Donkophobia

I was gonna talk about ghosts, but now I’m not.  Does this disappoint you, dear reader?  Of course it doesn’t!  First off, you had absolutely no idea that I was considering talking about ghosts.  Unless you just happened to be sitting around wishing that I’d talk about them, in which case you’re either insane or you’re a fuckin idiot with way too much time on your hands.  Secondly, not only are you not disappointed, you’re actually relieved that I’m not annoying the snot outta you with a few of my theories and questions regarding the existence or non-existence of ghosts.  I may blather about all that sometime else, but not right now.  You can take that as a threat or a promise.  The choice is yours.

If you’re still subjecting yourself to this blithering nonsense, you might be wondering, “What the hell am I subjecting myself to this blithering nonsense for?”.  You also may be wondering what the fuck I’m talking about.  Well folks, I’m here to tell you that I have no clue what I’m talking about.  Not since I took ghosts off the menu.  I pretty much just totally fucked myself when I made that decision.  Actually, I was pretty well fucked way before that.  If the most fucked I was was that I couldn’t think of what to write about, I’d be living large.  Instead, I’m not.  What does this have to do with anything, you’re almost certainly not asking yourself?  You’d like me to shit or get off the pot.

So I reckon I better shit.  Here I go…

You remember Hee Haw?  I don’t.  I mean, I’ve seen some goofy Hee Haw shit on Youtube a few times, but other than that I’m pretty well out of the whole Hee Haw circuit, if indeed a Hee Haw circuit exists.  And I’m certain that it does.  Like the Masons.  I could probably solve all these mysteries by Googling it, but I’m far too busy and important to stoop to such banal activities as that.  I’m too busy talking shit about Hee Haw.  

But I’m not even talking about Hee Haw necessarily.  I’m talking about the cartoon donkey who’d splatter his face all up in the screen at the beginning of the show.  When I was very small, about 3 and 4 years old, me and my big sister would sit in our pajamas and watch Hee Haw.  I was too little to give a fuck about the show.  Hell, now I’m too big to give a fuck about the show.  But I liked watching it just so I could see that goofy donkey get all up in your face with his buck teeth and bray at the top of his donkish lungs, “HEEEEEE HAW!!!!”  I was barely past being a toddler, but I remember it.  My dad did one hell of a Hee Haw donkey impression, too.  One of his talents that he neglected to exploit for anyone other than me and my sister.  It’s a shame.  He could’ve gone places.

So yeah, there was nothing on primetime TV in 1975 that would be of any interest to a little kid other than that goddam donkey.  Once in a while they’d show “Willy Wonka” or “The Wizard of Oz” or something, but generally you just had to find other shit to do.  And bread was 10 cents a loaf.  And nobody wanted to get gay married.  And you had recently figured out that you hadn’t yet acquired the dexterity required to cut up an apple with a big kitchen knife, that perhaps you should ask your mother next time rather than charging into her bedroom screaming all covered in blood.  Those were the days.

Oh yeah.  The donkey.  So, I thought that the donkey was the best thing that could happen on a Tuesday night at 8 P.M., 7 Central.  And maybe he was.  It could possibly have been a she.  It was hard to tell from the angle they gave you.  Maybe just once they could’ve had the donkey jam its ass up into our TV screen just to let us all know for once and for all what it was packing.  Maybe they did do that and I just missed the episode.  Anyway, I liked the goddam donkey and everything until I went to bed.  Once I was laying in the dark, my eyes adjusting just enough to see the monsters, that donkey wasn’t too cool.  I’d see him in my mind, see him in his straw hat with his bulging eyes and his murderous two front teeth.  I didn’t like that fuckin beast at all.

Now, it gets a bit hazy here, kinda like trying to remember exactly what the hell that revelation was that you had when you were completely fucked up on PCP last night.  If you’ve never experienced that and therefore don’t know what that’s like, allow me to put it layman’s terms: it’s a whole lot like trying to remember your donkey nightmares from when you were 3.

I’m aware that these memories have been severely tarnished by time, as all things are.  The Universe itself will die someday, so how is my merely mortal mind expected to keep memories such as these alive, healthy and perfectly intact?  And these recollections are tainted by hearsay, by folklore, by legend.  They have been warped by the words of others so that now they may be in fact utterly unrecognizable as truth.  Sounds like pretty intense shit when all we’re talking about is the goddam cartoon donkey on a retarded TV show nearly 40 years ago, huh?  Well, it’s not.  

My father is incapacitated and therefore unavailable for questions, but my mother is of sound mind and body.  Were you to approach her and ask her about any of this, she would very likely be very afraid.  And can you blame her?  Christ, she just had some weirdo come up and ask her about some bullshit regarding her son back when she was in her late 20s.  That’d freak anybody out.  But if for some reason she were to answer your question, she would tell you that on a regular basis she and/or my dad would have to go into my room to comfort me and to assure me that there was no donkey in my bed.  To hear her tell it I would be in tears, deleriously terrified that I was spooning with a jack ass in the dark.  Now that I think about it, that actually kinda happened later on in my life.  Perhaps I was envisioning my future.

I would be fated to have numerous experiences 4 years after this with a donkey that I would encounter on my walk home from school sometimes,  experiences that would bolster my donkophobia.  These feindish visions torture my sanity, fill me with such dread that it would be impossible to describe for if I did I should surely go mad.

Or whatever.