Witnessing For The Prosecution

Years ago, I was much younger, and didn't live here. I lived in a part of a certain town, far from here, that seemed infested with Jehovah's Witnesses.

At the time, I didn't have a thing against any religious group, creed, belief system, or much of anyone else.

I still don't.

Except Jehovah's Witnesses.

You see, these Jehovah's Witnesses used to Witness the hell out of this one neighborhood. Once or twice a month, I could count on one or two of them knocking on my door, wanting to come in and discuss "The Watchtower" with me.

This wouldn't have been so bad, except that they INVARIABLY showed up around eight a.m. or so... on a Saturday or Sunday morning.

I was in college at the time, unemployed, and independently wealthy from the royalties on my patents on various evil rubber sex toys, and the idea of being awake and ambulatory at eight a.m. on ANY day for ANY reason was durn near against MY religion.

...so like a sucker, I'd shrug into a bathrobe, stagger blindly into the living room, and open the door, expecting to find my old man there, telling me to get dressed, your grandfather's had a stroke...

...and instead be confronted by two clean-cut young men in white shirts and ties who want to give me literature and can they come in and discuss The Watchtower with me?

Now, I'm not fond of a lot of churchy folks to begin with, and I'm especially suspicious of the ones that come HUNTING ME DOWN. Nearly all religions preach humility, and for a quality so highly valued, you sure don't see a lot of it in many of these folks, and I don't much like being treated high-handedly or looked down the nose at, on the off chance that I don't happen to subscribe to a particular godfest, okay? And what kind of insane mindset holds the idea that if you PESTER someone long enough, they’ll join your church?

...and in time, I came to resent these people. I quit being polite. I got rather curt with them. "No thank you, I already have a religion," followed by closing the door in their faces because if you DON'T close the door in their faces, they'll KEEP TALKING, they won't LET you get away gracefully and politely...

In fact, some of them seem to THRIVE on being verbally abused, cursed at, sprayed down with garden hoses, and generally badly treated. Years later, I was told that this is PART of Witnessing -- being kicked in the butt by the Infidels. This is part of how Witnesses earn their way into Heaven! The more dirt you throw at them, the more exalted they'll be when they get there... the sweeter it is when they manage to CONVERT someone... the jollier it is, altogether. In short, being spat upon is PART OF THEIR RELIGION.

And it didn't stop them. They kept coming back.

...and this culminated in an ugly incident one Saturday morning.

You see, the previous Friday night, we'd been into Coca-Cola... and Civilization.

Civilization, the old Avalon Hill board game. Seven players. Each player takes the part of a Stone Age tribe, and you have to build a Classical Civilization, based on trade, warfare, and individual achievements like music, architecture, metalworking, agriculture, and so on. Ever played it? It's a kick, and educational, too...

...but a seven-player game rarely takes less than eight hours.

We'd just finished up. We'd been rolling dice and moving mice for about fifteen hours... and that sonofabitch Bobo had done his usual trick of cornering the goddamn salt market, ALL over the Mediterreanean, and the other players LET HIM DO IT, every damn game, and I'd had HELL keeping the Minoans out of Thrace, and Troll had been spreading plagues, iconoclasm, and heresy left and right -- he'd managed to delay the Greeks' entry into the Late Iron Age for two whole turns... and the Creature kept wanting to expand up out of Egypt (he stomped on the Egyptian player early -- he'd started out in Africa and, as Zimbabwe, had squeezed the Egyptian player out of the game singlehanded, but was still dumb enough to trade Bobo salt for ochre)...

...we were WEIRD. It was seven-thirty in the morning, and we were stonkered on caffeine, nicotine, ancient history, and fatigue poisons -- an ugly mix. One by one, we began getting up, putting away the board and tokens, and clearing away the mess.

Since it was my house, I decided to go to bed. I stripped down to my skivvies, and dived into the Legendary Waterbed, about which there's another story around here somewhere.

