Fountain of the Peeing Boy in Footie Pajamas: An Introduction to Logic

Logic has never been my forte, so it shocked me and everyone I knew when I got an A in my Intro to Logic course in college. There’s a valid explanation for this, though. Homework in this particular class was optional, so if we didn’t do the assignment, there were no consequences; if we got an A on the homework, the professor would give us extra credit; and if we got all the problems wrong, we knew it wouldn’t impact our grade. Plus, the professor would always encourage us to go over our errors with her or her TAs at office hours. “Learning happens by trial and error” was her motto.

Our grades were based solely on midterm and final exam scores. Having nothing better to do first thing in the morning, I would actually go to class and even do the assigned homework. I never answered a single homework problem correctly, but after getting a big fat F each time, I’d go to office hours and the professor or one of her TAs would patiently walk me through each problem until I got it right. By the time midterms and finals rolled around, I could do all the deductive syllogisms necessary to pull an A.

What I’m trying to illustrate is that logic has never been second nature to me. Yet, to my amazement, I’ve managed to get through 35 years of life and counting, even though I grew up with a mind undiluted by rational thinking.

To offer another example of my imperfect left brain and hyper-developed right brain: at the same time I was taking Introduction to Logic, I was working as a clerk for a claims management office. For my first couple years there, I was unacquainted with the office computers. Mostly all I did was file medical malpractice and workers comp records all day, every day, which was fine by me since it gave my mind a chance to go off on its perennial pleasure cruises while my body followed a simple, Zen regimen of stuffing carbon copies of personal injury forms into manila folders. But every so often, as I went about my office chores, gonglike booms would sound from either side of the filing cabinets. After hearing these several times, I surmised that I was having paranormal experiences, that the Universe was communicating with me—and only me—through spooky, magical crescendos. For months on the job, I attempted to decode these communications. Was I being chosen for some epic destiny? Why else would I be hearing these dramatic surges? I later discovered that what I was hearing was the sound of my supervisors turning on their Mac PCs.

These examples are part of a longstanding pattern of absentmindedness and harebrained conclusions that started way back in my childhood. They even preceded the night that our dentist’s son, Johnny Markewicz, came to spend the night at our house in the spring of 1979. I was five years old and my brother Kent was nine. Johnny was a year ahead of Kent in school and Kent wanted to get in good with an upperclassmen, so he begged our Mom to ban his embarrassing little brother (that would be me) from joining in the good times he and Johnny were planning on having together, playing with G.I. Joe action figures and Matchbox cars. Never one to suffer silently, I howled and screamed worse than any werewolf or werewolf’s victim until our Mom handed down the verdict that it was only fair that I should be able to be wherever I wanted in the house.

Kent gnashed his teeth and called me, “Brat!,” as usual. It was an insult, sure, but it wasn’t a swear word so he could get away with it. Still, it hurt every time he said it, especially since I didn’t want Kent feeling annoyed by me. His steady stream of jokes were so uproarious, I felt I just had to follow him everywhere he’d go, including to the bathroom—the one place where he could yell for Mom to finally shake me off his trail. Who could blame me, though? Kent was the one who taught me such humdingers as:

“So, the doctor said, ‘Here’s my thermometer, now where did I put my pen?’”

And:

“Doctor, Doctor! I think I’m a goat!”

“How long have you felt like this?”

“Since I was a kid!”

After punching out these staples of his comedic repertoire, I would double over, blinded by tears of laughter, only to straighten up and find that Kent had made a break for it. I’d sometimes have to spend hours sleuthing out where he went but most of the time I managed to find and pester him until he told me more jokes.

At first, every time these early shoots of Kent’s comic genius broke through, I’d end up wetting my pants. To put an end to this putrid habit, my parents imposed a new house rule stating that, whenever Kent made me laugh to the point of urination, I’d have to go straight to the bathroom and wash my hands after flushing. On paper, this all looks reasonable enough, but my trips to the bathroom ended up quadrupling as a result of their new ordinance. Not only that, but my time away from Kent meant that I was missing out on a good three-fourths of his inspired knee-slappers. I also failed to understand why one had to pee in the bathroom, of all places. Why not pee on the sidewalk, the grass, or against a brick wall? It only seemed logical that, wherever one spent a penny, a whirlpool would appear to flush the urine away with a whoosh.

So, with official permission to participate in the fun and frolics of Kent and Johnny’s sleepover, I suited up into my sunny yellow footie pajamas, which had white padded feet and white rings at the cuffs. Kent wore his orange and blue Chicago Bears PJs while Johnny’s pajamas had a white background where assorted Superheroes—Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Aquaman—showed off their various feats of power and dexterity. Johnny’s jammies alone showed how much cooler he was than us. I wanted to be around him even more than Kent. This whole affair was nothing short of thrilling for me, even though they both cold-shouldered me the whole time, hoarding their Hotwheels cars and barricading the two-tiered Mattel highway system with their bigger bodies. The best I could do was assume the sidelines. Still, I was so excited to be with the big boys, I hardly noticed their ostracism.

As we all hunkered down with toys on our bedroom’s shaggy red carpet, Johnny caught sight of the Tigger knockoff that I got for Christmas the year before. This particular orange plush-toy tiger was squat, whiskery and stationary where the real Tigger is lithe, bouncy and has only a few strands of whiskers shooting from both ends of his upper lip. Still, it was clearly a tiger, which is why the observation that Johnny made next struck me as not only bizarre but stupid. He turned to Kent and said, “I like your lion.” A lion? I sneered as I turned to Kent, awaiting his response. Kent picked up the knockoff Tigger, shook it around in front of his face and said in a gruff cartoony voice, “Tiger. I ain’t lyin’!”

Johnny merely giggled but I stood up, held my belly and gasped with laughter, gobbling gulps of oxygen like a fish. I laughed and laughed and laughed until I could feel my bladder growing heavy as an Acme Anvil. Then I laughed harder, harder than I’d ever laughed before. Flouting what I saw as a nonsensical convention, I refused to go to the toilet to relieve myself. Instead, in a fit of hilarity, I climbed on top of my mattress and stood above Kent and Johnny’s heads, catching my breath before unzipping my footie pajamas, lowering my Underoos crotch and chuckling myself pink as I hosed down our shaggy red carpet with a pipeline full of pee.

Kent and Johnny Markewicz could not help but pay attention to me now. But why weren’t they laughing? They both looked at me like I was a bank robber, who’d shot the teller pointblank before turning the gun on them. To my equal dismay, though, as the last few urine drops fell, I noticed that no vortex of water had arisen, as planned, to drain the offending liquid from the carpet threads.

Hot tears streamed down Johnny Markewicz’s face as he screamed that he wanted to go home. He refused to sleep on any of our beds and he wouldn’t even accept an offer to sleep in a sleeping bag on our basement floor. After all, our basement was carpeted and God knows what I might have done on it during a funny moment on, say, The Banana Splits. After Mr. Markewicz picked Johnny up to bring him home, Kent glowered at Mom for allowing me to come along and ruin his every shot at primary-grade popularity. As Mom knelt beside a bucket of soap and water on my bedroom’s shaggy red carpet, scrubbing away and remonstrating me for this senseless act, I stood in my now zipped-up footie pajamas, scratching my chin and wondering why the hell the whirlpool never showed up on my bedroom carpet the way it always did in our toilets.

Tags: Logic, Manneken Pis, Memoir