Mitchell Way
“Three weeks left in August. Then I go to my college, and you go to yours. Where did the summer go?” I griped.
My best friend, Chuck, and I were lying on the carpet of the TV room waiting for my mom to make us some sandwiches.
Terror. The feeling of helplessness or hopelessness. It causes some people to freeze, unable to make decisions. In others, who have the tendency to panic, it activates their “fight or flight” response, not necessarily reacting in actions which make any sense. This is sometimes described as mental dysregulation.
Turn on the TV news any day or read it from the feed on your phone. Somewhere in the world, someone or some large population group is experiencing the feeling of terror. In recent years, the stock market has crashed, there have been wars, fires, floods, active shooters in churches, schools, and malls. When you are involved, your stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol are released into the body which will determine how you specifically will react. Though, during my lifetime, I have reacted many ways to the feeling of terror, both personal and mass, my wife and I were not prepared for the note that my daughter brought home from her second-grade class teacher at elementary school. It stated very clearly in large block letters: Head Lice Infestation In Your Child’s Classroom.
As I read the flyer, my beautiful daughter stood at my feet looking up into my eyes. I gazed down at her thick long head of hair as the adrenaline and cortisol shot through my body and the first thought that came into my mind was, “Oh, icky.” As she reached up for a hug, I reacted like any dad who was just handed a baby with a poopy diaper, I gave her a long-arm hug.
Naturally, like any parent, I was in denial. “Not my daughter! We live in a very clean home. She showers regularly. Cheryl, would you come in here for a moment!”
As my wife came into the kitchen seeing me holding my daughter at arm’s length she asked, “What’s going on? I haven’t seen you hold her off like that since she had poopy diapers.”
“Could you get the flashlight and check Kalene’s hair for head lice?”
“Oh my gosh,” she exclaimed, the adrenaline and cortisol shooting through her body. “Let me put my shower cap on first.”
She ran into the bathroom and emerged with a shower cap on. To anyone driving by looking into our kitchen window, it now looked like both of Kalene’s parents were bald. She took the flashlight and began spreading Kalene’s hair apart to see the scalp.
“Oh no! No, no, no!” she moaned.
“Does this mean, no lice?” I asked.
So now we reacted in our own ways to terror. I stood dumbfounded not knowing what to do and Cheryl spun in circles with her hands flailing above her head.
“She has nit eggs all through her hair and I can see the adult lice on her scalp. What do we do? What does the paper tell us to do?”
I read down the page.
“Well, it says that there are many lice treatment shampoos on the market, or we could shave her head bald.”
“Always the funny guy in an emergency,” she growled.
“Dad. I don’t want you to shave my hair off.” Kalene started to cry.
“Your dad is being funny again, Kalene. We would never do that.”
“That would be a kick having three bald people in the house. We could just tell everyone that we have temporary alopecia. Let’s see what else the paper says. Hmm, bedding, clothing and hats should be laundered in very hot water on the same day that your child is treated. Nits should be removed from the hair shafts with a nit comb. Boil all combs and brushes that might possibly be shared with other family members. Do not share hats. All members of the household need to be checked when there is one case of head lice in the family.”
Isn’t it weird that just the thought of head lice in your hair makes your scalp itch? Cheryl started scratching her shower cap.
“OK, you go to the drug store and get some of that lice killer and I will start stripping her bed. I’m going to have to put her pillows in plastic garbage bags to starve out any lice that are on them.
Hopping into the car, I drove into town to the drug store. The line of parents stretched out into the parking lot. The pharmacist inside was busily emptying lice killing remedies off his shelves. Luckily, I was able to return home with a kit of the name brand lice killer. Inside of the house, the washing machine was running.
“Okay. Here is the lice killer. It says to put it all through her hair while she is standing in the shower and let it sit, then rinse it out. When the rinsing is done, use the nit comb and remove the nits from the hair.”
While the process was going on, I went to Kalene’s bedroom and scanned it for other possible lice nests. There at the head of the bed lay her two favorite companions which she had slept with since she was a baby, Mr. Monkey and the Wolley Bear. Mr. Monkey was a handmade sock monkey given to her by her aunt. Her uncle forever complained that he was now one sock short. The Wolley Bear, was a collectable store bought bear which was given to her by one of the relatives as a baby gift. His long brown hair and the look on his face, like Poo or Paddington, made him extra snuggly. Both of her bedmates slept next to her head at night.
“Going to have to do something with these,” I thought. I put them both into a plastic bag.
The shower being over, I said through the bathroom door, “How’s it going in there?”
“I left the chemical in her hair for the suggested amount of time, but it’s not killing the lice,” Cheryl called back. “They are still running all over her scalp.”