I'd been there maybe fifteen minutes... just enough time to get REALLY comfortable... when there was a knock on the door. Troll and Bobo were still there, but at that time, we weren't living together, and they weren't comfortable answering my door... so I got up, still dressed in nothing but Fruit-Of-The-Looms, and answered the door, fully expecting that it was the Creature or someone, having forgotten his keys or some durn thing...

...and, in the pale morning light, I found myself face to face with a fat lady in a flowered dress and her two small children. They all seemed quite surprised to be confronted with a sudden hairy near-naked man who stank of old cigarettes and the dust of ancient history. Precisely what they DID expect to find at my house at eight a.m. on a Saturday morning, I couldn't tell you.

We all stood there and stared at each other for a moment.

And then my eyes focused. I saw what it was she was clutching to her breast.

PAMPHLETS. And copies of THE WATCHTOWER.

I screamed. Well, perhaps howled is a better term. I wasn't afraid, of course... I wasn't even really angry... but I'd been comfortable, dammit, and about to drift off to sleep, and I'd taken THIRD place in the dratted game, thanks to Troll's carefully timed plague and Bobo's goddamn salt-based economy, and I'd been on the VERY EDGE of drifting off to dreamland, and it was EIGHT goddamn A.M. on a SATURDAY morning, and HERE THE BASTARDS WERE, ALL OVER AGAIN!

So I screamed. Loud. Guttural. Absolutely fucking berserk.

Troll and Bobo looked up.

The woman screamed, too.

Her children turned tail and ran.

She stood there, mouth hanging open, brain locked up on her from sheer shock.

It occurred to me that it would be nice if she would run away, too. It would certainly be convenient. How could I make this happen? Perhaps if I did something that seemed threatening...

I glanced at the umbrella holder next to the door.

In it were two umbrellas, a cane, a large rubber double-ended dildo, and a sword. A real sword, genuine Toledo steel, left over from RenFaire. I grabbed it, waved it around, and screamed again.

She screamed again, too, spun around, and took off running across my front yard.

.......

...now I don't really know why I did what I did next. I was still kind of asleep, you'll remember, or at the very least not really awake, and I'd been up all night, and I sure as anything wasn't really thinking straight.

I do know, though, that I decided that she might stop running. I didn't want her to stop running. I wanted her to keep running clear to Oklahoma, if at all possible. The only way I could think of to make her keep running was the thing I had done to make her start running in the first place.

So I took off running, too. I screamed some more, and began waving the sword, like a loony about to make Viking salad out of some luckless soul.

The children had stopped running at the sidewalk. When the mostly naked hairy man erupted from the bushes in pursuit of Mama, waving a sword and shrieking like a banshee with kidney stones, they took OFF, with Mama right behind, and the crazy hairy man in hot pursuit.

I screamed again.

Mama screamed again.

The kids, not to be left out, screamed REAL loud.

Well, I didn't want the cycle to stop anytime soon. I screamed again. Mama screamed again, and the kids screamed again, and we all ran across the street at the end of the block.

Well, as you'll imagine, this was kind of noisy.

Some people poked their heads out of windows. A few front doors opened. People were looking to see what was happening.

...and it occurred to me that this particular course of action might have consequences that I had not foreseen.

I stopped running.

By now, the kids had reached a car, and were tugging at the handle and crying and screaming for Mama, Mama, the car is locked!

Mama hadn't looked over her shoulder, and was still booking, all three hundred pounds of her. They all leaped into the car, all in a twinkling.

I roared at them and waved my sword, as they peeled out and drove away.

I stood there in the middle of someone's front yard in my underwear, holding a broadsword.

People looked at me.

Fortunately, at the time, I was well equipped to save face -- I had hair down past my shoulders, and a beard out to here. I scowled around me. A couple of people closed their front doors.

Feeling dangerous and foolish, I walked back to my house. Troll and Bobo solemnly applauded as I stuck the sword back in the umbrella stand and went to bed.

I understand the cops drove up and down the street a few minutes later, but nothing ever came of it.

...and for the rest of the time I lived at that address... the Jehovah's Witnesses NEVER bothered us again.

FRIDGE MAGNETS

So, Farrah Bonnot's story about the rubber snake reminded me about the story about the fridge magnets.

