Leave It To Beaver: The Lost Episode
I used to have a fiance (engaged to be married) named
Lizzie, but she broke up with me because I gifted her a copy of Jailbreak [Studio album by Thin Lizzy] as an anniversary (of our first date at Petsmart) present, and she assumed that I was prodding at her for her weight problem. It doesn't help matter that 'prodding' is a technique that ranchers normally incorporate to move cows along in their own daily struggles.
I first encountered the girlfriend at a yard sale. Now, usually at these things they sell you musty old junk like foldable lawn chairs, garden gnomes, and dimebags of the big 'H' (that's my codename for the 'heroin' substance), but this time around, I saw an attractive young lady holding the display that we refer to as 'Life'. Perhaps in her early 20s. Freckles, cute smile. Nice ass. And she was holding a box of delicious Life cereal... boxtop still attached, ripe for sending in along with proofs of purchase for a Jason Aldeen mini hotwheels. What a life.
"Hey, baby", I asserted. Enchanted by my irresistible looks and charming pick-up line, she asked to be engaged to be married to me on the spot. Now, in hindsight, I know that this is a little suspicious, as I have not described to you what I look like as of yet, but the horrifying truth of the matter is that I no longer look like anything. More on this later. In the meanwhile, while we were making out and impressing the elder gentlemen rummaging through baseball cards for mint Mickey Mantles that were once adorned by originally-flavored bubble gum stripes, I noticed something in the back-pocket of her jeans. A bulge. After asking her if she was actually a man (not to judge or anything, I don't mean it that way), I realized that it was actually a VHS tape. Her arms were wrapped firmly around my neck, but I craned like an ostrich injected with special vitamins and, wouldn't you know it: I could make out half of the title. "The Lost Epis(blank) (blank) (blank) (blank) (blank) Beaver", it said. I asked her if there were any beavers in her family, and to my relief, she said no. However, I couldn't help but be perplexed by why she would have a VHS tape in her pocket.
On the way back to her place, I managed to use my stealth Bruce Lee-esque skills to swipe the VHS tape from her back pocket. Admittedly, it smelled kind of like ass, but as I mentioned previously I really liked her ass, so it was more of a pleasant fragrance to my nostalgic nostrils. As you may have guessed by now, it was indeed a Lost Episode of the Leave It To Beavertelevision program. I gaped in wonderment at my new found discovery, but as I was driving and had been taking my eyes off the road to read the spine of the tape, we were in grave danger, and I do mean that literally. I guess it was fitting that my real name was 'George D. Jungle', because I didn't watch out for that tree. It was too late for the both of us. We had moved on to the deeper plane.
The Apostle Peter opened a big fat book, checked it for names, and saw mine. It turned out that I was actually a pretty cool guy in real life for donating to children, so he decided that I'd wake up in my hospital bed fully unharmed, after all. However, the same could not be said for my then-fiance, Rutabega. "She's dead", St. Peter proclaimed. "The trees hit her in the ovaries, and there's nothing that can be done to fix that kind of a wreck." I kind of shrugged it off, but in time I realized that I really did love her, and I kept her as an imaginary friend. Her parents aren't cool with it, but again, they say that you marry the girl's parents too, and I'm not a polygamist so f*** that s***, let them say what they want waffles hamsters first national bank was established by neoTemplars.
After awakening from the hospital bed, it was discovered that I had the VHS tape lodged up my ass. A sexy, middle-aged nurse removed it and plopped it into my lap. After offering to dance on my lap, she also offered to put on the VHS tape while I waited for further medical treatment. What a doll. Admittedly, MTV was on and broadcasting a musical video by my favorite heavy rock and roll metal band of all-time, Twisted Sister, but I decided that good things come to those who wait. Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry would always stay in my personal cassette tape collection, but this tape... this tape, I did not know if I legally had ownership to.
