My Curiosity Punished

So I’m sitting on the El train this morning when this girl gets on. She’s short, kind of plump, short haired, dressed in jeans and T-shirt. She passes right by me and she has this button on her shirt. It’s yellow on top and white on the bottom. The top says: “I want a President who …” and I can’t make out the bottom. So the girl sits down right opposite me and I’m staring hard at her trying to make out what the bottom of the button says and, evidently, this is a do-it-yourself button where you fill in whatever it is you want the president to do and this girl’s handwriting isn’t the best so I’m really staring hard at this, when she gives me a NASTY DROP-DEAD LOOK and I realize two things:

1] The button is pinned right on top of a really big hooter that I’m staring straight at …

2] The full text reads:“I want a President who SUPPORTS GAY MARRIAGE!”

So — I had to sit across from the bull dyke who thought I was staring at her tits from Belmont up to Howard. If looks could kill, I’d be a dead man …

Pop Quiz!

Saturday I was at the public library with my son (checking out DVD’s of The Bank Dick w/W.C. Fields and Geisevus' Memoirs), and we're going down the escalator and I have this rip in my jeans, right at the top of the leg, about an inch and a half of leg-flesh shows out, no big deal, nothing you can't see at the beach, and this voice comes from behind us:

Lady: You forgot to wear underwear!

Now, the voice was kind of snotty, like Lilly Tomlin, so I turn around. It's a woman, about 35/40, wearing jeans and a sweat-shirt, mouse brown hair in a pony tail, no make-up, so it's not like she's dressed up…

And what does she expect me to do, wear underwear with jeans? So I try to answer her nicely, make a joke out of it …

Dutchman: I never wear underwear. Elvis never did, and I always ask myself "what would Elvis do?"

Lady: How do you know he didn't wear underwear?

Dutchman: Every biography says so …

Now we've gotten off the escalator and she's following me …

Lady: You can't always trust what you read!

Dutchman: Well, I guess you could always call up Priscilla and ask her!

Lady: She wasn't with him for very long.

I didn't answer this one, I just made a sharp turn and went off where I didn't want to go just so she wouldn't follow.

So here’s the quiz part:

1] What was that lady's problem? She didn't seem to care that I wasn't wearing underwear, she just seemed to want to talk and then she contradicted everything that I said. What the hell was on her mind?

2] In a civilized country, would she be in a Gulag, or what?

Some kids need Quiet, some kids need Storm

Before I actually had a child, I was of a mind that they were born blank slates and that they were totally shaped by their environment. (This idea was probably a hold-over from my youthful indoctrination into communism.) About two weeks after my first child was born, however, I realized that my little Pumpkin had a personality all of her own and that I couldn’t shape her into an ideal Soviet Man, Modern Enoch, or whatever your ideal might be. I could only help her to become the Good Pumpkin, or the Bad Pumpkin, but she would always and only be Pumpkin.

After I had a second child I realized that, because Pod-Man was a different person, that I would have to treat him differently. He needed different things, must learn different lessons, responded to different incentives, and annoyed me in an altogether original way.

This caused a good deal of trouble, as my kinderen would frequently feel short-changed when they became aware of these differences and could point to my sister-in-law who scrupulously treats her two daughters exactly equally. None-the-less I stuck to my guns. Again and again I explained to them that Pod-Man got tickets to the opera because he was a born connoisseur, but that only Pumpkin could be left alone in the house because she was my responsible girl, and that Bean-Girl needed more alone time with Daddy because she was my shy girl.

They never bought it.

Finally an incident made my ultimate fairness clear to them. Pumpkin had to read Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front for her High School English class and write a paper on it. She was at a loss as to what to say or write, so she asked me. I tried to draw her out by asking “Well, what’s the book about?”

“It’s stupid! It’s just about how war is stupid!”

“Okay, Erich Maria Remarque was drafted into the Great War and saw all of its futility and carnage. But Ernst Jünger volunteered for war, became commander of a shock battalion, and wrote about how he loved war in Storm of Steel. Why don’t you read that and write a paper comparing them?”

She was baffled, “What’s to like about war?”

“Well, Junger said that ever-afterwards he only felt really alive when actually in combat. He said that ordinary life was tedious, and that only warfare drew upon the total man. He said that the comradeship formed among his fellow soldiers in the trenches surpassed any other human connection, even that of marriage. He writes about being under barrages as though they hold all of the excitement of a roller-coaster. He makes trench-raids come to life like an adrenaline rush. The affection of a comrade for his buddy, their devotion to one another, their willingness to risk all, makes mere romantic love seem pale and life-less ...”

As I was describing this, Pod-Man came over. At last he exclaimed, “Wow! I want to read that book!”

“NO!” I poked him in the chest, “You need All Quiet on the Western Front!”

