Butter

I used to eat butter as a child. Now, I don't mean that I would add butter in small doses as part of this nutritious breakfast. No. I mean, I would EAT butter.

Take a spoon, and dig into the tub. It's sweet, it's salty, it's smooth and fatty.

When I was small, on Sunday mornings, as a treat, I would occasionally get to go out to brunch with my grandparents and their friends after church. They would always go to the same vintage 1940's diner with moldy colonial wallpaper. They would religiously over-sugar their coffees. Most of the men wore bad ties. Most of the women smelled of cheap perfume.

Back then, their group of church/camping buddies numbered about 20 or 30. Now, many years later, there are only about six of them left. (Must have been the sugary coffee, but I digress...) Anyway, I would regularly wander from one sticky old lady to the next, charming the old bitties while I palmed their paper butter pats. Handfuls, I would horde, and away I would scurry.

Safely back in my seat, following a successful sortie, I would stack like bricks my pilfered pats, waiting for a lull in the conversation. Once the timing was right, and my grandfather was not hogging the spotlight, I would begin to peel the thin layer of wax paper from the butter. Quietly, I would begin to lick the raw butter blocks one by one, scraping the paper squares clean with my teeth. If I kept it up long enough, eventually one of the old women women notice and oblige my craving for attention by shrieking with horror. The others would look and respond with their own obligatory moans of disgust. They were good that way. This went on for years.

I believe that behavior ended sometime before 1984. However, I am certain that it did not occur anytime after that year, and I almost never ate butter again.

It was summer in Los Angeles. The 84 Olympics were in full swing, and Richard Ramirez (the Night Stalker) was gutting women in their beds by the score. It was high time to get out of Dodge. Therefore, the family piled into my grandparents' 1971 chevy van (Later the make-out mobile) and headed for Denver to visit with distant relatives.

It was on that trip that I first discovered the joy of Casa Bonita, but that is another blog to come... (unless I've already blogged about that... Have I mentioned Casa Bonita?) anyway, we were on the road for two weeks and had a local teenage girl house sit and watch our dog for us.

Upon our return, we noticed first that she and her friend were changing the sheets on the beds, quickly. Also our dog looked traumatized. Other than that, the house looked to be in order. A quick check revealed that my toys, absent one storm trooper, were in fine order. All was well.

Until the next morning, that is. Breakfast was eggs and toast, nothing exciting. Orange juice to drink. Butter for the toast. The butter came in one of those big oversized 80s-style buckets. My dad opened the butter and shrieked like a little girl. My mother quickly grabbed the tub and shrieked as well. Being 13 and curious about my dad's peculiar shrieking behavior, I looked also.

There, sitting peacefully in the center in the butter was a long dark pubic hair.

So, I guess the moral to the story is, if you're going to go to a house party, and you decide to fuck the butter, think about trimming the bush first. Thanks.