What ever happened to Battle of the Planets?

That’s what was going through my head this morning as I found myself humming the theme song I last heard maybe 20 years ago. I remember how much I loved that stupid show, with its horrible dubbed voice-work and convoluted storyline that made no sense at all, not even for kids. I also clearly recall being infatuated with the only female on the series, Princess. Not because I liked her, but because every episode there would be some silly, contrived reason for her to do a flip or other acrobatic move that would flash her nicely animated panties.

Yeah, I was a Geek even then.

After a quick look around the net imagine my surprise when I discovered that there just might be a movie based on the original Japanese cartoon coming out next year. I mean, the thought of once again seeing Mark, Jason, Tiny, Princess and that annoying bastard Keeyop in all their bird-based spandex glory is nearly enough to cause me to dance in glee. As it is, I’ve spent about an hour digging through some old boxes of junk searching for my 7-Zark-7 and 1-Rover-1 figurines. And yes, I know they’re not really part of the original series and were just added to the American version by the distributor to make the violent show more “kid-friendly.” But still, I don’t care.

Now, if only I could remember where my bird-cape and giant “G” belt were stored…

A little story, just for you.

When I was but a young lad of 8 or so, I was sent off to sleep-away camp in upstate NY. My second year of being sent to what I lovingly called ‘kiddie-prison’ I was introduced to a special ritual that had been passed down through the years, from camper to camper, until it finally reached my good friend David. Now David, it must be pointed out, was a good friend in the same way that Hannibal Lector was a good chef.

Meaning, they both scared the bejeebies out of me.

The method by which a Neanderthal like David managed to find the brain cells necessary to recall this ritual is of such astounding scientific importance that even now, decades after the event, some of our government’s greatest minds are attempting to discover it in the hopes of it leading to a cure for Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately for the Alzheimer sufferers of the world, at present the leading theory is, and I quote;

“Sometimes, even stupid gets lucky.”

Anywaste, back to our story. One fine day, David and his cronies managed to corner me outside of the main eating establishment of the camp, which was known far and wide as the “Mess Hall”. This building was called that due to its almost supernatural ability to cause all who passed through its doorway to become violently ill within 3 hours and empty their stomachs all over its floors, tables, chairs, walls and, in at least one case that I witnessed with my own eyes the year before, the rafters in the ceiling. The truly astonishing part was that the person who hit the ceiling for some odd reason actually stood up in their chair to do it.

And it was a 10 year old girl.

On the beautiful day at camp that I have been talking about now for about an hour, David, who liked to lovingly refer to me as, “Shrimp-Nerd”, cornered me outside the mess hall and thrust a plastic cup filled with fluid into my hands. This caused me pause for two reasons; first, when a timid, shy and tiny mouse is cornered by a giant, angry and menacing cat the very last thing the mouse would expect the cat to do is hand him a drink and invite him to dinner.

Secondly, the liquid was black.

I’m not talking brown and fuzzy, like a cola or root beer. I’m talking deep, deep, dark black. Like distilled midnight, or death’s blood, or liquid evil. It was a dark color the kind of which nightmares are made of and, not to put to fine a point on it, just by the look on David’s face I deduced that drinking the contents of that plastic cup would be Bad.

“Hey, Shrimp-Nerd. See what a good friend I am? I went and got you some grape juice to drink on such a hot day like today.”
“Gee, David. You shouldn’t have.”
“But I did, Shrimp-Nerd. And since I was so nice, you wouldn’t wanna make me mad and not drink it, would you?”
“Heaven forbid.”
“So?”
“So?”
“Ain’t you going to drink it?”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now.” [knuckles cracking]
“Oh. Uhm, ok…”

Have you ever eaten or drunk something that you thought was tasty only to realize after it was in your mouth that it was something so horrible that Satan himself had a patent on it for use in Hell’s Kitchen? You know, like when you drink some milk only to discover that it has the texture of cottage cheese? Or when you think you’re eating a piece of delicious bread pudding only to realize afterwards that it was actually week-old mayo that had been sitting in the sun?