The episode started as normal, with the usual Leave It To Beaver theme song. "Beaver! Beaver! They call him beaver! He's a heckuva pal, when he wields his cleaver! He cuts up meat faster than you'd bang yours! Hey, Beaver Cleaver! You're the kind we adore! Hey, BEAVER!". Weird. That was actually not the LITB theme song that I remembered from watching the animated sitcom back in the American 1980s, but I decided that I was O.K. with it and continued watching the tape. The first scene of the main part of the program showcased the Beaver family gathered at the breakfast table, eating cereal and orange juice and half-slices of toasts like an all-American family. The main difference from this and the usual program that I grew up with was... well, it was terrifying, actually. The family all sat there in silence. The father was staring intensely into his newspaper, or so I guessed, since we couldn't see his face as it had been covered by newspaper. The mother had a twisted smile on her face that looked totally contrived, as if she wasn't 'right' in the head and wasn't actually happy but was trying to convince the television audience that she actually was. And as for Beaver, his eyes were just... well. I know you won't believe me, and that's O.K. I can't believe myself sometimes, but here it goes: they were gone. Missing. Not ordinary eyes, not bulging eyes, no bloodshot eyes, nothing. I threw up in my hospital bed, and Nurse Ratchet came and threw down some sawdust in my lap, which was nice of her. Anyway, I was going to tell her to shut the program off until I caught sight of something. The main article of the newspaper! I can still see it now, in my mind's eye. Size 36, blood red, Times New Roman font, with a mix of emphasis, underline, and strong (called 'bold' in obsolete browsers that you may have used while waiting for 'net Time' at the town library back in 1957). What was really wrong, and how I really know there was something wrong with this television program, is what the letters spelled out: "THEY TOOK MY EYES", in all capital letters.
I considered giving up and going home, but remembering that my legs had been blown apart in the car crash, I realized that I couldn't get up, and who's to say where my home truly was? I continued watching the tape. This silent scene went on for another seven or eight minutes until the doorbell rang. Now, this was also pretty weird, because they didn't have doorbells back in the 1960s, but there was a doorbell, and indeed, it rung. "Come in", said the mother, in a really hoarse voice that bothered me a little bit more. The doorknob twisted, and then in came... well, it seemed pretty normal. Eddie Haskell, Leave It To Beaver's best friend and next door neighbor, came skateboarding into the house while wearing sunglasses and sporting a boombox on his shoulder. "Come n' get your fix of the Limp Bizkit mix!", he explained, popping chex mix cereal into his mouth and choking. ... Oh, Okay, it was pretty normal and wholesome family entertainment up until that point, but Eddie Haskell choking on chex mix? That was pretty messed up.
The next scene was also rather morbid and sinister. It was a funeral. We watch Eddie Haskell's casket get lowered into the ground, while Leave It To Beaver cries to himself and his mother and father try to consul him. "Eddie would've wanted it this way", the father character comforted his son, popping chex mix into his mouth. Normally that would have been pretty normal, but even this family moment was rather loco in the cabeza. When Father Beaver tossed the chex mix into his mouth... well, he didn't toss them into his mouth. Instead, a lengthy, slimy, salivy lizard tongue with engraved marks on it caught the chex mix in midair while he gulped it down like a frog swallows a fly. I squinted at the screen some more, and to my horror... I noticed something. Something bad. The engravings spelled out: "We know what you did to our daughter, Randy." My name!
It's weird to say, but at this point, I started to feel a sensation that you Americans tend to know as 'guilt'. But I wasn't a Leave It To Beaver character, and there's no way that they knew about me back in the 1960s, or that I would eventually be born to German-American immigrants who simply wanted to be accepted and cooked up pretzels while on the boat to appease the anglos who had been living in this country for so, so long and considered it to have been theirs since the time of colonization. There. Was. No. Way. This. Tape. Could. Know. My. NAME. But it did. It made no sense. But it did. Oh well. Whatever. I gathered up the strength to continue watching, coughing up some blood from the accident but perhaps also from my disgust of what was unfolding before my very eyes.
