TEAM LAST CALL

So when an invitation for my 10-year high school reunion showed up in the mail last week, I wasn’t exactly eager to revisit that phase of my life, a period that exists in my memory now as one dark blur of wet willies, red bellies, purple nurples, and my personal favorite, the atomic wedgie.

High school for me was one big game of Smear the Queer, and I was “it.” As an undersized marching band geek and an alleged pissypants, my function within the school was non-negotiable: I was a moving target. A small, dumpling-shaped target with orthopedic shoe inserts, headgear and a hairstyle that only Olympic gymnast Paul Hamm is brave enough to rock in the new millennium.

My entire existence in high school was dependent on speed. When the bell rang to signify the end of class, I would shoot out the door and scamper down the hall like a greased piglet, squealing, snorting and madly weaving in and out of my classmates’ legs to avoid the clutches of the varsity football team.

Sometimes, when the wind was to my back, I would make it to my next class; most of the time … not so much.

When I wasn’t busy riding around inside the football captain’s trunk or hanging from the flagpole by my underwear, I enjoyed such pastimes as hiding under my desk, shrieking like a schoolgirl and running for my life. On a good day, I went home in the same pair of pants I put on that morning.

Altogether, high school was a harrowing experience, complete with drama, intrigue and the perpetual nightmare of being picked for the skins team in gym class. I was miserable, frightened and paranoid, like a little Republican in husky jeans and hi-tops. I still pee my pants a little every time I think about it.

I’m exaggerating about the whole situation, of course. It wasn’t really as bad as I’m making it sound. I had braces, not headgear.

Everything else is true, though, including the pissypants rumors, although at the time I denied it like Bill O’Reilly caught rubbing up against a female intern.

The pissypants story actually dates back to the fourth grade. I was in the “gifted class” in school, which means that while the rest of my peers were in math class learning to add and subtract with fractions, I was busy writing poems about bunnies and learning how to crochet sweaters – invaluable skills that have come in handy ... well … I’m sure they will at some point.

Consequently, when our class sat down to take our year-end math tests, I was about as likely to get an A as George Bush is to win a geography bee. It was as painful and hopeless to watch as Anna Nicole Smith trying to tie her own shoelaces.

So while the other fourth grade kids were busy calculating the square root of pi, I was in my seat reacting in the only way I knew how: by emptying 4/7 of my bladder into 5/6 of my pants, resulting in 9/10 of my classmates making fun of me for the rest of my academic career.

They say there are two types of people in this world: those who were born to be made fun of (Hummer drivers, Anna Nicole Smith, anyone who’s used the term “freedom fries” with a straight face), and those who were born to make fun of others (all the kids in my high school).

It became painfully clear to me during my school years that I was and always would be one of the to-be-made-fun-ofs. And I’m not even a Republican. There’s just something about me – the way I talk or the way I dress or the way I look like the love child of George Costanza and Frodo Baggins – that makes people want to pick me up and stuff me in a locker. Which frankly makes it really hard to get any work done around the office.
Once a hapless nerdling, always a hapless nerdling.

It probably goes without saying that I’m not really anxious to relive the nuclear winter that was my high school experience, especially not for $75 a plate at my reunion. Unless there was some guarantee that my old bullies would show up all bald and fat with ugly wives and terrible children.

But even then, I’m not sure I’d go. I have enough trouble maintaining my dignity without being pantsed in the buffet line by a group of 30-year-old pizza delivery boys, or whatever it is my bullies do now. I can’t really risk another blow to my self-esteem, which remains low despite the fact that I’m a total cutey-patootey with the body of a Greek god, a wildly popular column and the best rock band on the planet. Or at least that’s what I wrote down for my bio in the reunion program.

So to my high school reunion committee I have to say thanks, but no thanks. Regretfully, I am unable to attend your evening of fun and nostalgia.

Time may heal all, but it can’t pick an atomic wedgie.

We English majors are widely recognized as the centerpiece of modern society, the glue that holds it all together, without whom the world would be overrun by grammatical terrorists and would constantly be besieged by run-on sentences and poor punctuation and would surely sputter and die.

