Please Be Careful...

Do you remember me telling you all about the hidey-hole? Sure you do. We talked about it over cocktails last month sometime. Don't you remember? Come on. Put on your thinking cap and try to remember it. It was a nice conversation, as conversations go. We had cocktails, and you did that thing with the stem of a maraschino cherry.

You must remember it.

Here, let me get this IV going. Give me your arm. The other arm. Okay. Thank you. This medicine that I will introduce into your system will help you remember how I told you all about the hidey-hole. The medicine will feel a little cool as it enters your vein. Okay, maybe cold. Or rather, ice cold. All right, I'm sorry. It is actually painfully cold, isn't it? Well, you will warm up in a second.

There you go.

How are you feeling? You look pretty good. You look a lot better than Chaz over there. Chaz looks downright nauseous. He always gets that way when he has the IV going. Yes, it is the same medicine that you are getting. You look a lot better than Chaz does, though. What's that? You feel nauseous? That's okay. You look good, though.

Now then, tell me about the hidey-hole. Do you remember where I said it was? Do you remember how deep it is? Do you remember what I put in the hidey-hole? Let me show you this picture. Yes, that would be a picture of what we put down the hidey-hole. It looks bigger in person, though.

Oops. Let me get you a bucket.

There you go.

So you remember it, don't you? Of course you do. And you had your hand down the hidey-hole, didn't you? Sometimes people lose fingers when they put their hands into hidey-holes, so you should be very careful. Oh, it wasn't your hand? Yes, of course. You stepped into the hidey-hole. Well, that can be even more dangerous. Just imagine what you could step on. Make sure that you wear big, heavy boots with protective soles if you go stepping into hidey-holes in the future, okay?

But don't go stepping into hidey-holes, okay?

There, now. The IV is all done. You've done a fine job of remembering. Chaz? Oh, don't worry about Chaz. They always have to carry him away like that. The body bag? He just likes the secure feeling that it gives. Pay no attention to it. He's fine.

Here's a maraschino cherry. Can you do that thing with the stem again?

"Limping Through the Charleston" -or- "If This is St. Petersburg, Then Where Are All the Liposuction Clinics?"

Little Danny DiBlasio (no relation to the Connecticut DiBlasios, the Kennebunk DiBlasios, or even the DiBlasios over on 83^rd Street whose old man was a dope pusher in his spare time) looked at himself in the big mirror that hung outside the county building. He smoothed his little cowlick with a little bit of spit in his palm, and gave thanks that it was not a larger and angrier cow that had got to him when he was born. That was, of course, the story he was told. Heck, we were all told that story – about how old Doc Needleheim (the OB-GYN man who delivered us – every stinkin' one of us, in fact) was also into animal husbandry (still punishable by dismemberment under the laws of several states), and how when we were being whelped, one of his bovine companions strolled into the delivery room. Just as we popped our little noggin out of the birth canal, old Bessie reached over with that big old tongue of hers and took a lick of our salty little melon, still dripping with the juices of the womb.

Did I mention that you might not want to read this while eating breakfast?

Anyhow, Bessie took a lick, and now we all have these ridiculous patches of our hair that will not sit still when we try to style them. Cow licks. Licks from a cow. Uggh. That is what little Danny DiBlasio tried smoothing down with a little spit as he looked into the big mirror that hung outside the county building.

Little Danny looked at his watch and realized that he was late for his appointment. He gave up on his hair and ran up the flight of stairs into the flag-monger's shop, taking the last three steps in a leap. He opened the door and stepped inside, just as his nostrils were met with the heady, intoxicating aroma of brand-new flags, fresh from the oven. He breathed deeply and urinated. Just a little bit though. Urinated, that is. He breathed deeply but urinated sparsely. I think you know what I'm talking about here.

Or do you?

The elderly woman behind the counter addressed little Danny DiBlasio ever so abruptly. She croaked some kind of words at him. They might have been Croatian – Danny was not completely sure. He nodded politely and tried to reply in the only semblance of a foreign language he could muster.

“Me have-o appointiamente con el anager-may of-o los flagoleo shoppo,” tried Danny. “Danke schoen, y muchas dinero, babycakes.”

The woman behind the counter stood up and broke wind. An uncomfortable silence ensued, which Danny tried to break by feigning a coughing and choking spasm. The woman quickly left the room and Danny thought that perhaps he should have feigned a seizure instead – that one works every time, he thought to himself.

In but a moment, the man that Danny knew as “Clubb-o” appeared behind the counter, twirling his mustache, which he kept in a small box. He looked at Danny, stroked his mustache twice, put it back in the box, snapped the cover shut and slid it into one of his trouser pockets. One must always keep one's mustache close at hand, you know.

“Forty-eight of them?” asked Clubb-o at long last.

“Forty-eight,” replied little Danny DiBlasio.

“I'll have them ready for you next Tuesday,” said Clubb-o, turning on his heel and disappearing into his shop.

“Thank you,” said to Danny DiBlasio to the thin air.

“No y problemas, tovarish. Ich habe ein oompa-loompa im mein hosen,” said the elderly woman – in flawlessly fluent Croatian.