Oh yeah, you’re all with me now.

Well, as I brought that tiny plastic cup of demon-diarrhea to my lips I knew it would be bad, I just didn’t know how bad until that viscous liquid made its initial assault on my poor, defenseless tongue. David and his crew had never laughed so hard and for the next two weeks anytime they saw me they would ask if I needed a drink. And every time they did my eyes would fill with tears and my body would convulse as I began to dry-heave for the next hour or so at just the thought of what I could only imagine was the irreparable damage I had done to my gastrointestinal tract. And what was the disgusting liquid I had been forced to ingest? A mixture of salt, soy sauce, vinegar, coffee, chocolate syrup and, of all things, ground red pepper.

And to this day, grape juice still makes me gag.

Even at age 11, Stacy was a goddess.

I didn’t quite understand the feelings that overcame me whenever she would look my way and smile, but on some instinctual level I knew I would do almost anything if she would just keep doing it forever. Stacy, being mature for her age, was the first girl in school to realize that boys could be manipulated into doing anything she wanted them to do just by smiling at them, or sometimes, if the boy was particularly dense, by touching their arm or shoulder in a ‘friendly’ way. I, on the other hand, being the cleverest boy in school, was the first one to play stupid with her on purpose so she would touch me.

Mama didn’t raise no dummy.

One day, as I sat in the school library, Stacy and two of her friends came over to where I was sitting and asked me if I wanted to play a game with them. Being smarter than the average bear I knew something was up by the wicked gleam in their collective eyes, but the warning my rational brain was sending was being overridden by the my libido screaming, “She’s wearing a low-cut shirt! A low-cut shirt!”

Stacy, for those who haven’t guessed, was an early bloomer.

And, like the rest of her, her young-lady boobies were perfect. Neither large nor small, they nevertheless were the envy of all the other girls in school. A few years later, she would be a solid C-cup, but at the time she was probably a small B. But to my mind they were a dream and she was all that and a bag of chips.

And she was leaning over the table to talk to me.

“GeekMan, would you like to play a game with us?”
[libido] “Boobs-AHOY!”
“Ahhh… errmm…buh-hurmmmm…”
“GeekMan?”
“Yeah! Game! Play! You! Yes!!!”
“OK, GeekMan. You need to come with us over to that corner out of the librarian’s view, though. Is that OK?”
[libido] “Ohboyohboyohboyohboy!”
“Gah… ermmm… uhhhh…”
“…giggle…”
“Ahem. Ok, let’s go play, shall we?”

I was like a lamb to the slaughter.

“OK GeekMan, here are the rules. You have to stand right here with your back to the wall. I’m going to name some animals and you say yes or no. Yes if you’ve ever had that animal as a pet and no if you haven’t. OK?”
“Uh, so what’s the fun in that?”
“Well, if you’re lucky, you could win a prize.”
[other two girls] “…giggle…”
[libido] “There is a god!”
[rational brain] “Danger!”
[libido] “Stacy’s not wearing a bra!”
“Game on!”

Yes, I know I’m an idiot. Shut up.

“OK GeekMan. Remember, only ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”
“OK.”
“Monkey.”
“No.”
“Dog.”
“Yes.”
“Whale.”
“No.”
“Mouse.”
“No.”
“Duck.”
“No.”

And that’s when the cutest girl in school punched me in the face.

As I lay on the ground, desperately trying to keep my left eyeball from popping out of its socket, Stacy leaned over me and, in a whisper I could barely hear over the peels of laughter coming from her two friends and the pounding headache I could feel building behind my soon-to-be horribly inflated eye, said…

“Silly boy. I told you to duck!”

I was an evil little man.

My younger cousin Princess, her older sister Dee, my brother FishMan and I were all playing together one day when I came up with a great way to torment FishMan and Princess while at the same time Dee and I could have fun playing with our toys without their annoying interference. In essence, I wanted to play with all the toys and the only way I could do it was to get rid of my cousin and my brother without their realizing what I was doing.