A lot of people think of us as some kind of superhuman race, and I admit that they’re not far off. We really are a magnificent breed. Sure, we tend to be snippy and humorless, and often have shortcomings in areas such as “basic math” and “being able to do a push-up,” but we can parse a sentence with the unbridled fury of a grizzly bear and/or Bill O’Reilly.

Not to pour salt on the wound, but in addition to being an English major, I also happen to be a professional editor, and you are not. Like most of my peers, I didn’t choose to be an editor; editing chose me. It’s a higher calling that can’t be ignored, a small, sweet voice floating on the breeze that says, “You live in your parents’ basement, have no job prospects and no marketable skills – why not edit for a magazine?”

We professional editors have a dizzying number of responsibilities, the most important of which is to silently judge everything you do and say. When you conclude a sentence with a preposition, we are there, shaking our heads in disdain. When your pronouns fail to match their antecedents, we are there, snorting away in nerdy, anal-retentive glee. When your participles are left dangling, we are there, watching, always watching. Unless “Passions” is on TV, in which case we’ll be back in an hour.

Of the many grammatical blunders I witness from day to day, my favorite by far is what I like to call the “misuse” of “quotes.” As you’re about to see, this common blunder can turn an ordinary sentence into a veritable “wonderland” of “editorial fun.” Come with me as we skip gaily through the halls of grammar.

Quote marks can be used for a wide variety of reasons within a sentence, all of which are “fun” and “action-packed.” Think of them as the Regis Philbin of punctuation marks; they’re multi-talented, they’re a total hoot, and they’ve got their own TV talk show. Or they should, anyway.

As you may know, the most common use of quote marks is to show when a writer is directly quoting another person.

Example 1: “Majoring in English is a good idea,” said the high school guidance counselor.

Example 2: “Would you like fries with that?” asked the recently graduated English major.

Another function of quote marks is to indicate when a word or phrase is being used in a non-traditional way.

Example 1: I think that George Bush is really “smart” and I hope he gets “reelected” this month.

Example 2: I think that John Kerry is both “handsome” and “engaging” and I look forward to “not dying of boredom” during his inaugural speech.

Another function of quote marks, which I made up just now, is to emphasize certain key words within a joke, thereby making it even “funnier” and “wittier.”

Example 1: Mom, can I have some “money?” I haven’t “eaten” in a week.

Example 2: I guess you should have “thought of that” before you “majored” in “English.”

But sometimes people use quote marks for absolutely no discernible reason, meaning that they’re either “confused” or have some kind of flagrant disregard for the sacred rites of “punctuation,” which is, of course, ridiculous. That’s like saying you hate babies or would like to punch a bunny in the face.

Let’s take a “look” at how some of these misused quote marks can adversely affect a sentence.

Sample sentence one: My favorite restaurant, Señorita Burrita, makes tacos with rice and beans.

Sample sentence two: My favorite restaurant, Señorita Burrita, makes tacos with “rice” and “beans.”

In the first sentence, we learn that there is a restaurant named Señorita Burrita that offers rice and bean tacos.

But in the second sentence, thanks to the errant quote marks, it becomes clear that Señorita Burrita doesn’t actually use rice and beans, but instead fills its tacos with what we can only assume is people.

Now, let’s apply this to a real-life scenario. The other day, I noticed a pet store right near my house with a sign that read: Pet Supplies “and more.”

This is ominous. What’s being communicated here is that, in addition to cat food and birdcages, this pet store stocks something so perverse, something so unspeakably sinister that all the owners can do is hint at it. What lies in the dark and seedy back room of Pet Supplies “and more?” Dick Cheney, that’s what.

That’s just a guess, of course. The only people who can really answer that question are the store’s owners, managers and the two or three English majors who mop the floors after hours.

I also came across an unfortunate advertisement for an area restaurant that said: Wings made “any way you want.”

What the ad is trying to say, of course, is that customers can order their wings in a wide variety of styles. Hot wings, suicide wings, double-suicide wings, the-heat-at-which-Hummer-owners-will-burn-for-eternity wings – the possibilities are limitless. Little do patrons suspect, however, that by saying “any way you want,” the ad actually means that the restaurant makes wings out of people! People!!

As a final example of quote-mark tomfoolery, let’s turn to a sign I stumbled upon recently in a local grocery store that, in order to avoid such complications as “lawsuits” and “accidental death,” we’ll refer to henceforth as “Gigantic Food Stores.”