“Okay, I’ll get the hair clippers,” I said. There was more crying inside the bathroom followed by, “Would you stop saying that. It’s not funny!”
When the two girls left the bathroom, they were both worse for wear. Kalene stood in a bathrobe with her hair making her look like a troll doll. Cheryl was frustrated because this was not the type of trauma she wanted to face this late in the day. I parted the hair on Kalene’s scalp and could see that the store-bought chemical had done nothing. Not only were the lice still moving and biting her scalp, but soon the nits would hatch and there would be twice as many on her head. Instead of trying again, and putting more chemical into her hair, an idea came to mind. We had been using “Dr. Bronner’s 18-in-1 Pure Castile liquid Peppermint Magic Soap” in the shower lately because Cheryl said it wouldn’t leave a scum in the tub like bar soap.
Dr. Bronner’s is a concentrated peppermint oil that we put in a pump bottle. One pump into the palm will lather up a good portion of your body and leave you smelling like a Life Saver mint. I can attest to the fact that it leaves no soap residue in the tub. I can also attest to the fact that you do not want to get it into your eyes because it stings like acid. I thought about it for a moment. If it stings the eyes so bad, I wonder if it would kill the lice. Besides, it’s made to go on the skin and isn’t an insecticide.
“Oh, Kalene. Let’s try something new at the shower.”
She came into the bathroom in her robe. “Does this have anything to do with clippers?” she asked.
“Silly girl,” I laughed. “I want to try something. Get down on your knees and hang your head out over the tub. Keep your eyes closed tight and I am going to put this peppermint soap all through your hair and scalp and we’ll let it sit for a moment to see what it does to the lice. Keep your eyes closed tight.”
Reluctantly, she got on her knees on the bathmat and hung her head over the tub. I poured some of the Dr. Bronner’s into my palm and began running it through her hair and over her scalp. The concentrated liquid matted her hair and I made sure that every hair shaft was coated. Cheryl came to watch.
As I parted the hair, we could see the lice writhing from the burn of the peppermint oil. The oil was also going into the nit larva and frying them too. I was pleasantly surprised that her hair was not coming out in my hands also.
“Let’s give this a minute and then you get back in the shower and rinse the soap out of your hair really good. Then we will see how your head looks. Make sure to keep your eyes closed tight. Mom will help you with the water.”
Five minutes later, I heard the shower come on and Cheryl helped Kalene rinse the soap out of her hair completely. The bottom of the tub was covered with dead lice and nits. It worked and made her smell like a Life Saver mint.
Knowing that she would have a hard time sleeping the night without her two bedmates, I came up with another brilliant idea: I’ll coat Mr. Monkey and the Wooley Bear with Dr. Bronner’s which will kill any lice and then I’ll throw them in the washing machine. Oh, Mr. Mitchell, your brilliance amazes me!
With the monkey and bear lathered up, I tossed them into the wash. When they came out, the sock monkey was no worse for wear. The bears long fluffy coat was matted. Perhaps, I should have let them air dry, but bedtime was near, so I tossed them into the dryer. In thirty minutes, I pulled out the sock monkey who had the same smile on his face letting me know that he was just fine. Mr. Wooley Bear came out looking like a sheep. This shouldn’t have surprised me since I have also made many of Cheryl’s wool sweaters into doll clothes.
Now in a panic. I wondered if Kalene would believe me if I told her that I gave Wooley Bear a perm.
She is now 37 years old and has moved multiple times across the country with her husband. They have no children or pets, but they do have Mr. Monkey and the Wooley Bear who will follow her forever. And for guests who ask if Wooley is a sheep, she answers with, “No, he is a bear with a perm. I can thank my dad for that.”
Faith Family Life Getting Older Growing Up Misadventures Music Patriotism Pets or Pests? Snips Tributes
Sitting in the “Lab for Creative Ideas,” I had just hung up the phone after talking to my Patent attorney, Butch Cassidy whom, like his historical namesake, was trying to rob me blind. Apparently, ideas #407, the stick gum dispenser, and #408, the “Sleepy Sling” baby carrier had proven to be unpatentable in his findings during patent searches.
It was the third time the airport manager had caught us riding our motorcycles on the old taxiways at the airport. This time he meant business as he accelerated the airport pickup, gradually gaining on our two bikes. If we could just make it to the old logging trail and cut into the woods, we could lose him. My best friend Chuck looked over at me with a worried look on his face, the high pitched whine of his two stroke Suzuki 90 made my step-through Honda 50 sound like the voice of a 12 year old boy going through puberty.
Standing in front of the church Elder board, I was being asked the usual questions as to why I felt the need to give the church free publicity in the newspaper. I guess I did have quite a knack for it and really, it did not take much effort to get it.
