Don't Sleep With a Bubba

by Susan Reinhardt

  Whew. “It’s okay, Johnny, but next time we need to feed the potty. The potty’s hungry. Everyone has to feed the potty or it will starve to death and we’ll have to use a festering outhouse, which is a hole in the ground with snakes and old doodies. You don’t want to squat over a pit of vipers and someone else’s doodies, do you?”

  He never pooped in his Pull-Ups again.

  Gym Time

  Gym time is fun for both the children and the teachers. It’s a great chance to relax, have fun and get even. It’s also a time when the selfish ambitions of this age show most.

  Sometimes, we let the kids have scooters to chase each other with. “I want the blue one.” “Gimmee the yellow one.” “I want the purple one like Savannah’s.”

  This is as irritating to a teacher as fingernails raking the blackboard. I had to handle this situation early in the school year. How could I deal with this whining all year? I came up with a plan.

  The next time it happened, I just looked at the first whiner and said, “You’ll get what you get and you’ll like it.” Except I didn’t really say it, I hissed it. He just stared at me, eyes wide-open, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. The next child dared to utter her color preference. She got the hiss as well. And so it went, down the line. I hissed at most all of the kids that day. Then I gave each one a little giggle.

  “You’re so silly, Mrs. Sandy,” they said.

  Silly? Maybe, but my plan worked. At least I thought it did until I started hearing the kids at the Lego table hissing at one another, saying, “I have a bunion in my nose and the potty is hungry and a rodent is in the outhouse and Tony is packing heat.”

  I just wonder how long my adorable sister will last at the upscale preschool. If they’re smart, they’ll double her pay and give her tenure.

  In closing, I’d like to thank my sister for sharing her experiences. I realize that if you are a young mother reading this, you’d just LOVE to have Sister Sandy as your baby angel’s preschool teacher!

  She rocks. Plus, she’s a Proper Picker.

  They Call Him Flipper, She Calls Him Hubby

  I know it’s sometimes hard to find the right man.

  But marrying a fish, I tell you, can’t possibly be the answer, even if that fish is really a dolphin, which is technically a mammal.

  A woman from London who couldn’t seem to find a decent man, decided to up and marry a dolphin. I’d much rather be known as the crazy lady who runs over and gives her dog a serotonin reuptake inhibitor than one who takes up with a dolphin.

  Well, bless his bottle-nosed heart. At least the woman landed herself a warm-blooded hubby and one who wouldn’t make her cook hot meals at night or wear thongs for his viewing pleasure.

  I imagine that when she met and married her darling dolphin, the phone call to her mother must have gone something like this:

  Ring, Ring, Ring. Answering is the British mother of this rich, middle-aged daughter who’s breathless with exciting news.

  “Mums, how are you? It’s me, your little Sharon, and I’ve finally found a husband who seems to truly fancy me.”

  “Well, darling, that’s jolly good. You sure waited long enough. What’s his bloody name, and what does he do for a living?”

  “It’s Cindy, but don’t worry. He’s a male and is 35 years old and perfect for me. I love him so much.”

  “Delightful, sweetheart, but what in God’s name does this chap do for a living? The last thing you brought in here had no job or a single prospect other than being a completely asinine sycophant.”

  “He’s in the entertainment business and doing quite well,” reported Sharon, the happy and blushing bride. “His aquatic skills are incomparable.”

  “Lovely, darling. Do be a dear and bring this young man to dinner, my love.”

  Pause. “But Mum, I can’t. He lives in Israel at a resort and reef and has many shows left to perform.”

  “Surely he can take some time off for his beloved bride and motor on up to meet his new family, my dear.”

  Longer pause and a few deep inhalations. “Mother…I’ve…er…Well, it would appear as such that I’ve married a…um…Well, some call them dolphins.”

  Silence ensues, followed by the sound of gurgling, ice cubes rattling in a glass, and perhaps bourbon flowing like water.

  “It’s not like we’re not both mammals, Mum.”

  I figure at that point her dear mum hit the floor and the phone went bouncing down the stairwell. This is what I imagined when I read about Sharon Tendler’s telling of relatives about her nuptials last year with Cindy, her “boy-toy” dolphin she met fifteen years ago while vacationing in Israel.

  Although the story of this rich Londoner marrying a dolphin sounds fishy, it’s apparently true. The media was abuzz when Tendler took the plunge and exchanged vows with Cindy in the waters of the groom’s home.

  Not since the controversy about Tinky Winky and Sponge-Bob SquarePants being fay or gay has the press had such a rollicking good time with a story.

  “At least it wasn’t a same-sex marriage,” quipped a coworker who’d had too much sugar one afternoon.