Upon walking into “Gigantic Food Stores” the other day, I was appalled to discover a fluorescent orange poster advertising a sale on “milk.” This raises a number of questions, the most obvious being, What is “milk?”

As a journalist, it would be irresponsible for me to speculate on the contents of this mystery beverage, other than to note that it probably contains some kind of steroid that will give you back hair and an inexplicable craving for other “Gigantic Food Stores” products, such as “cookies” and “cereal,” both of which contain people. Beyond that, I can’t really speak with any confidence. Except to say it’s a proven fact that people who drink “milk” are pudgy, have a tendency to exaggerate, and have nothing better to do with their time than nitpick about trivial things.

Oh, wait – that’s English majors.

I was stunned. I mean, I had literally no idea that I was gay, so to find out so suddenly was a real surprise. That’s a really big thing to just have dumped on you out of the blue.

I learned about my new sexual orientation during a recent run-in with a gang of middle-schoolers who were kind enough to inform me, in loud voices from across a parking lot, that I was, in fact, a major-league, card-carrying homosexual. I’m paraphrasing here.

I couldn’t believe it! I was shocked. Evidently, I had spent the first 28 years of my life wandering aimlessly in a heterosexual fog. To think, all this time I’ve been playing for the wrong team! I obviously owe those boys a huge debt of gratitude for shedding some light on the issue. I mean, who knows how many more years I might have squandered on the opposite sex if those boys hadn’t taken the time to enlighten me to the fact that I was a raging homosexual?

Oh, man, this was big. So much to digest at one time! I mean, you think you know yourself, but all it takes is a group of perceptive 12-year-olds in Marilyn Manson T-shirts, black fingernail polish and eyeliner to shatter all of the lies you’ve been feeding yourself over the years.

How was I going to break it to my wife? “Honey, I’ve got some bad news. Apparently, I’m a flaming homosexual. Sorry.”

“A homosexual? Oh heavens, that is bad news.”

“I know, I know. … Hey, let’s go dancing!”

“Finally!”

What bothered me even more than my surprise sexual orientation was the fact that there was something so extraordinarily gay about me that you could spot it from 100 yards away. What tipped those kids off? Was it my haircut? Was it the way I walked? Was it my Frankie Goes to Hollywood T-shirt? It was a complete mystery.

Telling my buddies was going to be tough. Not that I’m friends with a bunch of homophobes, but I wasn’t sure how they would react to this kind of news, especially coming from someone who just last week was crowned the King of Beef Jerky. Not that that makes me particularly masculine, but I’m willing to bet that not too many of my fellow homosexuals know their way around a bag of Uncle Farty’s Dried Cow Strips like I do. Anyhow, I knew I had to break the news to my friends gently. Maybe I could work it into the conversation during our next big video game tournament.

“Oh, sick! My guy just got his legs blown off by a bazooka! But not before I blasted Keith’s guy in the face with a shotgun! Ha ha, that was awesome! By the way, I’m really, really gay.”

Or maybe it would be better to drop some subtle hints first so it’s not such a shock, like during our next poker night.

Barry: “I’m in for five bucks.”

Dave: “I’ll see your five and raise it ten!”

Me: “I’m gay.”

Barry: “What?”

Me: “I said, ‘I’ll stay.’”

Barry: “… OK. Well, let’s see your cards. I’ve got three of a kind.

Dave: “I’ve got a pair.”

Me: “Ha ha, I’ve got a royal flush! Plus, I really am totally gay.”

I was nervous, though. Not just about telling my friends, but about being gay in general. Did I have what it takes to make a good gay man? What kinds of changes would I have to make to my life?

Did this mean no more peeking at the JC Penney’s lingerie catalog when my wife was out of the room? What about walking around in my underwear and playing air guitar to Springsteen? And oh my gosh, what about Krispy Kremes? Are those gay?

I knew I had one strike against me, which was that I wasn’t attracted to other men. But I wasn’t about to let that get in my way. I mean, if I’d managed to survive 28 years of heterosexuality without such basic assets as “self-confidence” or “biceps,” then surely I could survive this one little setback to my newfound orientation.

There was still one more thing about the whole situation that bothered me, though, and that was the fact that, you know, I’m not gay. Unless you count my Justin Timberlake CD.

