How I Got Burned By A Skunk

The year– 1989

I don’t remember much lately. It’s either menopause or alzheimers or little mini strokes (that’s what did my poor mother in), I prefer to think it’s menopause or better–I just have a crappy memory. But I remember clearly that day in 1989.

A few weeks before I got a call from my son’s elementary school. He was in the third grade at the time. It seems his third grade teacher (I will not mention any names here) had no idea how to handle him. I was told that the nurse, his gym teacher? and his third grade teacher spent time in his class observing him and came up with the conclusion that he needed therapy. I had just gotten divorced and figured maybe that’s why they were having a problem with him. He was always a high strung, non stop, dive in, kind of kid but I never thought he needed therapy. If anyone needed it at the time it was me.

I was brought up to do as I was told. I still have that problem. I have a tough time saying no to anyone. So I took him to therapy. Don’t worry I’ll get to the skunk soon. This is all just the set up. Like in a movie, you don’t go directly to the critical scene, you have to set things up, get to know the characters. I don’t know to this day if taking him to therapy ever really helped him but it did help me. I don’t remember seeing any changes in him but I learned how to deal with him a little better.

Now to the skunk. We had just finished with the therapist and stopped off at a pizza place to get some to go and then head home. By now it was dark and I hadn’t left the light on by the side door of the house. As I walked toward the steps, with pizza in hand, trailed by my two darling children, I went up the two steps and right in front of the door was the monster skunk from hell. He looked and me and I looked at him and we both screamed. I’m not sure that he actually screamed but some noise came out of him. I had no time to react (other than scream) before I got hit squarely on my right cheek with a steady stream of skunk stuff.

I’m not sure what part of that ass, the stuff comes out of. I really always have some kind of ass problems.

I always envisioned that when a skunk sprayed it would actually come out as a spray. But no, it was a stream. I could still feel it dripping down my face. I dropped the pizza, my pocketbook, yelled at the kids to run (I don’t think they had any idea what was happening) and we all ran. I could hear my son yelling “Mom, you forgot the pizza”. Chaos ensued. It didn’t take long for the kids to realize what had happened because I smelled like freshly sprayed skunk fodder.

Finally the skunk took off. My son felt worse for the pizza he knew he couldn’t eat than for me but my daughter, who was ten at the time, was right there for me. We went in the house, I got in the shower and told her to find every can of tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce (I didn’t care if it was seasoned, I figured a little basil couldn’t hurt) (I think my son thought I was going to make homemade pizza) and bring it to me. She promptly brought me about 8 cans and jars of whatever she could find and I took a tomato shower. I scrubbed my head in it, my whole body was covered in tomatoes. You haven’t lived until you take a shower in tomato sauce. I could picture myself wrestling in it, like mud wrestling. With who, I don’t know. I knew no one would want to stand near me for the next month. After I rinsed I took a regular shower with the strongest smelling soap I could find.

The problem was, the stuff had actually gone up my nose a little. It took weeks before I stopped smelling skunk. The next day I went to a hair salon and bought some stuff to strip anything in your hair right out. That actually helped. I threw away all the clothes I had on that night, including my pocketbook. Unfortunately I threw away my glasses which were in the pocketbook. I took about 5 more showers and I stilled smelled skunk, though my daughter said she had to get up really close to me before she could smell it. I think she was just trying to be polite.

Now to the burn. I was actually left with a burn on my face from the skunk stuff. Is there actually a name for skunk stuff? Is it their pee? I had the burn for a good week. I remember thinking “Can you actually get scarred by a skunk?” I mean physically not emotionally. I was definitely scarred emotionally.

Shortly after that is when my daughter thought it would be cute to always buy me some sort of skunk thing for birthdays, mother’s day, Christmas, etc. I have quite the collection.

This is my skunk hat

Well, that’s it. Now I hate the little bastards. Is that too strong a word. No, I don’t think so.

Next time I will have to tell you all about how my wasband (ex-husband to those of you who are new here) tried to electrocute a squirrel with water and an electric frying pan. Or even better, how he tried to chop down a ninety foot pine tree by himself. That was a close call. It’s one of those stories, that if it were on TV, you would see at the bottom of the screen “Please don’t try this at home by yourself.” Actually, that could apply to the squirrel incident too.  Oh, I just remembered the best one, the night my wasband tried to burn our  kitchen table (whole- I mean in one piece) in the fireplace. Actually that’s the best one.