Bro, You’re Gonna Be Famous

My big brother Jake successfully Superglued his predominant hand together into a fist in order to avoid taking a day’s worth of finals he’d forgotten to study for. It worked, but he got two weeks of detention and beat half to death by Dad over the doctor’s bill. He’s still got a scar. Not from where the glue messed his hand up, but where Dad’s belt buckle caught him just right on the calf and left a big hole.

Who wants to be accused of copying their older brother? Not me. He was still famous for his stunt. Who wants to be just as famous as his big brother? Me. I could at least try to be original. Licking the frozen flagpole was old hat, done a dozen times, and though that would have worked in a pinch and was considered brave, it was the middle of summer.

While everyone lamented living out in dairyville BFE, a benefit was how the school was surrounded by farmland. Farmland meant livestock. Livestock meant fencing. And fencing meant electrified wire. But a problem with farm country was with it being flat as a pancake. Whatever teacher was in charge of break patrol watched us all like a hawk for a half mile with good visibility, though we never had to get that far away to find trouble.

The property owners around our school had sense enough to use plain barbed wire on account of us kids being close by. All but one that is. I hoped I was the first to notice how Old Man Mitchell had forgotten about us kids and strung the eastern side of his cow pasture with electric wire. I could see the yellow insulators from my homeroom window. I kept it to myself for when I needed it, but I couldn’t sit on that information for too long before someone else noticed and tattled, and the cattle rancher got a call from Principal Parsons.

“Has anyone put their tongue to an electric fence?” I asked my brother, Ricky. I’d made the mistake of mentioning the opportunity Old Man Mitchell had made available to the first to strike. “It’ll knock you on your fat ass,” he laughed. “It’s bad enough to grab that wire regularly, let alone lick one, dumbass. It’ll barbeque your licker! You wouldn’t be able to talk straight for a week. I knew a guy who blistered the tip of his tongue so bad it fell off.” He was laughing so hard he could hardly advise me with all his big brother wisdom.

“Take it easy. I don’t need that to happen. It’s just a math final,” I reminded him.

Jake reiterated his philosophy. “If you’re going to the trouble of getting in trouble, you might as well be remembered for it. That’s my philosophy.”

I nodded. It was true. Anyone could play sick. Go the easy route. Dodge class.

“But what if they make me take the test anyway?”

“Witnesses,” he replied with his know-it-all grin.

“Witnesses?”

“Someone’s got to tell the story, man. About how far you flew off the ground, how loud you screamed, how far back your body shot from the jolt, right? They’ve got to exaggerate how many sparks flew out of your nose. How your eyes rolled back in your head. How the shirt on your back smoked. No student-loving teacher in their right mind would force a kid to take a test after such a near-death experience, man.”

He had a point. I hoped.

“Dang, little bro,” Rick said, not a little excited, “I wished I was still in school to make this one happen. This has epic potential.”

He’d graduated from high school seven years hence and his glue episode had been during his freshman year so that was like ten years at this point. Kids still asked me about my “crazy brother.”

“Is it true he glued both fists together behind his back in the middle of the testing week?” I’d go with it. “Oh, yeah. He was nuts. Still is. He’s in and out of mental hospitals.” My friends would ooh and ahh and wonder if I could ever outdo him. I’d swear I would someday, by God.

And here I was, in my freshman year, up against the wall and staring down the barrel of a math final that would determine whether I’d pass by the skin of my teeth or be locked down in summer school, not to mention licking any wounds dad might dole out for good measure. He’d started hating bad grades. I guess getting elected to the Board of Education got him concerned about all that. Grades. Conduct. Reputation. 

I spread the word about my plan at lunchtime among the few I trusted: Ray. Leonard. Mikey. They’d want to sneak out to the property line with me.

“You’re crazy,’ Mikey said. “You’ll blow your tongue clean off.”

“Might,” Ray agreed.

“Naw. But it’ll hurt like hell, I bet,” Leonard disagreed.

“What if it splits the end, like those snake people with all the tattoos?” Ray wondered, sounding worried. He was all for me, trying, of course, no matter what happened.

“Naw,” Leonard kept on. It’s not like he’s biting down on an M-80 or something. It ain’t no biggy; anyone can do it.”

I called bullshit.

“Bullshit.”

Leonard was a buddy, but he liked to stir things up.

“Naw, I’ve done it. Lots of times,” he challenged with a big grin.

The boys looked at him. Then to me. I sized up whether he was lying, and he sized up whether I’d bite. I didn’t answer.

“Plenty of times. Just hurts real bad, is all.”

I still didn’t answer. I could tell he felt challenged back.

“There’s worse things you could do.”

I didn’t care if he was lying. I knew he just wanted me to do something bigger, crazier.

“Like?”

“Piss on it.”

“Piss on what?”

“The fence, man.”

The boys gasped loud enough to be heard over the nearby lunchroom roar. I winced inside, but kept a stern confidence. 

The fence? Pee on it? Now, that was pushing the limits.

