Once upon a time
I was a very small lad, and very shy. Yaw, mynheer, dot is so. I used to like to hide behind my dad’s legs, and if he was wearing his trenchcoat, sometimes I would slip inside it and stand there, making us look like a black wooly quadruped with large muscular back legs and tiny front legs, like an improbable kangaroo.
I had followed Dad onto the escalator in Sears at River oaks mall- at that time, it was an outdoor mall and Mom was shopping at SS Kresges, while dad looked at shoes for me (I seemed to need a new set every six weeks) and Dad held my hand as I stepped up and in front of him, then tucked into his coat, my secret hiding spot. it smelled like wool and VO-5 and Old Spice.
Riding up the escalator, I peeked out from between the buttons of dad’s coat to see we had gotten on just behind a young lady (Well, young to me, now, but a “grownup” to me then) who was wearing a one piece dress, of the kind that was popular in, say, 1964. They were knit, and it had gaps between the material big enough to stick your finger in. I knew the type, my aunt had one just like it, but SHE wore a slip under hers, where this woman had nothing on under hers but underwear! Shees, you could actually see part of her buttcheeks! I don’t know if I even knew what I was looking at, at the time, but I felt it was something that had to be touched…
…So I reached up my five year old finger and pointed, and before I could even get close, a spark of static electricity about 2″ long leapt from my finger and zapped the woman right in the right buttcheek. The shock startled me so I withdrew my hand back into Dad’s coat, and she turned around and slapped dad right in the face so hard his hat flew off and down to the jewelry department.
Dad, who had been looking to his left as the display of fall sporting goods went by, was completely taken unawares. We had just about reached the top so the woman in the open knit dres stormed off and dad grabbed my hand, we walked off towards Shoes.
I wonder if he ever figured out what he had been slapped for, and how he explained the loss of a hat and the huge red weal on his cheek to mom later.
Who knows. He might have been more aware than you thought.
I used to get caught thinking bad things and I wondered how that happened.
Oscar Jr, is that you?
“I’m sorry, ma’am, it was my id – – er, my kid.”
This seems to tie in quite nicely with your previous post about storytellers.
Indeed, Titan, thanks for paying attention.
That event actually occurred, though it was very nearly a half century ago. Is my recollection extremely accurate? Lord, I doubt it, I forget things that happened this morning. Has time erased some details and substituted others? very possibly. Is my imagination filling in details unbidden? Almost certainly. Is this story actually a portmanteau of multiple events? Don’t know- many of my stories are. Is it entertaining? I have to leave that to the reader. Entertainment was certainly my aim, and if I have accomplished that, so fucking what if the tale I tell is not letter perfect or action accurate. The good storytellers-the best ones- like Vman or Acidman or Harvey or Kim Du Toit take an actual event and knead in some irony, some sweetness, some nostalgia, leaven with time, bake in a topical event, and pass around thick aromatic slices slathered in self effacing humor to be shared and lipsmackingly drooled over.
You do them proud. Always like Kim. read the others from time to time as well.
On a side note, I had thought about poking in the net holes one or twice my self.
The only time I actually saw a knit dress they had a camisole underneath. But that does not stop the minds eye.
Entertaining? You bet! True? Who cares? If it isn’t, it ought to be. I read your post out loud to my wife and she’s still chuckling. You got a twofer here!
I can picture a fedora, slowly rotating, gently descending onto the lower level. From whence it came, no one was the wiser. Hilarious.