part 3 THE HAMPER OF DEATH: Blazing Saddles

Last time I left off with the old metal container being carried off by the wolf pack as though they were a cannibal tribe carrying an unwelcome guest in a giant stew pot to the sacrificial fire.  Kidnapped and squished inside the tin can of death I had no idea where the agitated hordes were taking me.

“Si se puedes!” yelled Chewy like a cheerleader. The swarm of neighborhood locust heard his chant and cheered thinking he was egging them on in his native Spanish.  Up, up, up… they excitedly lifted me precariously high over their heads in the ex-baby-diarrhea-diaper-pail, turned hamper, turned sacrificial tribal-pot-of-torture and imminent death.  Thinking about the mountain of stinky baby diapers my stomach heaved desperately wanting to release all of its contents but my brain knew that trapped inside this dark, small, airless space was a bad Idea.   I could hear angels singing. I was going to die, they were here to carry me home.

Wait!

It wasn’t angels…it was the Lennon Sisters practicing for the Lawrence Welk show. The restless brood was carrying me off in the direction of the Lennon’s house. That was all I knew at that moment!

The metal coffin crashed with a loud thud as they dropped my ceremoniously to the ground in middle of the street.  Were they going to leave me here to play chicken with traffic?   Blind and unable to move I had a serious disadvantage. Was Tony going to electrocute the container I was in…the mad scientist loved to play with electricity.

 

Mr. Steadman stood on the porch and yelled inside to Mrs. Steadman, “Lock the doors; the Wolf Pack is on the move.”  Peering out through the blinds she mumbled back… “No wonder lions eat their young.”

Thump…. Thump…. Thump… Thump…. Thump…  Several hands began tapping out a beat on my metal container like a tribal war drum.  They giggled and laughed and began to sing along with the rap-tap-tapping on my vessel of death. Then one of the boys (I think it was Dooh-Dooh Pants) began to lead them in a chant that sounded like the witch’s minions in the Wizard of Oz…

“Oh-Wee-Oh. Wee-Oh… Oh-Wee-Oh, Wee-Oh…”

On and on they droned along with the tribal rhythm being pounded out on the lid of my latched container until someone kicked it onto its side. Crash!  Then, with a great shove, one of the boys sent me - my container - the lid - the latch and all, sliding sideways across the asphalt. The metal grated against the asphalt with a horrible screech that sounded like Sister Godzilla’s fingernails against a chalkboard, only a thousand times louder!

“Ughhhhhhhhhhhh,” I screamed, thinking this is how they were going to kill me… they intended to slide me around the neighborhood until my ears bleed and my brain explodes.

IF ONLY!

If only I knew what was going to happen next… I would have wished this was the way they had conspired to kill me.  If only.

Anyway, they shot me across the asphalt like an astronaut in a cockeyed rocket launch…that went sideways. My metal container screeched until it crashed to a halt with a colossal CLUNK striking something ginormous and solid and heavy and metal.  I didn’t know just how frightened I should be...but began to get a clue when I heard all ten-thousand feet hurriedly scramble away in a million directions as if they had seen King Kong. It was like a scene in an Alfred Hitchcock horror film. 

 Even the angelic voices from the Lennon House stopped singing. It was an ominous sign that I felt deep in my bones. I had no idea just how diabolical the plan was that they had hatched for the hamper and me.

That was until!

Until, I heard the dreadful and terrifying sound of Edna’s screen door hinges screeching. 

GOOSEBUMPS!  Every single hair on my arms and back of neck stood up in the sudden realization of exactly where I was… My rusted burial sarcophagus had come to rest and was lodged under the rear differential of Edna’s behemoth precious BUICK. 

I screamed as I heard her frantic footsteps racing off her wooden porch towards me.

“Help Edna, stop!” I wanted her to know that there was a child stuck inside the putrid can that was stuck under her car.  ‘Edna, Nooooooo…if you kill me, you’re breaking the 5^th commandment” I thought a dose of Catholic guilt might save my life, until I heard her keys jiggling in the door. I WAS A GONNER!

 

They couldn't erase me at Salton Sea, so maybe this was their next chance.