“What if it splits the end?” Ray whispered, looking even more worried. 

“Like those tattoo people?” Leonard laughed. “Naw. Impossible.”

I think the idea worried all of us.

“Cool,” Mikey whispered as if the plan was set. But I can tell you this, the plan was definitely not set. 

The next day was it, Friday. My math final. Math period was after our freshman break. I’d crammed just in case the stunt was a flop.

Didn’t something distracting always happen during break? Didn’t it require the watchdog’s full attention? A fight. An injury. Some argument. We’d use that to our advantage. Something had to happen early enough. If not, Ray volunteered to “twist” his ankle, jumping off the monkey bars. That would cause a big enough scene for the rest of us to run to Old Man Mitchell’s property line.   

We wandered as a loose group along the allowed perimeter. Leonard had his football. We threw it absentmindedly to each other, watching for the day’s random “event.” Break was only twenty minutes. Five were gone. I was about to send Ray off to do his trick when we heard those magic words – Fight, fight, fight! Two kids going at it and Mrs. Hicks, the teacher in charge, headed over to break them up, the opposite of where we would go, and we made for the fence line another hundred feet away. The weeds were high there. We stood a chance of making it without someone ratting us out.

We got there, the four of us.

“Hurry up,” one said.

“Tongue or piss?” one asked.

“Yeah, which?” Leonard egged on. “Better get to it.”

I’d drunk extra milk at breakfast that morning. I’d downed four juices at lunch. I was going for it, but I dreaded it.

“Hurry!” one yelled, “We’ll get caught!”

I unzipped. I actually really needed to go now. The anxiety had me worked up. I turned aside a bit so the guys wouldn’t see me. I didn’t need them ragging me. I had to concentrate. I aimed and relaxed.

Nothing.

I pushed.

Nothing.

Relaxed a little more.

Nothing.

“C’mon, man!”

Nothing. Maybe a dribble.

“I can’t!” I yelled.

“What?”

“I can’t pee. I’m trying!”

I’d always been a little pee-shy, I guess. Who has trouble at home in your own bathroom? Nobody. But get in a hurry, having to perform, and wham, the port’s closed.

They laughed at me.

“Dude, he can’t pee!”

The more they laughed, the more I knew I was doomed. My mind flooded with impossible, Einsteinian math equations. I think this triggered my first panic attack.

Then we all heard that voice, first from way off, then closing in.

“Boys!”

Closer.

“Boys! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Shit,” Leonard yelled, “It’s Hicks!”

Here’s what I remember. The boys scrambled. I saw that in my peripheral vision. My back was to Hicks, so she hadn’t quite seen what I was up to. I fumbled around, trying to get my pecker back in my pants and zip up before she walked up on me.

“What are you doing there, Patrick? Answer me, young man!”

I was panicked. I turned. I was too close to one of the fence wires.

Zap.

Witnesses. My brother had suggested witnesses.

Mikey heard the explosive buzz of the arc and turned in time to see me fall back into the weeds.

Mrs. Hicks was only a few paces away when she saw the spark of light. She screamed as I fell back, having no idea what was going on, but I’m pretty sure she thought she was witnessing her first student death.

Ray never looked back. He’d abandoned us. I wished he’d hit a gopher hole and twisted his ankle.

Leonard – good old Leonard – he’d ducked down but never retreated. He saw the whole thing. “Hicks was screaming, and you were hopping around trying to get situated and all,” he explained, “but you got too close, ya know, and as you turned, you sideswiped that wire with your dick, man! A spark shot out of your crotch like a Roman candle went off in your pants. Then you went stiff like one of those wooden nutcracker soldiers, and your feet left the ground, and you fell back into the grass!

But dude, your freakin pecker was still out! Sticking straight at the sky. Peeing like the Jenkins Dam broke. Way up like half the golden arches – right over at…guess what! The fence!

 Which sparked you again. Another big arc. Like a lightning strike. It was like they’d laid those heart attack paddles on you, man. I’m surprised you didn’t set the weeds on fire around you!”

He’s telling me all this at my hospital bedside.

“Then, then,” he continues between laughing fits, “Old Man Mitchell’s puttering up on his John Deere, right? Right up to the other side of the fence, cows following him, and he looks down at all the ruckus and goes – ‘Hummph. Well, I reckon now I know why the lights shut off at the house.’

Then he just turned his tracker around and drove off. Didn’t ask after you or nothing.”

Leonard laughing made me laugh, which made my mid-section hurt. I’d toasted the tip of my pecker. Almost blistered the hole shut. It hurt to pee. It hurt not to pee. At least I didn’t end up no tattooed snakey type without the tattoos. No one likes a split wiener.

“At least you didn’t have to take your math test, right?” Leonard encouraged.

“Yeah,” I said, “but at what cost?” I wondered out loud. “You’re my buddy. You can laugh all you want. But what about everybody at school. Getting my wang about blew off? I’ll never live it down, man.”

“Naw, bro,” Leonard said, real serious like. “You’re gonna be so famous.”