Andra Clark:  

Cookies and Catastrophe When I was a kid growing up in Denver, the fad for wearing the shirt collar turned up, a la James Dean, was big time. So was the D. A. haircut (resembling the hindquarters of a duck), and the boys did their best to locate the waistband of their jeans and chino pants somewhere between their pointy pelvis bones and sheer disaster.Etched in memory, along with Eddy Bennet throwing up on me in church, and my first kiss, is the day that will live forever in junior high infamy. I was walking to class behind Chucky Lucero - a guy so utterly cool that every girl in the class of five hundred had a crush on him - and me no exception. Nobody else could get that perfect line in his glossy black D. A. where both sides met in back - and his collar had a little extra lift in back, its starchy points like wings that might fly him away at any moment. AND... most significantly, he had the lowest waistline in the whole school. Maybe in all of Colordao. His mother must have sewn extra fabric to his shirt tails to keep them tucked in, Chucky was that long-waisted. His pants rode precariously just below the pelvis, the legs puddling low over his loafers. He was THE paradigm of fashion, the envy of every male in school. Chucky simply had no hips - none at all. Sitting for any length of time must have been torture for him, he was so devoid of padding. So it must have been with a certain devil-may-care attitude that he dressed himself every morning, casting fate to the winds - or in his case, a narrow Swank leather belt - as he slid those chinos down his torso as far as they would go and still hang on. I remember hoping, as I walked behind him, that he'd drop a book or something, so I could hand it to him and actually get to talk to him! That never happened, but careful what you wish for. He did drop something. There isn't much to tell. Everyone around him wanted to die on the spot - especially me, immediate eyewitness to the collapse of my hero's mystique. In the wink of an eye, before you could say, "Look out below," those chinos dropped right off his hipbones and bagged around his ankles. Chucky's mantle of cool evaporated like morning dew, as he dropped all his books to grab for his pants and fell to the floor, his feet all tangled up in pegged chinos, revealing a pair of very skinny legs. It was awful! I don't know what he did after that, as I had to look away, I was so crushed. Girls started crying. Some of the guys tried to laugh about it, but it was obvious their hearts weren't in it. Quite a few of them did draw in their belts a notch or two. Classes were ten minutes late, and no one was able to concentrate. We were dismissed early. The traumatic discovery that our school idol had feet of clay - or more accurately, birdlegs - was devastating. As for poor Chucky, I regret to relate that no one ever saw him again after that. It was rumored his family moved to Omaha, where I hope things went a whole lot better for him. The only consolation that day was in the lunch line, where they were serving Peanut Butter Balls for desert. One of the lunchroom ladies, sympathetic with us kids' distress, obliged with the recipe, which I share here in Chucky's name. PEANUT BUTTER BALLS 1 1/4 cup crushed graham crackers 1 tsp cinnamon 1/4 sugar 1/4 tsp nutmeg (optional) 1/4 tsp ground cloves 1/4 cup peanut butter 1/3 cup corn syrup Mix all together & shape by hand into approx. 1" balls. (to keep dough from sticking to you, apply thin coat of butter or canola oil to hands) Roll balls in powdered sugar. They keep well, if they stay around long enough - unlike poor Chucky. ****************************** ESSENCE-TIAL DEFENSE Maybe others have a similar childhood memory. Think back. You're a girl. A half-civilized, prepubescent male wants your attention, but has no idea how to get it. He says your dress looks like a Hostess cupcake, yanks out a fistful of your hair, or makes fun of your name, which unfortunately rhymes with an inappropriate word. Now what to do? Dump your milk carton in his lap? Chuck a science book at his head? Not if you were in my fourth grade. We women in training never resorted to such unladylike self-defense. We were secretly armed with an invincible weapon which, like the A-bomb, was never deployed until thoroughly deserved. Mine was green, about the size of a kiwi, with a range of some twenty feet. Deadly in a classroom. No beretta, my dainty little squirt gun was filled with that most lethal of concoctions - at least to the male mind - REALLY cheap perfume. My ammo of choice was Woolworth's "Blue Waltz". It had unparalleled staying power. One hit from it raised your respect level like a plate on the San Andreas Fault. I can still picture my little green gun. It looked like Dick Tracy's. I can't even remember the teacher's