[Listen]
[An ax chopping wood; THEME MUSIC plays…]
[Host: Christopher Gronlund]
I want to make one thing perfectly clear: this show is not about lumberjacks…
My name is Christopher Gronlund, and this is where I share my stories. Sometimes the stories contain truths, but most of the time, they’re made up. Sometimes the stories are funny—other times they’re serious. But you have my word about one thing: I will never—EVER—share a story about lumberjacks.
This time, it’s a story about a kid who makes a goopy monster in his bathtub…and the mayhem that follows its creation.
All right—let’s get to work…
* * *
[Narrator: Christopher Gronlund]
BOOGER
Bobby Simmons took one last look at the cup full of spit he’d been filling for two days before dumping it into his bathtub. He used his older brother’s hockey stick to mix his saliva into the mass of toenail clippings, urine, dirt, dog feces, toilet water, garbage, motor oil, decayed leaves, rocks, and the contents of the vacuum cleaner bag—and then bag itself. He was almost done, except for the final ingredient, the piece de resistance!
Digging deep into his nose, Bobby fished out a huge booger, the kind that feels like they’re connected to the bottom of your brain—the kind that feels good coming out. He balled it up and added it to the mass in the tub, like a tiny, mucous-covered maraschino cherry atop a compost sundae.
He then dropped in two 9-volt batteries, expecting the mass to ooze to life, but nothing happened. He figured the batteries would be enough to jump-start his creation; after all, when he touched his tongue to 9-volt batteries, it tingled and his mouth tasted like he was chewing aluminum foil. He needed something better, though—something more jolting, like lightning with Frankenstein’s monster.
Bobby once heard about a man who didn’t want to live anymore. The man filled his bathtub, climbed in, and dropped a live-wired toaster into the water. A jolt like that, Bobby hoped, would bring the heap to life, but his mother would scream at him if he ruined any kitchen appliances, even in the name of science. After giving it some thought, he grabbed his brother’s portable stereo; Justin wouldn’t need it—he was away at military school.
The cord on the stereo didn’t reach the tub, however, so Bobby got a long, orange extension cord from the garage that did the trick. When he plugged the stereo in, one of his brother’s rap CDs played.
S/FX: RAP BEAT THROUGH THE JUSTIN SECTION
Justin fancied himself hardcore, despite being another rap-listening white boy living in an affluent suburb of Chicago. When he finally got his driver’s license, he let the whole world know by driving around in his tricked-out Honda Civic, windows down, bassin’ away. Blocks before he drove by a house, its inhabitants heard the THOOM-THOOM-THOOM of an Alpine subwoofer “pumpin’ new shit by NWA.” To complete the image, Justin wore his cap backwards, said “Yo!” a lot, and stopped calling his mother “Mom,” opting instead for “Bitch.”
“Yo, Bitch—s’up?” he said one morning in a bad accent culled from Boyz N the Hood. “Want me some muthafuckin’ Wheaties!”
A week later, he was shipped off to Saint John’s Military School, where drill instructors made Justin the bitch.
Bobby pulled the shower curtain to the wall and dropped the stereo in. Sparks sprayed from the wall outlet, collecting at his feet before going cold. He thought for sure he’d end up electrocuted, just like the guy in the tub with the toaster, but a big POP, followed by the smell of ozone and burning plastic told him the outlet was fried and that he was safe. A thick, foul-smelling smoke rolled over the edge of the tub. a gurgling sound like a carp sucking Jell-O through a straw came from the other side of the shower curtain. He pulled it back and stared in awe at his work.
“Wow…”
Standing before Bobby was a shambling mound ready to take its first sticky steps into a strange new world. It was covered with tiny pores that swelled and burst under pressure, like fissures at Yellowstone National Park. The resulting odor lingered somewhere between sulfur and catfish bait, crossed with the stench of a dead, bloated raccoon Bobby saw on the railroad tracks in the heat of the previous summer. A vile pile come to life.
