Strange things happen all the time. Even stranger things than this. Just last week they found some guy in Oregon in his bathroom with a garden hose stuck up his ass. He thought it felt good when he turned the water on. He forgot that the rules of pressure rarely conform to the rules of pleasure. So there he was. Dead. With a green garden hose stuck in his ass. When his wife found him she wasn’t too sure what to make of it. She was extremely saddened because they had two kids and bills to pay and all that. And she was extremely saddened because she had a deep-seated thing for kink but thought her husband was one of those “by the bookâ€? kind of guys. You think you know someone and then one day you realize that all the while you could have been taking home plumbing to new heights.

That’s not to say that Debbie Parks was a sex fiend or anything. Well, at least not when she was sober. Debbie was one of those young girls that suffered from what is known as “a split weekend personality.â€? Most of the time she was just a regular high-school kid. But on the weekends she tended to turn into someone completely different. And that someone was so drastically different from her usual self that it led some to believe that she was easily influenced. That’s how the whole thing happened. But let me make something clear right now. There’s tragedy and then there’s a tragedy. This was neither. What happened to Debbie was nothing short of the universal definition of “oddity.â€? That’s the only way to say it without sounding callous.

Debbie was known to be somewhat of a lush on weekends. It was one of those things that wasn’t all that out of the ordinary for a girl her age. The weekends were for partying and everyone did it. Debbie’s problem was that she was a horrible drunk. And by horrible I’m implying that she did things without thinking about them first. Most of the things were just stupid, crazy things that kids tend to do when they’re plastered and feeling somewhat free-spirited. Things like truth or dare, streaking, skinny dipping, and the old “locked in the closetâ€? trick. Debbie did them all and regretted it each time. Every Monday morning she’d walk through the doors at school and hear whispers about her weekend escapades. All the guys loved her because they could get her to take her clothes off in front of everyone at the drop of a hat and all the girls hated her because they didn’t have the guts to. She wasn’t a slut, contrary to the reputation people foisted upon her. Debbie had only ever slept with one boy. And that was when her family went to Disney World. It was one of those last-minute deals when you know you’re never going to see the person again because you’re too young, live too far away, and know in the back of your head that given time you’d probably become quite annoyed by them. So she was rather good about things of that nature. But that doesn’t mean that she wouldn’t get naked and slip into an outdoor hot tub filled with cherry Jell-O in the dead of winter now does it?

And that’s exactly how Debbie met her end. Face down in a frozen, cherry Jell-O-filled hot tub. It’s how the tub got filled with Jell-O that’s interesting. You wouldn’t have any interest in reading this story if it was simply about some poor girl that drowned. It’s no different than some kids re-enacting Full Metal Jacket in the hallways of their school in some white, suburban enclave. You’re glued to your TV because you think “Oh my god! How could this happen? Why did this happen! Whose fault is it?!â€? wa, wa, fucking wa. Three hundred people get hacked to bits in their sleep in some village in North Africa and it gets a blurb in the newspaper. But when something happens in the quiet confines of our perfect little world then it’s a sure-fire sign that chaos is about to break loose in the streets and Satan is possessing the children. The only thing that it is a reflection of is our society’s egomania. We figure we’re so socially superior to everyone else that things of that nature should be uncommon. What we forget is that, like in every great society, the barbarians will one day be at our gates and we will slip quietly into the confines of some coffee-table book about ancient civilizations. And like those civilizations we were just as violently prolific as we were creative, ingenious, and compassionate. Because it all comes in a neat little package that has yet to be altered during our tenure on this rock. Welcome to life in the blind man’s utopia. Retain ticket stub for possible refund.

But that doesn’t explain how a hot tub got filled with Jell-O. It’s quite simple really. All it takes is for your parents to go out of town for two weeks, filling the hot tub with clean, boiling water, adding multiple packs of cherry Jell-O, and allowing the freezing effects of mother nature to run their course. The secret ingredient, of course, would be the eight large bottles of vodka that you also threw in. Presto! Instant drunksicle. So the next thing you do is decide to throw the biggest party of the year and invite the whole school. As the night progresses everyone munches on the Jell-O and gets really hammered. This leads to all kinds of strange events, including the part where someone dares Debbie Parks to get naked and jump into the hot tub filled with the Jell-O. She’s very drunk by that point and ends up going in rather awkwardly and with some momentum. This causes her to hit her head, but she pops up just the same with a big smile on her face and everyone cheers. Debbie starts munching on the stuff while she’s in there and eventually everyone decides they’re cold and goes back inside. Debbie remains in the hot tub. Then she starts to feel a little woozy. Maybe because she’s drunk, maybe because she’s got a concussion. She passes out, her body temperature has melted the Jell-O enough so that there’s some liquid in there and her head slips beneath the surface. And you’ve got yourself one frozen dead girl Jell-O cake.

About ten minutes later some guy who had wandered outside to relieve himself happened to notice that there was a naked girl in the middle of the party’s booze supply. It would definitely mark the end of the night’s proceedings and our boy didn’t want that to happen. There was a girl inside that he was convinced wanted to sleep with him. He was mistaken of course, and quite intoxicated, so he just went back inside and didn’t mention that Debbie Parks was frozen-dead within the icky confines of a hot tub filled with vodka laced cherry Jell-O. Debbie’s body remained there for twenty more minutes before it was discovered by two girls who had ventured out onto the back porch to smoke.

That’s how Debbie Parks drowned in cherry Jell-O. Sad but true. At her funeral nobody knew what to make of her death. Her parents were the most distraught and confused, seeing as their little baby’s booze-soaked corpse had been pulled from a frozen tub of fruitiness. The youngsters of the town learned a valuable lesson that day as well. They realized that going too far was something that wasn’t always a controllable experiment. After a certain critical mass is reached a whole set of volatile factors begin to alter the experiment. This leads to the creation of chaos. It’s an equation that can be applied to much more than just a girl drowning in cherry Jell-O. It’s something that engulfs us all as time passes and makes fools of us without our knowing. And in the end we become so accustomed to seeing ourselves as fools that we think nothing of it. Either that or it’s merely a fable about how not to freeze alcohol-infused gelatin in anything larger than a footbath.