wdevoe, Thu, June 11th, 2009

On Valentine’s Day, I found myself standing outside of a public restroom with pterodactyl in my mouth.
In one hand was a diaper bag and a purse big enough to sleep five. In the other, a squirming one-year-old. My wife and six-year-old son were, as they say in polite company, “indisposed.” The pterodactyl, a large, black LEGO creation, did not have to go to the bathroom and was shoved into my mouth by the son who did. My younger son, Nathan, is unencumbered by barbaric things like public toilets. He soils himself when and where he pleases. I envy him.
My son emerges from the men’s room and asks that I spit his toy into his hands. “It’s got your slobber all over it,” he says in disgust. He asked me to hold it so that it wouldn’t get dirty in the restroom.
My wife comes out, smiles and takes her purse off my hands. Our six-year-old, Kevin, starts wiping my spit off his pterodactyl with the tail of his shirt.
My family is between residences as we continue to try and purchase our first home (look for a Pop Culture column on that subject sometime after we close…in 2012), and lacking any grand Valentine’s Day designs, my wife thought it would be great family fun to take the kids to one of those stuff-a-doll workshops in a local mall.
Apparently so did everyone else in the Capital District. The line extended several yards outside of the workshop and into the mall.
“This is insane,” I said, as my wife and older son sized up the array of various animals offered up for stuffing, grooming and outfitting. They were visibly overjoyed.
“You can stuff a wombat,” my wife said to me, beaming.
“I’ve been arrested for less.”
Of all the unusual animals offered at the workshop, Kevin chose a kitten for himself and a rabbit for his brother. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a lemur instead?” my wife, Jess, asked him. And then, to me, under her breath: “It just seems kind of a waste not to get something, I don’t know…more exotic.”
“We can make them exotic,” I said. “The cat’s name can be Raoul and the rabbit’s name is Esmerelda. They’re vegan architects from Peru.”
“You should get some coffee.”
I took Nathan with me and headed out to the mall. On my way back from the coffee shop, I spied a kiosk promising the best in designer belt buckles. Wanting to avoid the stuff-a-doll workshop indefinitely, I pointed Nathan’s stroller in the kiosk’s direction and ventured over.
Standing by the cashier mounted to one corner of the kiosk was a small, desiccated old man. He had around his waste a studded black-leather belt fastened with a one-foot wide golden Superman symbol.
“That is quite the belt buckle,” I said.
“Only the best,” he replied, in a metered, somewhat broken English. “You look for something for Valentine’s Day?”
I wasn’t until he asked. I tried to imagine the most absurd belt buckle I could get for my wife, a rosy-cheeked, blonde professional type.
I asked if he had a rhinestone-studded belt buckle that said “hustler.”
“I check,” he said in an accent that was at once seemingly Slavic, Asian and Latin. “We look.”
He reached beneath the glass-covered case that holds the more popular belt buckles that say things like “Playboy” and “Live Free or Die,” or are adorned with flying pewter skulls. He opened a cabinet and pulled out a drawer.
“This where I keep good ones.”
He rifled through a pile of buckles in the shapes of various weapons, gambling implements and disproportionate male and female body parts. I knew then that I had entered the red light district of the belt buckle kiosk. I checked to make sure Nathan wasn’t looking, lest these risqué pant-fastening devices corrupt him. He was playing with a necklace adorned with a dull, grey marijuana leaf. I snatched it away from him like it were broken glass.
“I don’t see ‘hustler,’” the man said. “Maybe you like this.”
He pointed to the buckle and read it like it was in a language that was foreign to me:
“It says ‘Big Pimpin’.”
“Is that the same as ‘hustler?’”
“Is better.”
“How so?”
“Is bigger.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s always joked about having one that says ‘hustler.’”
“I can do that,” the man said, retreating to a spot behind the cash register. He pulled out a blue three-ring binder and tapped his index finger on it. “I custom order. Anything you want. You want hustler, straight hustler — I get.”
“Whoa, whoa,” I said. “What’s the difference between regular hustlin’ and straight hustlin’?”
“Is better,” he said.
“Which – forget it. How much does it cost — to get a custom buckle made?”
“For you…” said the man as he looked me up and down, “$50.”
I really didn’t know if that was a good or bad price. It must have shown on my face, because before I could answer, the man offered up this concession:
“You no like price? I throw in pendant for baby that says ‘Where My Ladies Be At?”
He pointed to his left and, sure enough, there was such a pendant hanging from a wooden dowel.
“Do you sell a lot of those?” I asked.
“I do today,” he said. “Is Valentine’s Day.”
“I’m really going to have to think about it.”
“Okay. Just $15 for necklace,” he said, motioning to the one I had taken out of Nathan’s hands.
“Oh…no, no. I was just taking this away from him. I don’t want it.”
“You sure? I throw in pendant.”
I dropped the necklace and ran back to the stuff-a-doll workshop, where Jess and Kevin had advanced about a foot and a half.
“How goes the struggle?” I asked Jess.
“We’re about to stuff our animals.” Her excitement had not been dulled by a motionless 30 minutes in line. She’s crazy.
“You know,” I said, “you can buy these things pre-stuffed.”
Before my wife could tell me that I’m no fun, we were swept up in a frenzy of stuffing, clothing, combing and suturing that included some pagan ritual of rubbing animal hearts all over my son’s body before they were inserted into the chests of the chosen dolls. I emerged from the workshop seconds later — baffled, disgusted and $50 lighter.
The kids were lovingly clutching their respective animals.
“That was fun, wasn’t it?” my wife asked.
“I should have gotten you a belt buckle,” was the only thing I could say.
“I will never understand you,” my wife said to me.

CATEGORY: Humor

TAGS: pimp, buckle, pop culture

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