And so, together with Dee, I hatched a plan.

“Hey guys! I just thought of a great game to play!”
“What game?”
“Yeah! Tell us, GeekMan! Tell us!”
“Well, it’s a fun game but it involves acting. It might be too hard for you little kids to play so maybe we shouldn’t…”
“No fair! You always keep us from playing the fun games!”
“Yeah! You better let us play in this game or I’m telling mom!”
“Are you sure you want to play?”
“Yeah!”
“You bet!”
“OK, but don’t say I didn’t tell you it would be hard for you.”
“We can take it!”
“Anything you can do, I can do, too!”
“Alright. Here’s the rules…”
“Yay!”
“Shhhh! We have to listen so we don’t break the rules!”
“Sorry FishMan. I just got excited.”
“OK Princess, just listen close or GeekMan won’t let us play.”
“OK.”
“Are you too done? Are you sure you want to play this game?”
“We do.”
“Word.”
“Word? FishMan, did you just say ‘word’ instead of yes?”
“Yeah. I heard it at school the other day and it sounded def so I thought I’d use it, too.”
“Deaf? Like you can’t hear?”
“No. Def, as in ‘the bomb’.”
“Oh. I see. Word, huh? That’s fresh, I can dig it.”
“Word.”
“Word.”
“GeekMan, could you tell us the rules now please?”
“Sure thing, Princess. The rules are that Dee and I are going to go into the other room and close the door while you and FishMan stay here in the hallway and sit in those two chairs. When it’s your turn to come inside and join the game Dee will come out and take one of you into the other room where we’ll play. Sounds easy, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, that’s because the hardest part of playing this game is sitting out here waiting to come inside to play. You need to pretend that you’re patients waiting to see the doctor. I’m going to be the doctor and Dee is the nurse. You two are the patients, so think up some really def illnesses so we can ‘cure’ you, ok?”
“Wow! This is a cool game!”
“Yeah! I’m going to be suffering from a head wound! Like from a sword!”
“OK then, you two stay here and pretend to be sick while we go set up the other room…”
“OK!”
“Word!”
[door slams]
“Bwahahahahahaha!”

And thus, The Waiting Room Game was born.

Her name was Shirley.

Shirley owned and operated the tiny little candy/convenience store a few blocks away from our apartment that Mr. Hentai and I would visit every day on our way to school. Each and every day, as we left the store with our single piece of candy each, Shirley would remind us to hurry or we’d be late and get detention. Then she’d laugh and turn to the next customer in line.

It was the laugh that kept us coming back.

You see, Shirley was not a pretty woman, in fact you could almost say she was ugly. Overweight and under-tall, Shirley had a pockmarked face, flabby arms and hair that would make even Medusa’s hairdresser groan in agony. Plus, she smelled of sour milk and old medicine. But none of that really mattered to us.

What mattered were her giant boobies.

Shirley had boobies of a most awe inspiring size. Honestly, they were truly astonishing to behold. They were each literally as large as my entire head and when Shirley laughed they seemed to move in ways simultaneously foreign to the realm of physics and magical in nature. These whale-sized mammary glands were the only reason why Mr. Hentai and I put up with Shirley’s brusque manner, her overpriced and crappy selection of candy and even her horrid, horrid stench. It was all just to see those two massive mounds of human flesh do their mesmerizing dance of joy as she shooed us out the door.

The memory of which got me through many a boring Spanish class.

One day, as we perused the sad collection of candy on display at Shirley’s establishment, I decided to buy a package of Whoppers for my before school snack but when I reached into the box I realized that this particular package of Whoppers just happened to be the very last one on display. As I picked up the Whoppers I discovered the dried out husk of a roach sitting inside the now empty display box, looking sad and alone as I took away its very last friend. Being a child I rationalized that the candy was inside the package and therefore safe to eat, not once connecting the dead bug and thick layer of dust on the package to the length of time it might have been sitting in the display waiting for some fool child to come along and purchase its freedom. Once outside I ripped open the package and popped one of the crusty, flakey, not-quite-correct-color-for-chocolate balls in my mouth…

And bit into Chocolate Hell.

