The Pillsbury Dough...EUNUCH!

I saw on the news the other day that the Pillsbury Doughboy had been kidnapped. I have just one thing to say to the kidnappers: please, please, DON’T return him. I’m sooooo sick of that little guy I could just kick him in the doughnuts!

Now, I have to admit, when he first came waltzing across my television screen I thought he was cute, would make a heck of a best friend. But after 40 plus years of him prancing across my television screen like some little dough nymph high on cornstarch, I have had enough! He’s just not cute anymore. In fact, he’s rather annoying (just once I’d like for that little squeaky-voiced nit-wit to prance across my kitchen counter top--I have a spatula with his name on it just waiting for him, and oh the things I’d do to him)!

First off, how old does one have to be before one is not considered a boy? Did you know that that little dough-head turns 55 this year? Fifty-five, the double nickel, yet he’s still a boy? Why, he’s closer to retirement, collecting Social Security, and using Medicare than he is to producing any little dough juniors that’s for sure.

And speaking of retirement, from the look of his wardrobe, when the doughboy retires he’s going to need some financial help from Uncle Sam. I mean fifty-five years on T.V. as Pillsbury’s spokesman and all he can afford is that little chef’s hat and a scarf? What’s up with that?

Also, how do we know he’s a boy? Have you ever looked closely at what’s below (or not below) that scarf and hat? It seems to me dough eunuch would be a more appropriate title for him.

Besides, I’ve never seen him driving with a dough woman, in a dough station wagon, full of a bunch of little dough kids. So, if in fact he is a doughboy, but he never gets together with the dough women, where will Pillsbury get their next generation of dough spokespersons? It’s worrying the heck out of me.

On the other hand, it’s a scary scenario to think that there’s a dough girl out there, and she and the doughboy hook up, get married—couldn’t have them living in sin you know--and have a bunch of little dough kids. Perish the thought! But I divert.

Here’s one last point to ponder concerning whether this little “dough person” is a boy or a girl. Weren’t we told all those many years ago by the good folks in T.V. land that Lassie was a girl? Turns out all the while the dog was really a male. Shoot, after learning that, along with learning there’s no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, or Superman, I’ve been emotionally scarred for life! I’m still in therapy.

Well, I for one think the people at Pillsbury owe us some explanations, but after 55 years of silence on these matters I doubt we’ll ever get them. Do I smell a conspiracy by the folks there? Nah, it’s just the doughboy’s buns baking in my oven.

Blanket Wars

One of the most asked questions a divorcee is asked by single members of the opposite sex is “what were the reasons for your divorce?” So, when first asked this question I took some time and delved deeply into my past in search of answers. Thirty seconds later, I discovered the cause for my divorce: men and women are not compatible bedroom buddies.

You see, when I “hit the sack,” I very sloppily throw the covers backward (almost completely off the bed), pirouette into a back flop, and fall onto the mattress. Once in bed, I toss and turn, flip-flop, and wiggle around until I’m comfortable. Of course, this puts the bedding in disarray, but that’s not a problem. I can sleep like that.

On the other hand, former wife had a completely different approach for getting into bed. Inevitably, after I performed my nightly ritual and was almost unconscious to the world, she’d come into the bedroom, cut on the light, which seemed brighter than the landing lights of a jumbo jet, and proceed to straighten and de-wrinkle the bedding. This, of course, rolled me in every direction on the mattress one can imagine.

Now, as she tucked the bedding back under the mattress, former wife would lecture me on the proper way to enter a bed. What? Like the good housekeeping fairy was going to sneak in at night and grade us on how neat our bedding looked after we’d crawled into it?

And Heaven help me if former wife daintily got into bed ahead of me. Waking her up with my back-flop-drop and my tossing and turning was worthy of a penalty too torturous to mention.

During a good chunk of our marriage, we lived in the Rocky and Ozark Mountains. Winter temperatures could be brutal, and the fact that my body produced little heat and hers put out more heat than a Dutch oven, didn’t make things any easier.

You see, it always took me a while to get warm when I slept. So at bedtime, I’d pile on the blankets. But sometime during the night my body’s thermostat would kick in and, in my sleep, I’d kick all of the blankets off of me. And the blankets I kicked off never seemed to find their way to the floor. No, they ended up on former wife. A few hours later, feeling as if she were about to have a heat stroke, she’d throw the blankets back onto me. Once again, I’d overheat and the blankets would get kicked back in her direction, and so it went all night long.

