Thursday, June 07, 2007

The True & Secret History of Doctor in the Butt

When I was in the 4th Grade, everyone at Glendate Acres Elementary School in Fayetteville, NC, played a game called Doctor in the Butt. It was something many of us heard of in the 3rd grade, a mysterious ritual of the Big Kids. In the 5th grade, while it was sometimes engaged in, it was generally considered pass. By the 6th grade, it had become expunged from memory. But in the 4th grade, it was all the rage.

This would have been the Spring of 1968 or 1969. Can you comprehend me being that old? I often can't; its like another lifetime, or one several times removed in a chain of reincarnation. The Spring before the Summer of Love, not that that particular Summer ever dawned in Fayetteville, right beside Fort Bragg. The only time I ever saw hippies was on class trips to the Planetarium at Chapel Hill, where wed lean out of the bus windows and shout Hey, hippies! and theyd raise two fingers and go Peace, little dudes! It was a time when we talked about the episodes of STAR TREK, then in its original network TV run, that wed just seen the night before while standing line for our chocolate milk and leathery little hamburgers in the cafeteria.

But I digress. The subject of this blog is Docotr in the Butt, not how fucking old I am. Onward.

Doctor in the Butt was played by a Doctor, a Patient and a crowd of onlookers. It was played at recess, in the tall grass at the edge of the playground, behind the outbuildings that had been used for 1st graders but were empty that year. There were no teachers or monitors watching us; at recess, we were pretty much left to our own devices, and before we discovered Doctor in the Butt, we played a game called War, which was essentially a gradeschool rumble, with us fighting each other en masse, and nobody ever got in trouble for that, either, not even when I jumped on John Bass, who was much bigger than me, successfully brought him down to the ground (where he could be satisfactorily pummeled by other boys my size) by sinking my teeth into his ear and hanging on to him like a hyena on a wildebeest.

But I was talking about Doctor in the Butt, not general grade school hooliganism.

The patient was induced to lie on his and the patient was always male, as girls would sometimes agree to be doctors, but never, ever patients stomach in the tall grass, with his pants and underwear pulled down to his ankles. The Doctor arrived at a diagnosis by inserting a twig, a number two pencil or a forefinger between the patients buttcheeks. I dont recall anyones anus actually being penetrated, so the twig, pencil or finger was never stuck in very far. It was basically what these days is called an Oil Check (thanks for that term, Scott). The finger, twig or pencil was left nestled between the (usually squirming) patient's buttcheeks while the Doctor sloooooowly counted to 20.

Once a diagnosis was arrived at, a Treatment was prescribed. This consisted of dropping either an M&M, a pebble, a red berry, or a pillbug (yes, a rolly-polly) into the patient's posterior crevasse. The Doctor would then slap the patient hard on each cheek and tell him that he should put his pants back on, as he was free to go.

And that's it, or all that I remember of it. I dont recall much of how I felt about it at the time, whether it was a guilty thrill or idle curiosity. I believe that I was a doctor far more often than I was a patient, which I suppose makes me a Doctor in the Butt Top.

Beyond contributing to my general weirdness, I dont think it had any obvious effects on my psyche. Ive never been the active or passive partner in anal sex and Im more of a tit and leg man than an ass man, although I certainly appreciate a nice derriere, make no butts about that. I have no fetishes about pebbles or pillbugs, nor is that part of my annual physical when I bend and cough a secret pleasure of mine.

Maybe it was just a few kids that played it, but I remember it being a huge crowd. Realistically, we probably only did it a few times, but I recall it happening almost every recess from the first warm weather until the school let out for the summer.

And now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Mr. Cavin said...

I certainly hope you don’t mind a long comment. Or multiple comments, actually: one) I am very glad to see you here. Welcome to real HTML. Two) I sure hope I didn’t start this butt theme (here), though I am uncertain that butt serendipity is all that much better. Three), your digression about “war” reminded me of a game we used to play in seventh grade. It was called “soccer”. One team, comprised of ninth through twelfth graders, kicked a ball around the gravel-strewn packed-dirt area where we recessed. Occasionally, they’d kick it to up to one end of the lot and scream “goal”, then start kicking back the other way. The fifth through eighth graders, my team, would try to take this fucking ball away from them and then kick it in a) the other direction, or b) all the fucking way down into the garbage pit back in the woods where no one would ever hope to find it in the ten minutes we had. There was one dude, Jarred, who was eleventh grade’s unstoppable “soccer” machine, possibly because he also played soccer. I’m remembering one of my finest days of MVP spots heroism. I was already pretty busted up from a little “losing the ball” action earlier which ended in the usual spinning sliding grindstone action that made a road rash grist of my left half as I skidded along the sharp black gravel. It had also done something rather swelling to my knee, and I figured I was totally out of the game since I couldn’t stand up without leaning against the building like a toddler. But I was wrong. Here came the mass of screaming “teams”, and Jarred dodged much too close to me. I could not stand on my hurt leg, so that’s the one I stuck between his fancy soccer footwork as the bitch flitted by. Man, that hurt: I must have double hyper-extended my bad knee that day because putting my leg in there was unfavorably akin to stopping a wagon spokes-first; it sent me sprawling too. But not before I saw Jarred, hands and feet palms- and soles-up, flailing helplessly behind him, lit by the golden May sun, slide for what seemed like fucking miles on his face over those same rocks. Bastard. I Couldn’t look at his gory face all the rest of the week without a glow of satisfaction. Of course, I suffered a lot of retribution, especially because it was a week before I could, you know, run away from Jarred again. Anyway, I never played any butt doctor or whatever. Simple vanilla displays of nudity among my friends was all there ever was. Please feel free to ignore these comments if they are too long.

4:06 AM  
Blogger Ian McDowell said...

Yeah, I think we played "soccer" like that, too, but I was never good at anything involving intercepting a ball, so I don't recall it as well (mind you, I'm not saying I was "good" at Doctor in the Butt, either!)

3:54 PM  

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