Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and it’s time to get your funk on, baby!
But first, you’re gonna have to get that funk the funk off you…
When I was a studly young Sophomore in high school, I lived on the farm with my dad in dusty-ass Southwest Kansas. Occasionally my unpaid labor on the farm wasn’t enough to get the job done to his satisfaction, so Dad would hire a farm hand to help him out.
Well, it just so happens that during this epoch in my life, Dad’s go-to guy was ol’ “Dirty Bob” Harris. I shit thee not–this was this guy’s actual nickname that people used when speaking directly to him. This moniker was well-deserved, too: he was a bachelor probably in his 60s who lived south of Rolla in a little shanty of a trailer, chain-smoked, and, when feeling particularly hygienic, would bust out his pocket knife and clean out the grit from underneath his grubby-ass fingernails. In fact, the one condition Dad had for his continued employment was that he had to take a bath at least once a week. Talk about setting the bar, pretty low, right?
I always thought that was kinda gracious of Dad, seeing as how a weekly bath wasn’t nearly enough to keep him from imparting a semi-permanent stank to our pickup, tractors, and other implements in which he spent more than 5 minutes. I would beg Dad over and over again to consider spending just a little more money on external farm labor, hoping that he would hire Clean Bob instead. But, NOOOOOO, apparently Clean Bob was outside of our price range. So there I was, stuck with the privilege of having Dirty Bob’s b.o. rubbing off on me any day I had to ride in the pickup with him.
It got worse though. You see, even though there were only three employees on the farm, there was definitely a power hierarchy. Dad (also a “Bob” FWIW), unfortunately, wasn’t afraid to pull a power-move when he had to. So being El Jefe of the whole operation, he got exclusive use of one of our two tractors to himself…meaning that us peons, Bob and I, had to share the other tractor.
His own flesh and blood–can you believe it? He made his own last-born son share a tractor with the stinkiest mother- ----- in all of Morton County! I really should have called Child Protective Services on his ass and reported him for cruel and inhumane child abuse….
As much as I loved working on the farm with the Bobs1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rWP_PGfiow (huge ----- eye roll here), what I really enjoyed doing with my time was chillaxing with my city-slicker bestie, the infamous, Phillip K. Ballz.2Featured thus far in: Solamente Selena, Back In The USSR, and Blowin In The Wind.
If I was lucky, I would get to hang out with him on the weekend. And if I was real lucky, I would get to hang out with him the one and only Saturday night Leslie, his hot-as-hell cousin from Texas, was coming to visit him.
Sure, I may have been a bit, uh, “ambitious” thinking that my scrubby butt had a chance of romancing her, but what can I say? I’m a dreamer and an optimist at heart. In BF-Egypt3Bum-Fuck, Egypt, for you geography scholars out there. Kansas opportunities like this didn’t come along very often, so I had to give it all I had, right?
I could feel it in my bones that colder winter day in ’97: that evening I was sure to have a date with destiny. But first, I had hot date with Tractor #2, as Dad had graciously agreed to let me take off a little early that afternoon once I finished plowing one of our many huge tracts of land4Inappropriately applied Monty Python reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=g3YiPC91QUk first.
When I got in the tractor that morning, I could definitely tell that Dirty Bob had been stanking it up in there quite recently. But, I figured it would be no problem–I would just take a nice hot shower afterwards and go on my merry way to Phillip K.’s. Look out, Leslie! Here comes your Casanova!
Now at this point, you may be thinking to yourself, “Wait just a tick there, Buddy! I know the Boss Lady’s name sure ain’t Leslie. That must mean…no. It can’t be. How ever in the world did your plan to court and marry your high school best friend’s cousin from out of town go awry?!? ‘Twas foolproof!”
Funny you should ask. In the end what screwed me over was Dirty Bob’s dirty smoking habit. Apparently when you smoke as much as he did and rarely bath or wash your hands, it turns out those hands will get covered in the most horrible smelling layer of smoke/nicotine/sweat/dirt funk. And then when you drive a tractor, you forever funkify the steering wheel for the aspiring young Don Juan that has to drive it after you.
It was only when I got home that evening and had washed up that I made the gruesome and horrifying discovery–now my hands smelled like Dirty Bob! I washed them over and over until they were almost bloody, but to no avail at all. I was doomed. Doomed, I say!
I lathered them in Old Spice aftershave, hoping that would overpower my dear sweet Leslie instead of the scent of Old Dirty Bastard Spice that I couldn’t seem to quite shake, and headed on over to P.K.B.’s house in town. Ol’ Phillip K., though? He sure noticed the smell and started endlessly ribbing me about it.
Figuring he would have some sympathy for a brother-from-another-mother looking to become a cousin-from-another-grandmother (you know, by marrying his hot-ass cousin, and what-not), I shared with him how distressed I was on account of how the Universe and Dirty Bob had conspired and done gone and blown my chances with Leslie. Big mistake. My god, he simply would not let me hear end of it, about how absolutely ridiculous I was, thinking I had any chance in hell with her.
Harrumph! What a prick.
Oh, and it turned out that she decided at the last second to not come hang out with us after all.5At least I don’t remember hanging out with her… So it was a basic all-around shit-show in the romance department for me that weekend.
The point of the story is, don’t ever let your dad hire anybody who unashamedly has “Dirty” in his name. But if he does, at least you can always blame him for the reason why you’re not dating the hottest 17-year-old in the 5-State Area. And that’s the only reason.
After all, you’re nothing but a studly young Sophomore stallion, right?
Content created on: 27 January 2021 (Wednesday)
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