Reprinted without my express written consent:

"Waaaah-haaa Ahhhhh.... Poo!"

Imagine a 9 year old boy making this sound.
This boy was one of my younger brothers.


I left home at a fairly early age - I was seventeen, and was mid-way through my senior year of high school. I was already a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, and had gone through basic training the previous summer. I was young, I was strong, and I was arrogant, which is just want parents and teachers want in their children.

Although I generally say that it was the overbearing religion thing that caused me to leave home, that's not exactly the truth. Or, the entire truth, anyway. Again, it's just easier than explaining. One wintry weekend, I had decided to spend the whole weekend away from home. I didn't tell anyone where I was going, or what I was doing - I never did in those days. While I was gone, my mother decided that she would clean up my "pig sty of a room". To be fair, I think that most parents would have been happy having their kid's room as "messy" as mine was, but that's neither here nor there. In the process of cleaning my room, my mother unearthed a small cache, 'cleverly' hidden under my bed. Inside, she found, among other things, a great deal of love (e.g. sex) notes from a girl, a few articles of clothing that may or may-not have belonged to said girl, A pack of cigarettes that most definitely belonged to said girl, a small canister of gunpowder, a half a pound of Sodium (That's a story for another day), and several glass containers, one of which was sealed tightly and contained a substance that smells like gasoline. What can I say? When I was younger, I had a keen interest in sex and chemistry - some nights, my friends and I would build small explosive devices and detonate them in an abandoned parking lot. As I got older, the interest in chemistry faded. But all that is an aside - Finding out their child was human was more than my parents could take, and after a huge blowout, I split, and they moved my stuff into the attic.

Fast forward one year, to another wintry night. My parents and I had somewhat healed the gap between us, and although I didn't live there anymore, I still stopped in occasionally to pick up some of my stuff, or eat dinner, or just say hello.

On this particular night, the front door was unlocked (as it usually was when the family wasn't sleeping - with four kids, someone was always coming or going). I let myself in, and saw through the arch into the living room that my mother, two brothers, and sister were sitting, enraptured by television. My dad worked nights, so it wasn't unusual that he wasn't there. No one noticed as I let myself in, and walked up the stairs. I went up to the attic, threw some things in a backpack, and was just putting my foot on the stairs down when I hear my mother say "Ok, it's Bath time. Thomas, you are first tonight, get upstairs and start getting ready for bed." Inspiration struck.

I turned and went into my brother’s room. He had a TON of stuffed animals. So many that he kept them in the closet, and they took up most of the closet - they were four feet deep inside, and he couldn't close the door, so they kind of spilled out into a stuffed-animal landslide. I dashed into his room, gave the light bulb in his lamp a few quick twists, and dove into the stuffed animal pile, worming my way down close to the bottom.

My brother strolled in, humming a little tune, and turned on his light. Click. Click. ClickClickClick. Nothing. "Mo-ooom... my light won't work." He yells downstairs. "I'll get a new light bulb for you in the morning, get in the bathtub," she replies. So my brother keeps humming and starts to get undressed. At this point, I made an "ooooOOOOOoo!" noise, and tapped on the wall. I was trying to make a noise like the Schmoo from the old Scooby Doo cartoons, but I don't know how successful I was. The affect on my brother was dramatic, though. Humming - Stopped. Undressing - Stopped. He whipped around to face the closet, there in the dark, and totally froze. Staring, at the closet. "ooooOOOOOoo", tap tap tap.

I've never seen the boy move so fast. Out of the room and halfway down the stairs, I hear him yelling "MOM MOM MOM THERE'S SOMETHING IN MY CLOSET!!!!" God bless her, old Mom had heard all the stalling tactics in the world, and was having none of it. "I told you to GET YOUR BEHIND IN THE BATHTUB," she yells, "now GET BACK UP THERE!"

So my brother creeeeeeeps into the room like a slinking dog, tail between his legs. He tries his light again. Click. Still nothing. He cautiously approaches the closet, moving his head back and forth like a bird, trying to see what made the noise. Ah-hah, he has it figured out! "Mom, David (our other younger brother) is trying to scare me!" he shouts. Mom is starting to get angry, though, and replies with "David is sitting right here, and he's waiting on you to get done in the tub, so start getting ready for BED, dammit." So Thomas again peers at the closet.

I work my hand slowly, slowly to the top of the stuffed animal pile, and grab one of the ones on top. It turns out to be his beloved Piglet from Winnie the Pooh, which he knew wasn't actually Winnie, but which he called his Pooh doll, anyway. A quick jerk, and Piglet vanished into the depths of the closet, quickly following by another "oooooOOOooooo" and some more tapping sounds.

"Waaaah-haaa Ahhhhh.... Poo!" he screams, and runs out of the room, crying and screaming to our mother that there was something in his closet eating his Pooh, and come help, please. What would you do, if your child was crying that the Schmoo from Scooby Doo is in his closet was eating his Poo? Mom snapped. "Get your ASS undressed, GET in the tub, and get READY FOR BED **RIGHT NOW**," she shrieks, "Because if I have to come up there, I'm going to spank your ass until you can't sit down for a WEEK."

The sound he made, that "Waaaah-haaa Ahhhhh.... Poo!" is one that I will never forget. He'll never live it down, as long as we both shall live. To this day, it makes me laugh until my side hurts.

But, given the choice between an angry Mom and Pooh-eating-Schmoo, my brother chose the uncertainty of the Schmoo. He slinks into the room again, and up to the closet. "Pooh?" he whispers, although I don't know what reply he expected from the stuffed toy. Closer, and closer he creeps. Through a small hole in the animals, I can see his teary eyes sparkling in the faint light from the hallway. Closer still, and I remain motionless and quiet, barely daring to breath. His feet are at the edge of the stuffed animal pile, now, and he's leaning over, way over, peering into the depths.

"Blarghle-Blargh!" Suddenly, I spring to my feet, arms in the air! "Blarghle-Blargh!" I scream, and stuffed animals go flying everywhere. My brother's eyes go wide, wide, wider than I've ever seen anyone's eyes go, like a cartoon character whose eyes are trying to escape from his head. His mouth drops way, way open in total shock and terror, and he SCREAMS like you've never heard someone scream, a scream of pure, unadulterated horror. Surprised and in shock, my brother falls backwards, lands heavily on his behind, and starts to bawl.

I think it was the scream, or maybe the Thump of his behind on the floor, or maybe both, but my mother came running up the stairs. I didn't think Mom could move that fast, either, but it seemed like she was up those stairs in just seconds. I certainly didn't have much time to react - I had just started to chuckle when she got there.

So my mother, my dear mom, dashes into the room to find her eldest son standing amidst a huge pile of stuffed animals, arms in the air, laughter just forming, and her younger son sitting on the floor, snotty and bawling his eyes out.

I laughed, so hard I fell back into the stuffed animals, laughing until the dust from the closet and the animals clogged my lungs and I was hacking and wheezing, struggling to breathe. And Thomas cried, he wept and bawled the whole time.

And Mom started to laugh.

She laughed, and laughed. She laughed until she had to sit down in the door, leaning up against the side of the doorway to the room, laughing and laughing, clutching her side.


Good old Mom. Not too long on the sympathy department, but at least she can appreciate a joke.