BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Just don't do it. Don't just do it. Do it just don't. If only Bob Dole had chanted his mesmerizing mantra thirty years ago for baby boomers on the verge of inhaling. Could he have rescued us from lives of debauchery? Would we still have grown up to be scoundrels of questionable character? Could Bob have stopped us from blowing our minds?

I didn't know Nixon's strange bedfellow had it in him, that Darth Vader maxim of nattering negativism, the blue meanie incantation of odd hypnobabble.

It's the character thing. Take my husband Sonny, for example, please take him. Last week his Big Daddy truck was spotted outside Ardmore, Oklahoma, parked next to a double-wide with a sign that said Truckers Welcome.

It's happened before. The thing that hurts worst this time is he had crossed the state line.

I can't help thinking about Sonny's secret sex fantasy ( I asked him like they said to do on Oprah). He said all he ever thinks about is a well-known small town porn star.

I am not some dish rag to be tossed aside like Bob Dole's first wife.

I am the winner of the 1969 Axel Race for Dates. I've had countless offers of love, and even a marriage proposal from Most Handsome Senior, Mickey Ricardo, which included a ride on his uncle's boat, a three day honeymoon in Las Vegas, and a used Mustang convertible.

If only I'd heard a snappy guru admonishing, "Just don't do it," as hormones veered me away from Mickey toward Sonny.

I have fantasies too, Sonny! People calling me Chiffon. Being married to the sexiest man alive, Mickey Ricardo, now an aluminum siding salesman in Albuquerque. Going to Vegas at least once a month. Me strutting my stuff in metallic knee boots and a real leopard skin coat, saying, "Pet me." Me and Mickey both smoking cigars, wearing extinct animals (what difference does it make?), spitting on people like you.

Speaking of dressing up, everybody's talking about Cabbage Fest, formerly known as the Rhinestones and Whips Masquerade Ball.

"Halloween is the devil's workshop," declared Brother Dickey Webb in church last month. (Imagine elves working round the clock on masks and rubber skeletons!)

Naturally there was an outcry from the social set who had already spent a fortune on dominatrix clothes but Brother Dickey prevailed, trading homage to a lowly vegetable for a glitzy candy corn and vampire gala.

Axel High plays Mingus next week and Grassburr fever is in the air. You would think we could act civil at least during football season.

But no, it's October, a perilous time for anybody who's already dangling by the slender thread of reason. The Guardians of Decency are picketing Wal-Mart for carrying thong panties. Cut-throat stage mothers are tearing each other's hair out at play practice. And Brother Dickey is leading his holy crusade to substitute a vegetable festival for my favorite holiday.

Pumpkin Fest was nixed because of the pumpkin's association with Devil's Day, as the preacher calls Halloween.

Cabbage Fest just sounds so boring. Why can't we get drunk like they do in New Braunfels? Nobody around here even knows how to make sauerkraut and who likes plain old boiled cabbage?

Axel moderates thought the holiday could be salvaged, de-demonized by forbidding "occult" costumes such as fairies, witches and ghosts. Kids could still dress up as axe murderers, leaves, or any non-Disney cartoon character. But Brother Dickey's disciples wouldn't hear of it.

Baby boomers are finally getting a dose of reality. As Guardian of Decency leader Elmer Dobbins says, "If life was supposed to be fun, we would have been born with horns and pointy tails."

Stoned boomers shouldn't have sat around waiting to be taken over by the forces of evil. And now it's too late. Our brains are rotted. Our character is unredeemably crumby.

Maybe there is still hope for the Youth of Today. Better late than never, the Dole campaign is telling kids to surf the web and see what "that awesome dude the Dolster" has to say about cool stuff like interactive games and belly chains.

Elmer Dobbins says don't forget to mark your calendar for the Dixie Decency Fair. Pistol-packing topics include:

How to know if you're worshipping the devil without realizing it.

Knights of Pythagoras--of the devil?

Immoral underwear in your local discount store!

The Filth which masquerades as books.

Public School Puberty Film or Porno?

See you there!

In the meantime--Happy Cabbage Day! Lasso Mingus! And, most importantly,

don't just do it!