Risins

by Henry Bob Kulup

One of the great mysteries of my childhood was the summer that my town suffered from an outbreak of risins. For about two months it seemed that everybody I knew developed a risin, lived with it, talked about nothing else. And then as mysteriously as they had appeared, they went away.

"Risin"? Don’t bother with a dictionary. It’s pronounced like "rising" except without the "g". Risin.

The only person who called them anything different was my aunt, who referred to them as "boils." Apparently no one paid much attention to her choice of words since she was already suspect as the only person in town who subscribed to Time Magazine.

Risins, boils, whatever you want to call them, they suddenly started popping out all over in June that summer. Big, little, visible, hidden, they were everywhere. From first being the prime topic of conversation they quickly became objects of pride, especially those that appeared in presentable areas of the body. "Looky here at this thing, the size of a lemon," and up would go a shirtsleeve and sure enough there would be this angry-looking reddish lump the size of a small lemon, with a whitish center.

That white center is what got everybody’s special attention. It was called the "head" and we all knew, or quickly learned, that you weren’t supposed to even think about touching a risin—no matter how much it might itch—until it had formed a good head.

At that point you had two choices. You could either lance it at home, or you could go to Doc Formby and have him do it.

Whatever you did you were never, never supposed to squeeze a risin. Oh it might be tempting, just sitting there looking ripe and ready to pop. But we all knew that a risin was actually the body’s way of getting rid of "poison," concentrating it in one place and then eventually ejecting it in the head. If you squeezed a risin before it was ready what you would actually be doing was spreading the poison throughout your body, an effect we heard referred to many times as "blood poisoning," and God only knew what would happen in that case.

There were rumors that Harold Dempsey’s expected demise (he was in his 80s and suffering from various degenerative diseases of age) in July had been somewhat hastened when his long-suffering wife prematurely squeezed his risin. Everyone knew that Harold’s time was at hand so nothing ever came of the rumors.

Besides, no one had actually seen Harold’s risin. Which may or may not have meant anything. Harold didn’t get out much so the town was used to not seeing Harold in toto, much less any risin he might be sporting.

There was also the possibility that Harold’s risin, like those of so many others, was in a more or less concealed, possibly unmentionable part of the body.

For some reason risins seemed to have a fondness especially for armpits, which was O.K., because the men at least had nothing against pulling up their shirt and raising their arm to display their worrisome visitor.

Other favorite known spots were the buttocks and the thighs, especially the inner thighs, both of which caused special problems. The buttocks, obviously, because sitting became a matter of arranging oneself in a delicate balance. The inner thighs, because walking ceased being walking and became a kind of cautious waddling.

At the height of the outbreak, the curious gait caused by an inner-thigh disturbance was so common that no one even remarked on it any longer when on a Saturday around the Square you’d see all manner of shoppers, old and young, prosperous and poor, making their way duck-like from one store to the next.

It was during that summer that I learned the word "groin." As I got it at the time, "groin" was the term for any front part of the body between the waist and the knees. Only much later did I realize that it was necessary to have one catch-all word not only to include the genitals but also anything within the area of the genitals.

Among us children stories were fabricated, embroidered, and re-told endlessly about risins in other even more inconvenient locations, which seemed generally to be attached to public figures at various levels of society. Rumor had it that Mr. Quisenberry, the high school principle, had to buy several new pairs of pants to accommodate a membrum virile considerably enlarged by a hidden risin. And we were all certain that Mrs. Moore, the Methodist Church organist, already known for the extreme voluptuousness of her upper body, was sporting a third very large nipple beneath the flowery bodices she was so fond of.

My own risin came and went fairly quickly and within minimum discomfort near the end of the outbreak. I was spared a visit to Doc Formby through my mother’s ministrations with a "sterilized" sewing needle. Sterilization was accomplished by holding the need in the flame of a kitchen match. Blackened and still hot, my mother quickly poked at the big red thing with a nicely developed head on my forearm. There was a kind of dull pop, and a mass of clear fluid oozed out along with a clump of white matter that looked sort of like small-curd cottage cheese. Rubbing alcohol was applied, a bandage was put on, and that was that.

By August the outbreak was over and to my knowledge didn’t happen again. That fact in itself only provided further fuel for speculation. What had caused it? Was it some kind of germ? (This was long before anybody had even heard the word "virus.") Was it perhaps diet, something we had all eaten? Was it the weather? Naturally there was talk among the Baptists about the possibility that the Deity was trying to tell the town's many non-total-immersionists something about the error of their ways.

Still, the fact that as soon as they started appearing, the eruptions had a name—it was as if the word "risin" were somehow genetically implanted and had just been waiting for the occasion when it would be needed—indicated that outbreaks such as this had happened before. Parents knew about risins. But how? From their own parents, from their grandparents, who might have experienced similar eruptions in ancient times?