MOAR BUTTZ, a tale told with pictorial accompaniment.

On January 16, 2014January 16, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Parenting12 Comments

So for the last couple of days the boy has been all

and, frankly, it’s starting to look really unpleasant. He’s clearly not terribly happy with the situation either.

My wife gets home from work today and tells me she has a mission for me. I’ll be honest: I was tired (again) and hungry (again) and more than a little aggravated already for reasons that I don’t plan to go into and the thought of a mission was not entirely pleasing to me.

“Describe the nature of this mission,” I requested.

“I need you to get butt paste,” she said.

“Butt paste.” I replied. I made sure to phrase it in such a way that she heard the period at the end of the sentence.

“Butt paste,” she says. “I’m hoping you can get it at Martin’s.”

(Context: Martin’s is our local grocery store; it’s a chain but I’m pretty sure it’s limited to north-central Indiana and maybe lower Michigan.)

I look up Butt Paste on the Internet, which sadly is probably not the oddest search I’m going to perform on the Internet this week. It turns out that there is a product specifically called Butt Paste. Check the URL: you find it at buttpaste.com, which should not be a website for medical supplies. However, frighteningly, that is not the Butt Paste that I’m looking for.

What I’m looking for– what the pediatrician apparently explicitly suggested my wife try to locate– is actually called Dr. Sirlin’s Bottom Ointment, which still sounds inappropriate. Dr. Sirlin’s Bottom Ointment is, near as I can tell, only sold in one place on Earth, but more on them later. Needless to say, that place isn’t Martin’s. My wife calls Martin’s anyway, just to be sure, and asks the pharmacist who answers the phone if they carry, no shit, this is a direct quote: “Dr. Sirlin’s butt paste. For butts. Baby butts.”

I consider protesting the use of the phrase butt paste for this query, because we aren’t looking for butt paste, we’re looking for bottom ointment, which is clearly very different. I do not actually voice the query. The person on the other line comes back quickly with an affirmative. We have butt paste! Go for butt paste!

And I’m off to Martin’s. It’s not far away from home, which is the reason we’d rather go there. Once I get there I arrive timed perfectly with a car leaving a very choice parking spot, which I wait for. The driver of the other car, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to get that I want her parking spot, and keeps trying to wave me on past her, thinking she’s being polite, and no amount of flailing and pointing at the empty goddamn parking spot on my part convinces her otherwise. So instead I park here:

And into Martin’s I go. To be greeted with a conundrum! Cute Cashier Girl is for some reason working at the pharmacy counter. Cute Cashier Girl, I hope to God, is in her early twenties. She’s a cashier, though! She’s not supposed to be at the pharmacy!

I cannot ask Cute Cashier Girl for butt paste. I’m gonna try and be all suave, like

but I know me. It’s gonna come off all

I cannot do this.

I spend a moment considering other options and can’t think of any. I approach the counter. She smiles cheerily and asks if she can help me, with no idea of the horror of the request I’m about to make of her.

“I’m looking for something called Dr. Sirlin’s Ointment?” I omit the word bottom, because I cannot say bottom to this lovely young lady. “I understand it’s supposed to be behind the counter for some reason.”

She looks quizzically at me, then looks around for a minute.

“I don’t see it. What’s it for?”

Don’t say butts.

“Diaper rash.” Ha! I win!

She lights up, smiling again. “Oh! You’re the butt paste guy!”

Oh hell no. I am a lot of things, Cute Cashier Girl, but I am sure as hell not butt paste guy. No. Uh-uh. No goddamn way.

The butt paste, apparently, is not behind the counter. It is actually in the baby aisle. I swallow what is left of my dignity and head for the baby aisle, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt what is about to happen. And my worst fears come true:

God dammit. That, you will notice, is not Dr. Sirlin’s Bottom Ointment. That’s fucking butt paste. I don’t want butt paste. I want bottom ointment.