Now, let me clarify that I’ve got nothing against people who do happen to be gay, unless those people also happen to drive Hummers, in which case they should be trampled by elephants. Of course, that’s more of a statement about Hummers than anything else; homosexual or not, if you drive a Hummer, nobody likes you. I really can’t stress that enough.

But Hummers aside, I certainly have no problem with people whose sexual orientations are different than mine. Or the same as mine, depending on whether you’re talking to that group of middle-school kids or not.
Please understand that the last thing I want to do is make those kids look foolish. They were just trying to help. When’s the last time you helped a stranger? No, I don’t blame them one bit for their little miscalculation. There are a lot worse things in the world to be wrong about. Like weapons of mass destruction. For example.

All in all, it was a very confusing phase of life for me, a phase I now affectionately refer to as “that afternoon when I was gay.” But I’m pleased to report that the waters have calmed, and I’m back to my old, jerky-eating, dirty socks-wearing, flatulence-lighting ways. God bless America.

I’m not what you’d call a manly man. I’ve never been very good at traditionally manly things like “fixing a leak” or “changing a tire” or “being able to grow a full beard” or “being shaped like a man.” I’m not one of those guys you turn to in an emergency, unless your emergency is a kidnapping for which the only ransom is a sonnet about boogers.

I can’t drive a stick shift. I can barely tell the difference between a screwdriver and a wrench. I can name more songs from the “Flashdance” soundtrack than professional athletes.

But none of these traits is as difficult to deal with as my complete helplessness when it comes to cars. My name is Jeff, and I am automotively challenged.

As a man, you’re expected to “just understand” cars in the way that virtuoso musicians “just understand” their instruments, or the way that Hummer drivers “just understand” how to cope with the fact that they are terrible people and nobody likes them. It’s not something you learn, it’s something you’re born with. Like how a good writer “just understands” that a preposition is something a sentence should never end with.

For most of my male friends, identifying and fixing a car-related problem is like a reflex, as automatic as blinking when you sneeze or paging through your wife’s Victoria’s Secret catalog whenever she leaves the house. But I was apparently born without the automotive gene, as well as the athletic gene and the gene that tells you not to wear black socks with shorts.

I “just understand” cars about as much as Anna Nicole Smith “just understands” molecular biology. Nine times out of 10, I can figure out where the key goes to start the car, but beyond that, they’re pretty much a complete mystery to me. Like my wife, but without all the shoes.

My helplessness in the face of mechanical problems is the giant oil drill in the Alaskan Wildlife Preserve of my self-esteem. Here I am, 28 years old and about as capable of fixing a car as Fox News is of reporting an unbiased fact. The embarrassment is crippling.

So you can imagine how, when my car sputtered to a stop outside of a party a few weeks ago, I was filled with absolute dread. I like my humiliation in bite-size portions. To be revealed as a helpless half-man in front of my wife is tolerable, if not routine; but to expose an entire house full of strangers to my wimpering girlishness was just too much.

In a moment of optimism, I thought that maybe the problem with my car was something so obvious that I could figure it out myself. Maybe I’d pop open the hood to discover a pack of squirrels hanging out on my engine, smoking cigars and playing poker. I’d put my hands on my hips and shake my head in mock frustration. “Look, guys,” I’d say, “You’re going to have to find another place for your poker game. Now shoo!” And then the squirrels would run off, problem solved.

“It was just a little issue with the gas-valve piston pump,” I’d tell the guys at the party. “I tweaked the alternator clutch hose and oscillated the catalytic viscosity belts. She’s running like new.” They’d pat me on the back, hand me a Coors Light and usher me into the den to watch some football, scratch ourselves, and braid each other’s back hair, or whatever manly men do when they’re left alone.

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t a pack of squirrels at all. Instead, I opened the hood to discover a bubbling globule of corrosion on the ... on the, uh ... thinger. Now, I’m no mechanic, but I was pretty sure I’d found the root of the problem.

The thing about manly men is that they can detect the sound of a hood being popped open from a mile away. They’re like sharks sniffing out blood in the water, except the blood is engine grease and the sharks have hairy forearms and need to pull up their pants in the back.

