Kick Me

by Paul Feig

  Whatever the answer and no matter what anyone said, I was not swapping spit with anyone, especially a bunch of guys I didn’t even really like.

  So Norman’s friend would grab the bottle and take a drink and get his stupid mouth all over it and then a gang of Cub Scouts who were friends of the kid currently drinking would show up and take their turns and after an eternity I’d get the bottle back. The top would be coated with everything our grade school served for lunch that day and the few inches of liquid left at the bottom of the bottle would have about the same viscosity as old motor oil. I’d look at it and feel queasy and feel like crying but instead would try to sound casual and say, “You guys can have the rest. I’m not thirsty anymore.”

  “No way. I’m not drinking that. It’s all backwash.”

  Yeah, YOURS! What started out as a pleasant, tension-relieving interlude with a bottle of pop had once again turned into yet another in a long line of torturous moments that made up what were supposed to be my carefree days of youth.

  Self-imposed torture, granted. But torture nonetheless.

  Well, it was a couple of years later into this neurotic little world of mine, when I was in junior high school, that something happened during gym class that was to prove one of the most traumatic events of the spit-and-germ-avoiding segment of my childhood.

  Simply put, I met a girl. And that girl’s name was . . . Resusci-Annie.

  “Annie,” as I’ve affectionately come to know her, wasn’t a girl in the standard person-who’s-actually-alive sense. No, Annie was a mannequin, a life-size doll with a rubber head, a mouth, a working windpipe, a set of lungs, and a body that was in possession of neither arms nor legs. Resusci-Annie, Queen of the Latex Torso Women, was something invented by paramedics and CPR instructors to be used for the teaching of the uninitiated in the fine art of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  Annie also had one other thing going for her. . . .

  She was terrifying.

  The first traumatic thing about Annie was that she looked like a dead person. Her face was white and rubbery, her eyes were closed, her mouth was loosely open, exposing a disturbing set of rubber teeth, and she had a full mane of greasy, matted hair on top of her head. She hardly looked like someone anybody had a chance of saving. I’d throw a blanket over her face and start contacting next of kin if I saw her lying in the street. But as far as the emergency health care community was concerned, Annie had one purpose in this world and that was to be revived over and over again by anyone and everyone trying to master the very practical skills of lifesaving. A group, I’m ashamed to admit, I had no desire to join. If anyone was thinking of having a medical emergency around me back then, they’d better have made sure their life insurance was paid up, because I’d be about as useful to them as earplugs at a whispering contest.

  Mr. Wendell told us to gather in the center of the gym as we came out of the locker room. As we walked over, we saw Resusci-Annie lying on the floor.

  “Whoa, cool, a dead person,” said Norman, as if the sight of an actual armless and legless corpse would be something one could consider “cool.” We gathered around and stared at Annie.

  I had recently been taken to my first open-casket funeral by my parents and had gone up and viewed the body of the deceased. I didn’t really know the man who had died, but I was amazed at how alive he actually looked lying there. Although it’s a cliché, the guy truly looked like he was sleeping, as if his eyes might pop open at any moment and he’d yell at me to “Stop staring, you little big-nosed bastard.” Looking back on it, seeing a dead body like that should have been a traumatic experience, but with the sad organ music playing and flowers everywhere and people quietly crying, I was surprised at how well I had handled the whole thing. It seemed very natural. All part of life’s process. I had thought dead people would look different. I thought they’d be scary. I thought they’d give me nightmares.

  In short, I thought they’d look a lot like . . . well . . . like Resusci-Annie did that day. And as I stood there, staring at her lying on the dirty floor of my school’s gymnasium, my fear of dead people immediately came rushing back like the Johnstown Flood.

  Just then, a very large policeman with a big red drinker’s face and a handlebar mustache entered the gym and walked up to us.