Sandy, powdery, yet still crunchy innards spilled into my mouth and down my throat as I choked on the 2,000 year old Whopper. Coughing and sputtering as if I had just swallowed the sandman’s semen I insisted that Mr. Hentai try one so he would know I was not overreacting. And idiot that he is, he did. From that day forward, Mr. Hentai and I have had a saying between us for any situation where we feel someone should proceed with caution. And that saying is;

Don’t eat Shirley’s Whoppers!

“Are you sure this is safe?”
“Shhh!”
“You shhh!”
“Shut up, Arthur. They’ll hear us.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, be quiet.”
“But GeekMan…”
“Shhh!”
“…”
“…”
“Can you see anything?”
“Not yet.”
“When can I look?”
“When you learn how to be quiet.”
“I can be quiet.”
“Prove it.”
“…”
“…”
“Can I look now?”
“Arthur! There’s nothing to see yet, and if you keep talking they’ll hear us and we’ll never see anything!”
“But why do you get to see and not me?”
“Who noticed the hole, Arthur? Who realized what a hole in Girls Bunk 5’s wooden floor meant? Who was kind enough to invite his 14 year old friend to come along with him to spy on the cute 15 years old girls in Girls Bunk 5? Was it you?”
“Uhmmm… No.”
“No. It was me. AND I found the way to crawl underneath their cabin to get to the hole, too. That means I get first dibs, so be quiet and wait your turn.”
“Sorry.”
“Shhh!”
“…sorry…”
“…”
“…”
“Here they come…”
“What are they doing?”
“They’re coming inside, stupid.”
“Can you see panties yet?”
“How would I see panties, you moron? They just walked in the door.”
“I dunno, don’t they walk around in panties and have pillow fights when they’re alone? That’s what my brother says they do.”
“That’s later, after they all shower together.”
“They take showers together?!”
“Shhhh!”
“Can I watch when they take a shower?”
“Shhhh! We can’t see the bathroom from here, you moron.”
“Oh. Then when can I watch?”
“Later.”
“How much later is later?”
“Quiet. I think Suzy’s going to take off her shirt.”
“…”
“Huh.”
“What? What?!”
“I think Suzy stuffs her bra… Wow. She must spend a whole lot on tissues.”
“She took off her BRA?!”
“Not yet, she’s just reaching under her shirt and pulling out tissues. It’s like magic.”
“I wanna see!”
“Fine. Here.”
“…”
“…”
“Heh. You’re right, it’s like magic. The funny thing is they look the same size even without the tissues.”
“They do? Why would she stuff then?”
“I dunno, maybe she’s got bad allergies?
“Yeah, maybe.”
“…”
“…”
“So, what’s happening now?”
“Uh… nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Heh…”
“Arthur, what do you see?”
“Shhh.”
“What do you see?”
“Heh… nothing…”
“Arthur, you better not be holding back on me…”
“It’s nothing. Really. Heh, heh, heh…”
“I’m going to kick your ass, Arthur.”
“Ok, ok. Michelle’s getting ready to take a shower.”
“What?! She’s got the biggest boobies in camp! Let me see!”
“Shhh!”
“You shhh!”
“You said it was my turn!”
“Now I’m saying it’s my turn again, so move over.”
“No.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Well, it’s my turn now and I’m busy watching Michelle undress so wait your turn and be quiet.”
“She’s getting naked?!”
“Shhhh!”
“Let me see!”
“One more second…”
“Arthur…”
“Alright alright… sheesh!”
“Where is she?”
“Probably in the shower.”
“You jerk!”
“Snooze and lose, GeekMan. She certainly does have big ones though, no tissues for her.”
“You’re a real bastard, Arthur.”
“Why are you so upset? I thought you didn’t like Michelle.”
“I don’t. She’s mean and bossy, but she’s got big boobies and that’s why we’re here, right?”
“Oh. Well, cheer up then. She’s got to come out of the shower sometime, right?”
“I guess.”
“…”
“…”
“So, what’s going on now?”
“Nothing. Everyone’s just sitting around talking…”
“No one’s getting ready for bed?”
“Well…”
“GeekMan! I told you.”
“Ok, fine. Beth is getting undressed.”
“Beth? But she’s so small and skinny, and she has that funny smell…”
“I know, but you asked.”
“Well?”
“Well, what? I’m just trying not to look in that direction.”
“Oh.”
“…”
“…”
“Oooo, here comes Karen!”
“Let me see!”
“You saw Michelle! I get to see Karen.”
“That’s not fair!”
“You saw big boobies, so I get to see the cutest girl in camp. Fair’s fair.”
“But…”
“Shhh!”
“But…”
“Shhh! She’s standing right over us.”
“…”
“…”
“What’s she doing?”
“She’s… She’s…”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know what she’s doing.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what she’s doing.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? Tell me what you see.”
“Well she turned away from everyone and… wiggled… and pulled her bra out from her shirt sleeve.”
“Woah!”
“Yeah, and then she wrapped a towel around herself like a toga, with her clothes on, and started undressing under the towel without taking the towel off.”
“Freaky.”
“Uh-huh. And now…”
“Yeah? And now?”
“Now she’s pulled her panties down to her knees and is just staring at them.”
“She is? Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t she just take them off?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s she doing now?”
“She’s… she’s peeling something out of her panties. Throwing it away… and going into the shower.”
“Freaky.”
“Darn. I didn’t get to see anything!”
“There’s always next time.”
“I guess.”
“…”
“…”
“Oh, well. They’ve all gone to bed and turned off the lights. Guess we’d better get back to our cabin before the counselor’s find us missing.”
“Ok, GeekMan. You wanna come back again tomorrow night?”
“Sure, but let’s bring a pillow tomorrow, my neck is killing me.”