I pick up the box, cursing God and all creation, and return to the pharmacy counter. She’s still there, of course, it’s not like the goddamn baby aisle is that far away.

“I have a, uh, follow-up question?”

“Oh, okay!” oh god she hates me so much she’s actually got her bright cheery smile on her face, and a bit of a twinkle in her eye that suggests to me that she’s enjoying my pain.

“I assume you are the one my wife talked to.”

“Yep!”

“She asked for Dr. Sirlin’s… (makes a face) Butt Paste. The stuff we want is actually called

Bottom ointment. I thought this might happen. Do you have the ointment? This isn’t actually what I’m looking for.”

She looks around again and then signals the actual pharmacist, who has been hiding behind a rack of drugs and trying her damnedest to keep a fucking straight face. The pharmacist confirms that, no, they don’t have Bottom Ointment. Just Butt Paste. So I have to go to the other place.

I thank her for her time and apologize for my own nonsense. Off to the car!

There are two reasons I don’t want to go to this other establishment. One I’ll get to later. The other is that they are a million miles away. They are literally not in the same town I’m in. I don’t want to go to another town for butt paste or bottom ointment. I want to be home, eating dinner. In my town.

But I love my wife, and I love my son, at least the non-butt parts of him. So off I go. I drive past this place on my way home from OtherJob all the time, so I know where it is, and I head there– to OtherJob, not quite realizing until it’s slightly too late that I drive past it on the way home from OtherJob, and for reasons that are not interesting I generally drive home from OtherJob via a different route than I take to get to OtherJob. So I’m going the wrong way.

Once I realize this and correct my course, I still manage to make two fucking wrong turns before successfully arriving at Pharmacy Two. On the way over to the pharmacy, it occurs to me that I am so fucking blogging this shit when I get home. I take a moment in their parking lot and compose an entertaining Tweet to that effect. Then I get out and go inside.

Well, I try to. As I’m reaching for the fucking door, an employee locks the fucking thing from the inside and points at a sign next to the door. The sign cheerfully informs me that this fucking place closes at six, as pharmacies do oh wait no they fucking don’t, ever.

I look at my watch.

It’s five fucking fifty-eight.

At this point my mood somewhat transitions.

I was entertained with this bullshit up until this exact fucking second.

You did not just LOCK A FUCKING DOOR IN MY FUCKING FACE TWO FUCKING MINUTES BEFORE FUCKING CLOSING AT A FUCKING ***PHARMACY***. It ain’t goddamn 1983 anymore. My fucking watch ties into a goddamn satellite that tells it what time it is. I can’t even adjust the motherfucker. It ain’t goddamn 6:00 yet, which means your ass isn’t fucking closed yet.

Listen, bitch, this ain’t fucking Barnes and Noble and it isn’t fucking Applebee’s. I am not fucking here to browse. You’re a pharmacy, motherfucker, and no fucker anywhere goes to a fucking pharmacy unless they motherfucking need to. I am there to get my shit and get the fuck out, and don’t you dare fucking thing for one fucking second that I can’t see that there is at least one motherfucker in there who isn’t dressed like he’s at fucking work.

I have two fuckin’ choices here. One is to go home. The other is to go to jail. Jail will no doubt feel better but either way there will be no fucking Bottom Ointment.

Not. Happy.

I went home and had dinner. A bit more research after dinner indicated that Dr. Sirlin’s Bottom Ointment is apparently produced by this pharmacy. It’s literally the only place you can get it other than the Internet. Well, fuck them.

Butt Paste it is. I return to Martin’s.

I collect my Butt Paste. I go back to the pharmacy counter, because I’m buying this with a damn flex account and it’s easier if we just use the pharmacy counter to buy anything medical-related. She’s still there, naturally. And she, I swear to God, says:

“There’s a story here, isn’t there.”

Oh sweetie. You have no idea.

