Prissy, The Pig That Couldn't Stand Up
Originally written for hatelife.org
This piece I originally wrote for hatelife.org,
in its infancy, when the other posters were complaining about their
paltry little problems like meaningless sex or shitting their pants
(not simultaneously).
you whiny goddam sons of bitches. you flimsy-wristed mama's boys and your stories of "i met this girl AND THEN WE HAD SEX and then we broke up, then i met this girl AND THEN WE HAD SEX and then i met this other girl after that AND THEN WE HAD SEX..."
and you dare to post to hatelife.
let me smart you up to what it's like to hate life. let old [alias removed] tell you of his lost childhood, his precious youth wrenched away from his meek little hand and given to cows and horses and fences.
let me tell you about the time i saw the hog so big it couldn't stand up.
i was a strapping young lad of, oh, 10 or so, and we were on a trip to see my ex-uncle. i say ex-uncle because he used to be married to my aunt, but they divorced. apparently this all went down before i was born, because this trip was to be the first time i'd ever met old uncle jack, or as I like to call him, just "jack." i don't recall why we were going to visit him. as it's the only time i've ever seen him, i'm pretty sure it wasn't for social reasons.
we were driving out to the small town of Tuskadero, Oregon, where jack and his new wife lived. we started out in the city of Bend, not a big city, but not a small one to be certain, and headed to the suburbs, and the suburbs of the suburbs, and the suburbs of the suburbs of the suburbs. each progressive suburb we drove through got smaller and redneckier, and i prayed to god each time we went through a new one that this would be the place.
45 minutes later, we saw uncle jack's doublewide sitting high on a hill, with a rickety old barn next to it. as we drove up the long, snaking driveway, the ground got less and less dirty and more and more muddy. stepping out of the car, my sneakered foot sank in the mud, and required me to pull with all my 10-year-old might against the loud sucking noise that held tightly to my foot. i walked the entire way to the front door like that.
jack and his lovely, overweight, snaggle-toothed wife greeted us at the door and invited us in. this didn't seem like the kind of place where taking off my shoes would matter, despite the fact that they were covered with muck. we were given special-occasion folding chairs to sit on while jack and his wife occupied the couch, which was exactly the same width as their combined asses. further inspection would have revealed, i'm sure, that the couch was form-fitted to their individual posteriors. they really were lucky people; you can't get tailor-made furniture that fits you that well.
they started talking, the adults, and jack made some comment about business being good.
"your uncle jack is a pig farmer," my father said to me. i looked down at my shoes.
at this point, jack's wife began laughing, and told us how jack had the whole basement, where he reared up the young piglets, rigged up with a watering system he made out of an old toilet. the way she explained it, what would happen was that he would flush this toilet that he took down to the basement, and it, with an elaborate system of PVC piping, would fill up the water troughs for all the in-basement sties.
my parents were impressed, and to tell the truth, so was i. not for the same reasons, though. to me, the truly incredible thing wasn't this feat of hydro-engineering ingenuity, or even the fact that he had somehow added a basement to a doublewide mobile home, it was the fact that these people actually were sharing their home with pigs, and saw nothing wrong or even strange about it.
now, i know that everyone's got to make a living, but i don't think there's anything wrong with me flat-out saying that my standards would not allow me to live with pigs. i don't think my standards are too high. look at all the people who live on the streets of large cities, begging for change and eating from the garbage -- they could probably be living with pigs if they wanted to. and yet they choose not to.
it was then that jack gave us the grand tour. the basement, another trip through the muck, the barn, and it was here, friends, that he showed us his pride and joy: prissy, the pig who couldn't stand up.
yes, that's right, this hog, this... prissy, was so large that she was no longer capable of standing up. she just lay there on her side, staring into space, panting. it wasn't particularly hot out -- it was cold enough for lots of wet muck -- so i'm not sure why prissy was panting like she was. apparently lying there doing nothing is strenuous for a hog of prissy's girth.
oh and prissy was quite the breeding stock too, equivalent to blue-blood status there amongst hog society in jack's barn. just that year, according to jack, she'd been knocked up, given birth, and nursed a litter of piglets, all without getting up. yet again: impressive.
there were plenty of other hogs in the barn, including one young male pig who, according to jack, had been quite the friendly little porker, always hanging around the humans. just like a pet, he was, until, jack said with a snort-laugh, "he done discovered pig pussy."
but there was no doubt in anyone's mind that prissy was the crown jewel to that barn full of pigs, the cream of the hogs.
i could go on, but i think i've told enough. you see all that i have to hate life? while you were making the tentative migration from gi joe to girls, i was touring hog farms. while you're whining about all your sex-filled relationships, i'm sitting here with a kleenex stuffed up my bleeding left nostril because I have hemophilia and the slightest change in barometric pressure makes my nose bleed. COUNT THE WAYS THAT ONE COULD POSSIBLY BE GYPPED OUT OF CHILDHOOD AND LIFE EXPERIENCES, AND YOU CAN BE SURE I'VE CHALKED IT UP ON MY LOSER RÉSUMÉ.
so before you come back hating life, ask yourself how many precious onion-headed-kid moments have been taken from your life due to being dragged out to pig farms in the middle of nowhere, or being yelled at by relatives because you flushed the toilet after you were specifically instructed to "only flush if it's number two."* you can't possibly be equipped to hate life, armed with nothing but your she-wouldn't-go-out-with-me stories. you think you know suck because your parents never let you stay out past 11? you think school is a drag? well you never had to see the pig that couldn't stand up.