It actually happened around the same time as the hitchhiker story; I was around fifteen and living with my parents. And there were these fluffy little critter fridge magnets.

Mom loved those magnets, but they drove her a little crazy, because my father and I had a habit of accidentally brushing them off the fridge in passing, accidentally; we were and are rather broad shouldered, and apparently, these magnets weren't real strong.

So Mom, as is the eternal lot of moms everywhere, habitually picked up these magnets and stuck them back on the fridge when she found them. Got to the point where she didn't even think about it.

And one night, she was making the rounds. Coffee set up. All faucets turned off. All light switches in the OFF position. Front door locked, side door locked, back door locked. All right, off to bed.

And she headed to the master bedroom, by way of the kitchen.

The lights were off, but she could see that a fluffy little fridge magnet had gotten knocked off, so she bent over, picked it up, and stuck it back on the fridge.

It fell off again.

She bent over, picked it up, and stuck it back, and it fell off again. She glanced at the fridge. Had the magnet fallen off? She picked it up again, and actually LOOKED at it, to see if the magnet was still on it...

At this point, your author enters the story, awakened from a sound sleep by a sound not unlike an opera singer being fed feet first into a wood chipper.

I leaped to my feet and ran into the hall, where I encountered my sister, who had heard it as well. We ran into the master bedroom, where my father was standing in the middle of their bed, with my mother wrapped tightly around his upper torso gibbering incoherently in Lovecraftian terror... while he patted her and tried to say "There, there," in a sort of strangled croak while also trying to loosen her grip on his throat.

We asked what had happened. My father mouthed "Hellif Eyeknow," while trying to soothe my mother, and we all stood there mystified. It occurred to me that she'd encountered someone while checking the door locks, and I ran around and checked them, and found them secure.

And then I detoured through the kitchen, and saw the fridge magnet sitting on the floor in front of the fridge.

My night vision is considerably better than my mother's. It wasn't a fridge magnet. It was a dead mouse.

I gave the poor little fellow a decent funeral, and retired to the master bedroom, where they'd successfully coaxed Mom down off Dad's shoulders, and she was standing on the bed, still jabbering incoherently, but somewhat more calmly.

"Was it the fridge magnet?" I asked. My mother shot me a look and stopped talking immediately. Everyone looked at me.

"I took care of it. Kinda freaked me out too," I said.

And Mom took a deep breath, and began to reassume her Momly demeanor. Dad gave me a look and said, "Give, kid," and I explained the discovery, and Mom was able... with long pauses... to explain the details of the story as listed above, the parts I was asleep for.

My sister went back to bed.

I asked if there was anything else I could do.

Dad smiled and said, "No, you go back to bed."

I didn't even make it into the hall before he started laughing hysterically. I had to give him credit; he waited, and hung on, teeth and toenails, until Mom was calm and okay and the disaster had been dealt with before he cracked up and collapsed on the bed, laughing like a loon.

And I heard Mom smack him a couple of times before I was back through the kitchen and into the other end of the house.

And this memory lives in my mind because it may have been one of the few occasions I ever saw my mother completely lose her shit...

...and it wasn't my fault.

THE BACK WALL OF THE CLOSET

I was thinkin' about my old closet this morning.

When I was in high school, I lived with my parents and had a closet in my bedroom. 'Cause, you know, I know you were all wondering about that.

I do not recall where I got the poster, but it portrayed an attractive and healthy young woman without clothing. Her back was to the camera, and she had struck a hitchhiker pose. It was cute and sexy, and being all of, I think, sixteen, I liked it. I knew I would not be permitted to display this poster in my bedroom, however, so I put it on the back wall of my closet, behind all my hanging clothes, where it was certainly inobvious; I hung my own laundry, so it's not like my parents were ever in there.

Right?

The poster hung there for quite some time, as I recall. I would look at it from time to time; the young lady was quite cute. Her behind was most pert. Sometimes I even wondered what her face looked like.