The orange extension cord hung from its neck, like a ready-made leash just waiting to be used. Justin’s stereo made up the bulk of its head, the two speakers looking like over-sized eyes, the volume knob serving as a nose. Its mouth was a big, gurgling hole, and sticking out from its neck were the two 9-volt batteries, like those from the neck of Frankentein’s monster.
“Hello…?” Bobby said.
He expected a grunt or a growl, but instead, he was met with a wave of bass.
S/FX: Bass THOOM THOOM THOOM
“What?” Bobby said.
S/FX: Bass THOOM THOOM THOOM
Bobby reached up to the monster’s face and turned the volume down.
“You need a name,” Bobby said, as he noticed something sticking out like a wart beside the creature’s nose—something he pulled from his own nose several minutes before. “I’ve got it: Booger!”
A knock at the door startled Bobby; it was his mother.
“What are you doing in there?” she said.
“Nothing! Going to the bathroom.”
When Justin was twelve, he went through a phase where he locked himself in the bathroom, even though he didn’t have to go. He masked what he was doing behind closed doors by playing his stereo loudly. It drove his mother mad, and looking back, she attributed the beginning of his delinquency to those times spent alone in the bathroom.
“Stop that right now, young man!” She tried the doorknob, but it was locked.
“Stop what?”
His mother was taken off guard; she didn’t know how to say it. “Stop…that! You know…that!”
“Going to the bathroom?”
“I know what you’re doing! Your brother did it, too, and look where it got him.” She rattled the doorknob. “Unlock this door now, young man!“
Bobby pulled the shower curtain shut and cracked the door. He rocked back and forth, acting like he needed to get back to the toilet. When the stench reached his mother’s olfactory system, she crinkled her face in disgust and gasped for fresh air. Bobby capitalized on the moment.
“It’s your meatloaf,” he said, rocking even more. He looked back at the commode and rubbed his stomach. “I think it got to me. I don’t feel so good.”
His mother, defeated, covered her disappointment with anger. “Well when you’re done, clean your room! How many times do I have to ask you? And stop listening to that rap music—I heard you. Do you want to go to military school like your brother?”
Bobby’s mom yelled a lot. Justin said it stemmed from their father’s frequent business trips. Bobby never knew what was wrong with business trips—their father had to work, after all, and he needed to bring his pretty secretary along, right?
“Okay,” Bobby said, shutting the door. When he felt for sure his mom was gone, he pulled back the curtain and looked at his creation.
Booger was created for a simple purpose: to get revenge on Chad Earnst, the school bully. Chad picked on Bobby unmercifully. Whether it was a simple slap to the back of the head in the hallway, to an all-out beating, there was nothing Bobby feared more in life than the mere sight of Chad Earnst.
“We better get you to my room,” Bobby said to Booger, while reaching for the extension cord. He helped Booger get out of the bath tub and checked the door.
As Bobby scoped out the hallway, making sure his mother was nowhere to be seen, Booger caught site of the mirror, stopping for a moment to admire itself. It reached up and fidgeted with its nose.
S/FX: Bass THOOM THOOM THOOM
“Shh!” Bobby said. Booger turned the volume down and stared at the mirror. It reached out with a dripping pseudopod, touching its reflection, leaving behind a gooey smear, like lumpy oatmeal.
When Bobby was sure the coast was clear, they made their way down the hallway, leaving behind a wet trail like the passing of a four-hundred and fifty-pound slug.
* * *
Bobby’s mother was quick to overreact when it came to the tiniest things: microscopic crumbs left on the kitchen counter, the garbage “dangerously” nearing the top of the kitchen garbage can, and stray drops of water left around the sink. To her, the presence of these little everyday messes was a reminder of just how little control she had over life. The day Bobby spilled grape juice on the living room floor, knowing full well that drinks were only allowed to be consumed over the safety of the linoleum floor in the breakfast nook, his mother went over the edge for an entire week, working at cleaning the stain so furiously and often that she ended up rubbing a hole in the carpet. The only thing that could fix the mess that was “all Bobby’s fault” was new carpet. But when Bobby’s mother got on him about cleaning his room, however, it was not without reason.