Why didn’t anyone tell me it was summer?

When I was a kid, the advent of summer vacation was heralded by the end of school and a whole two, or sometimes even three, months of freedom. The freedom to do whatever I wanted every hour of every day of the week until school would once again rear its ugly head sometime in September and suck my unwilling body back into its annoyingly educational embrace. Back then, summer meant long days of fun in the sun with my friends with nary a care in the world. My days spent on the beach, my nights out on the town with close friends and every day another wonderful adventure with all the beautiful people I knew. Ah summer, what a wonderful time.

Ah, bullpoop.

I don’t know how or when my real memories of summer were glazed over with these happy-go-lucky false imaginings, but it seems as if my own mind is trying to brainwash itself into recalling things about my younger days that never actually happened. I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid summer meant one of two things; being sent away for two months of sleepaway summer camp, or two months of absolutely nothing to do!

And, as we all know, boredom is evil.

Stripping away all the varnish from my memories, I’m getting a clearer picture of what summer was REALLY like for me as a kid. For one thing, I was a kid. And being a kid meant that most of New York was closed to me. No bars, no clubs, not even some back-room poker games with knife fights breaking out like zits on a nervous high school boy.

Also, as a kid, I had no job.

That means I had no money. And no money in New York means you can’t go anywhere or do anything. You can’t afford to see a movie. You can’t afford to buy a toy. And forget about asking out that cute girl down the block. Hell, you can’t even buy food for yourself let alone the girl you’re trying to impress. Now, I ask you, what kind of sick summer vacation memory is that for a young boy to have?

