Connor con Queso

It was July of 2012, and my good friend Connor and I had just started dating.

(For those of you confused by my cryptic wording, Connor is a current good friend and former boyfriend but for some reason that's ridiculously hard to phrase without sounding fickle. Unrelated side-note, I'm obsessed with writing about a super-villain called the Fickle Pickle. Trademarked by Grace.)

Early on in our relationship, when we were getting to know each other, Connor and I played the Question Game via Facebook message. (Question Game: Must ask another question after answering one.) We eventually got around to "biggest fear," then the far more interesting "biggest irrational fear," or what some may call "phobia." Here's my list:

• Horses*
• Escalators
• Open water*
• Daddy Long Legs
• Those little monkeys that wear diapers**
• Orangutans***
• Pregnant women's bellies

Granted, I have a rather hefty list. Truth be told, I can ride an escalator if I absolutely have to and I could probably hold myself together if I had the opportunity to gallop to someone's rescue on the back of a horse. See corresponding footnotes for related stories.

Connor's list was only two things.

• Being attacked/murdered while in the shower
• Anyone (including himself) putting their finger in his bellybutton

I really do respect irrational fear. I'm not the kind of person who rubs my hands all over someone when I find out they have OCD. (Do people do that? I couldn't think of a better example.) I never entered the bathroom while Connor was showering without clearly announcing myself.

That being said, I, like most human beings, do have occasional moments of pure evil. 

July of 2012, I'm sitting on a white vinyl bench on a pontoon boat in a lake in Northern Michigan. There are about 6 or 7 people on the boat; myself, Connor, Connor's brother Brendon, and several of Brendon's friends including Shawna and Melissa. (The only two I remember.)

Connor has this really, really frustrating ability to fall asleep whenever and wherever he wants in about 30 seconds, and at this particular moment had dozed off whilst shirtless, his head in my lap. I was instantly bored. Boredom, as everyone knows, is a dangerous sensation. All of my truly evil moments are manifested from boredom. 

I scanned the boat for entertainment and my eyes instantly went - as if drawn by a magnet - to Connor's belly button. I began looking frantically around me for something funny to put in his belly button. All I could really see was a life jacket, cigarette butts, and a few pairs of sunglasses. Cigarette butt was too mean. I sighed audibly and made eye contact with Shawna or Melissa (don't remember which) who was sitting across from me.

"I'm trying to find something to put in his belly button." I explained. Shawna/Melissa laughed and contemplated for a moment before having a stroke of genius; she went over to the driver's seat of the pontoon boat where the boys were and came back with a jar of Chi-Chi's queso dip that had been brought on-board to accompany tortilla chips. I could barely contain my delighted freak-out; I couldn't have asked for anything sillier. 

I stuck my finger in the queso and got a nice big blob of it and very carefully dropped it into Connor's exposed belly button. He didn't stir. I added just a smidgen more so that it was sufficiently visible. Connor woke up moments later with a groan. 

"Wha... what? Awwww, maaaan." Connor groggily noticed the queso and acknowledge my hilarious prank with a groan. I had expected that he would jump in the lake to wash it out. That's where the story gets better.

To Connor, apparently, hunger for queso takes priority over irrational fear. When he was done grumbling, he stuck his own finger into his belly button.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhh!" He grimaced in agony at the sensation. I started to say that he could jump into the water and he wouldn't have to do that.

Until I figured out what he was actually doing, which was eating the queso out of his own belly button. I have to admire his perseverance - he had to go back in three or four times before he got all of the queso. The man is truly unbreakable. 

When I decided to post the story, I mentioned it to my friend Josh, and as soon as I brought up the irrational fear of someone touching/poking your belly button, "Oh my god! No way! That is seriously my one irrational fear! I'm not kidding!" While my parents and I were watching the Modern Family premiere, I was looking up phobias online and the fear of having one's belly button touched or poked is called omphalophobia. Even better, there's an online community of people who share the common issue of omphalophobia! Apparently it's not horribly uncommon! Who knew?

Here are some of the more entertaining phobias I found in my quest:

Consecotaleophobia- Fear of chopsticks.

Eurotophobia- Fear of female genitalia. We have all had this fear at one time or another.

Papaphobia- Fear of the Pope.

More than you'lll never know.

Gymnophobia- Fear of nudity.

