Sunday, April 27, 2008

The Assthrax Incident

There were numerous occasions in which a child would attempt to, or would successfully, sneak prohibited contraband into the unit from a home visit. Once, a very clever and disturbed nine-year-old boy snuck in a four-inch long folding hunting knife. We discovered it only as he threatened to press it into his chest during a manic outburst. A coworker was fortunate enough to snatch the knife away from the boy as he was distracted. Needless to say, from that point on we always did a thorough strip search of that child after every home visit.

Another time, a female teen was caught trying to sneak in something a little less dangerous than a knife—yet still a "pointed" implement, if you will. Two female coworkers noticed a bulge in the middle of the teen's chest as they were checking her in from her visit. The coworkers took the teen into a bathroom and had her remove her shirt, and as she did, a vibrator slid out from under the middle of her bra and fell onto the floor. We all had a good laugh over this one, for we really couldn't chastise the girl for trying to add a little excitement to her forced stay in a locked and depressing institutional milieu.

But no other contraband story quite compares to "The Assthrax Incident." This one is a classic.

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Joey was an eleven-year-old Caucasian boy who was very devious and sly, and also quite troubled. He once snuck out of the short term residential unit by every day picking away at the caulking around the window fan in the boys bathroom, until one evening he was able to remove the fan and slide through the opening. After noticing that Joey was taking an unusually long time in the shower, a coworker knocked on the bathroom door. When there was no answer, the coworker unlocked the door and went into the bathroom, only to discover it empty and a hole in the window and the fan hanging by its wires.

Apparently, however, Joey's cunning went only so far, as he had a plan to sneak out of the bathroom and onto the fourth-floor rooftop at night, but he had not thought out how to get down from there. A couple of coworkers were able to get onto the roof through a door—one coworker, a big muscular guy, tiptoeing gingerly and slowly across the flat, rock-covered roof; the other, a part-time flying instructor and born into a family full of doctors, bounding across the roof with reckless abandon and absolutely no fear—and they corralled Joey back into the unit.

After this incident, Joey was "demoted" to the crisis unit. Where "The Assthrax Incident" occurred.

One day, Joey went on a home visit and returned a day or two later. Later during the day of his return to the crisis unit, a couple of coworkers found a picture from a porn magazine folded up and hidden under his mattress. Naturally, they confiscated the picture. Antwone later showed up for work and found the picture folded up on the staff desk. Out of curiosity, he unfolded it and took a pleasurable gander at it.

Suddenly, Lara came from the back hallway where the bedrooms were located and screamed at Antwone as she rushed toward him.

"Antwone! Put that down!"

"What, woman? Not like I've never seen something like this before."

"No, you don't understand. Joey had that up his ass!"

"What the—! What are you talking about?"

"Joey had that folded up and snuck it onto the unit by shoving it up his ass. I was just in his room talking to him and that's what he told me."

Antwone immediately dropped the picture. "Shit! And I've been touching my face!" He then sniffed his hands and ran to the staff bathroom.

Lara then stuffed the picture into the trash and followed Antwone to the bathroom to wash her hands. As she entered it, she discovered Antwone in a state that she would often describe later with much animation and laughter: "And when I went in there, he had the hand soap lathered all over his hands and face. His head was like a big ball of white foam! And he was scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing! It was hilarious!"

When I heard about this event the next day, I, like all of my coworkers, had a tremendous laugh over it. And suddenly the label popped into my mind, which I just had to share with Antwone and Lara: "Hey guys, you know, that's forever going to be known as 'The Assthrax Incident.'"

And so it is.


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© 2008 David Lee Cummings

1 comment:

Al Newberry said...

I'm so glad I wasn't there for the Assthrax incident, although I do remember listening in horror to the story that week.

I do remember the roof incident as I was in special care with a kid when it happened. As I remember it, one of the staff who went out on the roof had a bad fear of heights, which made the act even more heroic.