Friday, July 6, 2007

Are You Quite Sure You Wouldn't Like Some of my Corn Dog?

Well, it's been almost three weeks since my last embarassing post, so I thought I'd make with another one, since apparently my TiVo Chronicles have driven my readership to serial yawning. This incident took place when I was 15 years old, some 23 years ago.
My first real girlfriend was a girl named M. M, if you're out there, stay there. M was 17 and was at that point already a woman of the world, if you catch my drift. To her credit she wasted no time in making me a man of the world. We knocked around for about a year and a half before I just got so sick and tired of her endless whining and adolescent insecurities that I, at this point a boy of 16, actually turned down the nookie just to not be with her. But I digress.
I first decided to ask her to go steady with me when we went to the Topsfield Fair, a local ag fair and carnival that is an institution in our little corner of the world. I took M there and was encouraged by the signs she was putting off - she let me put my hand in her back pocket in that cool '80's way that people did, so I got to look cool as well as touch her hiney. Also in the ride of horrors or whatever the hell it was, she let me kiss her, so I figured, ok, I have something here.
So later that afternoon, after popcorn and corn dogs and chips and a bunch of other fair fare, we were strolling, hand in hiney, until we came across a ride that looked harmless enough. M begged to go on the ride and, like a grade-a jackass already thinking with the wrong head, I agreed. The ride -- ugh, I still shudder just thinking about it -- was basically a washing machine. You sat down, they strapped you in rather aggressively, and then pressed a button, which apparently started the spin cycle. We were hurtled forward like two astronauts in training, around and around and around at dizzying speed. The color drained from my face and I could feel every piece of popcorn, every bite of corn dog, straining to slip the surly bonds of my stomach.
At last came a glorious moment when I felt that the ride was slowing down. After checking to make sure it wasn't my own consciousness ebbing away from me, I felt with aching relief that this hell-trip was soon to be at its end, and that whatever desire my lunch had to once again see the light of day would go unfullfilled. The ride slowed ever more, until at last, it came to a blessed stop.
Then started going around, backward, just as fast as before.
This was obviously far too much to bear.
I'm not proud of what happened next - it certainly could be described as a candidate for "worst date moment ever." No verbal treatment, no passage of time, can sugarcoat it: I threw up spectacularly, over me, over M, over the ride, over everything. The centrifugal force applied on us meant that instead of just dripping slowly off our clothes, and M's face, it streamed out from the original landing points like raindrops on a windshield. And since the food in my stomach was relatively new and thus mostly undigested, it was sickeningly recognizable as it came out.
It was, in short, a disaster. But M, without a thought for herself or her predicament, led me by the arm to the nearest bundle of napkins and started cleaning us up. The only emotion she showed was concern for me, and I found that endearing as all hell. I kissed her (THAT must've been swell) and asked her to wear my pin, as it were, thinking it an upgrade from the contents of my stomach. And from that point on we were an item, until I made the correct decision that no amount of hiney touching was worth her incessant whining and complaining.

2 comments:

  1. LOL Glad to see you're back writing the funny stuff. I certainly enjoy your dirt dog articles, but nothing puts a smile on my face like your writing, when you're describing your own misery.....and for that, I thank you.

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  2. I must confess:
    socks + slippery hardwood=airborne
    is far more amusing than
    fair food + fair rides=vomit.

    Although, "rain drops on a windshield" was a nice touch.

    Thanks for the afternoon giggle!

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