I’m going to share a story with you. Recently, after a birthday celebration for a dear friend (from “back in the day”), the subject came around to that time I “peed” in someone’s car.

We’ll call this someone, “Dis Schmadliffe.”

For a few months in the mid-to-late 1990s, there was a rumor going around the (greater Burning Man) community that I had peed in his older-model Mercedes. Every party I went to, someone was sure to bring it up to me in disbelief.

“I heard you peed in Schmadliffe’s CAR…?!”

And, if he was at the same party, people would warn me to leave.

During that time, I was in my mid-twenties and I was hanging out with a rather “cacophonous” crowd. During the day, I was working at a print and copy shop in Oakland owned by the wife of “Dis Schmadliffe.” To get the job, I had promised “Dis” that I could learn Quark in a week from a book. I had been unemployed long enough at that time that selling my eggs were looking like a real option. Learning graphic design software cold in a week seemed like the less-invasive route. It was and it wasn’t.

There was always drama at the print shop. Always. Yelling, screaming, you name it.

Me being naive me, I seemed to be the one accidentally asking the uncomfortable questions out loud, “Why does it smell like booze in here?”

“Why are there bottles of liquor in this desk drawer?”

“Why are the paychecks late again?”

Then, early-early one morning, I got a phone call, you know, on the landline. The voice on the other end was YELLING at me. “How DARE you!? I’ll KILL you!”

I recognized the voice, it was “Schmadliffe.”

I was scared. I asked him what he was talking about.

“My wife told me what you did!! You KEYED my car because you didn’t get PAID!!”

KEYED. Not PEED. And, I wasn’t guilty of THAT either. Yet, like a screwy game of Telephone, the legend of “Rusty Blazenhoff urinating in Schmadliffe’s car” grew and grew in the community and there was little I could do to stop it.

Later, after avoiding him for months socially, he showed up at a toaster event I was co-hosting. He started walking over to me and I froze. He walked up to me, hugged me, and said he was sorry. “That lying whore told me what REALLY happened to my car. She got drunk and drove it into a ditch. The brush scratched one side of it.”

“Anyway, sorry. I’m divorcing her.”

Mark my words, dear readers, I guarantee there are still people who think I took out my “revenge” in his vintage ride.

Ah, the good ol’ days…

—

Anyhoo, last week I was all of you to tell me “something good.” A lot of you did. Thank you. Your responses ranged from quirky to informative to beaming-with-pride to nearly-intelligible-but-full-of-heart. Each and every one was glorious.

This week, I’d like you to take one photo — just one — of the inside your home’s medicine cabinet and share it with me. This time, I may share your response (let me know if you DON’T want a photo credit). Alternately, the photo can be of the inside your freezer, cereal cabinet, or silverware drawer.

New month, new Artist-in-Residence: Carollyne Yardley, master of Squirrealism!

— Rusty Blazenhoff

p.s.  Interesting side note: the print and copy shop I was working at back then was where the tickets for Burning Man were copied. Yes, copied. For a while, in the early days, they were Xeroxed on a big machine in downtown Oakland. Somewhere around here I have an uncut sheet of 1997 tickets.