Plates encrusted with the remnants of old dinners found a safe home beneath piles of dirty clothes. Comic books and video games were stacked in groups resembling ziggurats, and plastic Coke bottles crunched beneath heaps of paper when Bobby walked across the floor. Any mother—even one as profoundly clean as Bobby’s—had every right to demand that their son clean such a dump.
Booger slid to the corner of the bedroom, out of Bobby’s way. The creature seemed at home in the mess, the room so cluttered and dirty that it could serve as camouflage for Booger if Bobby’s mother poked her head in to see what kind of progress he was making. Booger belonged in that bedroom, a tall, upright extension of the clutter on the floor.
“I gotta clean this up. When we’re done, though, we’ll go have some fun.”
Bobby had a simple plan: he’d leave Booger in the small forest on the outskirts of Memorial Park, where Chad Earnst spent all his freetime smoking stolen cigarettes and roughing up sixth graders. Bobby would go to the edge of the park and shout, “Hey Chad, I fucked your mother!” and run for the treeline. Chad, of course, would follow, only to find himself face-to-face with Bobby’s newly created bodyguard. Bobby would explain to Chad that if he ever sucker punched him in the hallway again, or beat him up when they got off the bus after school, that he’d have to answer to Booger. Problem solved.
Bobby started filling the first of what would take several garbage bags to hold all the trash that had accumulated on his bedroom floor over the past couple months. It would be an all-day task, and he debated sneaking out, but his mother had been threatening military school more frequently, and with a brother already at St. John’s, he knew the threats actually carried with them some certain weight.
When Bobby had filled the first garbage bag, he set it near Booger, who had taken a great interest in what Bobby was doing. Bobby shook the second bag open, and as he started filling it, he noticed the first bag was nowhere to be seen.
“Booger, did you do something with the bag?”
S/FX: Bass THOOM THOOM THOOM
“Huh?” Before Booger could belt out more bass, Bobby shaked his hands and said, “Nevermind, it’s cool.”
Bobby picked up a handful of trash and brought it toward his new friend.
“You hungry, pal? You want some of this?”
Booger’s gaping maw opened, and mixed in with the sticky goo that seemed to comprise much of Booger’s mass were the remains of the first garbage bag. When Bobby tossed the trash in, Booger welcomed the snack.
“Cool…”
As Bobby gathered more garbage from the floor, Booger reached down with a sticky pseudopod, gathering an armful of debris. It raised the mass toward its mouth, before stopping and looking at Bobby, like it was waiting for permission.
“Yeah, that’s cool. Go ahead, eat it.” Bobby gestured toward the room. “Eat everything on the floor if you want.”
In a matter of minutes, aside from the sticky residue left behind as Booger made his way around the room, Bobby’s bedroom was spotless.
“All right!”
What would have taken Bobby all day was done in minutes. But Booger wasn’t finished. As it “cleaned” beneath Bobby’s desk, he didn’t stop at just the pile behind Bobby’s chair. Booger ate the chair before making short work of the final mound.
“No! Booger, not the chair. Only the garbage!”
Booger looked down at Bobby.
S/FX: Bass THOOM THOOM THOOM
“I’ll take that as an apology?” Bobby said.
But his room was now clean, he took Booger by the extension cord and said, “Come on—let’s go.”
* * *
Bobby was making his way toward the back door when he heard his mother. He stopped, but Booger didn’t; he bumped Bobby’s back, smearing it with warm garbage. He shoved Booger back, getting even more garbage and slime on him. His mother was walking their way.
“Shh…” he whispered to Booger.
S/FX: Bass THOOM THOOM THOOM
“What?!” Bobby’s mother said as she got closer. “Bobby, is that you?”
Bobby poked his head around the corner. “I’m sorry, Mom—I stubbed my toe.”
She was still walking Bobby’s way; he stepped out to block her, but she walked right by, missing everything. Bobby quickly ushered Booger to the other side of the entry to the kitchen. Just in time. His mother turned around and made her way toward the front door.
“I hope you don’t think you’re going anywhere, young man. Have you cleaned your room? I can smell that pig sty all the way out here.”
