Comedy Open Mic Round #27: Butt Fuck Pond

Mom, if you're reading this, I apologize in advance for the title. Nothing else suitably funny or fitting came to mind. In my defense, I was trying to work when this discovery was made. I'm not sure I ever told you about it, and if I didn't, I think you can guess why.

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Back when I was in seventh grade, Indiana experienced an extended period of days where the temperature fell below freezing and just sat there. It didn't get bad enough to close schools or anything dramatic like that, and we didn't get an epic snowstorm like the blizzard of '78, it was just cold. Continuously, obnoxiously cold. Cold enough that parents sent their kids out to play with warnings to periodically come back into the house so your face didn't peel off like an ice mask.

After the second or third day of temperatures like this, we finally got snow. I awoke in the hopes of a Snowpocalypse that had shut down the city, but all we got was a lousy inch-and-a-half (just under 4cm for my Metric-using friends). Enough to cover the ground but not enough to impact traffic. We aren't Georgia, after all.

At this time, I lived in a small condominium complex located near a small body of water. Specifically, this one right here:

Actual, un-retouched satellite image courtesy of Google.

Indiana has a high water table, so virtually everywhere you see any housing areas, you'll find a giant body of water in the vicinity, dug out so all that water would have somewhere else to congregate besides your ground floor. Someone at some point had stocked the pond with a few fish because I'd occasionally see people casting lures, there were an abundance of crawdads, and if the water level got too high due to excess rain or whatever, it overflowed into a giant concrete drainage area which led, via a large metal pipe, under the nearby street and into the sewer system.

Now, as far as I know, this pond didn't have an official name. It was just a pond situated by the community swimming pool, surrounded by townhouses. At least that was the case up until the winter of 1990, when someone took it upon themselves to unofficially christen it in the most spectacular fashion imaginable.

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As I mentioned, it had snowed over night and the temperatures had remained below freezing for several days in a row. At this time, my lone source of income was a paper route which paid me to deliver a township newspaper to roughly 150 houses once a week. I had my route worked out to a science, I knew which houses picked up the paper and which ones didn't, and I could completely cover the whole neighborhood in about two hours working by myself, or a little over one hour if I had friends willing to come along and help me lug newspapers. I wouldn't have otherwise been out in the weather, or walking anywhere near the pond, but the papers wouldn't deliver themselves, so I set out on my route, followed by my friend Chris who kept me company and also hauled an extra helping of rolled up newsprint so I didn't have to make as many return trips to re-equip myself.

As we made our way through the housing development, it became clear we weren't the only idiot kids out in the freezing weather, as there was a lot of racket coming from around the lake. Since my route took us past the lake to get to the other side of the complex, Chris and I headed over that way to see what all the excitement was about. What we saw was a cluster of about half a dozen neighborhood kids laughing their heads off and pointing at the lake.

From where we were standing, Chris and I couldn't figure out what was so funny. Then we moved to where the other kids were standing, looked again, and commenced to laughing ourselves. Someone had taken it upon themselves to go out on the frozen pond and graffiti the snow, only instead of writing declarations of love or other innocent things, they'd used a giant broom or a shovel to carve out, in large block-style letters, the words, "BUTT FUCK", along with a giant arrow pointing down towards the concrete outflow.

It looked something like this:

Re-touched satellite image courtesy of GIMP and Google.

Neither Chris nor I had ever seen anything so hilariously awful in our lives, and we spent quite some time in bemused adoration of this prominently-displayed vulgarity. This, clearly, was the work of a madman. Whoever did it had to be light enough to walk out on the ice without breaking through, crazy enough to risk it in the first place, proficient enough to shovel out the words in large, easy-to-read letters, and insane enough to add the giant arrow pointing at the drain for no apparent reason.

The best part was no adult was willing to risk breaking through the ice to sweep away the vulgarity, nor were they willing to send a kid out to do so either. The words and giant arrow stayed there for several days until the temperatures warmed enough to melt the ice and obliterate the snow graffiti. Of course by that time, every kid in the neighborhood had seen it and began calling it by its newly-designated name (when adults weren't around, naturally), a practice which continued for years afterward and may continue even today, I don't know.

Strangest of all was the lack of any evidence leading either to or from the lake. While there wasn't a huge amount of snow, anybody tramping through it would have left a trail on the ice, yet nothing had been disturbed except the area in the center where the words and arrow had been shoveled out. There were footprints all around the lake from the kids who had discovered it, but none on the lake itself, and none of the neighborhood children had any idea who had done it. None of them had the tools necessary, and anyone walking out on the lake in the middle of the day would have been easily seen, leading me to believe it was probably done the night before. There had been no precipitation since which would have covered the phantom shoveler's tracks.

To this day, I have no idea who got it in his head to vandalize the snow on top of the ice in such a fashion, or why, or what on earth the giant arrow was specifying. I refuse to believe anyone got up to anything of the sort in that foul, disgusting underground tunnel, but I guess one should never assume. Now that you know the story of "Butt Fuck Pond", the legend can live on in perpetuity as an immutable part of the blockchain. For the record, I still drive by that neighborhood from time to time on my way home from work. The pond is still there.

Waiting.

Waiting and hoping someone will come along and give it a new name the next time we get several consecutive days of sub-zero temperatures and snowfall.

Waiting for an absolution that will never come.

Thanks for reading, I love you all, and I'll see myself out.

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Rules say I have to nominate two other victims, so I'm going to poke @deadspace again (he was busy moving and missed last round) and @darth-azrael. Gentlemen, read the rules and render unto us your own tale of misery and/or mirth for the chance to flex those creative muscles and win some SBD!