Arnold and I could almost always be found playing with Star Wars action figures and Matchbox cars. Lest you think I was a total tomboy lesbo in-the-making, I'll have you know that I was playing with Barbies on alternate days. And for the record, the dolls were always impeccably dressed and not one of them ever played golf or worked for a non-profit. Oh, and when I did play with Matchbox cars, I always selected a Le Car (mustard yellow with an open-and-close hatchback) or a ragtop red Lincoln Continental. Make of that what you will, armchair psychologists.
ANYhoo, the mother of these neighbors was a stay-at-home mom who often passed the time with various crafty projects. One day we entered their backyard to find signs hung on the privacy fence around the pool. Because many neighborhood kids used to swim there and because she had the time to do it, the mother made her own signs similar to "Welcome to our ool. Notice there's no P in it. Let's keep it that way." Her homemade signs were neatly printed in blue ink on beveled wooden boards and were suspended from the fence by blue-and-white waxy clothesline rope. A few of her ground rules:
:: No runningOn the latter sign, the neighbor's mother drew three little circles in a triangular formation right next to the lettering. I remember questioning the meaning of the word dingleberry and was told by Arnold that it was another word for fart. So I gave the sign a closer look and surmised that the three little circles represented tell-tale air bubbles. I was on board with the whole no diving thing but I didn't think that farting in a pool warranted a whole rule devoted to it. It's not like it tore the lining, clogged the filter or caused permanent paralysis or anything like that. I felt it to be frivolous. Regardless, I was delighted with the new word I had learned and called everyone a dingleberry for months afterward.
:: No P'ing (I remember she made the "P" really big and thick)
:: Please don't pee in our pool. We don't swim in your toilet. (She obviously felt strongly about this)
:: No diving
:: No dingleberries
Fast forward several years later to me in a car listening to The Howard Stern Show. As frequent listeners know, Howard often regales the audience with tales of his battles with post-pooping clean-up. In short, the man is the King of All Skidmarks. So in the course of the broadcast, the term dingleberry came up often and not in the context to which I was accustomed. I became confused and voiced my befuddlement to a friend. Luckily, she was able to fill me in on its actual meaning. Imagine my surprise in a later conversation when my 70-year-old uncle used the term properly. Well, he called it a "dangleberry" truth be told but at least he knew that it was a wee ball of poop in question and not a toot, if you will. Don't even ask why this was being discussed.
It then occurred to me that the put-down I used for years was a far more wicked and diabolical insult than I had realized. The looks of shock and hurt it registered now made much more sense. Some of those kids really deserved to be called a piece of shit dangling from one's ass. But not all of them did. In that moment, I felt victorious and remorseful in one fell swoop.
Now here's where it gets slightly Telephone Game-like -- was the neighbor's mother mistaken when she made the sign or did her son interpret it wrong? Because of Arnold, I taught other kids that dingleberry=fart. A wealth of misinformation sprung from that boy. But that's not to say that his mother was in the wrong. Maybe she knew the real meaning and those three little balls she drew didn't signify air bubbles at all. Perhaps she grew tired of skimming mini turds out of the pool and decided to lay down the law. What I do know is that between this incident and his insistence that we watch the likes of No Retreat, No Surrender and Raw Deal, Arnold gave me many a bum steer during our friendship. Bum. Hee hee hee.
