"Madam, will you stop?" said Mrs. O'Rourke, clapping her hands over Kevin's ears. "The boy is too young to be knowin' of such things. Let him be, would you please?"
The old woman practically spat her vehemence into Mrs. O'Rourke's reddening face. "He is not too young! If we get them before they know anything, when they grow up they'll only know what we want them to know."
"What nonsense are ye talking now?" Mrs. O'Rourke's Irish temper was rising now.
"It is education. The board of education approved it four to three, and the three slackers were later reprimanded by the superintendent."
"Come on, Kevin," said Mrs. O'Rourke, not believing her ears. She pulled the boy along, trying to stifle her anger.
But another old woman blocked the door and said, "He doesn't have his little rubber safety cap. The young boys are not allowed in until they learn how to unroll their little caps and put them on."
"Put them on what?" Kevin asked, not understanding.
At that point the first old woman bustled up, and before Mrs. O'Rourke could block her son's innocent ears with her strong, protective hands, the old woman told little Kevin O'Rourke exactly where he should put his watermelon red condom.
Mrs. O'Rourke decked her with a roundhouse right that started at her right hip and didn't stop until the old woman was an awkward pile of bones on the school walk, her uppers and lowers bouncing in the grass.
The police were called. Mrs. O'Rourke tried to explain how the old women had provoked her with their foul terrible language-and in front of a mere boy at that-and the next thing she knew they were binding her trembling-with-rage hands behind her back with flexicuffs and she was in the back of what used to be called a paddy wagon in the days the Irish were treated like common dirt in the streets of America, and a matron was explaining to her that her little Kevin, the only good and fine thing that had come out of her brief marriage to darlin' Patrick, would be going to a foster home and the chances of getting him back were not very good at all.
Up until that day, Race Branchwood was just another unhappy three-hundred-thirty-pound disk jockey playing middle of the road music and reading the news-ninety uninterrupted seconds of news as the station's promos boasted-every half hour.
It was no glamour job. Oh, some thought differently. But not Race Branchwood. He had gotten his communications degree from Emerson College and thought he was destined for greater heights than playing mush for mushheads.
As it would turn out, Race Branchwood was absolutely right.
But on this early September day in the year 1991, Race Branchwood was Thrush Limburger, a name which he hated but which was a condition of employment at Radio Station WAKO in the Twin Cities, when he chanted into the microphone for the one-thousand-five-hundred-and-seventy-seventh time, "And now, ten uninterrupted minutes of seventies music, count them, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one uninterrupted minutes from the station that still plays with your bippy. This is Thrush Limburger, and I'll be right back."
He switched off the mike and left the sound booth, muttering under his breath as he hurried to the hall coffee machine.
"Thrush Limburger, my left testicle."
"What was that, Branchwood?" came the surly voice of the station manager.
"I said I got heartburn in my left ventricle."
"Burp. And while you're at it, try to lose a few hundred pounds. The next Arbitron book is only two months away and we're trying to project a lean-and-mean image. How can you show your face at public appearances looking like the the Pillsbury Doughboy?"
"What do you think people expect from a guy named Limburger?" Race Branchwood snapped back.
"The Limburger was to cover our bets. I want you looking like a Thrush, not just sounding like one."
"I could do better work under my own name. Race."
"Everybody knows that Race is short for Horace. You look like a Horace too."
"I am a Horace, you dink. It's my name, for crying out loud."
"We've had this idiot conversation before. I'm going to be next door having my hair done."
"Must be louse season again," muttered Race Branchwood, continuing on to the coffee machine, walking on tippy toes like so many three-hundred-pounders do. He coaxed the machine to fill the cup all the way this time just by punching the C in Coffee and added two sugars-real and not that pink stuff he hated-and a dollop of real cream and was back in time to pick off the latest news script that the WAKO news writer had laid beside his mike.
Race Branchwood took a quick sip of the coffee before picking up the script and switched on his mike.
He didn't know it, but the switching on of the microphone marked the end of his disk jockey career. It was also the end of Race Branchwood. He would never be Race Branchwood again. That was the only downside, the only regret he was to feel for the rest of his natural life.
"And now," he said in a booming baritone that was redolent of the cream in his coffee, "here is the WAKO Ninety-Second News."
Race Branchwood cast his professional eye over the first item and did something he had never done in his radio career. He froze at the mike. But only for six seconds. He took a second hit of the coffee he was destined never to finish.
Clearing his throat, he tried again. "A Mrs. Bernadette O'Rourke was arrested today for-" Race stopped. "This is unbelievable," he said in a stunned whisper. "I mean, ladies and gentlemen, this is an unreal item I have just been handed. Let me-give me a moment here, please."
He tried again. "A Mrs. Bernadette O'Rourke was arrested today for assault and battery of a seventy-eight-year-old woman named Agnes Frug-that's F-R-U-G, like the dance. Now the reason Mrs. O'Rourke was compelled to coldcock the other woman is very simple. It seems that Ms. Frug-the script says Ms. attempted to force Mrs. O'Rourke's five-year-old son Kevin to put on a condom before he could enter the Walter F. Mondale Grammar School. It was Kevin's first day of school. He never got in the door. As a matter of fact, he's now in a foster home. Mrs. O'Rourke is in the county lockup. No, I am not making this up. This is an actual news item and it took place in our fair city."
Race Branchwood took a deep breath. He looked at the wall clock and saw that he was already sixty seconds into the Ninety-Second News spot and he had only read the first squib.
Then he said, "Ah, the hell with it." And with that he became Thrush Limburger forevermore.
"You know what really gets under my skin, ladies and gentlemen? It's the whackjobs. The whackjobs who think five-year-olds have to be indoctrinated in the scare of the month. And the feminasties who put them up to it. And the old toot grannies who get their jollies playing with condoms in public. My friends, if you were to take those old toot grannies and turn their biological clocks back fifty years to when they were twenty, and hand them a rubber, they would have A) slapped you right in the face and B) whistled up the cops. And you, my friend, would be doing hard time on a morals charge.
"So how is it fifty years later those same old ladies are spending their waking hours packaging prophylactics and passing them out to kids too young to even begin to understand what the hell these things are. I'll tell you why. Because before menopause hit them like a ton of bricks and took away the last shred of common sense they may or may not have had, they were terrified at the very thought of a condom. Now they can't get enough of them. And why not? They're out of the game. They can't play anymore. And these dried-up old biddies can't wait to throw these things around like bingo chips."
In the control room, the program director was turning purple. Thrush Limburger-he was Thrush Limburger now even if he didn't know it-never particularly liked the program director, so he ploughed on, hoping to get the man's face to match the particular shade of lavender Thrush happened to be wearing around his own neck that day.