Bottoms up
Way back then, when he was just a little kid running amuck with his diapers at half-mast, Noville acquired a habit he didn’t outgrow, not even when he graduated to the tight white stuff. The problem stuck with him. This isn’t to say he was a bad boy. Actually, he was mostly a good boy who loved his Ma and Pa Newtonfigger, a kindly couple born in Dingleshafter, Bavaria. The family coat-of-arms is embellished with a giant flea, a memorial to the infamous Newtonfigger Fabulous Flea Circus that stormed Europe centuries ago.
Noville knew the secret early on, but he wasn’t saying as he rocked snugly in his cradle by the roaring hearth. What Noville knew stayed in Noville’s head. He was an only child who kept his yap shut.
His birth was a medical event of no small note. For there he sprung from Ma’s moist loins, not head first, but rather, bottom up. The Valley midwife had never seen (and will never see), the likes of it again. When a bottom appeared where a head should have been, she gave it a mighty smack, a crack of a slap, the echo of which bounced off the rosy buttocks and resounded throughout the Valley. The hair on midwife Gotchanow’s head turned snow white. Pa dropped dead.
To this day, villagers are given to musing that Noville’s reverse-end birthing was the real reason he was later given to mooning. But who knows. It’s said there is a chap out West who moons the Amtrak train every time it winds through the high plains. Click here if you are a disbeliever.
As Noville progressed through life, he continued to demand that his two rosy cheeks be fully exposed to nature’s whims — be those whims, rain, sleet, snow or hail. To enable his druthers, Ma tailored his trousers specifically to leave the backside of each clever pair open to the air. This lent the trousers (such bright colors, such happy patterns!) ample ventilation so as to better embrace the winds of chance that kissed his nether parts.
The only thing that Noville was absolutely, positively forbidden to do was to attend Sunday services at the M.E. Church of the WeepingTommyKnockers. This was no skin off Noville’s nose, as sitting bare butt down on a cold oak pew wasn’t exactly his idea of Sunday fun. No way was he going to conform in order to please Pastor Pickens and his flock of buttoned-up believers, who wore sheepskin knickers year round and hung out with The Fraternal Order of UpTights.
Eventually, even the nastiest villagers ceased pointing fingers, and yes, they even grew to love Noville’s sculpted and distinctly round, exposed bottom. Fair maidens came from miles about to sneak admiring peeks at the two little mounds of flesh, which (daily) seemed to expand into identical peaks of marbled muscle, the likely cause being Ma’s copious dinners of kutchenkloppers smothered in grogenwhippers. His trousers expanded right along with his bottom, and soon, Ma was calling in neighboring laborers to help with her sewing chores. But the backbreaking tailoring was worth it; Noville was her one and only.
And so it is writ that Noville’s bottom grew vastly, though his other parts were deemed to be normal. As a dreamy teen, he was oft seen gazing upward at the silver disk in the Harvest Moon night sky, and before long, it was reported that he was spotted with his backside turned upward toward the moon. Initially, this odd and very seasonal gesture was known as “Bare-Assing the Moon,” but it wasn’t long before it was known simply as “Noville’s Moon.”
For several decades, there was heard in this Valley and in no other, a tune entitled “Doin’ The Moon,” wherein sweating Foxtrotting couples clutched each other while trotting in circles bare-assed as fiddlers fiddled the crisp cool nights and days away. Not everyone was pleased, of course. For example, The Fraternal Order of UpTights tried to halt the innocent romp. “Too liberal!” they crowed. “Some nerve!” harped others, though everyone knew more than a few naysayers who gleefully dropped their drawers (but were never actually caught) and aimed their UpTight bottoms up, up, up to the moon shining through the panes of their bedroom windows.
The years passed, and the wrinkled and wretched Ma detached herself from her sewing long enough to concoct one final lavish dessert, duly christened, Moon Pies. In a crate of books recently unearthed south of town, this recipe was found among tomes long since read. No recipes were located for the vaunted kutchenkloppers or groggenwhippers, which remain forever entombed in Noville’s head.
Ma’s Moon Pies
Chocolate cake baked in sheet pan
Cut cake in 8 inch rounds
Slather one side of round with marshmallow fluff (lots of it), then place second round on top, thus creating a kind of Moonwich, or Moon Pie, if you will.
Note: If guests are coming, a round moon shape can be cut into the top round but this is not entirely necessary. For special gatherings, talented cooks have been known to draw the image of Noville’s bottom side on the topside of the pies.
If you travel to the Valley to visit the hometown of the boy who started it all by exposing his buttocks, be sure and visit the town square. It’s filled to the brim with mooning plaster gnomes. During Harvest Moon time, octogenarian Noville and his ancient Ma stand in the dead center of the square, their combined sagging bottoms withered beyond repair, pointing upward in a gravity-defying gesture aimed to salute the moon. Citizens (including The Reformed Fraternal Order of UpTights) from miles around, gather to celebrate with them. The sight of thousands of bare cheeks pointing skyward in tandem is said to be a sight to behold.
Naturally, Noville’s name lives on, and allegedly the bidding has been brisk at Christies for his outgrown trousers. A website has been established to honor his very being. Should you not believe, click here and see what is writ. For a little kid in half-mast diapers, Noville did right well, didn’t he?
A fabulist for the ages!