Of course, this worked in the reverse. If for some reason we didn’t have enough blankets on the bed to keep us warm, I was known to steal the blankets off former wife as I tossed and turned in my sleep. She would wake up near dawn with icicles hanging from her eye lashes and frost on her teeth, chattering the accusation that I was a sadistic, evil person who loved to see her suffer.

I must say, we’d tried everything we could think of to solve the war of the blankets, including an electric blanket. The first night we used it, I turned the control for my side of the blanket up three or four notches, but the blanket didn’t get very warm. In fact, it seemed that the higher I cranked the control the cooler the blanket would get. At one point during the night, I had the heat control set so high my side of the blanket should’ve been hot enough to defrost a frozen adult buffalo. But nooooo, the opposite was true! It was as if I hadn’t turned on the electric blanket at all, and I began wondering if we hadn’t wasted our money on the darn thing.

The next morning, ex-wife mentioned that the blanket had a heck of a thermostat. When she crawled into bed that night, she had set her control to the lowest number for heat. Still, within a couple of hours she was so hot she was drenched in sweat, so she cut off her side of the blanket altogether, but it continued baking her like a roast. Well, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what had happened; we’d plugged the controls in backward. My control was connected to her side of the blanket and her control was connected to mine.

But even after we straightened out that problem, we found ourselves right back in the blanket war. As usual, I’d warm up as the night went on, and in my sleepy stupor, instead of turning down the heat on my side, I’d kick the blanket off, which of course landed on former wife.
Eventually, she’d throw it back on me and then I'd throw it back on her, around and around we'd go.

You know, during 20 years of blanket wars, we never did find a solution to the problem. Well, actually, I take that back. We did find a solution—sleeping single in a double bed.

In the Words of Doctor Evil, “Zzzzzzzp It!”

What is it with men and zippers? We seem to have a history of problems with them, especially when it comes to our pants. Unfortunately, I speak from experience.

Years ago, I worked on the water department for a small city. One July afternoon I was walking main-street, reading the water meters. As I walked, I felt a slight breeze penetrate my jeans just below my belt buckle. “Hmm, that’s odd,” I thought. But I continued on my way.

Twenty minutes later, I received cat calls and whistles from a group of teenage girls as they drove by in their car. “Ahhhh, you devil you,” I said to myself, “you still got it.” I’m telling you, my ego grew so large it’s a wonder my neck didn’t break from the weight of it.

This incident repeated itself three or four times, and I was really getting full of myself when a car full of guys drove past me and did the very same thing. Still, undaunted, I walked on.

It wasn’t until I’d walked half the city that I happened to glance down and notice the fly to my pants was down, and a new dilemma arose. Just how does one nonchalantly zip up one’s fly while walking a street where the majority of traffic flows? It’s not easy.

A couple of years later, I’d reentered college. One warm July morning, as I traipsed across campus, I noticed people looking my way and smiling. I was worrying over an up-coming exam, and though I took mental note of the smiles given me, it never dawned on me those smiles had something to do with my attire.

That afternoon, I was still receiving curious looks and smiles from passersby when a thought occurred to me, “oh, oh,” I said softly as I glanced down at the fly of my pants. Sure enough it was down.

After graduating from college, I moved to Branson, Missouri where I, among other things, wrote a couple of entertainment columns. Early one summer evening, at Branson’s North Beach Park, I was walking to my truck when I spied Barbara Fairchild (For those of you who are old enough, do you remember the “Teddy Bear” song. That was one of her hits) at the tennis courts. “Hey Barbara,” I yelled. “How ya doing? Did ya read my review of your morning show?”

Well, after a little chit chat, I headed home. It was there I discovered that Ms. Fairchild had probably been smiling at me throughout our conversation not because of my charming personality. No, more likely it had something to do with the fact that, once again, my fly was gaping wide open, providing, I’m sure, amusement for all who noticed.

But the granddaddy of embarrassment happened at church a couple of years ago on Mother’s Day. I was asked in advanced to give a talk that Sunday on mothers, makes sense.

The service began with announcements from the pulpit, an opening hymn by the congregation, and a prayer. It was during the opening hymn, as I was sitting on the stand in front of the whole congregation, I noticed, to my horror, my fly was undone!