“So, did you enjoy our first date Suzie?”
“Well, I’m glad you asked me out GeekMan, but I can’t help but wonder if this date might have been better if we had, you know, gone somewhere or done something besides walk around my block and talk about the Thundercats for four hours.”
“Well, I wanted to take you to a movie…”
“That sounds wonderful! Let’s go!”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“No money.”
“Well, I’m sure your allowance…”
“No allowance.”
“Well, that’s alright, I guess. We don’t need to see a movie as long as we have a nice time together. And I did have a nice time, even if you are a bit… strange. But just now I’m a little bit hungry.”
“Well…”
“Oh no. Don’t say it.”
“It’s not my fault! Do you know how much a Happy Meal costs? I’m not made of money, you know! I’m only 10!”
“Sigh. My mother was right.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“All of ten and already a loser.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“Take me home.”
“Ok.”
“Oh, and GeekMan?”
“Yeah?”
“The Thundercats suck.”
[sob]

“GeekMan. FishMan. You’re sitting over there with the other kids.”

My brother and I looked at my mother in disbelief as she turned us away from the dining room and all the grownups chatting amicably within and pointed us towards the ‘kids’ table located in the kitchen. It wasn’t just that we were being turned away from the big people that was so shocking to us, it was that she didn’t even bother to get up from the table to escort us to our seats. In fact, she didn’t even bother to turn her head and look at us as she shooed us away. She merely made her declaration, pointed regally towards the kitchen and took another sip of her merlot. It was an almost physical slap across our faces, letting us know in no uncertain terms that even though we were in our early teens and didn’t think of ourselves as kids anymore, to ‘real’ grownups we were still thought of as nothing more than children.

Slightly taller children true, but children nonetheless.

Feeling insignificant to the max, FishMan and I left the grownups behind and made our way to the Kiddie Table. As we got closer to the table it dawned on us that of the seven kids present we would be the oldest children sitting there and thus, we were supposed to be the baby sitters of the other children during the meal so that the ‘real’ grownups could enjoy their meal in peace.

We nearly turned back then. Nearly.

After what seemed like hours of internal rebellion we realized that it was useless to argue and, sighing in resignation, we approached the table, found the only two available seats and sat down amongst the chaos that is the Kiddie Table. Now, many of you might think you know what I am speaking of when I say Kiddie Table, but on this day you would be wrong.

Horribly, terribly wrong.

You see, most Kiddie Table’s are fun affairs where children cavort with other children around their own age in freeform food flinging funfests. All the kids have fun until the meal is over and the grownups come to collect their children for the long car ride home. Or until one of the kid’s winds up with a plastic fork in their eye and blood running down their face.

You know, whichever comes first.

Sometimes there’s an older child who’s designated the ‘adult’ of the table and is considered to be ‘in charge’ of the other kids. The designated adult need not actually be the oldest child present; they just need to be considered the most ‘mature’ by at least two of the real grownups in the house. One of whom has no kids and thus considers themselves an expert on all things pertaining to children even though the last bit of ‘advice’ they doled out led to the arrival of EMS and what is now known as The Toaster Incident.

Remember, if a baby wants to play with a toaster, unplug it first.

The designated adult of the Kiddie Table will then be given instructions on what is, and is not, proper behavior for all the children during the meal. These instructions can be summed up as, “Keep the noise levels down, eat what we give you and stay in your seats until we’re finished eating.”

Sometimes, “And don’t kill each other.” is thrown in for legal reasons.

The designated adult would then nod in the most mature fashion they could manage and immediately start ordering the other kids around. The other children of course, would take great delight in ignoring the designated adult until they became so frustrated that they would go running to the adults with news of the other children’s’ misdeeds. This was in the hopes of courting favor in the adults’ eyes and thus being allowed to sit with them at the adult table and become the object of envy of the other children when they were punished for not listening to the designated adult.

Obviously, more often than not, the designated adult was female.

In this instance however, there was no designated adult. For while FishMan and I at the tender ages of 12 and 15 were clearly too old for the Kiddie Table, the other five children at the table were clearly too mentally retarded to be without constant adult supervision.

And when I say mentally retarded, I’m insulting the mentally retarded.

