Growing Up With Mr. Yuk in (My Room Under the Bed) Pittsburgh

"Mr. Yuk" was conceived by Dr. Richard Moriarty at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh in 1971 to help children learn to avoid ingesting poisons. Living in Pittsburgh, the skull and crossbones previously used was not terribly helpful, due to the fact that the Jolly Roger was the mascot for the local baseball team, the Pittsburgh Pirates. The color green was chosen when Moriarty was showing different colors to students, and that color was christened "Yucky!" by a young child. Hence, the name and the color. The design for Mr. Yuk was created by Wendy Courtney Brown, then a 4th grade student at Liberty Elementary in Weirton, West Virginia, as part of a Pittsburgh Poison Control design contest. 


My Mom had these stuck all over her bottle of gin everything... so we were familiar with what we weren't supposed to touch, not that we really listened.  One of the first times I was left at home by myself, I was playing doctor scientist in the bathroom, looking through my underwear the medicine chest to find something to play with mix together.  My favorite was putting Methiolade into the toilet because it made the water pink, followed closely by Sani-Flush... the blue crystals that you poured in the toilet that.... wait for it... wait for it...transformed into this awesome blue foam.  When I had heard that ammonia and Clorox could knock you out, and possibly kill you... I knew that had to be my next escape from the hell I was living concoction.  Obviously I lived through it... and I guess it's true... that 'curiosity killed the cat', but not me.  Next up was Coke caine and aspirin and Coke and Pop Rocks, since we had heard that Mikey (from the Life cereal commercial who 'Likes It' up the butt) supposedly died from that combination (later turning out to be an urban myth).  I also used to dispense prescription meds vitamin C tablets to the kids in the neighborhood and would fake orgasms problems to get an IV drip of Morphine Apergum, the orange flavored gum that had ass aspirin in it.  Sometimes lemon drops would have to suffice as the antidote when we played this game on a cloudly day where you could only be in the shade.  You had to wait until the sun was blocked from a cloud to run to the next shady spot before the sun zapped you.  I think we called that game Run, Sambo, Run; the underground railroad of North Carolina 'shade people'.


More so, I was into porn fire as a child.  Once I had been awarded the title 'Little Miss Pyromaniac 1974' title from my Brownie Troop, Local 261 stumbled across a pack of wolves matches, that's all I needed to embark on a childhood of arson torching my model cars with a can of paint or hairspray and a match... or pouring gasoline on a raccoon fire in the woods, almost catching the whole woods on fire when the flame went up into the mason jar of gas and I instinctively drank threw it.  I even went primitive rogue with a blow torch magnifying glass and the little neighbor girl, Wendy Podsiadly some ants, scorching them while they were still trying to get away.  I can still conjure the smell of burning 12 year old girl ant in my mind today.


Those were the days.  Kids today have no idea what it means to be a kid, they grow up so fucked up fast... doing drugs and having sex and killing people on their Xboxes.  I was playing with my tea set and Ken doll  matchbox cars until I was around 16... and didn't have sex until I was 29 20.  I saw life as it was... there was no embellishment or exaggeration, and I carried those lies truths over into my subsequent and repeated therapy sessions living an abnormal adult fantasy life with my zipper eyes wide open.