My chances of survival were becoming slimmer by the minute. I started to panic. My palms were sweating like Jessica Simpson at a spelling bee.
I jumped back into the car, sank down in the seat and began to frantically evaluate my options. One, I could set fire to the car. That way, I would look less like a bumbling idiot and more like a hapless victim.

“We were just pulling up to the party when the car suddenly burst into flames!” I’d explain to everyone as the firetruck pulled away. “I just wish I’d had some time to get under the hood with my tools and tackle this problem like a man! That’s what really burns me up!” Then the other men would pat me on the back, hand me a Coors Light and usher me inside the house, where we’d eat our weight in beef jerky and light our own farts, or whatever manly men do to show solidarity in a time of crisis.

Or two, I could be mature about the whole situation, walk inside the house and admit to the other men that I needed help.

I was just about to strike the match when my wife pointed out that people were already watching us from the front window. Defeated, I hung my head and began the long march up the path to the house of humiliation. Several men were already huddled by the front door, giving me a look of consternation that said, “This nancy probably doesn’t even have a favorite NASCAR driver.” I might as well have been prancing up the path in a pair of My Little Pony underwear. Which I technically was, but they didn’t know that.

I took a deep breath, glanced over at my wife and headed through the door to put the final nail in the coffin of my manliness. Goodbye, old friend. At least we tried.

That was her first mistake. Her second mistake was grossly underestimating the speed at which I could regress to the mindset of an 18-year-old.

There is a state of being that a man enters whenever he’s left alone, as if a veil were lifted from his eyes. I call it the state of Manlightenment, which, once achieved, is like being thrust into a long forgotten dimension, one in which entire meals are made of beef jerky; in which the only required uniform is your favorite pair of underpants; in which “T-shirt,” “hanky” and “napkin” all refer to the same piece of cloth.

As my wife closed the door behind her, I stood in the middle of the living room, paralyzed by the limitless possibilities now open to me. What would I do first? Surf across our hardwood floors in my socks? Rent the Rambo trilogy? Eat an entire chocolate cake with a pair of chopsticks?

I could do anything. I could put roller skates on the cat. I could bite the heads off all the Goldfish crackers and throw the rest back in the box. I could put on my wife’s underwear and prance around to Kylie Minogue songs. Not that I would, but I could. Forget I said that.

The only things standing between me and complete Manlightenment were the dogs. The dogs represented responsibility. They needed to be fed. They needed to go for walks. They needed to wear funny hats! Come here, doggies!

Minutes later, my dogs sat on the living room rug looking up at me, the Jack Russell in an adorable little sombrero, the cocker spaniel in a little pink bow that slid down over her left eye. They looked confused and ashamed, not very festive at all. Clearly what was needed here was a pep talk.

“Alright, listen, dogs. We have two short days to live life without boundaries. Think of it like a weekend in a giant field full of defenseless bunnies and fire hydrants and unlimited access to the cat’s litterbox. Yum! So you can see why this is important to me. Here’s my point: for the next 48 hours, let’s not bother Daddy with our usual complaints. If you get hungry, here are two large pizzas. If you need to go to the bathroom, here are two large pizza boxes. And let’s see ... well, that’s pretty much all you do. OK, do we have an understanding?”

I looked at the dogs. They looked back at me. One passed gas, the other curled into a circle and began licking himself. I knew then that we were all on the same page.

Admittedly, I had a few concerns about being able to achieve Manlightenment after such a long hiatus. What if I was too mature? What if my tastes had changed? Maybe I’d been stuck in a different reality for too long, the reality of man living in a grown up world, working a grown up job, married to a grown up wife, slave to a seemingly endless list of hard-to-remember rules.

“Don’t burp the alphabet at the dinner table.”

“Don’t answer the door in your underpants.”

“Take the trash out.”

“Don’t burp the pledge of allegiance at the dinner table.”

“How many days have you been wearing those underpants?”

“I told you to take the trash out.”

“If you teach our children to burp at the dinner table, I’ll kill you.”

“Is that smell coming from you?”

“You forgot to take the trash out!”

These kind of rules, obviously, are enough to break any man’s spirit. But had they broken mine? Was I too far gone? Or was I still capable of recapturing my manhood? I pondered these questions long and hard as I stood in the kitchen, in my tighty whiteys and a cowboy hat, dunking hot dogs into the peanut butter jar and sipping Red Bull through a Twizzler.