This was so self-evident that it became a catch-phrase around out house. Anytime one of the kids objected to the way we were “favoring” one of the others, all I have to say is, “No, Pod-Man needs All Quiet on the Western Front.”

The Game of Life

Last night I was playing the game of LIFE (by Milton Bradley) with Pod-Man and Bean-Girl and we had a few disagreements on the rules. As the auditors of the blog are well known for their impartiality, we are appealing to them now for a judgment on these rules:

— When I got to the “Get Married” space, I wanted to go to Vermont and marry by friend Brian. It’s legal there now and there’s nothing in the rules that says “heterosexual marriage,” so I contend that I am within my rights. Pod-Man disagrees, however, and claims that this is just a ploy on my part to avoid having children and the ruinous expenditures that they incur. Both Pod-Man and Bean Girl insisted that I marry a girl, but is it really fair to force me to live a lie just because of a an arcane set of “rules” that are no more than the codification of outmoded bourgeois proprieties?

— When it came time for Pod-Man to get married, he claimed a religious vocation. In fact he claimed that he had a calling from God and wanted to be a monk (thus avoiding both children and the purchase of a house). He said that his first amendment rights supersede the fiat rule of this so-called “Milton Bradley” fellow. Does the first amendment guarantee of free practice of religion allow him to do this?

— Bean Girl claimed that she wanted to marry me, and that we could then ride in the same car together and pool our resources. Pod-Man says this would be "incest" and disallowed it, but isn’t that just one more Bourgeois propriety that keeps people from living as autonomous persons?

— I landed on the space that said “Automobile Accident — pay $5000- for repairs,” and decided against fixing it. I proposed that I then walk for the rest of the game, dividing all of my spins by three to represent my slower pace. Pod-Man called this cheating, even though I’ve never owned a car in all my life, thus proving it can be done!

— Bean Girl got past all the spaces where you have children without landing on one and announced “If I can’t have children then life isn’t worth living! I’m slitting my wrists!” and she quit the game. Pod-Man said that she couldn’t, but I said all she had to do was write a note and inform the banker of her method of suicide because, after all, death is a part of life and we would just be burying our heads in the sand if we didn’t acknowledge this.

— Since Bean Girl wrote her note and specified that she was going to slit her wrists in the bathtub, she's legally dead for purposes of this game and, as next of kin, it’s self evident that I’m entitled to her money and property. Yet Pod-Man (who had earlier said it would be “incest” if I married her) claimed that this was just a cheap grab for money on my part. He just wants to have things both ways, doesn’t he?

— Later, I landed on the space that said “Fire Destroys House — pay purchase price to bank if uninsured.” Now, logically, why should I re-build that house when I’ve already inherited Bean Girl’s house and can simply live there? This really set Pod-Man off on a tirade about “cheating,” and “what sort of dad would manipulate the rules of a children’s game?” and “some Bolshevik you are!” Isn’t he just being petty? I think he was just jealous because I had two houses.

From "The Straight Dope" Column

Cecil Adams answers my questions:

Dear Cecil:

Recently I purchased a 1957 Information Please Almanac just to see if I had missed anything of importance. And indeed I had! Its table of "Grounds for Divorce" shows a mystery category of "Indignities," which I had never heard of. What are these "Indignities"? They cannot be "Crimes Against Nature," for footnote number five reveals that this is grounds only in Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina, and Arizona. Hurry, Cecil--I would hate to inflict indignities on my wife out of negligence or ignorance. --R.M. Schultz, Chicago

PS: What exactly is the "Loathsome Disease" that is grounds for divorce in Kentucky? If it's hay fever I'm in trouble.

Silly boy. Prior to the introduction of no-fault divorce in the 1970s, "indignities" was the catchall term for whatever bugged you about the old battle-ax (or inconsiderate pig) your adoring spouse had turned out to be, and as such was the most common grounds for a split. Sample indignities, lifted from a Pennsylvania lawyer's Web site: "vulgarity; unmerited reproach; habitual laziness; studied neglect; intentional incivility; manifest disdain; abusive language; [and] malignant ridicule"--any of which can supposedly "render [the injured party's] condition intolerable and his or her life burdensome." Loathsome disease, a traditional grounds for divorce in many cultures, is commonly understood to mean something like leprosy--not your typical marital problem these days. Manifest disdain, on the other hand . . . if I were you, I'd be careful about leaving that toilet seat up.

--CECIL ADAMS

I guess that's pretty obvious ...

I get home and, right after I close the front door, Bean-Girl runs up to me stark naked and gives me a big hug.

So I ask, "Why are you naked?"

"Because I haven't got any clothes on!"

Car Stuffed With Trash

This car was parked on LaSalle Street in front of Sandburg Village. Only the actual driver's seat was not stuffed to the ceiling with garbage, mostly newspapers, Dunkin Doughnuts coffee cups, and Pepperidge Farm cookie wrappers.