When we were little my mom and dad went to a seminar put on by a guy
who made is own extreme weather survival gear. It was an inner and
outer shell made of the same material as pillow cases are made of and
the fill was 2” mattress topper foam. A the seminar the man claimed
that he had worn this gear into the arctic and had deliberately
jumped through the ice into the water. He then climbed out and spent
the whole night with no fire or shelter in his wonder suit and he was
comfy as all get out. When they got back my mom was on a mission to
make a set of these suits for my father and herself. They were huge
and ill fitting and once even slightly wet were extremely heavy and
cold. Which means the guy either made his much differently than the
plans he provided or he was a liar. He was a liar. The upside was
that we had these great 2” thick foam scraps that were laying around in
the utility room and Matt and I discovered that if you poked a wire
through the foam, a 2” long piece in the shape of whatever you
stabbed though would pop out the other side in a comedic way. For
some reason, probably because we were 7 and 9, we thought that it was
hilarious and we named them 'Enos's Penises' because it was funny and
it rhymed. We had poked through about a hundred of these funny little
rascals and were laughing every time when my mom came in to see why
we were having so much fun,which my parents had learned from
experience was usually either expensive or immoral. My Mother felt
that our diligent manufacture of Enos's Penises had compromised the
insulative value of a 30 dollar piece of foam and spanked us both.
Maybe she was really mad at the man who convinced her to make those
ridiculous suits, because if she would have taken the time to make a
single Enos Penis she would not have punished us but reveled in one
of live's truly simple pleasures.