25 years had passed. Beaver was now at university and was studying what appeared to be advanced physics. "E = MC 2", Beaver sighed to himself, perusing a quiz that he had gotten a 92% on. "92% is a pretty good grade for a quiz", his classmate next to him asserted in response to his presumed buddy's achievement. "Yeah...", Beaver sighed. "I bet he would have been proud of me." I shed a single tear drop, caught up in the moment. Strange. I felt some sort of bonding between me and Beaver Cleaver, but I do not know why it possibly would be so. The next scene, to my surprise, was already the final scene. It was a montage of moments. It showed Beaver graduating from college, getting engaged, getting married, impregnating his spouse, getting divorced, explaining to his kid that life is complicated while his kid tries to keep his parents together by using the Bible as a proof that divorce is not right in the good Lord's eyes. Eventually, we see Beaver getting married, and a funeral, in which no one shows up. Finally, something that I could never have possibly imagined, and neither could you—occurred. You know how the world used to be in black and white, before the big events of the 1960s turned us all into color? Well, it happened. It suddenly happened. I always wondered when it happened, and it did. It turned color. From black and white. From grayscale. The world turned color at the exact moment that Beaver Cleaver's tombstone appeared on screen. The camera zoomed in, closer and closer, as we get a shot of his epitaph. Now, I know you're expecting something freaky and insightful, perhaps about eyes, but I couldn't make out what it said because it was in some sort of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic language. "FML", I muttered to myself out loud, not realizing that someone might overhear it, which would have been embarrassing as I was not communicating inside of an AOL instant message chatroom at the time. Trying to forget the horrifying television-related terrors that I had just witnessed, I fell asleep on my hospital bed, even though the sawdust had not evaporated the excess waste product as of yet, or however sawdust works (I'm not even sure why they throw that on your throw-up, but I digress and I don't want to be too icky right now because this is important).
I had hoped that dozing off into dreamland and Mr. Sandman bringing me a dream would relieve me of what was unsettling me, but no. Instead, I had the worst nightmare I had ever had. A bunch of global catastrophies played out before me. The stuff you read about in history books. Pearl Harbor, 9/11, WW2. Ancient Jewish man wearing sackcloth and rubbing ashes on their foreheads while proclaiming the end of the world as they knew it (and not feeling fine). It was just... horrible. And finally, I ended up doing it. I woke up, screaming. There was a voice in my head, and it demanded that I woke up, right then and there.
"The Prophet Randy shed blood, and did not even attempt to cover it up. He did not visit the widow, and he did not put away the idols in the hills, and followed in his fathers' footsteps. Let those who have eyes to see see. Remember...". And then...the epitaph letters. In my dream.
Indeed having eyes to see, and ears to hear, I understood that this vision was telling me that I had much to learn, and had no choice but to take initiative. I woke up, got better, and was eventually released from the hospital. They gave me those long metal tubes that they sometimes give people as surrogate legs, and I learned how to use them and I thought it was pretty cool. The kids in the park would call me Bionic Command, or Inspector Gadget, or Headstrong-to-take-on-anyone, which I just assumed was a compliment. I studied book after book on ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, and before long, I knew how to speak the stuff. I even flew out to Egypt and had fluent conversations with the neighbors. Yet, I still had not come across the exact characters from the Leave It To Beaver VHS tape. Perhaps they were a deep metaphor for something else that wasn't actually Egyptian hieroglyphics, or perhaps I had misremembered. But no, that couldn't have been it: I have perfect, photographic memory, and I would always be able to look into that photograph.
Unfortunately, I had lost the VHS tape a long time ago. Turnipgirl or whatever her name was, her family claimed it as unpaid dowry, so I lost custody rights. They eventually sold it to the black market, and as that's a market that cannot really be described, I could never tell you where the tape is today. I tried looking through LITB AOL bulletin board systems, but I couldn't find anything. Eventually, I just decided that they really weren't Egyptian hieroglyphic letters after all. I was doing a Mormon mission in Egypt, pretending to be advancing the mythos of the golden plates when I really was just looking for more clues about what the secret message meant. But I never found the 'secret decoder ring', and to this day, I still don't know oh s*** wait I get it now all of a sudden it makes sense.
You know that aftertaste that you sometimes get when you drink beer? I mean, no one actually drinks beer for the taste, dilly dilly and all.They drink it to get drunk, right? Maybe you're out with friends and you just order whatever the highest proof beer is. Well, when you're drunk, your judgment is impaired and you say and do embarrassing things. Perhaps I had been drinking before the car crash nope wait that's not it.
So, I went back home to Provo, Utah. I lost my religion, and took up cocaine as a sport. I would set up really, really lengthy lines in my room, and snort them with a silly straw. "PRO BONO!", I'd shriek as my battle cry. Now, I know what you're thinking: this can't be healthy, and no, it isn't. In fact, I died again, this time from an exploded heart. "Nothing we can do now about an exploded heart.", the Apostle Peter explained. "This time, you're boned." Boned. Boned. Wait. Wait a minute. "Boned...", I muttered to myself. "Boned", said Peter, holding up a bone. "Have you put it together yet, bonehead?" "No", I asserted. "That's right", Peter said back. "Because you're a bonehead."
