first and foremost that it had to be clandestine -- no one could know who pulled off this poo d'etat. As best buddies, we swore to never reveal who did what if we succeeded -- we would just relish the victory. But as the time went by, ideas dried up. We decided a trek to the creek would provide the inspiration required.
While climbing down the TV antenna from the roof, we spied the twins' poodle Nina pinching off a white dook. I don't know why the poodle's poop was white, it just was -- all the time. It was then that Chris showed his true brilliance. He said, "We could put Nina's poop in a cookie and get Joy to eat it."
By God, this was exactly what we needed. A foolproof idea! The trip to the creek was cancelled, and we repaired back to the roof to finalize our plan.
It was decided that Chris and Andrew would create a diversion, enticing Joy away from her bike and cookies by ridiculing her with witty commentary suggesting her gender was reversed. I can't remember exactly the rhyming couplets used, but I'm sure it made use of iambic pentameter, the structure typically employed in taunts by boys of that age. With Joy out of the picture, I would blaze across the street, steal one of her vanilla Girl Guide cookies, and remove the creme filling by scraping it on the sidewalk. I would then replace the filling with Nina's dook, carefully rotating the cookie to ensure the nasty nougat would not be over the edges of the cookie. I would then zip back to her bike, place the cookie into the box, and return to the roof to await my compatriots.
The plan had absolutely no flaws that we could see. It was decided that the twins should arm themselves with dirt bombs, just in case Joy got too close to catching them. Sufficiently armed, I watched my best friends take their lives in their hands as they set off on their mission.
Everything went perfectly. Chris led the chant from the roadway, a good forty feet from Joy. She seemed disinterested until Andrew chimed in with, "I know you have pigtails ‘cause you smell like one" -- obviously bailing on his proper poetical skills, but employing a blindingly obtuse observation of her socio-economic status. She stopped skipping that thing that went around her ankle and had a ball on the end and immediately gave chase. The twins took off like bullets. And as they disappeared, I sprung into action.
I made it over the street, grabbed the cookie, and returned to the fresh dook in mere seconds. I was placing the cookie back in the box when I heard Andrew screaming, "Let me go!" Joy was seated on his chest, washing his face with grass. Chris was nowhere to be seen. My task completed, I returned to the roof of my friends' garage to watch Joy return to her bike and, with any luck, decide now was the time for a poop petite four.
Luck was not with us that day. Joy returned to her bike, scooped up her cookies, and went inside. Chris and Andrew had returned to the roof, and we all shared a sense of gloomy foreboding about what could happen. What if her Mom ate the cookie? What would happen if we got caught? My friends were quick to point out that it was I who would be in trouble. I started to panic -- maybe it wasn't too late to go over and tell Joy's mom what I did. She probably wouldn't get too mad -- she was one of my mom's good friends. I screwed up the courage to go over, but just as I was about to walk up the driveway my Mom yelled for me to come home, "NOW!"
Oh no! I could tell from her tone I was sunk. Maybe I could catch a freight train to Mexico. Maybe I could get hit by a car on the short walk. Maybe the boogeyman (residing in the neighborhood utility box, according to older kids) would get me first. I went to my fate with great trepidation, convinced I was a goner.
My mother stood on the porch, visibly upset. My brother peeked from his window with a look of pity. As I reached the stairs to the front door I played the tried and true method of any child seeking sympathy: I started crying. While this tactic was usually sound, my Mom saw through this ruse. My days as the resident Sir Laurence Olivier were finished -- I was exposed as nothing more than a borscht belt hack. She grabbed my arm, slapped my ass as hard as she could, and told me to go to my room until my father came home. This was a sentence worse than death.
As I sat on my bed pondering my fate, my brother snuck in to tell me all the details of what had happened. Joy's mom had seen me monkeying around the front of their house, and when Joy came in and put the cookies on the table, her mom opened the box and noticed a very weird looking cookie -- and, she said, something that "didn't smell right." Upon closer inspection it was obvious it had been tampered with, and that the vanilla creme filling had been replaced with poo -- white, viscous poodle doo. She put one and two together, so to speak, and came to the conclusion that I was responsible for this act of terrorism.
I heard my father's car pull up in the driveway. I dreaded the spanking I'd get. It was bound to leave my ass as red as the Vietcong on the Ho Chi Minh trail. I waited and waited to hear my name called out, but there was just silence. The calm before the storm.
Finally, after what seemed like ten eternities, I heard my father call me to come to the living room. I had resolved to go with strength, not to cry, to take it like a man. My father was a Leonard Maltin of sorts -- he could spot a poor performance from the lobby. So any hope of an Academy Award performance and subsequent reprieve was out of the question. As I reached the room, my father told me to sit down and tell him what happened. I stuttered around the story, omitting my friends' involvement. I even mentioned that Joy had it coming to her.
My father calmly told me how utterly stupid and dangerous what I did was. He spoke painfully of how I had let him down. He'd never spoken to me like this before. I cried, not out of fear, but out of shame. He gave me a hug and told me never to do anything this despicable again. I was to march over and apologize to my neighbors, and my allowance was going to them as payment for the despoiled cookies.
I trudged over, knocked, made my apologies, and made my way back home. I was sent to my room to think things over. They say that revenge is a dish best served cold -- in this instance, it was me who was left shivering.