Varoom roared the engine to life…Her car jerked backwards as she hastily forced the gear shift lever through reverse on the way to drive… creasing the hamper and pinning me inside my tiny metal coffin under the heavy metal housing of her behemoth Buick’s rear end.   

Tires squealing, can screeching, sparks flying and kid screaming.  The angry grouch tore down the street in her 18 ton battleship with my hamper of death heating up and shooting a forty foot rooster tail of sparks. 

Talk about blazing saddles... my stinky death container was getting red hot and my Swedish little derriere was hotter than molten lava... Krakatoa (east of java) was about to erupt.

 

part 2 THE HAMPER OF DEATH: I Took the Bait.

"Sure...Kurt, you want me to climb into an the hamper that used to be an old diaper pail!"

This terrible decision all began when Karin and I were playing "The Healing of the Lame Man."  I had lost a shoe that had gotten buried in a pile of clothes somewhere and my ingenious mother decided to wrap my foot in an Ace bandage so I could pretend to have bum foot (She didn't want Mrs. Lennon to see me running around in the neighborhood with only one shoe).

Jump hobble thump. Jump Hobble thump. I had found a crutch and chased Karin around the second floor. Jump... Hobble... Thump went the thud of the crutch on the wooden floors.

Meanwhile the older boys, their girlfriends, a couple of the guys (that live upstairs in the room with the snake cages) and several neighbors were downstairs holding onto electrical wires that my dad had left hanging out of a wall during a past remodel that never got finished. I had already played that game with them enough and went upstairs to get away this time. I had been chasing Karin around as I hobbled on the old wooden crutch.

I don't know why none of us died holding on to those electrical wires...but we didn't. (IT'S DANGEROUS - DON'T DO IT). In my head, I could almost hear Mrs. Blaser saying, "Donny, I don't care if Tony Dahlin jumped off a building, it doesn't mean you have to jump off a building."  I could also see her saying, "YOU DID WHAT?" when he came home with curly hair and told her what the crazy Dahlins were up to next door.

Whenever the boys electrocuted themselves it was always like Frankenstein or something. "IT'S ALIVE!" It seemed to awaken the creative juices of the inner Viking - The Monster! It always spelled some kind of disaster for our neighborhood or just out-right trouble for either me or the grouch next door.

THIS IS WHERE THEY HATCHED THE PLAN - for the inglorious "TWOFER" They would get me and Edna at the same time.

A little bit about the poor, dear-old lady next door. I'm sure she wasn't always a grouch. I'm sure our moving in next door had something to do with it. I'm sure our cars, our junk stacked up on her fence, the fact that we stole her avocados and the fact that our rattlesnakes had kept escaping onto her property had something to do with it. Anyway poor Edna did not want us to touch one blade of her grass, stack car parts or used tires up against her fence or come within 10 FEET OF HER PRECIOUS BUICK!
                                                                                                    "My precious. My Precious!"

Anyway, Kurt and the boys had just finished frying their brains when they hatched this latest plan...where they had commissioned him to trap me.  "Hey Mark, do you want to play Hide-N-seek?"

"Me?" I asked, a little too enthusiastically - giving away too much up front. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be accepted.

He said that he had the best hiding spot in the history of Hide-N-Seek, then pointed to the hamper.

I gagged. The hamper! You mean the retired-diaper-pail! IT STILL SMELLED LIKE BABY DIAPERS - How could it you might ask (Karin has been out of diapers for years)?

Ahhhh...but think about this with me for a minute, because that's exactly what I was doing -THINKING ABOUT IT! With my vomit-superpowers and faulty brain-to-stomach wiring - Not Good!

  

With our family, eight babies with an average of about four or five diapers a day (a couple of those - most likely would have been full of green-baby-pooh). Multiply that by seven days-a-week, times another fifty-two-weeks a year. Multiply that by the fact that an average baby wears diapers for about two years, which means that over all those years and all those babies, (let me see, doing the math in my head), I figured that it had to be close to about a bazillion and one stinky, smelly, poopy diapers that had once been stored up in that diaper-pail. Meaning, that in order for me to successfully hurdle this hamper invitation, I would have to mentally overcome the picture of vast mountains of green-mushy baby-pooh that now occupied the better part of my brain.  Mt Everest of Pooh-Pooh.

