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“Ummm...Daddy?” asked the little boy, making a low whistling noise as he blew his unruly, dark blonde hair out of his face, struggling to get over the lawn mower that was blocking the door of their cluttered garage.
“Whaddaya say, Munchkin?”came the reply from the tall, heavyset man whose dark red hair and beard made him look almost as if he had glued a lion’s mane to his head.
“What would happen if I do this?” he questioned with the almost angelic innocence of youth. The elder man jumped and started to turn around; the last time his son had asked that, he’d had to spend 3 nights in the hospital after getting surgery to repair a foot that had been run over with an out of control tractor that was too much for the 6-year- old to handle. He was too late.
He felt something poke him sharply in the right side of his butt, immediately followed by another two pokes.
“Ahhhhh! Ow! Shit! What the—ugggh!” he started to run around frantically, forgetting that he had a hoe laying in the yard—he had never quite gotten the wisdom of putting the hoe’s blade down.
The little boy let the nail gun slip out of his hands and jumped under the workbench his dad had been using to repair their weed-eater (the little boy had used it as part of a makeshift drumset the night before, and used a hammer and a monkey wrench for drumsticks)— he knew he would be in big trouble once they found him, and didn’t plan on getting caught.
Looking frenzied and even more like a lion, the victim came limping in and immediately took off his jeans and underwear, both of which had a large red spot in the rear.
“Munchkin,” he grimaced as he maneuvered himself to a chair and rested his left buttcheek upon it, “I know you’re under the workbench. Get out here, and bring me a pair of pliers, please.”
“Munchkin” crawled out from under the workbench, a look of remorse frozen upon his face and a tear sliding from his big, green eye, and complied with his father’s orders.
Just as the cold steel of the needle-nosed pliers made contact with the first nail—and his buttocks—their next-door neighbor came hustling into the garage, panting slightly.
“John! Are you okay? I heard screaming and wondered what had hap— ” she stopped, a look not quite akin to shock and horror displayed across her plain, yet pleasant, face. John and his son lived next-door to a convent, and this particular nun had never seen a man in less than a t-shirt and shorts, much less a man who was wearing absolutely nothing.
“Thank you, Sister, but we’re all right. Jerry just ‘lost control’ of the nail gun.” John, forgetting he was stark naked, strode to the fridge, “Would you care for something to drink, Sister?”
Slowly, almost as if a trance, the sister walked to John, eyes kept level with the base of his neck, and gently laid a hand upon his face. The hand started to tighten, and she drew even nearer to John, eyes now staring into his.
She started to move her free hand around him, almost as if she was going to take him into an embrace. And, then, with surprising speed, strength, and grace for a woman with such a petite frame, she ripped all three nails out of his posterior.
He fainted.
