Spank, Spank! Squirt, Squirt!

So we are working some unknown festival in some unknown town. We are in the middle of cranking out the first show. It was looking like rain, but only God and groundhogs can predict the weather. I thought I felt a few drops during the juggling number, but the weather is the least of our problems.

Most of the audience is school kids and they have already started heckling us. 12-year-old creeps -- that age where boys and girls travel in groups and the sexes are kept separate; some sort of primitive, instinctive, ancient, survival thing still lurking in our genes.

The time has come to hit these idiots with one of my many heckler lines like "look, I've only got 20 minutes to make a fool out of myself and you have the rest of your life, so shut up." The kids look at me like they don't understand a single word; they probably don't, since this is not an English-speaking country. Luckily the tone of my voice cuts through most language barriers and they quiet down.

The show rolls on into the acrobatics number and that rain sprinkles again. But now we find out that it is not rain at all. One of our audience members is in possession of a squirt gun. None other than one of those juvenile jerk-offs in the front row. My partner, Susi, goes straight for the weapon and disarms this child of Satan. The deep well of patience that I possess has run dry and I start yelling at the top of my lungs.

[photo of Stevie G & Susi Q

"So you think that's funny? I'll show you funny."

I snag the little derelict and put a headlock on him. Then I drag him to the center of the circle. Susi hands me the gun and I start squirting the little bastard. I'm still yelling.

"Isn't this funny? Isn't this funny?"

My mind is racing and I decide to start alternating between spanking his little butt and squirting his little head. Spank, spank. Squirt, squirt.

Enough is enough, though. Maybe one of the 300 people watching is about to call the police for child abuse. (It's such a fine line nowadays. Not like the good old days when you could kick around a kid like a dog for its own good.)

(Editor's note: We find this offensive. We would NEVER kick a dog...)

I take the devil child, release him and give him a helpful kick in the ass, back to where he came from. Now, I know what most of you are thinking: "Oh, that poor child. How could you be so mean? Oh, that's not right. You can't do that." Well, my mother was a child psychologist and I learned a few things from her. The children in my family were raised according to the B. F. Skinner technique of positive and negative reinforcement. Here is the rest of the story:

We finished the show and, lo and behold, our young fans are still there. One of them stutters out to me in English that I can barely understand.

"We're French. We don't understand English."

I instantly reply, "Oh, you're French? That's no excuse for being assholes."

I inform Susi that they speak French and ask her to tell them in their native tongue that they are all jerks and I hope they die young. So, you're all looking for the good in my out-of-bounds attack on this helpless child. Here it comes.

During Susi's brief conversation, all the young "convicts to be" apologize for their behavior. This festival is a competition with the winner chosen by audience vote. After they apologize, all of our young fans line up for ballots and put our name in for first place.

This lost 12-year-old, despite years of lack of discipline, will never, never fuck with another street artist. Those brief minutes of public humiliation in my show have corrected his years of wayward antisocial behavior due to lackadaisical parenting. What happened in my show was nothing short of God's will being done by my body to save one of his flock. I am but a humble servant.


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