The story of the little shit

This article was originally published back in 2011, as Povestea unui cicacel

Back in the days of childhood we "had fights" or in other words found ourselves in a conflictual state with some kids from another condom-inium.

Declared by the traditional "get the fuck back to your condom(inium)"ⁱ used by both camps every time the occasion demanded it and reaching incandescence when I fooled them that "some guys from the construction yard are coming to inspect whether kids stole the pipesⁱⁱ and therefore best they hide such (right here) and run away lest they're caught. After which the poor darlings were left without their pipes.ⁱⁱⁱ A quite notable haul, as the asses and thieves of kids at that other condominium had really cool pipes.

And after this we of course fortified our space in snow once Winter came, and spent day after day playing Diablo OOO around the half-frozen walls, wet to the very bone in the chilling winds of Cluj, which may not be Siberian in nature but that doesn't make them warm either. And we all died of colds and assorted sufferances with the exception of those of us who somehow survived to the age of writing blogs on which to publish something more interesting than what latest interactions with authority manifested as the ticket checker or town hall parking clerk we've had on our schedule. But let's not digress.

A kid, rather maginal in the society of preschool kids, aiming in his turn at a more respectable hunk of centrality started recounting, after we had repelled a dastardly assault of the enemy^iv how he threw a little shit!!! and hit one of them!!!

But... how did you grab it ?

Well no, it was frozen where he grabbed it.

So if it was frozen... you've basically thrown a rock or something, what difference does it make it was a little shit. And moreover, how did you even manage to know its substance ?^v

No, no, it was unfrozen on the part he didn't grab it by.

Nobody went into a period of oioioioing-boioioioing as it'd have been right and proper, given that such is the manifestation of small kids, and we even if not necessarily old enough such as to for instance go to school or such, nevertheless were old enough so as to not do such things (except if you're a girl). But neither did anyone believe him, and his heroic as well as risky and biohazardous exploit passed unrewarded by the public eye.

I'm yet left with a regret, however, which is to say that if the kid had the presence to say yes! it was a little shit that had congealed in such a manner as to have a handle on one side, under the snow, whence I grabbed it, as well as a brissant coat in the outside, relatively thin, allowing it to fly as any solid object but nevertheless to also spread on impact diarrhea one square mile around, and bad diarrhea at that, of yoghurt with beer and pinworms inside, superdisgusting. And with tapeworms. And it also had some cuts on the surface in a squarish pattern, like for isntance from having been run over by a tyre at some point. AND I DESTROYED THEM!!!!1

It'd have been pretty cool, and I confess I'd have liked the guy.

Back then, when I wasn't yet seven and we still had fights with the enemies from across the road. Then I'd have liked the guy. Today, people over thirty doing this dumb shit on blogs as a sort of tardy compensation for having missed the opportunity to impress me thirty years ago, and with that grab hold on a heftier chunk of centrality in the society of children aged thirty and over...

What can I tell you. It's too late, what. Get the fuck out of here.

1. I've no idea how well spread geographically was this usage, possibly it only functioned in an area delimited by "whence you can see your home" -- this being the more expressly stated or more subtly implicit limit of the independent existence of the preschool kid in communist Romania -- but during my boyhood "to caramba" was a verb, and it worked not just in the imperative, "Yo caramba!" ie get lost, but even in perfect constructions like "yo, caramba-ize these back to their... spawngrounds", heard by my very own ears as directed to an older kid (yes, well, there were kids of all sizes, what) in the sense of chasing away the same-age enemy element. Because "they won't let us be".

   It's not clear whence it comes from, but I might take note that at the time some cartoons with Speedy Gonzalez were playing on TV, whom as you well recall "ay caramba!" and so it's entirely possible given that afterwards followed skirmishes. Caramba being a minced oath, if you're curious, it really stands for carajo. [↩]

2. A kind of Pexal piping, used by the adults to maintain in prefab elements the running lines for electric wires and by the children to project their nascent desires into the butts of girls in the shape of a paper cone. A sharp paper cone. If she doesn't hurt what can we claim to have done ?! [↩]
3. A pipe meant the blowtube quite specifically for all kids of the time. It was a major childhood activity, the making of paper cone and the blowing them at enemies, occupying I would guess no less than 2-300 hours annually, and producing now and again worse paper covering of the neighbourhood than you've ever seen for any party or celebration. The quality, complexity and sheer luxuriant elite quality of the blowpipes themselves was a major component of kid social status in kid society (which did not include any girls as a matter of principle). [↩]
4. For reals, have you ever seen an attack otherwise than dastardly put up by an enemy worthy of that name ? [↩]
5. There's a lot of Romanian humor on this topic, such as the two policemen who encounter a piece of shit on their beat, have a debate as to its nature, end up tasting it and conclude happily that their governmental diligences prevented their stepping in it. Which is exactly, but I do mean exactly what government is and what government does, ever since it was invented and for as long as two idiots willing to taste shit to avoid possibly stepping in it can somewhere be still found. [↩]