I remember the day, though. I was cleaning one of the fish tanks I kept in the bedroom, when my mother came in with a woman I did not know. She was showing off the house. I don't know why she was showing off the house; it wasn't for sale or anything, and of all the times I have ever visited my friends, seeing their children's bedrooms was never really on my priority list.

But Mom was showing this lady my bedroom, and to my surprise, she flung open the closet door, jammed her hands into my hanging clothes, and with a grand gesture, spread them wide, to reveal the back wall of my closet and my pretty hitchhiker.

I was a little surprised. Had she known about the hitchhiker? She had literally entered the room, gestured to the walls like Vanna White, spun to the closet, flung open the door, and gone STRAIGHT to the hitchhiker. Like Mom wanted to show her off to this stranger. What was THIS all about?

Mom's reaction indicated that she did not know about the hitchhiker, and could not have been more surprised if there had been an actual nude lady in there who had been hiding while I calmly cleaned the fish tank.

Apparently, this sort of derailed whatever Mom was doing with the stranger lady, and they sort of did a fast fade, and I shrugged and finished cleaning the fish tank and putting the fish back in.

A while later, Mom showed up and gave me holy hell about having a naked lady on the back of my closet, and asked me what the hell I was doing, having that in there.

To which I responded by asking what the hell she was doing bringing a complete stranger into my bedroom, walking straight to the closet, and yanking all my clothes out of the way like she thought the Ark of the Covenant was hidden back there.

She found this answer unsatisfactory, and brought my father into the debate. And I figured I was kind of screwed; they were usually pretty much a united front, parentwise.

And upon hearing the issue, Dad asked "Did he TELL you to look at the back of the closet?"

"No."

And Dad got kind of a pained look on his face and said, "Well... honey... he's a teenage boy. What the hell did you THINK you were going to find back there? Narnia?"

The issue sort of fell apart after that. The poster remained where it was, and my privacy was respected after that, albeit sorta grudgingly.

But to this day, I have no idea why my mother brought a complete stranger into my bedroom and went all Vanna White and almost immediately felt the urge to show her the back wall of my closet.

Any of YOU have any clue?

A CHRISTMAS STORY

(Doc wanders onstage, glances briefly at the audience, walks over to the stool and table. Sits on the stool, takes the pitcher of water and pours himself a glass, and takes a sip, smiles, nods, and addresses the audience.) Ah'moan tell the Christmas story, now. Those of you who've heard it, you are excused; feel free to hit the restroom or the refreshment stand, or step outside for a smoke. We begin by saying that my old man... was the cheapest guy on the planet.

He's retired now, and while he insists he is as poor as a church mouse, I'm sure he has a few yachts stashed away in the garage, a few pounds of gold bullion buried in the begonias, perhaps an offshore bank account or three, because my old man was the cheapest guy on the planet.

At Target? He bought Archer Farms. At Costco? He'd buy Kirkland. At the grocery? Store brand all the way. I learned early that if I wanted Santa to bring me a thing, I'd better pick a thing that didn't have cheap knockoffs of it that were "just as good."

This was the guy who started turning off the water heater, because he could lower the gas bill by eight bucks a month if we didn't leave the pilot light on, which meant that someone who wasn't him had to get up in the morning and light the pilot light every weekday so everyone could shower before we all went to school and work.

AND THEN HE'D get up, yawn, stretch, and go take a shower. Because there was plenty of hot water THEN.

It was the only time I have ever witnessed a family mutiny. Mom led it, but overruled me when I wanted to string him up by the yardarm. But that's another story. The only thing you really need to know is that my old man hated to part with money. He was the cheapest guy on the planet. Still remember him trying to argue over the phone with the lady at the electric company, but I digress.

Anyway, there is a tradition in deep south Texas, and that is tamales. White folks talk about turkey and ham, but the Mexicans will tell you where it is at, and that is tamales. Christmas tradition. You got to have the tamales.

