Goiter Fear

I have always had a horror of goiters and been troubled by bad dreams of getting one. I have nothing against the goitered, so if you happen to have one and are reading this, I don’t mean to be insulting; I’m sorry for your troubles and that being said, I just have an unholy fear of them, and this is why:
One day, when I was a little girl, I was at Curtis Drug with my mum. It was still an old-fashioned chemists soda-shop at that time. Curtis's store had huge apothecary jars, a great big marble counter, two spinning slushy machines and a bizarre collection of various stuffed or pickled albino animals on display behind the cash register along the back wall. If you were lucky you could sit on one of the shiny silver and red vinyl stools, as you waited on your medicine, with a rootbeer float in hand and divide your time by staring at the colorful twirling frozen drink machines or the freaky menagerie of dead animals as the comforting smell of menthol eucalyptus and floor wax filled the air.
I was pretty darn new then, maybe five or six on that day when I had mustered up the guile to walk around the end of the counter to the corner shelf to peer closer at the small oddities like the snow white weasel as I nursed my float and tried to ward off the impending brain freeze that was sure to follow.
Then I spied the old peanut butter jar labeled "albino dung" and ventured timidly closer.
I was busy coveting this treasure of critter poo that looked surprisingly similar to marshmallows floating in water when my mum concluded her business at the counter, said goodbye to Mabel Sweetock and turned to go.
I looked at the bizarre turds a fraction longer and then, turning to catch up with her, bumped right into the stomach of a purple old man. Not even purplish. Purple. With a pitted, veiny drinker’s nose and whorl wind teeth. And right there on his neck was a huge and shiny goiter. I froze in utter terror. I had never seen anything like it, even in a book. What horrible, terrible thing did this man have on his neck? And his nose! He must be very wicked indeed.
Then I ran to my mum's skirt and hid my face. I was all of a sudden ashamed of myself because I knew I must have hurt the old man’s feelings, but it was the most vivid moment of raw, bulbous terror I’d ever had in my short life.
My mum flapped me out of the shop and, as it was obvious I’d taken a real fright about something, she left me be once we got home and I had put my older brother Butch's insulin in our old Frigidaire.
The handle had broken clean off our refrigerator's solid door so dad had wielded a big heavy rebar triangle onto the latch forming a new handle. To open the door I had to brace my feet wide and tug with both hands repeatedly with all my weight. Maybe dad had that planned when he designed the new opener, as us kids really had to be hungry to open that metal Behemoth. I'm sure in the long run it had saved our family a tidy sum in grocery money.
I hid for the rest of the waning afternoon under the willow tree at the edge of our yard as the root beer churned in my belly and I lost myself in thought about that grotesque monster cleaving to that man's throat. Glimpses of the Jethro Tull Aqualung album hidden away from my tender eyes in the back closet filtered through the slim green leaves, mixed with images of my new nameless fear and caused me to clutch Goldie the Tom cat too hard for his comfort until he wrangled out of my arms.
I was straddling Goldie probing his neck with my finger tips when Butch's GTO crawled into our dirt drive.
Butch always drove slow on the gravel so as not to chip The Judge's glossy silver paint, even though he washed his pride every day.
Knowing I had a better chance staying safe and finding answers with my big brother than alone with an uncooperative cat, I scampered over to the side of the house where Butch was filling a soapy bucket from a hose and sat on my haunches pointing out spots as Butch scrubbed.
"Butch?"
"What Squirt?"
"You know Mr. Dallahyde?"
I had heard the clerk address the deformed man as Mr. Dallahyde before mum brusquely ushered me from the drug store.
My brother knew everyone. After all he worked in the big window factory twenty four miles east in the next town over. The next county even.
He tried to reassure me that Mr Dallahyde, the owner of the goiter, was a very nice old man who’d lost his wife (where?); that it was not anything very terrible at all; and that it wain’t a separate, living demon latched on to the poor man’s throat.
But I wasn’t listening because I’d heard, for the first time, the name of the swelling. Goiter. The ugliness of the word made me shudder. Goiter-goiter. Goiter!
Butch handed me the little wire brush when he finish the body of The Judge and my slim fingers worked the bristles around the hub cap spokes as my mind worked around my brothers explanation.
I was not sure I believed him.
When mum had caught me flipping off our sister she had asked Butch to have a talk with me.
"You do not show your middle finger to your sister", he had said in his I mean business voice."
Why? Can I show it to mum?"
"You do not show your middle finger to anyone."
"Can I show it to Goldie?"
"Little girls do not show it to anyone!"
"Can I show this finger?" I asked holding up my pointer.
"Yes. That finger you can show."
"Can I show this finger?" I asked holding up my pinky.
I then proceeded to ask after each of my digits before I changed my venue after I flipped off my mum who was scowling across the kitchen at me in the next room.
"Why?"
"It means something bad" Butch said in a serious whisper.
"What does it mean?" I whispered back holding up my middle finger at my big brother but cupping my other hand around it just to be safe.
"Eagle."
"Eagle?"
"Stopping flipping people the eagle ok?"
Butch left at that point having done his duty but not explaining any further why a bird that was on money was such a bad thing I could not show anyone.
But on that traumatizing day Butch had yet to apply the turtle wax and buff his prize Pontiac so I had his time.
"But why do people get a gggoiter?" When I had to say that repulsive word, I cleared my throat with it, as if by doing so I would expel any beginning of unsightly tumors.
"Lack of iodine, little one. People need iodine in their food or they grow bumpy. Now clean The Judge faster or I'll give you some bumps to worry about.
"I had never noticed any iodine in mums kitchen cupboards.
I had considered telling Butch we hadn't picked up his insulin so he would let me ride The Judge with him all the way back into town where he would buy me goiter repellent at Curtis's, but I didn't.
At the dinner table that night I scrutinized my family's Adam's apples as I rubbed my tingling neck. They all appeared normal. None of the garden vegetables or the venison tasted like the dark foul smelling medicine mum would dab from the little glass bottle on the scrapes from that I would bleed when I crashed the rattle trap bike dad had made for me from various pieces of others rides and junk yard finds. I had meant to ask dad if my brothers iodine theory was right, but he had asked me to get the milk out, which led to a quarter hour tug of war with the fridge door so I missed my opportunity.
I would have asked my sister in the big bed we shared later that night but but she was the sort who smugly knew everything and hold it over me so I would have to flip her the sign of money to set her right. In the darkness she might miss my slam.
So I sat on the toilet with my peddle pushers pooled around my ankles swinging my legs before bed while I studied the skull and cross bones on the side of the iodine bottle mum kept in the chipboard cubby dad had built into the corner of my bedroom he had turned into the family bathroom after he had been paid by the Gillie family with their out cast stained porcelain fixtures for fixing their potato harvester.
Knowing I had to do something that would keep me from frightening my self and cause strangers to hide their eyes from my countenance I threw open the door that led from the bathroom straight into our bedroom and snapped on lights. That was easy to do, as the switch for our bed room was still in the bathroom.
"Read this ", I demanded of my literate sister who probley was just laying there solving math problems and practicing next years spelling words in her head instead of worrying about the impending doom of all our pie holes.
"Do not take internally."
Not knowing the difference between internal and eternity, I vowed to myself to stop drinking iodine tincture as soon as I felt safe from the evil of goiters.
I have never suffered from any physical malformations before of after that night I threw up all the bathroom sink, and then later on my sister tucked snug in our bed - aside from a hive or too, and that one thing the good doctor's caustic acid made disappear. But now and then when my husband is on the road and I know not where, those dreams come back.