High school kids and Friday nights. Nearly always a bad combination. Friday nights mean parties, mischief, or both. I woke up at my usual late time on Saturday morning and staggered to the bedroom window to check on the weather.
Adventure. My best friend Chuck and I were always on the lookout for some new and strange adventure. Something that most kids would never have considered trying. Something that while sitting in front of our parents would cause them to scream, “Why in the world would you try a stunt like that?”
Peaches and Lydia Chanterelle were sisters who were my age. They were each blessed by having beautiful voices. At the time, I had a gospel singing group which toured the northwest corner of the US, and the Chanterelles sang with me.
Author’s note: In 1990, I wrote this bedtime story for my two year old daughter. Tucked into the covers next to her were Mr. Monkey and the Wooly Bear and on her bedroom floor, the biplane. I hope that your children and grandchildren will enjoy hearing it too.
Rocking horses and Teddy Bears are scattered around the floor in her room upstairs and little Kalene lies sleeping in her crib. There is an airplane mobile flying overhead, protecting the airspace above her bed and a music box across the room plays gentle music.
The components of a great comedy skit must include some, if not all the following suggestions to be successful. By not meeting these criteria, you may well receive blank looks from your audience and the possibility of being booed off the stage (believe me, I know.) The list is as follows:
There was a period in my life, during the teens and twenties, when I was going through the Monty Python/ Maxwell Smart phase. It just so happened that everyone in my college group was going through it also, so we became an improv act.
All our skits were clean humored because we were, after all, a college church group. We started out with small announcement skits at the morning church service. After proving ourselves, and getting laughs, we were soon asked to create skits for multiple events around the church throughout the year.
We had a program for elementary age children called Junior Church. It was an alternative for them, which got them out of the adult service on Sunday mornings. The ages of the kids ranged from kindergarten through fifth grade. Stories from the Bible were taught so that a child could understand them. There was also a time for crafts.
Because there was a shortage of older adults who were willing to be leaders for Junior Church, I volunteered. My wife, Cheryl, reminds me that I was the perfect fit since I also had the maturity of an elementary school student. Each week we would creatively come up with skits and crafts to entertain ten to fifteen children. For the most part, they were all good kids, or rascals, depending on how you looked at them. The only boy who challenged me was an imp named Silas Wiseacre.
Silas was a red-headed third grader covered in freckles. With his oversized crooked adult teeth coming in and his baby teeth falling out, he had quite a smile. He had quite an oversized attitude also and Silas and I faced off many times.
“You better not, Silas!” I’d growl.
“What are you going to do if I do,” he’d ask, just to see how far he could go. It was frustrating.
So, just because I could, I played tricks on him, which I found out backfired, because he realized that he could also play tricks on me.
Now, one of the guys in the college group named Johnny Z had a mother whose name was Shirley. Shirley had the position in the church of being the Sunday School Superintendent, meaning that she set up all the programs for the youth. Realizing that we were starting to gain fame from our skits, she asked Johnny if we would do a series of four skits during the adult morning services. A whole month of skits. They should have a continuing story line with a message and all the Junior Church kids would be present. The kids would be able to see what happens in the adult church and the adults would be able to share in the kid’s program.
It sounded like the church had finally accepted and respected our talent. We accepted Shirley’s offer.
First, we got the whole crew together and came up with a four-week story line. It was of course, a storyline which bordered on the ridiculous. There would be a villain, a dimple-chinned would-be hero, a maiden in distress, and a horse named Fetalbalm. The rest of the crew would be off stage in charge of props and sound effects.
Of course we couldn’t have a real horse inside the church building, so we created one. Fetalbalm had a burlap bag for a head. Inside, the head was stuffed with straw. There were two red apples for eyes which were held onto the head with long pieces of string. If we wanted to, we could put slack in one of the pieces of string and slowly lower an apple to the floor.
Notice that we now had two of the required criteria: a story line, and sight gags.
A push broom head inside of the top of the bag gave Fetalbalm’s head its shape, and the handle allowed the operator to rotate the head. A brown Army blanket formed the body, and underneath, to provide the legs were two men; Mason who worked the front end, and me as the rump. Since we were always covered, no one in the audience knew who was playing those parts under the horse.
I might add here that my wife Cheryl has called me multiple variations of a horse’s rump over the last 40 years.
This is a brief synopsis of the storyline as I remember it:
The villain kidnaps the fair maiden, and each week the dimple-chinned hero and his faithful horse try to save her. During week four she is rescued, much to the delight of the crowd. Of course, each act included many sight gags and witty dialog which only the adults understood.
One of the gimmicks we used each week was that Fetalbalm would be missing his tail at the start of the skit. It was hidden somewhere on the stage. If one of the children could see the tail on the platform from his seat, he could point it out to the hero and then come up on the stage and tape the tail onto the rump of the horse. This made them excited to come to the skits because they might be the one to tape the tail on the horse.