  I Googled the woman’s name, and tons of stories from reputable news sources popped up about her “marriage” to the dolphin who’d become the love of her life. The reports say that when she met Cindy the connection sparked and she began visiting him at the resort several times a year.

  As for the ceremony, the bride wore a white dress to the dock at Dolphin Reef, becoming the first person in the world to wed a dolphin, shocking a huge crowd of spectators. She bent on one knee, her hair framed in a veil and pink flowers, and gave Cindy a kiss and a nice piece of mackerel.

  The salty groom was waiting in the water after the ceremony, and friends tossed the happy bride into the pool to frolic with her new husband, their own version of a consummation.

  Another sugared-up and naughty but hilarious coworker suggested Cindy’s bottlenose might come in handy sometime.

  “I’m the happiest girl on Earth,” Tendler was quoted saying. “I made a dream come true, and I’m not a pervert. I really do love this dolphin.”

  According to the reports, the woman fell in love with this Flipper at first sight. She became the world’s first person to “marry” a dolphin, though many of us doubt this union is legal.

  This was the strangest story I’d come across since the one about a woman from Norway breast-feeding a litter of 17 orphaned pups, or the cat that dialed 911 for his unconscious owner.

  I’ll tell you a secret about how I discover this kind of news. Truth is, I sit right next to the entertainment editor who also writes the Beer Guy column and while slightly tipsy (a job requirement), he shows me these tidbits on the wire services. He has the kind of job where it is required he sample beers on company time, poor man.

  The features staff sit in a section of the newsroom I call the Colon, since there are no windows, and it’s a long and straight alleyway that ends in an exit door—the last flush before one leaves the building.

  We were all punchy from a hard and long day and trying to look on the bright side of this latest piece of bizarre news, thinking of advantages to having a husband at sea, so to speak. Here are our top reasons why marrying a dolphin could have certain perks:

  He doesn’t require three squares a day served from a
hot oven or a cold beer poured after a tough day chasing skirts. Or, in his case, chasing fish.

  He won’t leave the toilet seat up in the bathroom or his dirty socks on the floor.

  He probably won’t be flipping through any of the Victoria’s Secret catalogs.

  He won’t go to bars.

  His bottlenose will never go limp, thus eliminating the future need for Viagra or testosterone treatments.

  The bride doesn’t have to see her hubby but a few times a year.

  He can’t tell her that her butt’s gotten bigger than a chest of drawers or that her boobs hang like laundry on a line.

  He won’t notice when she’s gray and wrinkled and missing half her teeth.

  He’ll never watch ESPN or want to spend hours in front of the TV during the NCAA basketball tournaments.

  If he cheats on her, chances are she’ll never know.

  Later in the week, after testing a series of new microbrews at a local tavern and sitting at his computer to review and write about these high-alcohol content beverages, the Beer Guy scanned the wire again and brought up another winner. He was laughing so hard I thought he’d have a myocardial infarction or whatever those who drink and eat and are too merry often have.

  “Seems a woman in Iran had given birth to a frog,” he said, slurring slightly. “I’m not kidding, Sue. It’s right here in black and white. I’ll shoot you an e-mail and you’ll see.” He opened up a bag of barbecue potato chips to absorb his microbeer buzz.

  I read the story a few times, then went online to make sure it was true. About twenty different news sources carried the story including the BBC.

  “It’s probably the biggest birthing news since eight-baby Mandy,” the Beer Guy said. “Remember her? That British woman who back in the 90s packed eight fetuses in her womb but lost them all?”

  The frog birth was reported by the legitimate press and illegitimate press.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh about the absurdity of it all or cry for the poor woman who had survived labor and saw nothing for her efforts but a wet, gray frog surrounded in mud. I wondered if her husband had a video camera. Or if she even had a husband. Maybe she was just a desperate person making up the entire thing.

  The BBC online quoted the Iranian newspaper The Etemaad as saying that the amphibian grew inside the woman’s body, and that she probably picked up the larva while swimming in a dirty pool. Another news source said the gray frog was born alive and full term.

  The paper never reported how much it weighed, or whether they put it in an incubator or slipped one of those cute little caps on its head—all questions I wanted to know. It did say that the woman had two healthy HUMAN children.

  While the frog-child has yet to undergo genetic tests, The Etemaad says it sports quite a few human characteristics. If this is true, it’s DEFINITELY the strangest story I’ve ever read. It reminded me of the woman in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who told the parents of her granddaughter’s prospective groom that the lump on her neck was her former twin.

  According to news reports, a clinical biology expert is quoted as saying: “The similarities (between frog and human) are in appearance, the shape of the fingers and the size and shape of the tongue.” I thought frogs had, like, 24-inch tongues. If so, this frog-child got shortchanged getting a human tongue.

