some musings on the word 'wombat'
every couple of sundays, my old summer camp used to offer mile-long treks to the nearest candy store. it wasn't an especially scenic trip and the route stuck to highway scrub and asphalt, but at the end of it was a tiny street of faded prettiness and novelty shops set up inside colonial-looking houses and, best of all, a fucking gorgeous dollar-and-a-quarter spending limit at the confectioner's at the far end of the street.
back at camp, there were weatherbeaten stairs leading up to the art building and i remember hanging around outside them with a gaggle of other campers and waiting for the two counselors that would be going with us on the one and only day i signed up for the trip.
i was a reticent kid and i still am, but i think i might have ventured a joke while we waited. it was probably a bad one. i know i used the word 'wombat' in some context or another.
this one girl - i don't remember her name, but she had strawberry blonde ringlets and a winsome face around the counselors and a talent for dead-on impressions of people - would not leave me alone for the rest of the day.
i do not remember what it was that she did, but i remember having a residual twitch whenever anyone said 'wombat.'
the word still evokes some indefinable emotion. i see it and i think, ooh, infamous, but i don't even know what i'm referring to anymore. maybe she kept cornering me in the sweet shop and saying, "WOMBATS! tee hee hee," or, "hey, how 'bout them wombats?" or, "have you heard the one about the rabbi and the WOMBAT?" (trauma, that.)
maybe she pulled a lever behind the fig newtons and one of the floorboards flipped up and she pummelled me in the forehead with a stale snickers bar for good measure and then i found myself tied to a chair with licorice in a secret subterranean lair she'd set up on her last visit in anticipation of getting her own over the few campers who didn't adore her to pieces.
(i can see her squinting in her vanity mirror at a couple of geeky campers playing scrabble in one of the lower bunks behind her and thinking to herself, i will fuck a bitch up.)
maybe 'wombat' just translates into 'mad conspiracy theories' in my mind now.
maybe anthony michael hall is RIGHT BEHIND YOU.
edit:
i remember the comment.
it wasn't a joke.
someone asked me what my pet of choice would be.
i guess we know what the answer was.
man, no wonder they thought i was one weird little kid.
edit:
the object of my terror:
(full image here on morgan spurlock's blog. aww with me!)
back at camp, there were weatherbeaten stairs leading up to the art building and i remember hanging around outside them with a gaggle of other campers and waiting for the two counselors that would be going with us on the one and only day i signed up for the trip.
i was a reticent kid and i still am, but i think i might have ventured a joke while we waited. it was probably a bad one. i know i used the word 'wombat' in some context or another.
this one girl - i don't remember her name, but she had strawberry blonde ringlets and a winsome face around the counselors and a talent for dead-on impressions of people - would not leave me alone for the rest of the day.
i do not remember what it was that she did, but i remember having a residual twitch whenever anyone said 'wombat.'
the word still evokes some indefinable emotion. i see it and i think, ooh, infamous, but i don't even know what i'm referring to anymore. maybe she kept cornering me in the sweet shop and saying, "WOMBATS! tee hee hee," or, "hey, how 'bout them wombats?" or, "have you heard the one about the rabbi and the WOMBAT?" (trauma, that.)
maybe she pulled a lever behind the fig newtons and one of the floorboards flipped up and she pummelled me in the forehead with a stale snickers bar for good measure and then i found myself tied to a chair with licorice in a secret subterranean lair she'd set up on her last visit in anticipation of getting her own over the few campers who didn't adore her to pieces.
(i can see her squinting in her vanity mirror at a couple of geeky campers playing scrabble in one of the lower bunks behind her and thinking to herself, i will fuck a bitch up.)
maybe 'wombat' just translates into 'mad conspiracy theories' in my mind now.
maybe anthony michael hall is RIGHT BEHIND YOU.
edit:
i remember the comment.
it wasn't a joke.
someone asked me what my pet of choice would be.
i guess we know what the answer was.
man, no wonder they thought i was one weird little kid.
edit:
the object of my terror:
(full image here on morgan spurlock's blog. aww with me!)