  “Hello, gentlemen. My name is Sergeant Korn.” He said it loud and proud, like a guy who knew that since he was a cop, nobody was going to laugh at his goofy name. “As part of an organized effort to teach people in our community about emergency medical procedures, I’m here today to demonstrate to you the proper way to administer the life saving technique of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.” He droned on for several minutes about how this procedure could be used to revive a drowning victim or a choking victim or a victim of any number of other accidents and maladies that would send me running for the hills if someone around me actually fell victim to them. So I wasn’t exactly sure what I was supposed to get out of all this. However, if learning mouth-to-mouth meant it would keep us from having to play flag football or floor hockey or having to embark on yet another pointless attempt to do enough sit-ups to try to qualify for the much-unwanted President’s Physical Fitness Award, then I was all for it.

  “And now, with the help of my good friend Resusci-Annie here,” Sergeant Korn said, gesturing grandly and then chuckling at his allegedly cute comment, “I’m going to show you the correct way to administer the ‘Kiss of Life.’” And then, accompanied by an aria of grunts and groans, he awkwardly got down on his knees next to Annie. He stuck his fingers into her mouth, telling us that before we did anything, we were supposed to make sure that there were no “objects” blocking the victim’s throat. So, I wondered, before you saved someone, you were supposed to stick your fingers into his or her mouth and fish around for gum or a toothpick? Forget that. If a person was dumb enough to drown while chewing on a wad of Bubble Yum, then it’s not really my fault if he or she dies.

  Sergeant Korn pinched Annie’s deathly white nose, put his hand under her neck to “open the throat,” took a deep breath, put his mouth on top of Annie’s, and blew. Annie’s chest rose and fell. Sergeant Korn watched it, his face a bit redder than it had been a few seconds ago, then took another deep breath, put his mouth back on Annie’s, and blew again. Again her chest rose and fell. I immediately started to feel a bit nauseous. Even though we were watching a very clinical procedure, it had the feeling of something that we really shouldn’t be seeing. Maybe it was the image of an overweight cop on his hands and knees blowing into the mouth of an oversize doll and making his already uncomfortably red face even redder that made it feel more like I was watching a very low-quality porn film than a lifesaving demonstration. Unsettling images of Sergeant Korn’s private life with Mrs. Korn started to flood into my head. Fortunately, before I was able to ruminate on these mental pictures for too long, Sergeant Korn looked up and breathlessly said, “Resusci-Annie . . . now has enough air . . . to start breathing on her own again.” He took a few more deep breaths to compose himself. “And I can now feel good that I just saved a life.” And then he struggled to stand up again, improperly equipped as his body was for kneeling and bending, let alone chasing bad guys. How this man with the physique of a sumo wrestler got to be a cop was beyond my comprehension. But then again, this was small-town Michigan. Guys of this body type were as common a sight in one’s life as cars whose lower halves were completely eaten away by rust. However, hearing him pant and try to catch his breath, I had a momentary flash that Sergeant Korn might keel over and that one of us would then be expected to put our newfound Kiss of Life knowledge to the test.

  Well, I knew one thing for sure: that “one of us” wouldn’t be me.

  “Easy to revive a person, isn’t it?” said Sergeant Korn as he adjusted his belt and pants, his red face glowing like a shiny new fire truck.

  Sure. Easy as pie, I thought. Can we leave before Mr. Wendell makes us play Killer again?

  To be honest, I wasn’t really sure why
Mr. Wendell was showing us this in the first place. I guarantee that if I was lying on the ground unconscious and in need of revival, not one of my classmates would turn me into their Resusci-Danny. “I’m not gonna kiss him,” I could hear them saying. “I ain’t a homo.” Emergency’s Gage and DeSoto these guys were not.

  So, Sergeant Korn had shown us what he came to show us and I figured that was it. But it wasn’t. No, my friends, my nightmare was only beginning. Mr. Wendell stepped forward.

  “All right, you guys. Line up. You’re all gonna take a turn.”

  Huh? Excuse me? I’m sorry, I must not have heard you correctly. It sounded like you said that we were all going to take a turn giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to that doll that Sergeant Korn had just had his grown man’s mouth all over. That couldn’t be right. It would be completely unsanitary. That is, unless you have a bunch of freshly boiled and sterilized Resusci-Annies in the back, enough for each of us to have one of our own.