(ADDENDUM: I didn’t include this in context because it kinda kills the tone of the piece, but the other reason I don’t like this pharmacy? They tried to kill my dog. My dog in high school/early college developed epilepsy, and rather than try to get a canine version of the drug they needed the vet just contracted through them to produce his medicine– which happened to be in liquid form. He was on the stuff for quite a while, and at some point we went in and got a bottle that was a radically different color and consistency than every other version of the medicine we’d gotten. The pharmacist not only argued with my mother about whether the medicine was different, at one point he actually said the words “Look, it’s just for a dog.” So this is the second time this place has nearly resulted in a member of my family going to jail. Merrill Pharmacy in Mishawaka, Indiana? Go fuck yourselves.)

(FINAL NOTE: As I was finishing this post up, my wife, who has been bathing our son, sticks her head into the office. “Hey, babe? There’s poop in the tub.” Because of course there is.)

The End.

In which I almost die but don’t

On November 13, 2013November 14, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy8 Comments

IMPORTANT NOTE: Spoiler alert; I don’t die at the end, and neither does anyone else.

Also, I’m literally making dinner while typing this, so I may be slightly less coherent than usual. I’ll be stopping every couple of sentences to stir and it may distract me a bit.

Also also: the last time I made this dish I forgot the goddamn avocado. Don’t let me forget the avocado!

Anyway. Every Wednesday, without fail, I go to the comic shop after work, because Wednesday is New Comics Day and us nerds need our comic books. I left work today kinda weak and dishevelled; it was a pretty damn good day for the most part (needed, after Monday, and I even have another nice story or two I might type out later) but I wasn’t feeling well again this morning and I needed something to eat. I found myself with the rarest, but hardest to deny, of cravings: Chicken McNuggets.

So I got some. I’m a grown-ass man; if I wanna play to stereotypes by buying Chicken McNuggets to eat in my car while I drive to the comic shop, that’s what I’m gonna do. Also, sweet tea, because why would I pass up sweet tea? No damn reason at all, that’s why, and you’re a filthy Communist for even asking.

(This kind of thinking may be one of the reasons my ass is… well, grown.)

(Before I get any farther: yes, I know exactly how stupid every part of this is, especially the part where I deliberately eat Chicken McNuggets and french fries as a fucking mid-meal snack like some sort of animal, and I’m making a goddamn vegan dinner to make up for it.)

So, yeah, picture this: I’ve dumped the fries and McNuggets out of their original packaging and into the bag to make them easier to eat while I drive. The bag is in my lap, and my tasty beverage is in a cupholder to my right. I scarf a McNugget or two and a couple of fries and then, pulling out into traffic on what I should point out is a fairly busy road, reach down and to my right and pick up my beverage. By the rim of the cup, around the lid.

Note that I have performed this maneuver dozens, nay, hundreds of times in my life without incident. No more!

I lift my delicious iced sugary beverage to my mouth to partake of its loveliness and the fucking lid falls off. Well, not quite: the lid stays where the fuck it is. The cup falls off.

A number of things, as they say, happened very fast.

I may have said a swear.

I yanked my knees up to catch the cup and leaned forward. Now, this seems as if it should be impossible, as I’m typing it, but if I’m lying to you at least the lie is entertaining: I somehow pinned the cup in between my upper body and the wheel before it hit my lap and exploded, losing only a miraculously small amount of liquid. Of course, this wasn’t terribly helpful, as the car was moving and the act of yanking my knees up removed my foot from the accelerator and also took it away from the brake.

This is bad. There was traffic.

Somehow– in a feat requiring either ninja reflexes or the will of God or incredible bloody-arsed luck or, most likely, at least two of the three, I managed to get the cup away from the wheel, into the cupholder, and my car out of oncoming traffic and flowing properly with no more than a couple of tablespoons of liquid ending up on my coat and in my lap. I decided to stop pressing my goddamn stupid luck and waited until I got to the comic shop to eat the rest of my disgusting, fat-laced calorrific “snack.”

