The True Story of Play-Doh

I'm reasonably sure this happened in mid-November, 1999, which would make me a freshman in High School. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

My parents had recently completed work on the second addition to our house, which included a new section of basement. This new basement had been annexed for my dad's work room, but at the moment, it was still just wide open territory. So i laid a claim on it for the site of my birthday party that year. This was in a more innocent time, when my birthday parties consisted of five to eight guests and neither bands nor alcohol were present.

I dragged a TV, VCR, and Nintendo 64 down to the basement and set them on a microwave stand. I also came up with two or three mattresses, i don't exactly remember where from now, and set them side by side across the basement in front of the TV. Since the plans for the night essentially consisted of the N64 and a couple of movies (i do remember the movies, actually: Virus and The 13th Floor), this was all that a small group of 7th to 9th grade boys needed for a wild night. Right?

So, that's pretty well exactly what happened. This story isn't about the night of the party itself; it's about the morning after.

Seeing as the party was but a small group, my dad made French toast for everybody in the morning (nowadays, i have to cook the French toast myself). As we begin eating breakfast, the orange juice gets passed to Skippy, who unsuccessfully attempts to pour himself a glass.

The pitcher was of a style which, i think, nowadays, is pretty standard. The lid is normally closed, but you rotate it to get either a full pour, or a strainer. Skippy didn't seem to understand the concept, so when he tipped the completely full pitcher of OJ and nothing was coming out, he became confused. Believe me, even in the days before Skippy discovered pot, he was very easily confused. So he did what anybody would have done: he tipped the pitcher farther. Somebody, i think it was my mom, noticed what he was doing and was just attempting to get him to stop and explain it to him when the pitcher reached near-vertical, and the lid popped off, sending an entire pitcher of orange juice straight into Skippy's lap.

Not a huge deal. It got cleaned up. My mom procured some of my brother's clothes for Skippy to wear while his were in the laundry. A new pitcher of orange juice got made. It seemed the incident was pretty well wrapped up.

After breakfast, we retreated back into the basement and returned to our Goldeneye tournament. That was, after all, what we did back then. After a length of time had passed, suddenly somebody said, "Hey, where's Skippy?"

All of a sudden, a pair of underwear come flying out of Skippy's sleeping bag. The rest of us exchanged the expected bewildered glances, and then came to stare at the sleeping bag.

A moment passed in silence, and then Skippy burst forth from the sleeping bag like he was an alien fleeing John Hurt's chest. He was butt naked and raving loudly something about not wanting to wear my brother's clothes, and started jumping up and down on the mattress and flapping his arms like a wounded penguin.

Then the screaming started. Not from Skippy, from the rest of us. Everyone except for Zippo averted their eyes, clamoring for him to get the clothes back on. Zippo just stared, in a stupor, probably in what paramedics would describe medically as "shock." This went on for such a long period of time (seriously, ten minutes or more), where nobody wanted to move or open their eyes due to the trauma. We'd look up occasionally, to see whether it had stopped yet, but the end result of this action was always a renewed round of screaming and all-around horror. One wonders what my parents were thinking at that moment and why they didn't come down to investigate. Actually, from their perspective safely outside of the basement, it probably didn't seem all that unusual.

Now, accounts vary on exactly who made the statement that would follow Skippy around for the next six or seven years. Some say that it was Skippy himself who made the observation, others believe it was an incoherent rambling from Zippo, at least one person has suggested that it was even me. But in any case, somebody made the following observation about Skippy's genitals: "Hey! It looks like Play-Doh!!" Come to think of it, it was probably Gay Eskimo.

I don't really recall how this story ends. Somebody may have finally just tackled him, and somehow stuffed him back into the sleeping bag until his own clothes came out of the dryer. Or else maybe the rest of us left the room. Neither of these options sounds entirely feasible, but i'm at a loss as to what else might have happened.

And that is why we called him "Playdo" for years to come.