  I looked over at Mr. Wendell and saw him produce a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a rag. He dumped some alcohol onto the rag and wiped Sergeant Korn’s spit off of Annie’s mouth. My stomach dropped into my Keds. A wave of panic overtook me. My natural instincts kicked in and I immediately started for the locker room.

  “Feig! Where do you think you’re going?” yelled Mr. Wendell.

  “I have to get something out of my locker.”

  “It can wait. Get back here and line up.”

  My eyes zoomed in on Annie’s mouth. White and cold and open and now dripping with an indeterminate mixture of Sergeant Korn’s spit and alcohol. My head started to spin.

  “I said get in line, Feig.”

  My mind raced. This couldn’t be happening. But it was. My fellow classmates were starting to line up in front of Annie. There had to be some way out of this. It just wasn’t possible that I was going to have to put my mouth on that thing. Especially after other guys in my class were about to do it, too. Something had to be done.

  “Mr. Wendell, I think it’s against my religion to do stuff like this.”

  “Feig, I don’t care if you’re the pope. You’re doing this, so get in line.”

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. Visions of germs swimming en masse in a sea of spit sloshed through my brain. And as my panic rendered me stationary, my fellow classmates just kept lining up like lemmings. All my stalling was very quickly placing me at the back of the line. And yet I truly couldn’t move. I tried to engage in a logical discourse with myself. Maybe being at the back of the line would be a good thing, I thought, since class might end before I got up to Annie and I wouldn’t have to do it. But then I noticed that the line was moving at a pretty fast clip. Kids were reviving Annie one after another. Reality was starting to sink in.

  There was no way around it. I was eventually going to have to give Annie the Kiss of Life.

  I watched kid after kid kneel down in front of her. I saw her chest rise and fall a couple of times, then saw the kid walk away wiping his mouth and then saw more alcohol dumped on the rag that was now soaked with spit and disinfectant brought down to wipe off Annie’s face. I was really starting to feel sick. And this was before I realized that with all the air going in and out of Annie’s chest, there was a whole reservoir of lung germs inside my future Resusci-girlfriend just waiting to infect my body. I felt like a trapped animal, as I had so many times in this emotional gulag we called gym class. I had to get out of there but I knew I couldn’t. I was stuck, doomed, and now the last in line. More and more spit was being deposited on Annie by the second. Instead of having to revive her, I could accomplish the same effect by walking around the room and licking the inside of everyone’s mouth, including Sergeant Korn’s.

  I was getting closer. And now I noticed that the kid directly in front of me was Doug Blaychek, our school’s most infamous mentally retarded kid. He was a nice enough guy if you met him in the hallway, but he had extremely large and droopy lips that constantly seemed to be soaked with saliva. I’d always been unsettled by the sight of his spit-covered mouth, but until this moment the odds had been nonexistent that I’d ever have direct contact with it. But that was all about to change.

  Doug turned and gave me a big, wet smile. I forced one back at him. My life started to flash in front of my eyes.

  Four more people to go. I thought about running out of the gym and making a dash for home, but for all I knew, Sergeant Korn would chase me down and make me date Resusci-Annie.

  It was Doug’s turn. He kneeled down and bent over Annie. He took a loud, deep breath as if he were preparing to jump into the ocean to dive for pearls and put his mouth onto her face. I saw his back rise and fall several times as he tried to revive the lifeless rubber doll on the floor. However, it looked like Doug was actually trying to inflate her, and after a few moments, Sergeant Korn put his hand on Doug’s shoulder and said loudly, as if Doug were deaf, “Okay, that’s fine, young man. You saved her.”

  Doug stood up and threw his arms in the air as if he had just won the hundred-yard dash at the Special Olympics. As he moved away, I looked down.

  There she was. Annie. Her face was soaked. I didn’t know what part of that “soaked” was spit and what part was alcohol, and I didn’t care. It was a mess. And there was now officially no way I was going to do this. Mr. Wendell slapped the rag on Annie’s mouth and haphazardly pulled it across. Was that how he disinfected her every time? Annie’s face must now be a festering cesspool of disease and death.

