Tossing Salt Presents:
12 (Dougie) Days of Christmas – Day 11
Charlie Brown Christmas, Birds & The Bees, Cow Pow & The Dentist
DougMaynard.com
Doug Maynard

Christmas is nearly here. Before I forget, as my brother says, Merry Christmas Adam. We’re on Day 11 of the 12 (Dougie) Days of Christmas and I’ve got a few stories to tell. Instead of new material, I decided to back in time with some older material from Days of Dougie Past. Yeah, I’m cheating, but I’m not feeling it tonight. Walmart pissed me off. I’ll tell that story eventually, but for now, it’s all about family, festivity, and togetherness. So let’s get on with this, shall we? The topics are A Charlie Brown Christmas, The Birds & The Bees, Cow Pow, and The Dentist. Enjoy and I’ll talk at you later.

Charlie Brown Christmas

A Charles Shultz classic with Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy, Linus, and the entire Peanuts Gang talking about Christmas. Charlie Brown has the blues and can’t understand the true meaning of Christmas. Luckily, Linus is there to explain what the reason for the season is. And we get a Happy Ending. It’s a great story and cartoon and one of my must-see television shows every year. And it reminds me of a story.

Way back in my early 20s, I lived in a nice trailer over in Glen Acres. Christmas was coming and I needed a tree. Rather than get one from the usual places, I went out into the woods and cut myself down a tree. Did I say tree? It was essentially a big branch from a pine tree that looked almost identical to the Christmas tree from the Charlie Brown cartoon. I set it up and decorated it with lights, tinsel, and a few ornaments I had gotten from Mom’s house. And it rocked! No presents because I was poor, broke, lived alone, and it was just me and my cat, Stinky. But it was special to me and Stinky liked it as well. He liked climbing to the top and trying to pull the tree down while attacking the angel perched on the top. Good times!

Birds & The Bees

The Birds and the Bees is the talk we should all hear sometime around when puberty hits. There are two sexes, men and women. Just two genders, nothing more. And sometimes, men and women fall in love. There are deviations of this as sometimes men love men and women love women, but the normal standards are men and women meet and feel attraction to each other. And our bodies change and our feelings grow and develop and people become attracted to other people. And shit happens. And there you go. And now, here’s a book.

Yeah, that’s how it went for me, except for the actual talk. I just got a book. Thank goodness for movies, Playboy, and erotic novels. I’m still waiting on the rest of the sex talk, but I think I’ve figured most of it out by now. If he’s cute, smile and says, “How you doing?” and let nature take its course. And of course, if they’re not interested at first, twenty bucks is twenty bucks, right? ‘Nuff said!

Cow Pow

Cow pow is exactly what it sounds like, the big pile of poop in a field, that comes from the cow. Many years ago, I was visiting my cousins up in Ohio for the summer, and one of the things we did was camp out with his friends. His friend’s family raised cows. We went cow-tipping that night. And one of the guys, while we were running away from a pissed-off cow, hit a pile and did a flip, feet in the air and landing on his back. And my cousin, without missing a beat, immediately called him the Master of the Cow Pow.

Maybe you had to be there, but it was funny as hell at the moment and we laughed about it the rest of the night. And every time we’d see a pile of animal deposits on the ground afterward, it’d be called “dog-pow”, “horse-pow”, or whatever the offending animal may be. We were only like 11 or 12 years old at the time and this was hilarious stuff to us. That was an awesome summer.

The Dentist

When my brother and I were small kids, my Dad would always volunteer to help Mom out by taking us to our annual dentist appointments. Just being a good father, right? Well, he confessed to me when I got older that there was a reason that he didn’t mind these trips. And guess what it was?

After we’d leave the dentist’s office, especially if we had just had a cavity filled, he’d always take us to Hardees. And being typical small kids, we’d get hot dogs. And he would sit and laugh at us trying to eat a sloppy hot dog while our mouths were numb from the visit to the dentist. We couldn’t feel our mouths or talk and we’d be trying to eat hot dogs anyhow and Dad would just sit and smirk and laugh his ass off.

It’s funnier than it sounds and we’d generally end up with hot dogs and ketchup and chili all over our faces and clothes and he would just be grinning and laughing at us. I think my Dad had a slightly twisted and sadistic sense of humor. That must be where I got it from. But I’ll never forget those days and those memories. And I’ll never forget my Dad. I love you, Dad.

And there you go, Thanks for reading and for taking this 12 Days of Christmas journey with me this week. Tomorrow is Day 12. Be ready. Abd with that, I’m out of here. Who loves you, baby? Merry Christmas Adam. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Ubuntu!