“I’m cleaning it right now. I just need to get a couple more garbage bags from the kitchen.”
“Well, if you’d just keep it clean, you wouldn’t have to spend an entire Saturday cleaning, would you?” She pointed to the living room. “Do you see how clean the rest of the house is? It doesn’t take much time…just a little here and there.”
Just a little here and there consisted of practically fulltime work for Bobby’s mother. Most people could spend an hour cleaning their house and be content with the results, but Mrs. Simmons took clean to the molecular level. Bobby’s brother, Justin, blamed it on the medicine she took, but Bobby had a remote feeling that it somehow had to do with his father’s trips away from home.
“Okay, Mom…I’ll start doing that.”
Mrs. Simmons straightened the door mat and left the house.
“Whew!” Bobby said.
S/FX: CRASHING POTS AND PANS
He remembered that Booger was in the kitchen. Alone.
Booger was eating the toaster when Bobby stepped into the kitchen. The creature had already devoured his mother’s mixer and blender, and had also—from the looks of things—eaten two of the four chairs in the breakfast nook. Slime was everywhere.
Booger! No! Come on, stop!”
Bobby rushed over, hoping to save the toaster, but it was too late—it had already gone somewhere deep inside Booger to join its Kitchen-Aid cousins in the belly of the beast.
S/FX: Bass THOOM THOOM THOOM
Bobby looked at the mess made in the kitchen, shook his head, and said, “Let’s just go…”
* * *
“You wait right here,” Bobby said to Booger. They were standing just inside the treeline on the far side of Memorial Park.
“Don’t go anywhere, and try not to eat stuff, okay?”
S/FX: Bass THOOM THOOM THOOM
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Bobby muttered as he headed off in search of Chad Earnst. And there he was, just as Bobby expected, terrorizing a group of younger kids, pinning them to the ground and blowing smoke into their faces. Bobby stopped halfway across the field between the trees and the park, making sure he had enough distance between himself and Chad so he could make it back to the safety of the woods.
“Hey…Chad! I fucked your mother!” Bobby bellowed.
As predictable as a Swiss watch, Chad jumped to his feet.
“Simmons? You wantin’ to die?!”
“Yeah, that’s it!” Bobby shouted. “Only I don’t think you have what it takes, you pussy.”
Chad Earnst spat his cigarette to the ground, pointed Bobby’s way, and yelled, “Dead man walking!”
Bobby turned and ran; Chad Earnst followed, making up the distance between the two faster than Bobby had planned. He could hear Chad getting closer—if he could only reach the trees, he’d be safe. He heard Chad’s raspy breath catching up as he pushed into the maples and oaks and rushed to the spot where he’d left Booger. The monster was nowhere to be seen.
“Booger?” Bobby said, but the only answer was Chad saying, “Time to die, Simmons. Time to die…”
Chad Earnst made his way toward Bobby, cracking his knuckles and walking slowly with purpose. Chad was experienced in beating the snot out of anyone who gave him a sideways glance, or looked the other way, and he took great pleasure in dragging the terror of his victims out. It made the beating all-the-more satisfying to him—smelling that fear. Bobby was backed up against a tree, Chad Eart’s smoky breath right in his face, threatening the beating of a lifetime, when Bobby heard Booger eating something in the trees.
“Booger! Help!”
“What’s with this booger shit, bitch?” Chad said.
Bobby smiled. “Why don’t you turn around and find out.”
Even though Bobby was now looking at Chad from behind, he could tell Chad’s Levi’s had gone wet with fear. Urine creeped down his legs as he looked up at the towering mound of garbage lurking above.
“What the fuck is that?”
“That’s Booger. He’s my bodyguard,” Bobby said. “So if you ever mess with me again, you’ll have Booger to answer to. Right Booger?”
Bobby was waiting for Booger’s aggressive bass or hardcore rap lyrics to drop from Booger’s speaker eyes, but instead all he heard was a sickening SLURP as Booger swallowed Chad Earnst whole.
