Kevin Allison's True Stories: Baby Mis-Steps
A comedy article
by Kevin Allison  809  4
07/08/2009 01:12 PM 828 views
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The first thing I remember was heiney.
That was what I called it. Because I was three. I was off in my head one day doing three-year-old stuff. Staring into carpet fibers, singing make-em-up songs, maybe relieving myself in my shorts. Then there it was. On top of a wood chest. It was like a Hummel figurine made of hard rubber. A toddler boy about my age in a onesie of baby blue PJs. He looked like he got tuckered out, stuck his thumb in his mouth, and dozed off on his haunches, half in a crawling stance. But on the trap door of his PJs, the little flap around the back, the buttons had popped.
Long story short, you could see his heiney.
A different figurine, but no less provocative.
You know, they say a thing of beauty is not to be ignored. Like these two mini moons with a Mona Lisa smile cracked right down between 'em. It was hilarious, surprising, endearing, sexy. Life worth remembering had begun.
Now, in Cincy, sex itself was obscene. Two men were arrested there just for holding hands. Mark Twain said, "When the end of the world comes, I hope I'm in Cincinnati, because everything happens there 20 years later." Everyone talks about politics the same way based on the same talking points from the same gasbag on the radio. And the only thing that was non-negotiable for a boy was to be intensely, infinitely mesmerized by sports. I never was.
But on this particular day, something interested me all right. I grabbed a footstool, jumped up on it and got my little mugs around that figure. I held my heiney boy like a newborn king and went into Paul Revere mode.
"LOOK EVERYONE! LOOK AT THIS THING! YOU CAN SEE HIS HEIINEEY!"
"Help! This thing's crushing my balls!"
I leapt up the stairs. My older siblings were in their rooms. I burst in on them and let it rip. "SEE IT?!! HEINEY! YOU CAN SEE HIS HEINEY!" They laughed because I laughed. Then I thought, maybe the Sanders next door should know! Maybe people would understand life differently -- understand me differently -- maybe someone would see things the way I saw things and jump and shout and laugh like me. But on the way down the stairs, out the corner of my eye, I saw my mother coming.
She still looked a bit like Julie Andrews, but her jaw was clenched, her lips were pursed, her eyes were cold and gray.
I had only glanced back, a peripheral thing. Maybe I could get away with pretending I hadn't seen. But no. The world was brimming with her silently saying BAAAAD. While the hardwiring in me said NO! SOO GOOOOODD!
It was spooky. Mom was everything to me. My wife, my lover ... other Freudy things. I was a little actor. We need attention. And it was her attention I craved most. I tore down those stairs with her giant NO-ness gaining on me but now it was like I was running underwater. I'd somehow gone afoul.
This is where the instincts of the comedian kicked in. You don't bail on your act because the first crowd sucked.
So I yelled louder. "YOU CAN SEE HIS HEINEY!"
Walt Whitman would have cheered me. Rave on tender howler! Pay no heed to the terrible NO-ness! You CAN see his hyney! But he wasn't there.
Nowadays, people keep figurines like this in their yard.
In a flash, my feet left the ground. Mom had nabbed me by the scruff of my shirt, yanked me round and snatched the little figure right out of my mitts. Like a dwarfish rebel had torn into her home with a bomb in his hands. She set me down and I could see she was composing herself. I could see she felt I could not possibly understand what was really happening. Sex was a filthy idea. Only nuns telling you not to have it could be excused for bringing it up.
"See it mom?" I said. "Isn't it something!"
She wasn't a good actress when her nerves were raw.
"It is," she said. She wouldn't look at it. "I'm just going to keep it in a place it will be safe." And she walked away.
It was over. It had been in her muscles, her nerves. She was teaching me that no matter how you feel, there's a radically different way to behave. For her, with the figurine, she knew the script. You were supposed to say something like, "Get a load of this little sleepyhead with the mischievous smile. What's he know that we don't, right?!"
I'd reacted differently. She found it shameful that I found it wonderful. She knew that because I wanted to share it with the neighbors, it had to go. From then on, the bottom line for everything was What will the neighbors think?
I looked for the little guy for the next couple days. But now I know where he was. Covered in coffee grounds and the last drops of milk cartons. Fast asleep and dreaming. On a barge headed west with the rest of the refuse.
He was making his way down the mighty O-hi-o.
"Tin Man? Is that you?!"
Do you have a "Baby Mis-Steps" story - something you did before your teen years that got you into trouble or gave you a scare? Submit it as a ZUG Article and title it "Baby Mis-Steps: _____________." You might be invited to contribute to my upcoming podcast of dangerous stories, daringly told called RISK! The first season of RISK! will include Mike Birbiglia, Marc Maron, Michael Ian Black, Chuck Klosterman, Margaret Cho, Michael Showalter, Kristen Schaal, Rob Sheffield, David Wain, Janeane Garofalo, Keith Powell, Lynne Koplitz, Rachel Dratch and more. Click here to submit your story!
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Like This? Rate It!
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Hilarious
9 votes
4.0
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0 votes
0.0
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John Hargrave 128,123  71
07/08/2009 01:14 PM
Nice job as always, Kevin -- the Walt Whitman quote killed me.
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Hilarious
1 votes
4.0
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Jeff Haynes 631 4
07/08/2009 03:00 PM
Now, in Cincy, sex itself was obscene.
As a Cincy native myself, I wish I could even pretend to be offended. But, in reality, you're speaking the truth. Possibly one of the best formulas for comedy ever concocted was Cincinnati + Robert Mapplethorpe.
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Hilarious
6 votes
4.7
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UnderWhere? 99,723 76
07/08/2009 03:52 PM
I've written about this before, and it's not long enough to be an article, but since you asked nicely, I'll post it here:
I remember that when I was about 6 years old, my aunt had a miscarriage while visiting our house. They put the baby in a big pickle jar and stuck it in the fridge.
It was there for about 2 hours. My little sister and I kept daring each other to open the door and look at it. I finally did, but my mom had pushed it all the way to the back, behind the diet pepsi and a tub of leftover corn.
Of course while trying to get to the gold in the back, I knocked the tupperware onto the floor with a large PLOP and corn scattered in every direction. My sister started screaming and I got a spanking.
Though I'm not sure why, now. I mean, at least I didn't knock the fetus on the floor and send parts of that thing oozing everwhere.
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Funny
3 votes
3.3
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Whistler P. McManus 183,262 42
07/09/2009 09:52 AM
Undies, that was the weirdest, most wonderful thing I've heard so far this month. One of the great "what the Frost" stories ever. If you were a windbag (like me) you could have easily stretched that into an article.
Great job, Kevin. My mother collects Hummel figurines. I have never beaten off to them, but I'll look into the possibility the next time I visit her.
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Hilarious
2 votes
4.5
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Kevin Allison 809 4
07/10/2009 09:45 AM
Undies, you sell yourself short. That's a jaw-dropper. If I were you, I'd take a look at what you wrote and--sentence by sentence-- start asking, "Why this? What was that about? How were we feeling? What sights, sounds can I recall?" That sort of thing.
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0 votes
0.0
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Randall Cleveland 49,000 13
07/18/2009 02:23 PM
With some of Undies' stories you want to spend as much time as possible burying all those instincts under a pile of onion slivers.
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