And then had to text my wife to be talked out of buying the incredibly awesome Hulk statue pictured above, where– I swear to God this is true– part of my justification process for trying to talk myself into it was “Fuck it, I already spent a grand on the cat this week; I may as well blow some money on myself.”

I educate your kids, folks.

I’m in this job for the paperwork

On October 17, 2013October 17, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting, Politics3 Comments

Random, before I start: my neighbors have big (thirty feet? I’m bad at estimating distances) columns supporting a portico (or are the columns part of the portico? I’m also bad at architecture) in front of their house. There’s an honest-to-god woodpecker at the top of one of them; I heard the bastard when I got out of my car after getting home this afternoon. He’s ~~wailing~~ whaling (bad at homonyms!) away up there. Is that something I should tell them about?

Anyway. It’s bullying awareness week, or some such bullshit. Or maybe it was last week; I’m not aware enough to be sure. Here is how most people think bullying works: A bunch of children mercilessly pick on one poor bullied student, causing him to be very sad and blah blah blah. Here is how bullying actually works, most of the time: everyone involved is an asshole and a bad actor and everyone involved is doing their best to make everyone else involved miserable as best they can, and the ones who are either the sneakiest or the quickest to file paperwork get to be the “victims” while everyone else gets to be the “bullies.” Oh, and every time the word gets used I have a legally-mandated two days to “do an investigation” and a bunch of complicated paperwork to fill out, only to find out that Suzie told Allie that Shelly said that Sammi said that Sharon said that Allie said that Sheryl was a slut, only it turns out that Shelly didn’t actually say that, Sharon said that Allie said that to Shelly but Suzie is dating Sammi’s ex-boyfriend and Sharon’s mad at her because of it so Suzie actually said that Sammi was a slut because she was defending her on Facebook and today this is a world-ending crisis and the very second I’m done with the paperwork they’ll all be best friends again and oh never mind we worked it out until they hate each other again next week.

If you think I’m exaggerating, you’re not a teacher. I have been doing this job for twelve years and I can count the number of unambiguous instances of clear bullying that I have witnessed on one hand. Everything and I mean everything else has been mostly-mutual teenage bullshit of some kind or another.

That said, one of the events I’m about to describe so far may actually be pretty clear-cut, but I haven’t done my investigation yet.

Keep in mind, by the way, that these are seventh-graders. Thirteen-year-olds.

My third and fourth hour got wrecked because of some vile combination of the following events: 1) One student suggesting to another student that she’d be open to a threesome with her ex-boyfriend and one of his friends; 2) That student reporting to the ex-boyfriend and the buddy that said threesome was a possibility; 3) Upon being asked about the possibility of said threesome via Facebook message (I’ve not seen this message, but other staff members have) the original young lady replied “No… well, maybe… LOL” and then was 4) surprised somehow when the two young gentlemen in question told everyone they knew that this was going to happen. And then during art today there was apparently 5) an attempt to get the threesome bargained down to some oral sex for the non-ex-boyfriend while the ex-boyfriend, apparently, watched. Throw in a different ex-girlfriend of the same dude doing her best to keep her nose in their business and one of the two guys deciding to try to get everyone to ostracize the second girl in the first conversation and you have eaten my entire day, as all four of the principals involved are in my third and fourth hour.

Note that, legally, this isn’t bullying, and I know this because we just had a meeting where we went over the legal definition of bullying in great detail. And also note that none of it took place in school and yet it destroyed not only my entire day but at least two other staff members’ days as well. (And while we’re noting things, note that this still qualifies as sexual harassment and it’s not being ignored.)

I’m leaving the school counselor’s office after spending the first half of my prep period with her and one of my paraprofessionals hashing all this out and making sure we’ve written down everything and notified everybody we need to notify. I’ve done no actual preparing during my prep period. I never do any preparing during prep; that’s Fireman Hour.