  I learned from one newspaper that the woman had a sonogram that showed a cyst, and for six months she didn’t have her monthly cycle. The cyst turned out to be the frog. I don’t know if I buy any of it, but comedians and jokesters all over the country, including friends and colleagues in our Colon, had a field day with the topic.

  One of the sweetest people in the newsroom had this to say:

  “What’s wrong with having a frog? I’d take it. It might be the only baby you ever have.”

  And she was right. Think of the many benefits of birthing a froglet. I’ll name some:

  There would be fewer flies in the house.

  You wouldn’t get stretch marks.

  I doubt there’d be a need for an epidural or episiotomy.

  You’d save a fortune on swim lessons.

  He’d be the Olympic Gold medallist in the long jump.

  You’d never again be the ugliest person in the room.

  Now, here are the downsides of mothering a frog:

  Decorating the nursery would be difficult, as an indoor pond might be costly and tadpole wallpaper is hard to come by.

  Cuddling could cause warts.

  The loud croaking could keep other family members up at night.

  All in all, there were more bonuses in adding a frog to the family than in not. One thing is certain: I’m not swimming in any dirty lakes this summer.

  Forget Muskrat Love

  W hat used to be considered a great Friday or Saturday night for dateless girls with A-cup bras and no fake ID cards was making prank phone calls.

  It was a pastime of my youth, a standard game at all-girl sleepovers prior to getting older and playing Spin the Bottle.

  With caller ID, Star 69 and other gotcha features, those pranking days are extinct unless you don’t mind going to prison or paying hefty fines.

  A few years ago, to get the immature thrills of the Crank Call days, I discovered message boards, and even a chat room where I thought I could anonymously act ugly and never get caught. I realize this is juvenile and probably a definable psychiatric condition, but I swear it cured my blues about as well as chocolate, target shooting, shopping and fiendish eBay bidding.

  It all started innocently enough and with good intentions, shortly after I’d found a message board devoted to a tropical island to which my husband and I were destined. We’d gotten a deal on an all-inclusive vacation package and I wanted to make sure I knew everything possible about the island, the hotel and its amenities. The more I read, the more convinced I became that the resort we’d chosen was a hangout for rowdy Spring Breakers, skanks, drunks, lechers and pervs.

  This is when I decided to adopt an alter ego and transform myself into the abominable Stinker Jenkins Brown, the bawdy cyberdrunk who liked prostitutes and corn “likker,” and would strike every few days to scare potential college-age vacation customers from the destination we’d chosen.

  I was afraid loud partygoers would overtake the place, and if I posed as Stinker Jenkins Brown coming to fester up the joint, maybe people would decide to go another week rather than the one we’d chosen, or panic and switch hotels. This is mean, I realize, and will buy you a coach class, one-way ticket to Hell if you asked my mama, but since it was Spring Break and most were just in the “Which Resort to Book” phase of the deal, I wanted to steer them elsewhere.

  I figured the staff would thank me in the end because such a group of ne’er-do-wells would tear up the hotel and repairs could cost a fortune. It’s much cheaper to have a hotel half-full of decent, law-abiding adults than having hundreds of Spring Breakers busting furniture, getting injured during drunk-capades and bringing about major lawsuits.

  Thus Stinker Jenkins Brown, age 62 and right out of prison, hit the message board and told all excited posters he was headed to St. Paradise to stay in the White Sands Resort and Villas. He struck the boards with a whiskey’d bang, and the following are examples of his posts showcasing my more ludicrous behavioral flaws.

  (I figure my immaturity is physically healthier than bulimia or meth-making, and financially sounder t
han a QVC or Home Shopping Network addiction. My mother, if she knew about Stinker Jenkins, would refuse to speak to me for at least four years. However, I came to love Stinker, and would release him every evening after supper and a few Michelobs in the months leading up to our first Caribbean vacation in fifteen years.)

  “Howdy, people. My name’s Stinker Jenkins Brown and I’m an old cuss from the hollers, fresh out of jail for a sex charge I didn’t commit ’cause by God she begged fur it and had just turned 13. She had more of a mustache than I do. That said and done, I need to escape and get really trashed and chase girls I’m not related to. I’m tired of my aunts and cousins. Hee har. So get ready folks. I’ll be at the White Sands Resort and Villas on April 2, with four of my best ‘Pen’ friends, which in case you don’t know, stands for penitentiary buds. I’m even getting my back waxed for the event and a new tattoo where the sun don’t shine.”

  For a month leading up to this trip we’d saved for years to take, Stinker appeared almost daily on the board, answering others’ posts with his hick wit and sarcasm. One poor man who kept posting irritating questions got the best of Stinker when he asked for the fourth time where on St. Paradise was the perfect place to take his new bride for a fabulous shrimp dinner.