8 (kids) X 5 (diapers)                                 X 7 (days a week)                                 X 52 (weeks in a year)                                 X 2 (years+/-) = 1,000,000,000,000,001  dirty, stinky, poopy, diapers

Gagging, I visualized that setting foot inside of that thing would be like tunneling into that mountain of baby diarrhea, which when latched, had no possible way of escape.

           "There are no windows and no doors!"

As soon as Kurt opened the lid, my stomach heaved in a pre-launch sequence for my super-vomit. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3…I willed my stomach into submission before the count-down reached zero. Miracle! Thank you Saint Anthony! Both, Kurt and my Hide-N-Seek career were saved. 

 "Come on boy. You can do it" Kurt said as if coaxing a frightened dog, but what he didn't know is that primordial metal container represented 85.14% of all my worst fears.

       1)    Smelly things.

       2)       Suffocation.

       3)    Death. (death was behind suffocation and gross smelly things). 

       4)    Small places.

       5)    Being left behind at Salton Sea

       6)    Brothers - after they've been jolted by electricity

       7)    Sister Godzilla

       8)   Things that smell like poop.

       9)   Things with lids that latch.

      10)   Small dark places.

      11)  Being trapped.

      12)  Being in things with lids that can be latched from the outside by a brother.

         13)  Brothers - before electricity

      14)  Any smell or sound or thought that makes me think I want to vomit. 

            15) Small dark places with latches that smelled like it had been used for diapers.

      16)  Mrs. Simpson, my third grade substitute teacher.

      17)  Finding Alligators in the bathtub.

      18)  Peeing your pants in 3rd grade. 

      19)  Getting hit by a car and having on dirty underwear 

      20)  Being raised by my Brothers or by the Salton Sea-ites.

I would never say yes!  "...um...sure Kurt, no problem."   WHY?   I was most definitely clinically-psychotic - there was no other explanation! I just wanted them to like me. I wanted to feel like I belonged.

In his generosity, he squish me into conformity of the diaper pail like I was made of Jello - slammed the lid closed and snapped down the old rusted metal flap on the outside. 

It wasn’t about a minute that I heard footsteps and voices

Like an unwelcome swarm of locus coming up the stairs I heard muffled hushes and shushes and whispers and the solid thuds of well-placed fists as the clan smacked each other.   

Please God - don't let them find me, don't let this be a trick and please don't let me die!

More footsteps! More noise! Before I knew it, I was in the air and I think they thought I didn't know! Keeping the hamper pail upright as they carried me somewhere, thinking I was a complete idiot.  With the suppressed giggling and the thumping and the socking and the tribe “hushing” and “shushing” each other along with the sound of slaps to the back of the heads - didn’t help their cause one bit. I knew what was happening all right. I was on to them, but I wanted them to be happy, so I pretended to be oblivious to their treacherous plan.  

First, it was down eight stairs, then a right turn on the landing, then seven more stairs down to the first floor, then more “shushing” as if I didn’t know by this time exactly where they had carried me.

“Dirty bird. Dirty Bird!” sang the mynah bird that Liver-Lips taught curse words to, giving away the location at the bottom of the staircase in the entry.   

After sixteen paces across the entry the tired old hinges squealed as the humungous oak door hesitated to open. They were taking me outside! With a few more steps across porch, I began to get really scared knowing I was being kidnapped and not knowing where they were taking me. Just as we started down the front stairs, someone cut the cheese and brood dropped the hamper as I bounced and tumbled and rattled and shook and came crashing to a solid thud onto the concrete at street level.  

It was not a Good Vibration - I threw that in because it was the hottest Beach Boy song right now. 

By this time, I figured that they knew that I knew so I screamed a little to please them - after all, it is what they wanted...but I was just happy to be included - no matter how afraid of where the next phase would take me...

Call it a premonition...a prophetic utterance... a word of wisdom...but little did I know how right I was to be afraid. It only got worst from here. 

NEXT:  THE GREAT "TWOFER" and the FLAMING HAMPER OF DEATH...Please Reader Discretion Advised in the next episode of markie d.... oh and by the way... I'm not sure that I was feeling the "love-good vibrations" from the Wolf Pack.