So, here I am now. I'm at the pearly gates. They allow beer in heaven and they sell it for $7 a pop. I don't know where the money goes, and that seems a little greedy to me, which seems to go against the supposed rules of the place, but hey, you know what's written in the Book of Joshua about not sparing babies. Weird. Dudley Do-Right pog slammers. Unopened gushers fruit snack packages from the disco-era 1970s. Ally McBeal dancing baby. But here I am now, staring at the pearly gates, and there are... those characters. Staring at me. From the gates. But why?
Since we're at the present now, instead of narrating this, I'm going to put on speakerphone and let you listen in to my current circumstances.
"Oh. Those letters. How nice. I still don't—wait. I get it now. I actually DO recognize those letters. They're from that newspaper! If I can just get a little closer... and squint..."
- muffled noises * "Well, Martha, would you look at that. It's the guy who killed our daughter. Oh, hey, Randpaul. Did you reveal the government's darkest, deepest secrets yet? That the real reptilian is actually you, and your cold-blooded heart?"
"No! Wait! I can explain-!" * sounds of bone against bone, fist against face *
"You really thought you could kill our daughter and get away with it. You really thought we'd forgive you, just because you lived a good Protestant life and quit drinking. You really thought you could watch The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser time and time again and find hidden secrets inside of it. But no. You can't escape the guilt of who really killed Penelope. Because you-"
"... Who the f*** is Penelope?"
"Oh, s***. TODD!!!! Henry had a handlebar mustache."
"You mean... wrong guy?"
"... Wrong guy, Todd..."
"Well, s***. Looks like we f***ed up your life for no good reason. Those letters were just scrawlings from a Denny's placemat that Penny wrote when she was 7. We thought you knew that and were just, like, subconsciously forgetting it, or some s***, out of guilt."
THE END
Just kidding. About the tape player and being in the present and all that. I hope you liked my voice sounds, though. They're my impressions of a tape recorder. ... Compliment them. Anyway, I'm a mental hospital now while they treat me for psychosis. They feed me a steady diet of bread and water, and occasionally, iced cream, if I am good. As it turns out, I did indeed claim their daughter in a drunk driving incident, and the doctor claims that I'm trying to convince myself that I am somehow not at fault. I would argue that I'm in the right here, because after all, New Jersey is a no-fault state.
But who's to say who's really at fault? If you've been paying attention, I was seduced at a yard sale while all I was looking for was a sweet deal on garden sheers. And isn't that all we're really looking for out of life, really? A good deal? One might say that I perfected the art of the deal, other than that I manslaughtered the love of my life and her parents hate me and I invented a fake television program in order to pin the blame on something entirely disconnected from me.
Five years had passed, and the doctors had decided that I was no longer a threat to society. For my half a decade of service, Nurse Ratchet awarded me a plaque, as well as a set of golden earbuds and an iPod with some of my favorite songs preloaded. Ignoring the 'this volume is so loud that it will likely hurt your ears' warning, I triumphantly walked out of the mental institution lobby, first floor hallways, and entrance doors as a free man with a new lease on life. As I was truly sorry for the sins of my past, my conscience was now cleared and I was free to start over, other than that it is impossible to forget—just possible to forgive.
On my way out, I perused the parking lot in search of my parents' car, as I had been notified that they would come and pick me up and take me back to their musty basement, where I would live out the rest of my years set off from society, where the world could be safe from my unorthodox patterns of thinking. Instead, as I turned my heard around the corner, I saw—nothing more.
He took my eyes. He plucked them out. Beaver. Beaver Cleaver. With his cleaver. He leapt out of the shadows. "For Eddie!", he exclaimed. As it turned out, that was the girl's name. The girl who I was arranged to get married to, other than that she never really wanted to marry me but felt sorry for me because I was crazy and kept asking her when I'd order combo meals off of her at Popeye's.
Eddie.
... That's a pretty weird name for a girl.
THE END oh I I ohhhhh ohhh I'm still alive
YouTube reading
Credited to DaveTheUseless
| Comments • 0 |
Loading comments...
|