I walk to my room, sit down at my desk, and start composing an email. The teacher next door walks into my classroom with another kid in tow– a student who I had in sixth grade two years ago who I just last week had referred to a risk-assessment psychologist on account of she’s cutting herself. The student is being disruptive and making her job impossible and can she stay in my room for a bit? Sure, why not, this email’s gonna take me a few minutes and I’d prefer to have a good excuse to stay in my room if I can have one.

Less than five minutes later, I’m taking her back to the nurse because she’s started shrieking and ranting about how ridiculous it is that anyone thinks they can stop her from hurting herself because it’s her body and she’s gonna hurt herself if she wants to. Well, fuckin’ great, let’s go talk to that psychologist again. I go get the counselor (whose office, remember, I’ve just left) again and that eats another fifteen minutes of the only break (to do everything else I have to do but teach) that I have each day. I have just enough time to run down to my room and get something that I need to have photocopied by the morning; I make it down to the photocopier as the bell is ringing and discover that the photocopier is broken.

Well, great.

Off to the gym, where I make the seventh and eighth graders sit where they’re supposed to and call off buses as they arrive. I spot one of my (7th grade) homeroom girls, normally the sunniest, biggest-smiled kid you’ve ever seen in your life, sitting in the stands, bawling her eyes out.

No goddammit don’t ask this can only cause trouble what are you doing jesus this day is long enough don’t you NO GODDAMMIT YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHY ARE YOU WAVING HER OVER JESUS STOP IT NO NO

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

I consider simply replying “Bullshit” and don’t; there are a few buses gone by now and there are a bunch of other teachers in the gym, so I can pull her into the hallway without officially abandoning what I’m actually supposed to be doing.

We go into the hallway.

“Let’s try that again.”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. Sobs again.

“Sweetie, there’s absolutely no way I’m letting you get on the bus like this. Tell. Me. What. Happened.”

“(Eighth-grade dumbfuck) won’t leave me alone. He asked me out yesterday and I said no and he just keeps asking and he’s been bugging me about it all day. I can’t get him to stop.” And she starts bawling again.

Which: again, not bullying. But is, again, at least at first blush, a pretty damn clear-cut case of sexual harassment. By some sort of divine providence, the dumbfuck in question is part of the reason that the wrist-cutter earlier got put into my classroom; the two of them were feuding about something too.

I note that he’s already left and ask her if he has her phone number and if she thinks he’ll be calling or texting or Facebooking or anything like that tonight or if he knows where she lives or if she will be quit of him until school starts tomorrow. She confirms that he has no way to get in touch with her and I tell her that we’ll talk about this tomorrow morning. I reflect that she has many older brothers (like, seriously, at least four, plus at least one sister) and consider simply making sure that they have this kid’s address.

I put her on the bus and stop in the counselor’s office on my way out, asking her if she has any room on her lap left, and (as I am mandated to do by law whenever I encounter instances of sexual harassment or bullying) notify her as to the content of the conversation I’ve just had and that I’ll be following up with my official within-two-work-days investigation during homeroom.

At least I know what I’ll be doing during seventh hour tomorrow.

OH WAIT SHIT I FORGOT THIS PART edit: I end the conversation with the counselor early because there is a parent in the office who is screaming at the attendance secretary so loudly that I can hear it halfway down the hallway through two closed doors. As it works out, both the principal and the assistant principal have been out of the building all afternoon at different meetings and so there is really no one in the office who the secretary can refer her to.

“Yeah, I’ll talk to you tomorrow, I’mma go deal with that,” I tell the counselor, and leave her office, attempting to summon my Calm Face. Luckily for (very likely) everyone involved, by the time I got down there another teacher had intervened already and maneuvered the lunatic into the hallway and out of the office. As it turned out he was apparently who she was looking for anyway; I hung around for a minute until I decided he didn’t really need any help (turns out that kids who are angry psychotics tend to have angry psychotic parents; who knew?) and went down to my room to get my stuff, the music of her discontent accompanying me the whole way.

The end.