Disgruntled Would-Be Memoirist Bitten on Fanny
Hey who wouldn’t want to write a disgruntled memoir about all the shady stuff they we're forced to live with? Back when it was Howdy Doody Time for all us early Boomers how frequently did I myself want to set down in black and white the abuses I suffered as a toddler when mothers would routinely shut their wee ones up in the ingenious Gitmo-style restraint knows as the "Snuggle Ducky,” a sort of zippered cotton envelope which prevented a person from sucking on his fingers or toes, forced him to lie as if crucified, unable even to scratch his nose - I choke back old tears writing this - able only to do what my three-year-old self bravely, gamely, spoke of as ‘making cookies ‘ which meant using the only thing I had, my little rosebud of a baby mouth to suck little circles of moisture onto the cloth as the only source of sleepytime fun. ~ SOB! ~
Plus, I was also given enemas, right in front of three, sometimes four wildly smiling older women. (What was it with the enema and the woman of former times, can somebody tell me?) Also, my sister and I were taken out on leashes, in public! Also tied to the maple tree out front so we wouldn’t wander off.
In other words I can totally identify with this Scott McClellan dude and his exposé of life in the White House. And the only thing that stops me from taking pen in hand and writing up my own book of Humphs and Grievance is the sad fact that I myself live in fear now: of my very own cats of all things who I can just tell in the twilight of their careers have totally forgotten the meaning of loyalty and are poised to start talking to the media. And I know what they’ll cite: The tuna-flavored lip balm designed to bring up hairballs; the odd thermometer addressed to their nether parts when such a thing proved needful; the cry of genital mutilation from our boycat, just because he got his pee-pee cut off this spring BUT NONE OF THESE WERE MY IDEA, they were the vet’s, and the vet is my superior and nothing is my fault ever and all right so I won’t write my memoirs but continue instead to hold my tongue and lick my wounds poor me, poor sainted, sainted me.