name. My family has grown considerably, and we've developed many variations on this theme. My girls have defended themselves with aerosal deodorizers, colognes, hair sprays - even bug repellent, once. I did think that a bit over the top, and intervened. But the basic idea was appropriate: avoiding physical retaliation with a flick of a harmless atomizer. This battle plan isn't limited to the female gender. Several Halloweens back, my son came home with a report that some older, mean boys planned to egg our house that night. He did not wish to engage in mortal combat. He and his father rounded up a pair of super-soaker, pump-action, water assault rifles - male counterpart to my delicate squirt gun. They requested my worst cologne, which I located in the basement, where it had been marinating for eight years. Imagine the potency - it was half-evaporated and had turned a malignant shade of khaki. My husband wrenched opened the cap, took one whiff and nearly passed out. He and Sonnyboy filled their rifles with a mixture of hot water and the pungent stuff. At dusk, they ducked under cover of bush by our front door as the expected assailants came loping to our house with stacks of styrofoam egg cartons under their arms. They dropped their foul ammo and ran screaming when multiple, jet-propelled blasts of rancid "Emeraude" soup, aged to perfection, sprayed them like invisible sprinklers from perdition. No fistfights, no blood, no dried egg on the front windows. We did have to throw the super-soakers away - corroded mechanisms and no way to get the smell out. When our daughters became young teenagers who attended concerts, my husband and I occasionally felt it necessary to accompany them. I seldom carry stinky perfume, but at one concert with 'festival seating,' (meaning you stand for hours through the whole thing), I had brought a forgotten, purse-size squirt atomizer. We were part of a body jam, a sea of heads craning to see Sugar Ray and the Goo Goo Dolls. The crowd was a conglomerate of young music fans, beer drinkers, pot smokers, and a liberal sprinkling of older weirdos, remnants of the Woodstock generation, scanning the crowd for some solitary young thing to maybe bring home for a souvenir. My husband and I stood on either side of our five teenage charges, ferociously guarding them like a pair of Chinese Foo Dogs. Halfway through the concert he showed up, shirtless, sporting a few tattoos, his arms tastefully wrapped in glow-in-the-dark plastic coils. I could smell him behind me, but mostly I could feel the steamy heat of his body, because he was a full foot taller than me, and was bent backwards over my head doing some very bizarre dance with his phosphorescent bracelets. I waited for him to move on. He did not. I considered referring the situation to my husband, some six people away. He could not see this dubious Martha Graham devotee intruding on my personal space. But as I thought of my husband, Viet Nam vet and holder of a black belt, I decided to seek more pacific means to rectify the situation. Fourth grade wisdom came to the rescue. I ferreted in my frumpy cloth bag, my fingers locking onto a little spray bottle of over-ripe "Jontue." It was a real hot night. I lifted hair off my neck and piled it on my head, fanning myself with four fingers, cradling the tiny weapon in my palm, my actions in no way provocative. Pointing the atomizer towards my neck, I aimed just a shade off to the side, to land the spray over my left shoulder. Bingo. And a second quick shot, for luck. But I knew the first one had hit full tilt boogie on the writhing target behind me, when the instant absence of his body heat told me he was gone. No muss, no fuss, no public spectacle. The concert terminated peaceably. People carry pepper spray these days, but I find that too confrontational. Everyone knows why you have it. Give me innocuous rotten perfume, that time-tested secret weapon proven by the boys of fourth grade. ******************************** Momma's Little Pig-Trail to Natchez I do not need a GPS locator. I have been an expert map-reader since childhood. As displaced Tennesseeans living in Colorado, my family made annual pilgrimages across the Great Plains to visit our native land. These odysseys invariably resulted in our getting lost at least once or twice, provoking colorful verbal discussion as to who deserved responsibility for the wrong turn. A former cartographer, Dad could read a map in the dark blindfolded. By association, Momma had acquired a skill rivaling his. So whenever the question arose as to whose (censored) stupidity had caused the two-hour delay while our happy little band toured forty miles down a pig-trail in the wrong direction, both parents were equally qualified to cast blame. My father had not yet taught my mother to drive - ...Expand for more