The Brutality Report - Childhood Embarrassments

One day, when I was eight or nine, I was passing through a friend’s living room when my entire life changed. On the far side of the room, his younger sister lay face down on the couch, pants around her knees, with a thermometer sticking up from between her butt cheeks like a swizzle stick. In the single second it took my mind to acknowledge this sight, the image burned itself into my visual cortex. Even now, typing this, all I have to do is close my eyes and I can clearly see the scene. I turned back into the hallway and stood in the corner, burning with shame. I knew I had just committed an unrecoverable social error. My life would not, could not, ever be the same.

"Tough break, little guy. Childhood embarrassment is brutal," a voice said. I turned and saw a man standing in the hallway with me. He seemed oddly familiar.

"But, trust me, this isn't anything. In 1987 you'll be sprinting across an intersection in Delmar, NY when your belt will magically pop off and your pants will fall down around your ankles. Your buddy's em-bare-assed sister in the next room? That'll be you, in public. And then you'll spot the gaggle of teenage girls standing on the opposite corner. There won't really be time to slow down because of oncoming traffic, so you'll more or less be running at these young ladies full speed with your pants down, like a bizarre Benny Hill gag. FYI, although you'll have recently turned old enough to be arrested, you won't switch from tighty-whiteys to boxer shorts for another year."

"Wh- what?" I asked, baffled.

"And in 1991," the oddly familiar man continued, "you'll be hiking in the Muir Woods with the guys from Econochrist when you'll slide down a trail and slap your hand into a fresh pile of deer shit. Fun factoid—deer shit is basically cold napalm. You can scrub and scrub, but that stuff takes forever to wash off. Not that you'll have any sort of sink facilities at that moment, of course, on account of you'll be in the woods. So in lieu of washing, you'll just sort of scrape the biggest hunks of jellied deer scat off your person using a large stick, and then you'll roll your useless hand in dirt and pine needles so that it will appear as if you're wearing a single shit mitten. Meanwhile, those guys you'd planned on impressing? They'll all be crying with laughter."

"But how would you know…."

“And in 1994? Oh man. You'll be starting a new job in Richmond, Virginia, when your new boss will ask if you have any questions. You’ll decide to inject some edgy post-postmodern humor into a minimum wage supermarket position, so you will look at him earnestly and ask, 'where does light come from?' WOW. Mortifying.”

I stared at him with undisguised horror.

"Okay, I got sidetracked," he said. "My point, kiddo, is that everyone goes through this. Your buddy's sister is probably going to remember this moment for the rest of her days as well. There's no escaping the lifetime of embarrassment you've got ahead of you."

I gulped with a terrifying realization. "Are you me from the future?"

"What? Jesus, kid! I'm the meter reader! My name's Jake."

“Oh," I said, more confused still.

He smiled. "Of course, no one has experienced the level of embarrassment you'll achieve just moments after you receive your first Oscar in 2028…."

Previously - "1,000 Lives (To Die)"

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