Pareuresis (par-yur-ee’-sis): To put forward a convincing excuse. [Shifting the blame.]
We went to Maine every summer, leaving behind the brutality of New Jersey for one week. We drove all 400 miles in our old family Chevy to a town on the coast where our anscestors landed in the late 1600s—East Boothbay.
The Chevy was a coupe—a piece crap with a hole in the floor between me and my sister—we sat on the floor. Coupe’s didn’t have back seats. We just had to be careful. The drive was long and would’ve been boring as hell if our dad did’t make up a stupid game (Beaver!) and sing traditional and popular songs with words he made up, sort of like Al Yankovich.
We had just finished playing “Beaver!” and my sister had won again. Beaver! rules were simple, when you saw a station wagon with exterior wood paneling you yelled “Beaver!” Whoever got to five beavers first, won the game. When I got older and heard a vagina referred to as a “beaver,” I thought maybe my father was a pervert.
The songs were the best boredom fighter. Dad would make us laugh and time would fly. Although they were silly and stupid, they did the trick. I’ve listed some titles below:
- “Ground Hog” (Elvis, “Hound Dog”)
- “Feral Jock Straps” (French trad. “’Frère Jacques”)
- “Tony Baloney” (Roy Orbison, “Only the Lonely”)
- “I Shot You Babe” (Sonny and Cher, “I Got You Babe”)
- “Baseballs Afire” (Jerry Lee Lewis, “Great Balls Afire”)
- “I’m Pickin’ on You” (Jimmy Bowen, “I’m Stickin’ With You”)
- “The Twits” (Chubby Checker, “The Twist”)
- “Roses are Dead” (Bobby Vinton, “Roses are Red”)
- “The Blunderer” (Dion, “The Wanderer”)
- “I Want to Hold Your Ham” (Beatles, “I want to Hold Your Hand”)
We called these “Dad Songs.” They kept us awake and from falling the through to floor between me and my sister. Once our suitcase blew off the roof of the car and Dad Sang “Our Garments are Blowin’ in the Wind” and kept going.
We stopped at the Salvation Army store in Bath, and got new clothes. I got a two sizes too big t-shirt with a hole in it that had a big red lobster on it and said: “Vacationland.” I loved it, almost as much as I loved Mom and Dad.
Soon we would be in East Boothbay, and the Boothbay Shores where we would pitch a tent on private property, sleep to the tune of mosquitos, cook on a Primus stove, and I would spend my week’s vacation looking for crabs at low tide, drinking Yoo-Hoo, fishing, and shooting my BB gun.
That was 60 years ago.
The Daily Trope 