Doctor, Lawyer, Winkie Manufacturer

My son's second grade class is doing a community project, in which they are tasked with interviewing local workers. They asked for parent volunteers to go into the classroom and be interviewed by the children, and I said I would do it. I went in this morning.

Thank goodness my many phobias do not include extemporaneous speaking; the children hammered with me with relentless questions that reminded me of bad job interviews, including:

How do the goods and services you provide impact the community in positive ways?
How do you see your career changing in the next ten years?
Do you like horror movies?

No sooner did I answer one question than 10 more hands shot up. Later, I asked my son what other careers different parents had.

"Well, this one dad makes fake winkies."

"What do you mean, 'fake winkies'?"

"He makes them for people whose real winkies have fallen off in an accident or something."

"Do you mean protection for winkies, like when kids play sports?"

"No, real fake winkies! It's a fake winkie company. They provide goods and services that help the community. Like, if you lose your winkie, you get a new one. The company is called Hot Shots."

Hot Shots? They named their prosthetic penis company hot shots?

Then he said: "We learned the Winkie Block. Hawww!" And he covered his privates with his hands in a sudden crossed-arm motion. "That protects you from losing your winkie to an unfortunate accident!"

"That's not such good business sense," I said. "For a company that makes money out of providing fake winkies?"

I stared at him really hard but he did not flinch. I still suspect that I have been duped.

And this completes my trifecta of posts about weenies and winkies! Thank you and good night, Mamaroneck!

Stuffed Animals With the Heads of Men

Always alert to iconic ponies, especially pink ponies, I spotted this display in the window of the ISE Cultural Foundation in SoHo, whose mission on their web site reads: "In the generation of globalization, cross-national and regional activities have been splendid in the field of arts." Do we think they are fulfilling said mission? I vote YES. This is entirely splendid. I spent many fond moments examining the creatures while keeping an eye out for the Tribeca Taco Truck.

(Can anyone identify the men depicted in the below photos?)

Bald, malevolent, dangling, pink. Everything one wants in a pony. But not everything one wants in a man's weiner, not really. Why did I even write that previous sentence? Hey, lookit the cute pony! He is mad.

So many things are happening here. Those penile projections are releasing weird globular goofballs into the air, while things with fur and heads are dropping from above. The furred things are scared. What will happen when they reach the bottom? Maybe a furred shark with the head of Mr. T will rise up and devour them? These activities have been splendid!

I got a close-up of this one. His voice through the glass was tiny, yet audible. He said, among other things that were unprintable: "Good Lord! Is that a first-generation iPhone?"

Prodding and Poking With Naughty Intent

Esteemed second son (age 5) has gotten into trouble ever since he started kindergarten.

The child lives in his own imaginary video game. He doesn't walk—not anywhere, and not for any reason. When he moves he runs, bounces, leaps, twirls, and scuttles. When moving from room to room, he jumps from one edge of the carpet to another, and sidles along the wall. He's clearly thinking that the plain wood floor is made of boiling lava and alligators.

All the while, he keeps up a running patter of nonsensical singing (mostly half under his breath) and poop/fart talk.

"Fart! Fart! In my apple tart! Farty butt doo-dee! Farty butt doo-DEE!"

He repeats a phrase so often that he becomes breathless. When you try to catch his attention, it usually takes about six tries. His pockets are filled with "nature" and found objects. He often gives one crumpled bits of nothingness as gifts—like some lint stuck together with glue and popsicle sticks and some old cheese wax and wrapped up with ripped tin foil, then tied with a used ribbon. The Tiger Mother would have hurled such items into the garbage with a disparaging "pfah!", but I line them up on my desk until I can bury them under cover of night.

Anyway, Second Son's antics didn't serve him so well in school, where he has to sit still and pay attention at times. First, his teacher mentioned the "little noises and squeaks" he makes during circle time. Then there was the "inappropriate touching." He had "poor impulse control" and a tendency toward rude language.

(He's really a very bright and marvelous and whimsical child, although I realize that I have described him almost exactly as I would describe a fictional child with a curious collection of special needs.)

Photocopied apology notes started to show up at home:
"Sorry for the badness in gym."
"I am sorry I punched you. I am still your friend."
"Sorry for breaking the pencil."
"Sorry I pinched your butt."

Second Son and two other boys in the Kindergarten class started a gang of sorts. The gang's sole purpose was to bother other members of the gang. Poking, pushing, and kicking soon led them to be the first Kindergarten kids in memory to be referred for weekly Group Counseling Sessions with the school psychologist. There, they would forsake their naughty ways and learn not to prod and poke one another with evil intent.

It seemed to have worked, for Second Son recently announced that he had "given away his bad."

"Who'd you give it away to?" asked the teacher's assistant nervously. "Someone in the class? Can you give us a name?"

All was well for about a month until today, when I arrived to pick him up from school. The teacher pulled me over and said: "We had a little problem this week."

"More punching?"

"No, we had some penis touching."*

"His own? Or others'?"

"Ah, well...both. He thought I didn't see him, but I caught it out of the corner of my eye. Several times."

The teacher reached her hand out to demonstrate, and gave a very light and gentle "poke!" into the air.

"At least he was gentle about the whole thing!" I said.

"Very gentle!" she agreed. "Very gentle!"

Progress!

*Note: The touching was to the penile "area." No actual winkies were touched.

I Once Accidentally Spied the Weiner of Lyle Menendez

I recently unearthed my high school yearbook, and found this photograph of my famous classmate:

My friend Claire wrote on the page: "Methinks he'll make ugly babies..."

Yes, it is Lyle Menendez, of the notorious Menendez brothers. He and sibling Erik shot their parents at point blank range while they ate strawberry shortcake in their den. They went to high school with me. For real!

You may wonder: What did I know of this villain? Sadly, not much. Lyle did not deign to speak to me more than a handful of times. I was not of his ilk. His ilk wore tennis whites all day long, in the hallways and classrooms. I tended to hang around behind the school and smoke cigarettes. I was invited to his senior year class party along with everyone else, however, and went up the driveway past the fluttering balloons tied to the mailbox and shook hands with his soon-to-be-dead parents and jumped into his swimming pool.

I was on the JV tennis team, and he on the Varsity. Therefore, we would often pass on the way to the courts. Lyle was usually stuffed with self importance, his dark eyes shining with pride and athleticism and a grandiosity that repelled me. He didn't concern me much, but one day I turned to my pal as we lurked in a bush and had a surreptitious smokie treat. "That old Lyle looks like a Class-A prick," said I.

"He is a Class-A prick," she replied, and took a deep drag.

The only story I have of him is thus. I shared an English class with him, and as we were scribbling away at a freewrite I chanced to glance up. He was wearing his tight, white tennis shorts as he always did. He let his left leg swing out, lazily, blissfully, and his weiner dangled right out of the shorts. I glanced away, horribly embarrassed. But throughout the class my eyes kept flicking over there, against my will—and the weiner kept winking in and out, like a turtle in a cave. He was totally ignorant of the thing. He just kept staring at the English teacher with a dumb, vapid expression.

I wanted to yell out at him: "Put away your weiner, man!" But he was a serious sort of dude. I would never have spoken to him in such a light manner. He had these strange, dark eyes.

That's all I really remember about him. Methinks he'll make ugly babies.

Lyle and Erik Menendez. Remember this shot? I do! Remember the Made For TV movie? I do!

UPDATE! Just remembered the story that my mother told me back in the 90s. She said "I met that Kitty Menendez once, and I did not care for her. She was rather rude."