Now here is something of interest I found about being the rump of a horse: flatulence, not from the back of the horse but from the guy in the front of the horse. The guy in the back of the horse is in no position to get out of the way of the guy in the front of the horse. I can remember being in position inside the horse one Sunday when a foul odor filled the inside of the blanket.
“Oomph! For crying out loud, Mason. What did you have to eat last night?”
“Quiet,” he whispered. “The kids will hear you – and it was Sauerkraut.”
Silas was there each Sunday of the skits, and he sat in the same aisle seat. So, each week to annoy him and get a laugh from the audience, as the horse walked past him, I would swing the horse’s butt into his back, or step on his shoe with my hoof. I’m realizing that I would not get away with a prank like that today because Silas is a 50-year-old truck driver who would most likely pound me into the carpet. As of week three, Silas had not been the first to spot the horse tail and he would shout something sarcastic at the child who did find it. It was during week four, our final skit, that things changed for us all.
As was usual for the scheduled format, Shirley and the Pastor took to the platform at the start of the service and Shirley welcomed the children and introduced the skit by reminding them to look for the horse’s tail. They both then sat down in their chairs on the platform facing the audience.
It is important to note here that the platform was three steps up off of the main floor where the audience sat. The skit began.
A dial telephone used as a prop, sitting on a small table on the platform, started to ring. It rang about seven times, when suddenly, the dimple chinned hero entered from a side door, dripping wet, wrapped only in a towel as if he had just stepped from the shower. He walked to the center of the platform, picked up the phone and began his dialog.
I had to hand it to Shirley. She didn’t even turn her head to look at him. She just followed him across the stage with her eyes. Her face, which some of the adults in the audience were also staring at, showed signs that she may soon pass out, but her knuckles, wrapped around the base of her seat brought out nicely the stained oak of the chair.
This was then our cue to bring Fetalbalm to the platform. Naturally, walking past Silas, I swung the horse’s rump into his back as we passed him. This got no reaction from him, but as we began climbing the stairs to the platform, he stood up and yelled, “There it is! I see the tail.”
To this day, I believe that someone in the cast told him where to look, because it wasn’t in plain sight. At any rate, Silas jumped up and ran to the platform to tape the tail onto Fetalbalm, but for Silas, it was not about winning, it was all about getting even. He took the tail to the rear of the horse and instead of taping the tail onto the rump, he reached under his coat and pulled out an upholstery stapler and fired two staples into my butt.
It is evident to me now, why the NFL has banned what they call the tush-push, where players get behind the quarterback and push him and the center far enough forward to get a first down or a touchdown. Mason was caught by surprise when I jumped forward, pushing him and I off the platform onto the floor below.
The mystery of who was under Fetalbalm was then revealed as I ran from the sanctuary trying to pull loose the Army blanket which was securely attached to my butt. Mason was left alone holding poor Fetalbalm’s head by the broom handle. As he let go of the string holding the apples and they started lowering to the floor, he grabbed one and took a bite out of it. This of course traumatized the children.
Although we fully covered all the essential criteria for a great skit, the Fetalbalm skit was our last. After receiving a tetanus shot, I gave Silas the tail to hang as a trophy on his bedroom wall and the two of us made a truce.
Faith Family Life Getting Older Growing Up Misadventures Music Patriotism Pets or Pests? Snips Tributes
It used to be that when I was young, strong, and had hair, just walking in front of a group of women would make them stare. Now when the women stare it is usually because something is wrong. I’m not saying that I look bad in a swimsuit but last year while walking on the beach in Cancun the women secretly dressed me with their eyes. It’s because I have fashion blindness.
At Bellingham High School, the stereotypical gender pathway in the 70s was always the same; enter the school through the main doors, pass the main office following the hallway down between the auditorium and counselor’s offices. Upon reaching the next crossing hallway, the girls turn left walking north. The guys turn right or continue straight out the east end of the building. The girls were going to Home Economics and the boys to Industrial Arts.
Elwood K. Wayson was a man of the woods. He was a hunter, trapper, and fisherman. He was a spar tree setter for logging camps and later a lineman for the local power company. Elwood lived in a small house behind mine when I was growing up. Since I had no living grandfather, I adopted him to be mine.
Saturday, June 4th, 1988. Just another typical weekend morning for me. I was reclined in my lounge chair in front of the TV, sipping a cup of coffee and watching Garfield and Friends. These were the Saturdays I enjoyed. Totally relaxed, no socks on, not a care in the world.
I was an eleven-year-old in sixth grade All City band. It was two hours each Saturday that the family would not have to listen to me practice my trombone. There is only so much a parent can do to encourage a child. After that, they play a game called, “Hide the Slide.”