Something had gone horribly wrong on this day before Halloween: Adding baby lima beans to the spaghetti sauce the previous night to pump up the vitamins. Huge mistake. What really got pumped up? My ass, with gas that could kill small children and most forms of plant life. And I had to go out, because I needed to collect an outfit for Halloween.
First stop: The Avenue (fluffy chick store, I’m fluffy) to find a black skirt. As we drove into the parking lot I told Vin that, “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea for me to go into such a small shop right now because of the lack of dissipation space.” Funny the things you consider in certain predicaments.
He didn’t take me seriously. He sat on a bench at the side of the store with Gadget, who was a toddler at the time. Every time I had to let one go in Avenue – which was unusually crowded, by the way – I had to sneak off into a corner to pretend I really liked some ugly blouse hanging there. I’d let it steam out in isolation, so I’d have enough time to shoo some off and leave the scene of the crime, hoping no one would head for that part of the store to connect me with the aroma after I’d fled. Of course this never happened anywhere near Vin, so though he knew I was gassy, he didn’t know how gassy, nor how putrid these ass-burners were. He was unaware of my corner-bombing missions. I grabbed a skirt and didn’t bother trying it on because I didn’t want to stink up a changing room, have the next chick go in and go, “WTF?”, come out and point me out to her friends, while trying to regain consciousness. I let another one go near the bargain bin and scooted quickly toward the check-out. I panicked a little when one of the cashiers recognized me from last time I was there and wanted to “catch up” but, clenching my buns, I somehow managed to get out of there with that skirt and my dignity somewhat intact. (If I’m not on-scene when the odor strikes, I’m technically innocent, right?)
Next stop: Halloween store. I told Vin we’d have to stay together so I could pass one off on him if it happened near, you know, people. He reluctantly agreed-ish, still unaware of my potency. When I actually did drop a bomb in his immediate vicinity, he looked around like he was trying to locate whatever died and started to decompose in the store. Did he really not know it was me after I’d informed him five hundred times? He looked at Gadget all concerned and asked me if Gadget was sick. I started to giggle and his face fell. “Awwwww, damn… that was you!?” he exclaimed out loud. OMG!! I nudged him with my elbow and said, “No, hon, that was YOU… remember?”, and he was all, “No! That wasn’t me! That was YOUR FART!” I turned beet red and was starting to wish I could crawl up my own ass and hide, except I probably would have died up there. THANKS, VIN! You were supposed to take one for the team, but No! So much for chivalry! I was grateful the cashier guy was so ultra-goth that he couldn’t laugh for fear of looking happy. I wondered if he would have smiled had bats flown out of my butt?
Last stop: Ursula’s Kid Cuts of Doom. We took Gadget to get a haircut.
Ursula was a terrifying woman with skunk hair, white on top, black on the sides, completely natural. She wore many layers of makeup, had pinched lips, and breath that could rival what had been wafting from my bottom. We were about to subject our child to a monster with sharp metal instruments.
We sat Gadget down in a little taxicab-shaped “seat,” which was situated in front of a TV, allowing kids to watch videos during their haircuts. And he was fine, watching Toy Story. Ursula wrapped him in a plastic poncho to catch the trimmings, and then she whipped out the electric clippers. She flipped them on and buzzed maybe two passes through his hair before her phone rang. She didn’t bother excusing herself, just ran off to have a twenty-minute chat with someone who was apparently very funny (or someone she wanted to think they were funny), as she pseudo-laughed loudly and flamboyantly the entire time.
She returned and clipped a little more. I “accidentally” let another one go, but we couldn’t smell it as we choked on Ursula’s perfume. Her phone rang again.
Ten minutes of crazed flamboyant laughter later, she returned, and by this time Gadget was getting grouchy. Ursula made a toddler wait for too long, so she deserved the crankiness that ensued. She began to clip again, and Gadget began to cry. She tried to soothe him by shoving some little alien toy in his face, calling it a “frog” as she bounced it around all stupid-like. And by this time he was wailing and trying to escape the taxicab, but we couldn’t take him away with half a haircut, and all the other stylists were busy with their own clients.
I tried to hold him while he flailed, kicked, and screamed, and I was cutting cheese like crazy now because I had quit caring.
She asked me, “Will you want gel in his hair?” and I replied, “Yeah, we’ll give him a fauxhawk.”
In a flat, disgusted tone the witch replied, “No. WE won’t.” She did a few more passes with the clippers, AND THEN THEY BROKE. And then her phone rang again, and she ran off once more to answer it.
No more. Gadget’s hair was not finished, but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t finish it at home, and the color on Vin’s face was somewhere between lobster and tomato (irritated, not embarrassed), and I could tell he was about to lose it. I grabbed Gadget out of the taxicab and hurried him to the waiting area to nurse him back to calmness.
Vin stomped over to the cashier and demanded to see a manager, and he wasn’t nice about it at all. Ursula and her manager looked dumbfounded, and the manager began to speak and stopped, her nose wrinkling up as she looked at Vin suspiciously. Vin pointed at Ursula. His lima bean spaghetti sauce had finally kicked in, and his “perfume” was clearly more tenacious than Ursula’s. He grinned at me. I knowingly grinned back. We headed for the door, looking over our shoulders and waving our hands about to shoo off the aroma that everyone now thought was Ursula’s.
A moral to the story, if there is one: Don’t mess with people who eat lima beans. No amount of perfume will save you.