I broke out in a cold sweat as an unfortunately familiar dilemma reared its ugly head. Just how does one nonchalantly zip up one’s fly while sitting where the whole congregation of one’s church can see him?

I was saved by a prayer, literally. You see, it dawned on me that during the prayer the congregation would hopefully have its collective eyes closed, and that would be my chance to save face as it were. It either worked or people were just too nice to say anything for it was never mentioned to me by anyone, including the teenagers I taught in Sunday school.

Well, from these experiences, all I can conclude is with as much trouble we men have keeping our zippers closed, it’s certainly a good thing our brains aren’t zipped into our heads—they’d be constantly falling out. Although, sometimes I’m accused of acting as if have that problem.

Skunky, Me, and BB Guns, Not a Good Combination

When middle and youngest sons were teenagers, they asked their momma and me if they could each have a BB gun. Their momma had no qualms about the idea and at first I didn’t either. Then I remembered an experience I had with my childhood friend, a great American if there ever was one, Skunky Wilson. That memory cast grave doubts in my mind concerning the sanity of putting a gun into the hand of any child sporting my DNA.

It was a late fall afternoon of my thirteenth year. Skunky and I grabbed our BB guns and headed for the woods surrounding the Wilson’s small farm. Now, we weren’t going to the woods for target practice, and we weren’t going to the woods to hunt squirrels, rabbits or snakes. No, we decided on something much more fun and entertaining, something that would truly test our hunting skills. We were going to play army…with loaded BB guns.

When we arrived at the forest’s edge, Skunky and I split up in opposite directions, Skunky heading west, me going east. We agreed that we would walk about a quarter of a mile in our respective directions before turning around to start hunting each other.

It’s interesting how one’s senses become more alert when one is being stalked. To say the least, I was a little jumpy, and the farther I moved in the direction where I had last seen my friend, my nerves became even jitterier.

We were well into the hunt when I heard a rustling in the bushes. Now, I knew better than to shoot at something before knowing for sure what it is. It can buy you a whole lot of trouble.
Immediately, I knew it wasn’t Skunky I winged with a BB. Instead, what I shot was the lone member of the animal kingdom from which Skunky’s nickname was derived. And ooooh it was mad! At least, that’s what I gathered from repugnant order it showered on me.

This was not good. Not only could I hardly stand to smell myself, but the wretched scent would give Skunky a huge edge in the war game we were playing. He’d smell me coming long before he’d see me. The only thing to do was to get down wind of him and attack from there. That’s just what I did.

Twenty minutes later, and maybe thirty feet ahead of me, I heard the crackling of a twig under someone’s foot. It had to be Skunky!

With my heart pounding so hard I thought it might break a rib, I quietly made my way toward the sound of the snapping twig. Shortly, I caught sight of my friend, standing, his left side to the front of me, listening intently for any indication of my presence.

All of a sudden he caught a glimpse of me. In what seemed like a fraction of a second he raised his gun and fired.

“Owe!” I yelled as a BB stung my left hand and I dived behind a tree for cover.

Skunky cautiously started in the direction where he saw me disappear. All the while, I crouched low behind the tree, constantly moving around it, keeping it between me and Skunky.

My friend continued searching the area where he thought I might have gone, and he wasn’t far off. As his shadowy figure moved closer in my direction I eased off a shot. It was a narrow miss, but it caught Skunky’s attention, and he dived behind some bushes. I aimed my rifle where Skunky’s vague form had disappeared, then pulled the trigger.

“Aye!” he yelled, confirming I’d scored a hit. Me, I chuckled out loud. “You dadburn--” his voice trailed off as he fired his gun in the direction of my laughter.

Now, you talk about luck. If I had Skunky’s kind of luck I’d for sure play the state lottery and I’d win! With the shadows in the forrest growing ever deeper, there’s no way he could have seen my face peering from around that tree. But within an instant of him firing his gun I felt a thump and a severe stinging sensation on my forehead, right between my eyes.
“Ooooouuuuuch! OK, that’s it. You win.” I hollered.

“Naw, I’d call it a draw,” Skunky answered back. “I just noticed I’m lying in a patch poison ivy.”
Well, eventually, we both healed from our wounds and managed to find more mischief to get into.

But do you honestly think, after thinking back on that experience, I was going to let my boys have BB guns? I don’t think so…unless, of course, they invited me to play army with them.