The Old Kootchie-Kootchie-Koo

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Wednesday - April 11, 2007

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This column was originally published on July 31, 2002.

The law of the courts, “innocent until proven guilty,” is a grand way to live. Unfortunately, it’s harder to apply in real life than anybody is willing to admit. In my case, I’m “guilty until proven innocent by reason of stupidity.”

The other week I volunteered to work in our MidWeek/Star-Bulletin booth at the Farm Fair. Our marketing people lined up a bunch of columnists from both papers to get out and meet the public, which I felt sounded like a fun idea.

Of course, there’s no way that I’m going to the fair without including my family, so I rounded up my wife, our 13-year-old son and our 5-year-old “princess of the amusement park” daughter. Figuring that my shift in the booth was going to be about four hours long, we decided to get dinner. After each selecting our favorite carnival cuisine, we went to find a table and seats under the dining tent. The place was packed and we did the table-hunting square dance - you look for someone about to vacate seats, but by the time you get there someone else do-see-dos your table. Then I saw the reason why. Kikaida was going to make an appearance and sign autographs. The president couldn’t have drawn a bigger crowd, and while I hate to admit it, I wanted an autograph. The line was comparable to those at Disneyland. Standing there while my family ate, I noticed a woman in line behind me carrying adorable toddlers in both arms, apparently twins.

I saw what I thought was the bare tummy of one of the kids sticking out and I started tickling it saying “kootchie-koo.” I got no reaction from the child, but the mother let out an embarrassed laugh. Confused, I asked, “They’re not ticklish?” She shot back, “You’re not tickling the babies.”

I did a double take and saw that I made a huge mistake. My face was the same color as the bottom line ink of a WorldCom P&L. Suddenly my wife appeared and asked what was going on. With a talent for lying and telling the truth in the same sentence, I replied, “Nothing, I was just playing with her twins.”