The Legend of Teeterass: A Kid Story

[After the depressing possibility of the world's water being managed by the most corrupt institution on earth, I needed to write something fun... so here's the story of Teeterass]

I don't know what it is that makes kids act the way they do... all I know is we were all kids once and we all did em. It was the mid-50's- 56 or 57 and Elvis was all the rage. We all tried to look like him and act like him. I was living up in New Hampshire with my uncle on the outskirts of a farm and the horror of my early childhood was behind me now- I was trying to become normal. My friend Rodney lived across the field and we hung around about every day. He even kinda looked like Elvis- he'd do that thing with his lip like Elvis did.

Me and Rodney each threw in $5.00 and we bought this old Morris Minor and we used it to play Helldrivers, like Joey Chitwood who we saw at the fair. We'd put on football helmets and shoulder pads and run that thing into trees and roll it down hills. We also used to go into town and hang out hoping for a chance to tease Teeterass. When you're 12 in small town New Hampshire, you got entertainment wherever you found it.

Teeterass was Rodney's brother Wayne who wasn't "right." He had this way of rocking frontwards and backwards when he walked so we called him Teeterass... every chance we got. Teeterass weas big and kinda fat and he had this huge head- he wore those round metal glasses that were so small it looked like his head grew around them. He lived in town, about a mile or so from the farm, in a one room shack by the river. He'd come out to the house to eat. He chopped wood for people and I guess they paid him and gave him wood for his stove... I don't know for sure.

Anyways, when we'd be hanging out on the bridge and when he'd cross over we'd holler out: "Hey Teeterass." He'd get really mad and yell back: "Teeterass, Teeterass." But when he yelled it it sounded like a donkey going Hee-haw. That would make us howl with laughter so we'd holler it back trying to sound like him. Then he'd get really mad and chase us with his axe. Then we'd go down and bounce rocks off the tin roof of his cabin to get him to chase us again.

When we'd catch him out by the house for his lunch or something we'd yell at him some more and he'd take one of his fits... he'd get so mad his face would turn all red and his tongue would fold over when he stuck it out and he'd tear all the buttons off his shirt. His mother would make him sew them back on. She'd yell at us saying: "Y'all shouldn't do him like that." We'd act all sorry and go into Rodney's dad's radio room to wait for lunch. His dad had a room full of ham radio stuff and it looked like Dr. Frankenstein's lab or something- all full of dials and stuff like that... it was really cool- he could talk to people all around the world. Sometimes at night he'd come out and say something like" I just talked to a guy in Germany," or something.

Well, by the time lunch was ready, Teeterass would have the buttons sewn back on and Rodney's mother would tell him: "Apologize to your brother." So Rodney would say: "Sorry Teeterass" and he'd jump up and tear them all off again. I know it was wrong, but it was funny as hell.

Y'know I think about those people a lot now that I'm old. They were really good people- Teeterass too. We had nothing in the world against him- I'm sure Rodney loved him. We were just stupid kids doing stupid stuff. Of course, in retrospect, knowing what I do now, I'd have never have done it. But that was then and now is now. They were just good common hard working people, and so was Wayne, limited as he was he still went out every day and cut wood- I respect that now. I wouldn't trade all the crooked politicians in Washington for one Teeterass.