Hammers and a Good Tinkle

I haven’t been feeling especially funny of late. This happens from time to time, and I know I shouldn’t worry about it, but I do. It’s like having tendonitis in your left arm; you know it’s not a heart attack but still….

One of the bartenders at my local watering hole, a budding filmmaker we all call “the evil Belac” (because hey, why not?), tells me that probably I’m just overextending myself, creativity-wise. He could be right: I’ve been working on a second novel, a collection of short stories and a screenplay (with, natch, the evil Belac.) Plus my nephew, an otherwise bright lad we’ll call Aren because I’m pretty sure that’s how he thinks “Aaron” is spelled, has me “editing” some of the essays on his college applications.

While I admit that Belac may have a point, I’m beginning to wonder if Aren’s soi-disant essays, acting in a sort of nefarious tandem with the recent boatload of stupid-people stories in the news, haven’t just squashed my muse like a bug. I mean, I try to upbeat in these blogs, you know? I think, if you look over the previous dozen or so posts, that you’ll find that in many cases I’ve tried to be inspirational even: There was the Cameron Evans story, for instance, and the absolutely wonderful tale of that tax guy in Argentina.

But for every story like those, there are four more like the one about Michael Ray Hunter who—drunk and carrying a pot pipe and some prescription medication for which he had, alas, no prescription (perhaps his hero is Rush Limbaugh)—decided it would be a good idea to take a whiz in (really) the parking lot of the West Virginia State Police headquarters. Or the unnamed dead fella in Rio who tried to open a rocket-propelled grenade with, yes, a hammer. The list goes on and on and on.

The idea was that from time to time I would intersperse my stories of inspirational characters like Cameron Evans—the kind of guy I want in my future administration—with stories of people like Michael Ray Hunter, whom I frankly imagine as that “Far Side” cartoon kid who has a sign on his wall that reads “First socks, THEN shoes.” But the Cameron-type stories are fewer and further between than I ever imagined, and the Michael Ray Hunter/dead cretin Brazilian stories are all over the damn place.

Not, I hasten to point out, that I’m putting Aren in the dead cretin Brazilian category. He’s a good kid, a bright kid, but someplace along the way, the educational system decided that ‘ritin’ wasn’t important no more, and his application essays reflect that. This is the same educational system, of course, that has taken away art classes, music classes and sports because the Japanese do better in math than we do. Somehow, if you’re a Congressperson—or worse, an Administration Official—this kind of thing makes sense.

I can only assume that Aren’s application essays (“…college will be importent because its importent to have a degree when you look for a good job…” [Sic, Sic, Sic]…) would be considered the height of prosaic beauty at, for example, the Department of Homeland Security, where the latest claim to fame is taking credit for some major British anti-terrorist work.

All of this was going through my mind the other evening on my way to the local watering hole when I noticed that evidently no one where I live has figured out how to use a turn signal. This was not inspirational. There are only two reasons for not using turn signals, after all: Either you’re an arrogant little shit, or you’re dumber than the proverbial box of hammers.

So I was not in the best of moods, is what I’m saying, when I walked in and took my usual seat and started drowning my sorrows in Diet Coke® and Cheese Fries. The evil Belac—a man, I should point out, who has been known to use his turn signal in his own driveway—was working.

“You look like you need to hear Cindy’s latest story. It’ll crack you up.” Cindy, of course, is the overworked busperson I have mentioned before, usually as some sort of metaphor.

A few minutes later, she appeared, holding one of the “comment cards” the place gives its customers, one of those “let us know how we’re doing” things.

“You wanna hear a stupid-person story?” she asked me. (Well, of course it would turn out to be a stupid-person story, but I honestly never saw it coming. So much for pathos.)

“Sure,” I said, “but tell me one thing first; is it a story about people who are so stupid they are evidently constitutionally incapable of using turn signals? Because that’s what I happen to be thinking about.”

“Very possibly,” she grinned. Cindy has a killer smile, incidentally. “See that couple? The tall skinny guy and the short round woman, the guy who’s yelling at Dave?” (Dave is one of the managers.) “They stiffed Walter—two bucks on sixty-three.”

It occurred to me immediately that Cindy was right: These were not turn signal people.

She handed me the comment card. Next to “Service,” the couple had checked “Below Expectations.” In the comment area below, one of them had scrawled (this is reproduced exactly as it was written): “Serve never brung catchep.”

“Before,” Cindy said, watching me read the card, “you go into one of your holier-than-everybody spittle-spewing rages, you should also know that they were drinking ice tea. I found like a zillion empty Equal packs when I went to clean the table.” Cindy is young and given to exaggeration, but I took her point. The sweeteners are kept on the tables in a little compartmentalized wooden box. In the compartment right next to them is—you had to see this coming—the ketchup. “And yeah,” she finished, “I checked. It was there. It’s not like they even ever asked.” She wandered off, shaking her head in wonder.

And suddenly I cheered up. There was some hope for young people, after all, at least the ones like Cindy, who recognize (and wonder about, no doubt chuckling evilly) truly awesome stupidity when they see it. Plus, after looking at the couple again, I could definitely imagine the man going home and whacking at a rocket-propelled grenade with a hammer.

Boom. Giggle.