The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (v5.0) by Bill Bryson Page B

could see my reflection in it, distorted, as in an M. C. Escher drawing. I knew that if any part of it touched my face, it would sizzle hotly and leave a disfiguring scar.
    In fact, he sucked the gob back in and got off me. “Well, you let that be a lesson to you, you little skunk pussy poontang sissy,” he said.
    Two days later the soaking spring rains came and put all the Butters on their tar-paper roofs, where they were rescued one by one by men in small boats. A thousand children stood on the banks above and cheered.
    What they didn’t realize was that the storm clouds that carried all that refreshing rain had been guided across the skies by the powerful X-ray vision of the modest superhero of the prairies, the small but perfectly proportioned Thunderbolt Kid.

Chapter 3
    BIRTH OF A SUPERHERO
    EAST HAMPTON, CONN. (AP) —A search of Lake Pocotopaug for a reported drowning victim was called off here Tuesday when it was realized that one of the volunteers helping the search, Robert Hausman, 23, of East Hampton, was the person being sought.
    —
The Des Moines Register
, September 20, 1957

             
    AT EVERY MEAL SHE EVER PREPARED throughout my upbringing (and no doubt far beyond), my mother placed a large dollop of cottage cheese on each plate. It appeared to be important to her to serve something coagulated and slightly runny at every meal. It would be understating things to say I disliked cottage cheese. To me cottage cheese looks like something you bring up, not take in. Indeed, that was the crux of my problem with it.
    I had a distant uncle named Dee (who, now that I think of it, may not have actually been an uncle at all, but just a strange man who showed up at all large family gatherings) who had lost his voice box and had a permanent hole in his throat as a result of some youthful injury or surgical trauma or something. Actually, I don’t know why he had a hole in his throat. It was just a fact of life. A lot of rural people in Iowa in the fifties had arresting physical features—wooden legs, stumpy arms, outstandingly dented heads, hands without fingers, mouths without tongues, sockets without eyes, scars that ran on for feet, sometimes going in one sleeve and out the other. Goodness knows what people got up to back then, but they suffered some mishaps, that’s for sure.
    Anyway, Uncle Dee had a throat hole, which he kept lightly covered with a square of cotton gauze. The gauze often came unstuck, particularly when Dee was in an impassioned mood, which was usually, and either hung open or fell off altogether. In either case, you could see the hole, which was jet-black and transfixing and about the size of a quarter. Dee talked through the hole in his neck—actually, belched a form of speech through it. Everyone agreed that he was very good at it—in terms of volume and steadiness of output, he was a wonder; many were reminded of an outboard motor running at full throttle—though in fact no one had the faintest idea what he was talking about, which was unfortunate as Dee was ferociously loquacious. He would burp away with feeling while those people standing beside him (who were, it must be said, nearly always newcomers to the family circle) watched his throat hole gamely but uncertainly. From time to time, they would say, “Is that so?” and “Well, I’ll be,” and give a series of earnest, thoughtful nods, before saying, “Well, I think I’ll just go and get a little more lemonade,” and drift off, leaving Dee belching furiously at their backs.
    All this was fine—or at least fine enough—so long as Uncle Dee wasn’t eating. When Dee was eating you really didn’t want to be in the same county, for Uncle Dee talked with his throat full. Whatever he ate turned into a light spray from his throat hole. It was like dining with a miniature flocking machine, or perhaps a very small snowblower. I’ve seen placid, kindly grown-ups, people of good Christian disposition—loving sisters, sons