  “All right, Feig. You’re up.”

  I just stood there, staring at Annie. Maybe if I throw up all over it, I won’t have to do it, I thought. No, I’m sure they’d just make me do it anyway.

  “C’mon, Feig. What is it with you? Get moving!” barked Mr. Wendell.

  “Yeah, c’mon, ya fag! Do it already!” yelled Norman. Sure, it was easy for him to say. Norman would probably wring out Mr. Wendell’s spit rag into a Dixie Riddle Cup and drink it for a quarter. My mind reeled. I had to do something and I had to do it immediately. But what? Think fast, I told myself.

  Then it hit me.

  Faint.

  I coughed violently and fell over. There was immediate commotion. I hadn’t been sure if they would buy my sudden and convenient fainting spell or not, but I guess that the perception of me as someone who was prissy enough to faint at the thought of giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was enough to convince them. As they all gathered around, I wasn’t sure if I should be insulted by this or not. But at that moment, all I cared about was how close I was to getting out of having to ingest a tidal wave of my peers’ saliva.

  “I’LL SAVE HIM!”

  It was Doug the retarded kid. New panic set in as I heard him stomp toward me to deliver his newly learned Kiss of Life. I was nanoseconds away from blowing my cover by screaming and running away when Mr. Wendell saved me by quickly grabbing Doug by the arm. “No, Blaychek,” said Mr. Wendell, “we don’t know if he needs mouth-to-mouth.”

  I was starting to feel pretty good about myself. I had done it. I had substituted a brief moment of colossal disgust for a nice lay-down and a shot at becoming the center of attention. And not only was I going to get out of Annie duty, but I’d probably get to go home early. It was only second period, so I’d be able to watch The Price Is Right and eat lunch in the safety of my own living room. I could practically taste the SpaghettiOs.

  “He coughed really loud before he fell down,” said Norman. Good, I thought, you were paying attention. Maybe now you’ll leave me alone when you realize this is probably just a delayed reaction to your drinking all my Squirt years ago.

  Sergeant Korn stepped forward and looked me over. “You said he coughed?” he asked, sounding tense and official.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Then he must have choked. Everybody step back.”

  And with that, Sergeant Korn stuck his fingers in my mouth, pinched my nose, and kissed me.

  I was home sick for three days.

  THE WORLD AND
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  MR. CHICKEN

  I was a huge chicken when I was a kid.

  It’s hard to say why, exactly. I mean, most kids are scared of one thing or another, but I just seemed to be afraid of absolutely everything. And when you’re afraid of everything, you’re going to be afraid of some pretty embarrassing stuff.

  Loud noises always scared me. Up until about the age of six, I always reacted to a thunderstorm in the same way: I’d clamp my hands over my ears and refuse to take them off until the thunder stopped, the storm clouds cleared, and the sun came back out. The loud rumbles and claps of thunder sounded to me as if the earth were exploding and about to fall apart, and I guess I figured that if I could keep the sound out of my head, I could somehow make myself exempt from the world’s destruction. My parents’ anecdote about the thunder being the by-product of bowling angels was of little comfort, making the sound even more off-putting because of the image their explanation conjured up— hundred-foot-tall giants in white robes with enormous, feather-covered wings growing out of their backs throwing balls the size of elephants down a lane made of roiling black clouds, knocking down pins that would crash on top of each other like the unsettling footage of falling trees I had seen on a National Geographic special about lumberjacks. My fear that these gigantic bowling pins might break through the clouds and fall on top of my house, killing us all, made me angry at these recreation-loving angels who were so self-absorbed that they had no idea how much they were traumatizing a kid who was forced to go to Sunday school every week just to learn about how wonderful they were supposed to be. If it was thundering during a meal and my parents wanted me to eat, one of them would have to feed me by hand because my palms would not leave my ears even if I was on the verge of starvation. I’d put my arms up and elbows out to the sides and clamp my hands so solidly onto the sides of my skull that the Jaws of Life couldn’t pry them off. I looked like a human loving cup, the living booby prize for my poor parents, who were quickly discovering that their only child was a neurotic mess.