AH HA!

I am a fresh air addict and I am still refusing to close my windows at night despite the low early morning temperatures. In order to close them, I'd have to admit that summer and the best of autumn have been defeated. I will have to resign myself to it one day as I always do, but I don't like it.

There is another reason to shut your windows but it's a rare one. Skunks.

I awoke around 4 am this morning to a horrible stench that was so bad IT probably was the reason I woke up. I lay there, knowing exactly what that foul odor was and figured the neighborhood skunk had ambled across my backyard, leaving a trail of perfume, or had sprayed something nearby. I tried to go back to sleep but that burnt garlic odor kept rousing me. So I use a trick I learned as a kid when we drove past pig farms in Seekonk, I breathed through my mouth. That does the trick!

There used to be a joke shop in Downtown Pawtucket. I never went to it being so far away and too young to go alone. My older brother and his friends did however. My brother's friend, nicknamed Burnsy, bought a bottle of Skunk Perfume. It was some sort of sulfurous compound that spread through the air like perfume does. The point was to open it up stealthily and let the liquid vaporize off and stink up a room, car or whatnot. You then can accuse anyone with you of not showering or what have you. The stuff really did reek as Burnsy managed to sucker me into taking a good whiff of the stuff when I was five. Ugh!

What he had done with it, I thought pretty creative and cruel. After leaving the joke shop, they went to a diner on Main St to get some burgers. After they were done eating, Burnsy quietly opens the bottle and lets the vapors drift off down the line of patrons seated at the diner's “bar.” He and my brother told me several of the customers started coughing and gagging to the stench. One got up and left w/o paying his bill.

What a nasty thing to do! While people are eating, you gas them with man-made skunk. When I was told of this, being five, I roared with laughter, as did Burnsy and others. I had to ask if anyone puked as that would've made the joke even funnier. These things are humorous to boys who are under twelve you know.

Burnsy then decided to use the rest of it by pouring some if it in one of those old plastic squirt guns, mixed with water. Without saying anything, he pumped the thing about six times into the chest of Rachel M. who was standing with us. She nearly puked herself from the odor. His chosen targets were any of the girls in neighborhood, since they were most likely to be completely disgusted. He managed to get three of the girls who couldn't run away in time.

We all had a good laugh until two of the girl's mothers came walking down the street. We all became pretty quiet when they both walked up to Burnsy's house and disappeared inside. About 90 seconds later we heard, “ROBERT!!!!! YOU COME HOME RIGHT NOW!”

Burnsy was cooked. His Mom had been informed of his misdeeds.

I could tell you of the many 'stink bombs' some kids lit off in Goff Jr High near the end of the school year, but that happened on such a regular basis it became dull.

I saw this and it was gross, but funny. Boys are notorious for doing anything particularly low to one another for comedy.

We had a kid on this street, Kevin who was a year or two younger than my cohort, and six years younger than the guys in my brother's group. Kevin was needy, loud, annoying and always tagging along wanting to be included. Our group included him but my brother's friends just tortured the poor thing.

Chubsy, my brother’s friend, was drinking a Coke when little Kevin asked if he could have some. Chubsy, then with a compassionate lilt in his voice said, “Sure!”

He says to Kevin.

“Open your mouth and close your eyes I'm gonna give you a big surprise.”

Now since Kevin was much younger, naïve and in desperate need for some liquid candy, did exactly as Chubsy told him too.

Then I saw this.

Chubsy, from deep down in his throat, hacks up a glob of very thick mucous and spits, literally fires the thing into Kevin's mouth.

Kevin didn't quite know just what he had received until he saw the rest of us either laugh or stand there in open-mouthed in amazement. Chubsy couldn't stop from laughing.

Poor Kevin, his little child like mind finally figured it out and he spit out Chubsy's spit. Once more, Kevin runs crying home.

This wasn't a practical joke but it displays the real boorish behavior that was fairly endemic with our group so long ago.

Supanic (and I use his real last name!) and my brother are driving down Hamlet St when, up ahead, they see a little girl on her bike take an awful spill on the sidewalk. My brother told me she perfectly went SPLAT onto the concrete.

Supanic, who was driving, pulls over into the opposite lane to get real close to the girl and then points at her from his open window and let's go some riotous laughter.

“AH HA HA HA HA! AH HA HA HA!”

The poor girl, crying from smacking the sidewalk now has to put up with a 17 year old's sense of humor.

When told of this, I too laughed at the gall it took to do this. Then in the same thought, the poor kid and how she grew up waay too fast that afternoon, learning about callous teens.

*****

Ya know, growing up in my neighborhood and the schools I attended gave rise to a few thoughts in me. I would witness things, like cruelties and how teachers in our classes would spend a quarter of the time telling us to SHUT UP. I began to think there was something not quite right with my generation. Or at least far too many examples of weird behavior. I don't know. I have no idea if the kids of today are just as bad, perhaps they are.