2003-09-14 2:45 p.m.
Mrs. Lemon-Ass vs. The Imp Dirtbombers

When I woke up this afternoon and made my customary cup of tea, I also added, since I've lately been unwell, a squeeze of lemon. This petite dash of lemon led me instantly to recall the woman my mother always referred to as Lemon-Ass.

Lemon-Ass lived up the road a few miles from us. The Lemon-Ass children rode the bus with my three siblings and I. Something resembling a bitter rivalry existed between us and them; they were prissy, presumptuous, snotty little brats who were always trying to steal our hard won seats on the bus. Their mother invariably wore a sour, pinched expression no matter where we saw her; at school, in the gorcery store, the post office. My mother declared, upon noticing her for the first time, "That woman looks as though she has a lemon stuck up her ass." Hence the nickname Lemon-Ass.

But I'll call her Mrs. Lemon-Ass for politeness' sake.

One day, my two young brothers were bored. This was never a good thing (anyone know what a kender is? Then you'll also know the sort of thing that happens when a kender gets bored. Similar disasters have ensued with these two). To one side of our house, there was a forest, and where the forest met the road, there was a wall of grass about two feet high. My brothers, inquisitive little imps as they were, discovered that if they ripped a handful of grass out of the earth, a pretty decent sized clump of dirt remained attached to the roots of it. Now, what else would two overimaginative little demons see upon this discovery? Not handfuls of grass with dirt clumps at the base. No, sirree. Bombs. These were bombs. Using the remaining grass fort as cover, they eagerly awaited a passing car. They didn't have to wait long; down rained the dirtbombs, landing smack in the center of a windshield belonging to...yup, you guessed it: Mrs. Lemon-Ass. Now, Mrs. Lemon-Ass, obviously, was not one to take such things lightly. She screeched to a halt, flew like a valkyrie out of her car, and unleashed her wrath upon the imps. The attack was so deafening, it brought my father running out of the house. Upon reaching the street, he saw his two rascals, saucer-eyed, scared stock still, victims of the most vicious oral castigation ever witnessed. He intervened. He acknowledged that they were wrong, and would be duly punished, but nothing was broken and that they were just kids, after all, and they didn't deserve to be chastised so savagely. This only enraged Mrs. Lemon-Ass further, and a language battle of titanic proportions ensued, culminating in complete chaos, with Mrs. Lemon-Ass still shrieking her devastating keen, Mr. Lemon-Ass (whose presence in the vehicle had gone previously unnoticed) attempting to choke my father, only to obediently release him at the banshee's command. Then they sped off. My brothers stole tentative peeks at my dad, giggling nervously under their breaths as they followed him into the house.

It's a story, like the time my brother Sam redecorated a wall in the house with spray paint and, thinking to defer the blame, added to it "Zane did this" as his final piece of artwork, that we all laugh about sitting around the dinner table now.

And, once, when my Steve and I were out at a restaurant, he stated, (after I pointed her out at a table closeby and related the story), "Wow, that woman really does look like she has a lemon stuck up her ass."

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