I had planned something else this week but Bob and Stephen’s recent columns jarred loose an old memory buried in my noggin that I hadn’t thought about in years.
It happened not long after I first became a Time Traveller. I was still pretty green and I was still getting the precision down on my jumps. So I’m not sure exactly what year I landed. Sometime in the late 70s or 80s if I had to guess.
I was attempting to jump to Fresno, California, in the year 1985. I had a date.
Instead I ended up someplace with lots of corn. Oh, I do remember that corn.
There were also these two kids.
One of them was normal-sized, and the other one looked like a little baby Oompa Loompa. I was safely hidden in the corn field where I had landed, but I could see these two kids running not far away. And damned if that little Oompa Loompa wasn’t chasing after the big kid!
But the part that scarred me for life and probably caused me to repress this particular memory didn’t happen until after he had caught him.
Now at this point I imagine you’re probably thinking I’m about to describe some horrific sick and twisted incident involving a midget and a little boy’s bum and a cricket bat but there I am afraid you would be quite mistaken.
Because it wasn’t a cricket bat. It was corn.
Lots and lots of corn.
Dried corn cobs and fresh ears of corn, shucked and unshucked, silk on and silk scrubbed, raw, grilled, boiled and microwaved. Dripping with butter and salt.
Needless to say, I was horrified. And fascinated.
“Kids didn’t do these sorts of things to each other with corn when I grew up,” I thought. “They used carrots and cucumbers.”
The only other thing I remember is the little Oompa Loompa kid had a little jam box, and “Short People” by Randy Newman was playing really loud presumably to help drown out the terrified screams of the other kid.
I didn’t stick around to see how it all ended. I suppose I could have went in and tried to rescue the big kid but I figured if a normal-sized kid can’t even beat up a baby Oompa Loompa to defend himself then that must be one tough baby Oompa Loompa and I’m a lover not a fighter as the ladies say. Or would say if they knew their business.
So I got the hell out of there.
I managed to land in Modesto, 1983, which gave me two years to thumb my way down to Fresno and keep my date.
But alas that is another story.
THE SONG IN BOB’S HEAD
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