*Both of these fears originated with an early childhood viewing of "Black Beauty," the only scene from which I can remember is a large boat sinking and a little boy and horse ending up on some random beach, where the horse got spooked by a snake and flailed it's deadly hooves all around on the screen. Also, my parents had told me about Christopher Reeve breaking his neck by being bucked off of a horse, and in my mind it had turned into "a horse crippled Superman."

**The episode of "Malcolm in the Middle" where Craig has a homicidal helper-monkey may have something to do with this.

***I was at the zoo once and was at these glass windows that looked into the orangutan enclosure, and there was this orangutan who came up to the glass and I got all excited because I was going to connect with a monkey like Jane Goodall, and he seemed really curious and friendly! I got all excited and turned around to yell for my mom to come over and see the orangutan. When I turned back, the orangutan was rubbing this slimy, bright green goop all over the glass directly in front of me. The people around me were making "Eeeew" noises and turning away. I could not for the life of me figure out what the green stuff was, it was definitely not feces and the orangutan was having a ridiculous amount of fun rubbing it on the glass. Here's what I missed when I turned away to beckon my mom, drawn very, very poorly:

Of course, now that I've expressed my association of orangutans with nausea, I cannot not love this guy:

Gail v. Robespierre

I've been saving this work story for a while because I couldn't come up with good cartoons to go with it. I finally compromised and drew one unnecessarily-detailed cartoon.


Gail
A middle-aged, horse-loving, mini-van-driving, serial-dessert-baking vet assistant and mother of at least two with whom I used to work. (That may not have been a complete sentence but I went out of my way to avoid ending it with a preposition.)

Gail is funny. I really didn't like her at first - she just rubbed me the wrong way. Then one day she walked in with her usual "Good morning, Gracie!" and I suddenly realized that she'd grown on me and without knowing it, I had begun to adore her. The things that used to get under my skin became things that made me laugh, and not in a sarcastic way.

She had a tendency to scurry around the clinic like a chicken with her head cut off, doing random things like "cleaning all the dust pans" or Lemon Pledge-ing the wooden railings.To me, eventually, she seemed to take on a "mother hen" role. (I did not plan for those metaphorical clichés to match so well.) The bottom line is that Gail could be neurotic, but in a stressful work environment it meant a lot to have someone call me "honey" and make me feel appreciated.


Robespierre
A small, bean-shaped French Bulldog puppy who was born with a cleft palate. One of the technicians at the clinic took him home to do the rigorous tube-feeding required to nurse a pup with a cleft palate and he blossomed into a less-small, bean-shaped Frenchie with the derp-iest face I've ever seen on a canine and eyes that pointed in two visibly different directions.

He always had this "crazy-eyes" face that my dog gets when he's about to do something that he knows is blatantly against the rules. He looked like he was continually saying "Hit me, bro!" He didn't bark, either - he had a velociraptor-like shriek that sometimes sounded uncannily like the scream of a hysterical human woman.


The Showdown
I was standing in the main office filing paperwork. Robespierre was hanging out in the practice manager's office with a baby gate blocking the door while the technician taking care of him was at work. There were at least two pee pads laid out on the floor for him to use.

Which was, of course, wishful thinking, because the moment the manager stepped away he squatted in the center of the office and took a dump on one of the very few patches of floor that was not a pee pad. See left for a detailed but not-specific-enough-for-anyone-to-recognize-it-because-I'm-paranoid-that-I'll-get-in-trouble-even-though-I-haven't-said-anything-bad-about-the-hospital-and-I-don't-work-there-anymore map of the manager's office.

Gail happened to be passing through the office at that moment, and the sudden inspiration to do dirty work hit her - albeit not for a client's animal, but it was still a triumph. She grabbed a few paper towels and stepped over the baby gate into the office.

As soon as she moved towards Robespierre's poop, he starting freaking the hell out. He was squealing and screaming and snapping his crooked little mouth at her and would not let her take his feces.

Gail started "Oh!"-ing, all flustered the way she gets - "Oh! Oh no! Oh dear!" (and so on.)

Neither the receptions nor I thought to help her because we were too busy busting a gut watching Gail get terrorized by a tiny, retarded bulldog intent on literally guarding his poop.

Both parties made a valiant effort, but only one could win. Gail eventually rallied, got the best of Robespierre, and robbed him of his precious creation... although not without getting poo on her finger.



When Robespierre was older, an animal neurologist confirmed that his neurological issues were abnormal and irreparable. This is my homage to that crazy little mo-fo who terrorized poor Gail more and made me laugh harder than any dog ever has.