Hammer Time!!!

This is a story ripped from the gritty front pages of 1989's most savage news!

If you have allergies, then you need to check your tampon more often than you think.

Now, don’t buy into the corporate bullshit.  You do not need five differently configured
products.

 You do not need to open up a goddamn map of Europe and plan your every movement
for the next week using little colored flags and those pool cue things. Just carry extras,
and duck into every bathroom you come across one, and check the fuse.

Don’t wait until you sneeze.   

I was picking my daughter up from grade school.  At the time I was driving a 1963
Ford Falcon, full trim package.  It was Energy blue, with patches of grey primer, and the
word “WOW” spray-painted on the drivers side door.  Unmatched colorful chandelier
crystals hung all around the edge of the headliner.

I was wearing Hammer pants that day. Oh yes, I was; and they were a bright red-cerise
not found in nature and covered in minute, multicolored paisleys, because I didn’t stand
out enough.  

I looked AWESOME.  

The school was a pleasantly landscaped facility surrounded by blossoming chestnut
trees.  

I stepped out of my car, took one breath and sneezed so hard my well-soaked tampon
blasted down my pantleg like a bullet.

I was not expecting this.  

A glance down told me that the only tell-tale was a somewhat darker area down near my
ankle, where the pants nipped in and clutched the lower leg. Remember those pants?
 From the knee down they were skin tight. But it had been one gut-busting hell of a sneeze.
 The only thing keeping the little darling off the sidewalk was the tight ankle of the pant and
the cuff of my sock.

It was very warm.

And I kept on sneezing as I stood there, per regulation, waiting for my little school girl to
come out.  With all the other mommies and daddies. Slowly soaking my vast, screaming
red pants in explosive blasts with every sneeze.

Not one single soul noticed.

Once she hopped into the car I was gone. I ran stoplights.  I split lanes. I made illegal turns,
passed cars, exceeded the speed limit and somehow, somehow, I was not stopped by
the police, who would have been mightily impressed by my whole thing going on, I’m sure,
particularly the 7 year old kid in back singing Madonnas “Like A Prayer”.

I don’t even remember parking, just running to the shower.  

Did I leave a trail?  Yes. Yes, I did.

And did the shower stall look like I’d slaughtered a pig in it ?  

Oh my goodness yes.  

And I kept sneezing. I’m rinsing and squeezing and rinsing my pants and socks and every
time I thought I had things under control, I’d sneeze again, so I was holding them at chest
height, which was awkward and unpleasant.

Pants and socks rinsed,  I grabbed a roll of toilet paper to stem the tide and a bath sheet to
wrap up in, dumped my clothes in the washer, got that under way and then duck-walked,
dripping wet and barefoot, wrapped in a huge towel, 409 in hand,  back through the house,
pushing a dishrag with one foot, mopping up the scene of the crime.

All the way out to the car.

Every time I sneezed, I could feel the toilet roll hanging on for dear life. I kept it in place by
invoking the kind of sheer emergency telekinetic power that mothers manifest when lifting
a freight car off an infant.

The only lasting answer was a drastic measure.  

And so once I was finished mopping up what looked like an axe murder, I rolled up a bath
towel, saddled up, then pulled a pair of my husbands underwear over the works, and threw
a big old hippie dress on top of it all.

Wherever you are, in whatever you do, God bless you, M.C. Hammer.