These kids were psychotic. If ADD and ADHD were animals and you were to trace their history you would find that they were first discovered here with these children. They weren’t just hyper; they were kinetically, frantically, hypersonic! Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. We all had chairs, but only FishMan and I were actually using them for their intended purpose. One of the other kids was using their chair as a podium from which to spout high-pitched sermons on the virtues of the Transformers vs. Go-Bots, complete with visual aids involving throwing all their Go-Bots toys to the hardwood floor one by one and watching parts fly in all directions while holding their Transformer toys aloft and screaming, “Go-Bots are poopie!”

And that was one of the girls.

The other kids were worse. Two were banging their plates screaming that they wanted their food, another was playing a game of tag… all by themselves, and the last was doing his best to find out if his whole hand could fit inside his right nostril because he was positive that he could then grab his brain and pull it out for show and tell at school on Monday.

I almost tried to help him. Almost.

After what felt like hours of this torture, but was probably more like a couple of lifetimes, one of the grownups took pity on us and brought out our food. And it just so happened that on this day our meal was spaghetti. Plain, no sauce added, spaghetti. No meatballs, no garlic toast, not even some cheese sprinkled on top. Just a mound of plain spaghetti with a tiny amount of butter on top of each plate and a glass of apple juice.

It’s a miracle that I was able to hold back my tears.

The grownups were busy laughing at their table, eating fried chicken, barbeque ribs, corn on the cob and other assorted dishes of delight, while FishMan and I were stuck in hell eating plain spaghetti with little monsters. And, as if that weren’t torturous enough, the other kids didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, they went positively bonkers with delight as plate after plate of plain spaghetti was placed in front of each of them.

[in unison] “Spaghetti!”
“I love spaghetti! Isn’t this a great dinner?”
“Hey, GeekMan! Doesn’t this spaghetti look like worms?”
“Ew! Worms are yucky!”
“No, not worms! It looks like hair!”
“Look at me FishMan! I’m wearing a wig made of Spaghetti!”
“No! It’s not hair! It looks like brains! Right GeekMan?”
“Oooo! Brains! Look, I’ll make them come out of my nose!”

[a fake sneeze and a handful of spaghetti flies to the floor]

[in unison] “Cool!”

[fake sneezing begins and handful after handful of spaghetti-brains begin flying in every direction]

“Oops! Sorry about that FishMan! I didn’t mean to get my brains all over you!”
“GeekMan! Hahaha! You’ve got brains all over your sneakers!”
“Don’t the brains look like worms when they’re on the floor?”
“Ewww!”
“Don’t let the worms eat your toes! They love to eat toes, so don’t let them!”
“Eeek!”
“The only way to stop them from eating your toes is to eat them first!”

And back onto their plates, and then into their mouths, the spaghetti went. At this point FishMan and I were in such a state of shock that we didn’t even know how to react to the fact that these kids were eating spaghetti that moments before had been on their chairs, their bodies, the floor, the walls, and even on, and under, dirty shoes. Thankfully, during this whole fiasco, FishMan and I had managed to protect our plates from their grubby little hands, so at least our food was…

“Hey GeekMan, can I have some of your spaghetti?”

[grubby little hand that moments before was shoved deep into right nostril grabs a handful of my spaghetti]

“Thanks!”
“Hey! That wasn’t nice! You shouldn’t take from other people like that unless they’re done and he hasn’t even started yet. You should go get him some more spaghetti!”
“I’m sorry, sis. She’s right GeekMan, I’ll go get you some more spaghetti, OK?”

[goes to giant pot in kitchen, reaches in with his dirty, snot encrusted hand and plops a handful of spaghetti onto my plate]

“Ok, that’s it. Mom, check please, I’m done.”
“Me too.”
“But GeekMan, FishMan, you haven’t even eaten anything yet!”
“But somehow, I don’t think we could eat another bite, right FishMan? Isn’t that amazing?”
“Well. Are you sure you don’t want some more spaghetti?”
“Mom, I think it’s fair to say that we are so done that we may never be able to eat spaghetti again. Ever.”

And, to this very day, I still have trouble eating spaghetti.