Spaghatta Nadle Part Thrah!

A few more Spaghatta Nadles for you... (if this is your first time here, or you haven't read the other Spaghatta Nadles yet, this will all make a lot more sense if you start a few posts back....)

Spaghatta Nadle Part 4

Spaghatta Nadle Part Tah!

You guys, I have so many more of these it isn't even funny.  And I'm drunk now, so I'll probably make even more.  

Spaghatta Nadle Part 3

Spaghatta Nadle!

To be continued...

Spaghatta Nadle Part 2

PLEASE STOP!!

When I was a child, one of the things I enjoyed doing was hitting other children with a stick.   Many of my classmates also enjoyed doing this.  We would walk through the forest in back of our school, trying to find the biggest stick we could feasibly wield as a weapon.  When we found the right stick, we would lure an unsuspecting child out of the teacher's sight during recess and attack them.  We called this game Stick War and it was the best game ever as long as you weren't the one being beaten mercilessly.

We were able to secretly play Stick War for almost three whole days before one of our asshole classmates ruined it by calling for help when we wouldn't stop hitting him.  Our teacher was furious.  She sat us down and told us that from then on, if any one of us felt like we were being treated unfairly, we could yell "PLEASE STOP!" and the offending party must stop or face dire consequences.

Life after Please Stop was very different for us.  We could no longer overpower our weaker classmates with brutality.  

No matter what was happening to you, you could always count on Please Stop to prevent it from continuing.  It was a magic bullet of pure power. We respected it.  We feared it.  

It didn't take us long to learn how to abuse it. 

We began using Please Stop for everything.  We used it to settle ownership disputes and to bend the rules of freeze tag.  If we didn't want to learn about numbers, we would shout "PLEASE STOP!" at our teacher.  It became a single word - "PLEESTOP" - uttered triumphantly in a loud burst.

Please Stop quickly made its way into our home lives, too.  I clearly remember sitting at the dinner table, yelling "PLEASE STOP!" at my mom because she was trying to make me finish my meatloaf.   My sister and I became Please Stop ninjas, constantly finding creative new ways to wield the ultimate source of power more effectively.   

But one fateful day, we flew too close to the sun and ruined Please Stop forever.  I remember that it was summer.  I had just come inside from catching grasshoppers and I was sorting them on my sister's bed because I didn't want to get grasshopper guts on mine.  I tried to sort them based on how many legs they still had - the intact grasshoppers would be dried out for display purposes and the  mangled ones would be used in dissection experiments which were not done for scientific reasons, but more as an excuse to chop up grasshoppers with my mom's butcher knife.  

My sister was horrified to find me trespassing on her side of the bedroom. 

My sister:  "Don't sit on my bed!"

Me:  "It's a free country!  I can sit on your bed if I want!"

My sister:  "PLEASE STOP!"

Me:  "PLEASE STOP SAYING PLEASE STOP!"

My sister: "PLEASE STOP TELLING ME TO PLEASE STOP SAYING PLEASE STOP!" 

Me:  "PLEASE STOP TELLING ME TO PLEASE STOP TELLING YOU TO PLEASE STOP SAYING PLEASE STOP!" 

We had discovered a glitch in the system -- Please Stop was flawed.  It could be used against itself infinitely, thereby becoming useless.  We were in a goddamn Mexican standoff.  

It felt like we had forcibly ripped apart the universe and were now staring at a gaping black hole where our powerful weapon used to exist.  What had we done?  

Over the course of the summer, the other children in my class also began to discover the flaws of Please Stop.  Parents could not be controlled by it.  It was hard to yell it effectively when your mouth was crammed full of your own socks.  It was even harder to yell when your head was underwater. 

By the time we returned to school in the fall, we had resigned ourselves to settling things the old-fashioned way, with sticks and rocks.   But we were bitter and jaded, having placed our faith in something so obviously corruptible, so even Stick War lost its former appeal.   