* another terrifying story i posted to the same site. perhaps you'll see it next time it's 11:30 and i have no better content. again.
you whiny goddam sons of bitches. you flimsy-wristed mama's boys and your stories of "i met this girl AND THEN WE HAD SEX and then we broke up, then i met this girl AND THEN WE HAD SEX and then i met this other girl after that AND THEN WE HAD SEX..."
and you dare to post to hatelife.
let me smart you up to what it's like to hate life. let old [alias removed] tell you of his lost childhood, his precious youth wrenched away from his meek little hand and given to cows and horses and fences.
let me tell you about the time i saw the hog so big it couldn't stand up.
i was a strapping young lad of, oh, 10 or so, and we were on a trip to see my ex-uncle. i say ex-uncle because he used to be married to my aunt, but they divorced. apparently this all went down before i was born, because this trip was to be the first time i'd ever met old uncle jack, or as I like to call him, just "jack." i don't recall why we were going to visit him. as it's the only time i've ever seen him, i'm pretty sure it wasn't for social reasons.
we were driving out to the small town of Tuskadero, Oregon, where jack and his new wife lived. we started out in the city of Bend, not a big city, but not a small one to be certain, and headed to the suburbs, and the suburbs of the suburbs, and the suburbs of the suburbs of the suburbs. each progressive suburb we drove through got smaller and redneckier, and i prayed to god each time we went through a new one that this would be the place.
45 minutes later, we saw uncle jack's doublewide sitting high on a hill, with a rickety old barn next to it. as we drove up the long, snaking driveway, the ground got less and less dirty and more and more muddy. stepping out of the car, my sneakered foot sank in the mud, and required me to pull with all my 10-year-old might against the loud sucking noise that held tightly to my foot. i walked the entire way to the front door like that.
jack and his lovely, overweight, snaggle-toothed wife greeted us at the door and invited us in. this didn't seem like the kind of place where taking off my shoes would matter, despite the fact that they were covered with muck. we were given special-occasion folding chairs to sit on while jack and his wife occupied the couch, which was exactly the same width as their combined asses. further inspection would have revealed, i'm sure, that the couch was form-fitted to their individual posteriors. they really were lucky people; you can't get tailor-made furniture that fits you that well.
they started talking, the adults, and jack made some comment about business being good.
"your uncle jack is a pig farmer," my father said to me. i looked down at my shoes.
at this point, jack's wife began laughing, and told us how jack had the whole basement, where he reared up the young piglets, rigged up with a watering system he made out of an old toilet. the way she explained it, what would happen was that he would flush this toilet that he took down to the basement, and it, with an elaborate system of PVC piping, would fill up the water troughs for all the in-basement sties.
my parents were impressed, and to tell the truth, so was i. not for the same reasons, though. to me, the truly incredible thing wasn't this feat of hydro-engineering ingenuity, or even the fact that he had somehow added a basement to a doublewide mobile home, it was the fact that these people actually were sharing their home with pigs, and saw nothing wrong or even strange about it.
now, i know that everyone's got to make a living, but i don't think there's anything wrong with me flat-out saying that my standards would not allow me to live with pigs. i don't think my standards are too high. look at all the people who live on the streets of large cities, begging for change and eating from the garbage -- they could probably be living with pigs if they wanted to. and yet they choose not to.
it was then that jack gave us the grand tour. the basement, another trip through the muck, the barn, and it was here, friends, that he showed us his pride and joy: prissy, the pig who couldn't stand up.
yes, that's right, this hog, this... prissy, was so large that she was no longer capable of standing up. she just lay there on her side, staring into space, panting. it wasn't particularly hot out -- it was cold enough for lots of wet muck -- so i'm not sure why prissy was panting like she was. apparently lying there doing nothing is strenuous for a hog of prissy's girth.
oh and prissy was quite the breeding stock too, equivalent to blue-blood status there amongst hog society in jack's barn. just that year, according to jack, she'd been knocked up, given birth, and nursed a litter of piglets, all without getting up. yet again: impressive.
there were plenty of other hogs in the barn, including one young male pig who, according to jack, had been quite the friendly little porker, always hanging around the humans. just like a pet, he was, until, jack said with a snort-laugh, "he done discovered pig pussy."
but there was no doubt in anyone's mind that prissy was the crown jewel to that barn full of pigs, the cream of the hogs.
i could go on, but i think i've told enough. you see all that i have to hate life? while you were making the tentative migration from gi joe to girls, i was touring hog farms. while you're whining about all your sex-filled relationships, i'm sitting here with a kleenex stuffed up my bleeding left nostril because I have hemophilia and the slightest change in barometric pressure makes my nose bleed. COUNT THE WAYS THAT ONE COULD POSSIBLY BE GYPPED OUT OF CHILDHOOD AND LIFE EXPERIENCES, AND YOU CAN BE SURE I'VE CHALKED IT UP ON MY LOSER RÉSUMÉ.
so before you come back hating life, ask yourself how many precious onion-headed-kid moments have been taken from your life due to being dragged out to pig farms in the middle of nowhere, or being yelled at by relatives because you flushed the toilet after you were specifically instructed to "only flush if it's number two."* you can't possibly be equipped to hate life, armed with nothing but your she-wouldn't-go-out-with-me stories. you think you know suck because your parents never let you stay out past 11? you think school is a drag? well you never had to see the pig that couldn't stand up.
* another terrifying story i posted to the same site. perhaps you'll see it next time it's 11:30 and i have no better content. again.