“No! Booger! You weren’t supposed to eat him!”
S/FX: Bass THOOM THOOM THOOM
“You’re gonna get me sent to military school, just like Justin. I can’t go to military school. It’s not my thing! Booger, come on, cough him up.”
Bobby began pushing on what he figured was Booger’s stomach, but had no luck, and he realized that irritating the mound may result in a similar fate as Chad Earnst’s. Bobby had to come up with something…quick!
He grabbed a branch from a tree and shoved it down Booger’s throat, hoping the creature’s anatomy worked like a human’s and something pushing down its throat would result in a gag reflex, bringing Chad up in a flood of sticky vomit. But Booger ate the branch, too.
“Booger, no!”
Booger looked down at Bobby, clearly not understanding what he had done wrong. Bobby grabbed the orange extension cord from Booger’s neck and led the creature home as quickly as he could.
* * *
“You stay here. Understand?”
Bobby shook his head, left his bedroom, and ran for the garage. He didn’t want to do it, but desperate times called for desperate measures. He grabbed his father’s circular saw. He’d never used a powertool, but there was no better time than now to learn than now. He had seen Booger’s stomach convulsing with Chad’s struggles…there was still time to save him.
As Bobby made his way through the kitchen, he heard his mother’s car pulling up out front. From his bedroom, he heard crashing and banging—this was the day his mother would have too much, this is the day he’d be shipped off to military school, he was sure of it.
He ran to the bedroom, prepared to cut Booger open wide, freeing his enemy from the creature’s gooey gut. The thought devastated Bobby—with a specter of a father, a mother who liked cleaning more than her second-born child, and a brother he hadn’t seen in a year, the eight-foot mound of garbage tearing up his bedroom was the closest thing he had to family. He wondered if Booger could somehow be trained; he wondered if the circular saw would kill his new best friend. He heard his mother open the front door open…moments later, he heard his mother screaming downstairs.
“Bobby Simmons, what is this mess?!”
He ran into his bedroom, slamming the door behind. Things were only getting worse—Booger had eaten Bobby’s dresser and was now working on his bed. The creature was swollen like a tick. Booger gobbled Bobby’s bed in two quick gulps; Bobby never had to use the circular saw.
SFX: SPLUT/SPLASH
Booger could hold no more—the bed was one big bite too much. Bobby’s new friend had exploded everywhere, sending bags of garbage, kitchen appliances, and Chad Earnst flying about the bedroom. From a far corner, he heard Chad Earnst moan—he was still alive, at least, covered in goop like a newborn foal.
S/FX: BANG BANG BANG
Bobby’s mother was pounding on the bedroom door. Chad shook his head, regaining his senses.
“Bobby, you open this door right now and explain the mess in the kitchen! If you don’t have a good excuse, you may be taking a trip to Saint John’s before your father even gets home. Do you hear me, young man?!”
He had no choice. He opened the bedroom door, letting the mess that was once Booger spill out his door and into the hallway. His mother grabbed her nose. Retching sounds like the time she found spoiled milk in Justin’s room echoed from her throat. She looked at the mess in Bobby’s room; she looked at Chad Earnst covered in goo.
“What the hell is going on here?! I told you to clean this room and instead, you invite your little friend over and trash the whole damn house? He needs to leave, and you need to get cleaning, mister!”
Bobby and Chad looked at each other—the events of the last fifteen minutes leaving both of them in a daze.
“I’m going to call Sergeant Patterson and let him know another Simmons boy is coming his way!”
She slammed the bedroom door, and when it was clear she was not coming back, Chad Earnst gave Bobby Simmons the beating of his life.
* * *
A big thank you for listening to Not About Lumberjacks. All instrumental music by Ergo Phizmiz and Yung Kartz. The rap tune was “Whip Yo Head” by Dollar Boyz. Visit nolumberjacks.com for information about the show, the voice talent, and music.
In one month, it’s the annual November anniversary show that I SWEAR is not about lumberjacks! The title? The Lumberjack of Williamsburg.
Until next time: be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!
[…] Episode Transcript >> […]