There was a brief ray of hope when someone invented "Please Stop to Infinity" to solve the escalation problem, but shortly afterward someone else invented "Please Stop to Infinity to Infinity" and we were right back where we started.  

As we grew up, we learned to solve our problems through "talking" and "compromise," but I think secretly we all still yearned for the days where we only had to yell "PLEASE STOP" and anything we wanted was ours.  

This is Why I Have Hundreds of Unpublished Posts...

I drew this today:

I thought it was really funny.  I showed it to Boyfriend, and he looked at it for an awkwardly long time before looking up at me and making a sound that was too tainted with confusion to be considered laughter.  So I was like "Get it?" 

Boyfriend:  "No...?" 

Me:  "It's funny because those triangles only look fun to hang out with because I drew them that way." 

Boyfriend:  ...

Me:  "I could have drawn mean triangles, but I drew happy, fun-looking ones." 

Boyfriend:  "Yes you did." 

Me:  "And that's why it's funny.  I'm sure not all triangles are fun to hang out with.  Just the ones I made." 

Boyfriend:  "What is wrong with you?" 

Me:  "I don't get why you are having such a hard time with this!  Triangles don't have personalities.  I am projecting personalities onto the triangles!  And then I'm making a blanket generalization about all triangles based upon my own arbitrary projection!" 

Boyfriend:  "Okay." 

Me:  "No, you still don't get it!" 

Boyfriend:  "I get it.  It's just really weird."  

Me:  "You don't understand what a burden it is to have such an advanced sense of humor." 

Boyfriend:  "I'm sorry.  It must be terrible."  

Me:  "I bet this is exactly how Beethoven felt." 

Boyfriend:  "Beethoven played the piano." 

Me:  "I know that.  I was making an analogy.  Someday I'm going to be a famous genius and you're still going to be a hobo!" 

Boyfriend:  "Still?" 

Me:  "Yeah.  And I won't give you any money because you were such an asshole to me before I was a famous genius." 

Boyfriend: "Well, in that case, can I make you some waffles or something?" 

Me:  "Nope. Sorry. Too late. I'm going to go draw more pictures that you aren't evolved enough to understand."  

And then I drew these: 

After about 45 minutes, Boyfriend was like "What are you doing?" 

Me:  "Drawing." 

Boyfriend:  "What are you drawing?" 

Me:  "You wouldn't understand." 

Boyfriend:  "Maybe I would..." 

So then I showed the pictures to Boyfriend and he was like "The speed bump one is kind of funny..." 

I bet even Beethoven didn't have to deal with this kind of adversity.  

Skeleton Man

The elementary school I went to was run out of a large, gaudy, 70's-themed house. The kindergarten was upstairs and the first and second grades were on the basement level.  The building was surrounded by woods.

One year, on Halloween, our second-grade teacher told us a scary story.  It was called "The Skeleton Man" and it was unbelievably terrifying.  As our teacher was telling the story, we sat motionless, absorbing every gruesome detail. 

When it was over, a strange silence fell over the room.  It was obvious that each one of us was simultaneously filled with regret for ever agreeing to listen to such a horrifying tale and also trying to figure out how to hear more of it.  The rest of the day was tinged with a foreign, unsettled feeling - like we had all just been diagnosed with cancer.  We drifted around the classroom, doing our tasks quietly and robotically because we were too consumed with anxiety to experience any secondary emotions.  

I went home that evening and sat petrified in the corner.  

I knew that my life would never be the same - that everything I did from that moment onward would be tainted with my knowledge of the Skeleton Man.   

The next day at school, I excused myself to use the restroom.  The basement bathroom was terrifying in and of itself - it was claustrophobic and mildewy, painted brown with weathered, yellow linoleum that curled up in the corners.  The shower was full of tattered cardboard boxes and the mirror was cracked in several places.  To get to it, you had to walk through a maze of boxes in the creepy supply room.  There was a closet adjacent to the toilet that was covered with a stained bed sheet.  But the bathroom took on an entirely different level of terror when I realized that the Skeleton Man almost definitely lived in the closet.  I couldn't believe that I'd never noticed before.  