I grew up eating tamales at Christmas. And that's okay. Tamales are awesome. I always thought so. I like tamales just fine, and I like to have tamales at Christmas. And this brings us to the Tamale Lady. There was this little old lady, the abuelita (grandmother) who lived down the street. Every December, about a week into the month, she would go out and buy the masa and el puerco and whatever else, and she would drag several tons of it into the kitchen and make about twelve thousand tamales, each wrapped in its own individual corn shuck.

To this day, fortysomeodd years later, those tamales remain the best tamales I have ever eaten, and I have eaten a tamale or three in my time.

I know this, because Abuelita would sell the tamales to buy Christmas presents for her grandbabies. She'd drag out this ancient Radio Flyer little red wagon, and she would construct a charcoal stove in it, out of bricks, see? And she would wrap up those tamales in foil, a dozen to a pack, and she would cuddle them all up in the brick oven in that little red wagon, and she would throw on a serape and a head wrap and she would tramp all over the neighborhood, pulling that little red wagon, selling the tamales door to door.

I first saw the Tamale Abuelita when I was, I think, twelve, perhaps thirteen. There was a knock on the door, and I answered, and there was this little, bent over gramma lady, all of perhaps four feet tall, smiling at me with, I think, perhaps five teeth, asking, “Buenos dias, senor, por favor, compras me tamales?”

Now, I knew this would not end well. My old man (did I mention he was the cheapest guy on the planet?) did not OBJECT to door to door sales people, but he did not BUY from them. He’d sit there and lecture them on their approach, their product, their deportment, their pitch, and then shake their hand and leave them standing on the porch.

But I didn’t want to be the one to tell this sweet little old lady to take a hike, so I said, “Un momento, por favor,” and went and got Dad, so HE could be the one to give her a ten minute lecture and then not buy her tamales. Plus, his Spanish was better than mine.

So he went to get the door, and I returned to whatever teenage pursuits I was doing elsewhere in the house.

Next thing I know, Dad’s at my bedroom door. “I’m gonna buy her tamales. You have any cash?”

Now, I don’t know which bumfuzzled me worse: the idea that he was going to buy something from someone at the front door, or the idea that he wanted my money. I had learned the hard way that you did not give my father money. He might pay you back later. He might pay you back MUCH later. Or he might simply invoke the fact that he had raised you from a sprog and baby food ain’t free, and consider it a partial repayment of the expense of your upbringing; it really depended on his mood and how close to the end of the month it was.

I was so surprised, I gave him a fiver. He grinned, and thanked me, and then went to go hit up Mom, because he wanted to buy every tamale the woman HAD, several dozen of the things.

I don’t remember how much they cost. I do remember they were very reasonably priced, even for the late seventies. I DO remember they were considerably more than a quarter for three dozen, though, because that’s the only price that would have much moved my father to buy her entire stock. Or so I thought. But he scrounged up enough cash to buy her entire stock, and we ate tamales for a couple of days. Hey, no complaints; he even gave me my fiver back a day later.

So, the following year, it did not surprise me much that the little abuelita came back, and asked if we would like to buy any tamales. My old man had cash on him, and bought her out again. And this time, I saw her dimple and thank him profusely, and amble off with her little red wagon, trailing smoke from the charcoal oven made of bricks.

The third year, she hit our house FIRST. My old man, true to form, bought her out. By then, I had a car, and I spotted her later in the day, trailing smoke from her little red wagon. She’d gone home and loaded up more tamales. I like to think those grandbabies were getting the GOOD stuff by then.

She continued to show up, usually the second weekend in December, and I saw her even after I left home; I’d come home from college, and she’d turn up and smile at me, and I’d go fetch my old man, and then swear up and down I didn’t have a cent on me, and he’d go hit up Mom, who’d give me a dirty looke because she knew damn good and well I had cash, but she also understood why I didn’t necessarily want Dad to know that.

So we always had tamales around Christmas. I can still get them, living in Colorado, but it takes a bit more planning. I miss the Tamale Abuelita; I expect she’s long gone, being as she appeared to be about a thousand years old back in 1980, but she lives still in my heart and my memory… not only as a maker of some really fine fresh tamales… but as one of the few things, even in the Christmas season, that could get my old man to part with a sawbuck…