How many times had I sat there on the toilet, blithely relieving myself while the Skeleton Man watched me from two feet away?   

From then on, I refused to use the basement bathroom.  At first I tried thinking of excuses to go upstairs to the kindergarten so I could use their bathroom.   I would suddenly spring up from my desk and say "I think I hear my sister calling me, can I go check?" or "I just remembered that Ms. Brunton said she wanted me to bring her this piece of paper" or  "I hope the kindergartners are okay... maybe I should go make sure?"   This tactic was rarely successful, so I opted instead to sneak outside and go to the bathroom in the woods behind the school.  

Whenever I had to go, I raised my hand and asked my teacher if I could have permission to use the restroom.  I clearly annunciated the word "restroom" in case anyone should doubt my actual intentions.  Then I would stomp loudly down the hall and through the supply room, stopping just short of the bathroom.  I would then turn around, sneak quietly back the way I came and slip out the door.  Once I was outside, I would break into a sprint to avoid being spotted on my way to the woods.  The process became even more complicated in the winter months because I couldn't just grab my shoes and coat on the way out the door to "use the restroom."  People would begin to suspect something.  No, I had to brave the snowy forest barefoot.  It was worth it, though.  I remember watching as my foolish classmates left the room to use the bathroom, and congratulating myself on being smart enough to avoid the life-threatening mistake they were making.  

My little plan couldn't last forever, though.  Sometime in the spring, I was caught peeing behind a tree by the first grade teacher, Mrs. Davison.   There was several months' worth of toilet paper scattered around me, so it was clear that this was not a one-time offense.  

Mrs. Davison:  "Allie!  What are you doing?" 

Me: "Looking for ants." 

Mrs. Davison:  "What's all this toilet paper doing out here?" 

Me:  "I don't know.  It must have blown here with the wind."

Mrs. Davison:  "I see.  And why are you peeing in the woods?" 

Me:  "Oh, I was just out here and I had to go." 

Mrs. Davison:  "How about you come inside and use the real bathroom..." 

At that point I started weeping and screaming about the Skeleton Man and how he lives in the closet and if I used the inside bathroom, he would kill me and then I would never get to grow up and be a veterinarian and my family would probably cry and wish that I had never used that stupid bathroom and my mom would yell at Mrs. Davison for making me do it because if I died it would be all her fault! 

I'm sure it was quite a spectacle.  

For the next week or so, I avoided peeing altogether.  I would hold it in until it became painful and I had to sit rigidly in my chair with my legs crossed.   Eventually I had to face the basement bathroom, but I tried my hardest to make sure that those terrifying encounters were kept to a minimum.  

The next year, our class was moved to a different building with a different bathroom, but I never completely got over my fear of the Skeleton Man.  Even as an adult, I sometimes feel like he's hiding in my bedroom closet or in my basement with the orc rapists.   

UPDATE:  There have been a lot of questions regarding the details of my elementary school, so I thought I would elaborate a little.  I didn't go to a traditional public school, but we definitely weren't a commune :)  The fancy, normal-looking, brick building in which the school started was condemned (because of asbestos) and the school had to move suddenly.  They hadn't found a suitable permanent location yet, so that's why we had school in the old house.  Before the school bought the house, we had to have class in a tiny upstairs library in a church.  It smelled like moth balls and it got really, really hot during early September.  The house was an upgrade for sure.  The school owned the house, so it's not like we were just running around in someone's living room or anything.  

Regarding the barefoot thing: because we went to school in an old house that had carpeted floors, we had to take our shoes off at the door.  And I don't know how I was able to escape detection for so long.  I mean, we didn't have hall-monitors or anything (the school was far too small for that), but it is still pretty amazing that I was able to sneak around the teachers.  

Melodramatic Cards