It occurred to me that five years ago this would have been a perfectly normal scene in my life, give or take the tighty whiteys. But the fact is, I am no longer a 23-year-old bachelor, and it’s exactly this kind of behavior that I, by which I mean my wife, will not tolerate.

Over the next few hours, I learned a lot of important things about myself, including the following:

1. While I can fit eight dimes up my right nostril, I can only fit seven up my left;

2. I don’t need my hands to operate the TV remote, or to eat grapes;

3. I don’t look good in bikini briefs;

4. My head is nearly a half-pound over the average weight;

5. You can totally get razor burn on places other than your face;

6. I cannot eat baked beans while doing a headstand.

I also learned that chocolate sauce is delicious over chili and potato chips, but not very good at all on a kielbasa. I know, I was as shocked as you about the kielbasa.

That night I dreamt that my internal organs were going on strike. They were all parading around my living room, waving little picket signs that said things like, “Just say no to chili dogs after midnight!” and “Digest this: we demand better working conditions!”

In the morning, I woke up to what I could only assume was an angry mountain cat trying to claw its way out of my stomach. I spent the next 24 hours sprawled out on the couch, whimpering softly as thousands of tiny little Irishmen slipped on miniature kilts and performed an endless round of Riverdance in my belly. And then, just as I was about to succumb to the delirium of my pain, my wife came walking through the door.

“Oh, what’s wrong, baby?” she cooed. “I’ll make you some soup and tea, and you’ll feel better in no time!”

I looked at the dogs. They looked back at me. One rolled over so my wife could scratch his belly, the other lay her head on my wife’s knee and went to sleep. I knew then that we were all on the same page.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I want to do most of the time.

The term “cell phone,” as you may know, is derived from the Latin word “cellophonicus,” which experts loosely translate as “Hello? Can you hear me? Sorry, I’m driving through a tunnel!”

A few weeks ago I was standing in line at the grocery store when a woman came walking up behind me. She looked me right in the eyes and shouted, “Hi, baby. How are you?”

“Um,” I hesitated, “I’m not sure I know you. Have we met?”

“What are you wearing tonight?” she yelled.

“I’ll probably put on some sweatpants ... Are you sure we know each other?”

“Ha ha ha ha! Potatoes!”

“I’m sorry, but ...”

“Potatoes!”

Then I noticed the little wire running from her ear down to her hip, where a cell phone was clipped to her belt.

Thoroughly embarrassed, I spun around to the cashier. “Can you believe her?” I hissed. “That’s so rude!”

The cashier rolled her eyes, reached up to her head, and popped out her earpiece. “I’m sorry, I was on the phone. What were you saying?”

Cell phones are the new Spandex – they’re OK for your personal use around the house, but there are some ugly details of your life that the rest of us just don’t need to know about. Yet in restaurants, malls, office spaces, and theaters across the country, cell phone users insist on yelling, laughing, and blabbing the details of their morbidly boring private lives at top volume into their phones, completely unaware that they have become the giant pink flamingoes stuck in the front lawn of our society.

I have a few friends who are absolute cell phone junkies. Most of their lives are spent prancing around in desperate search of salvation in the form of cell phone reception. Should their antennae fail them for more than a few seconds, they drop to the floor and start flopping around like bug-eyed fish in the bottom of a boat. To lose reception, perchance to miss a call. To miss a call, perchance to have to wait five whole minutes for crucial information, such as how their friend just won $20 for snorting a gummy worm up his nose.

These are people who, given a choice between losing their cell phones or being eaten by a bear, would choose being eaten by the bear because maybe, just maybe, they’d still have good reception inside the bear.

If a cell phone and a baby fell into a river, they’d save the cell phone, because you can’t send text messages with a baby.

If a cell phone could fall in love, they’d marry it. They might anyway.

I was driving a friend to a concert the other week when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him hunched over his phone, slowly stroking its side like a puppy. The soft, blue glow of the screen reflected in his eyes, which were dilated like saucers. His tongue was lolling out of his mouth, and strands of drool stretched across his teeth like spider webs.

He coughed a few times, and then started whispering to himself. “My precious,” he hissed. “We loves you, my precious.”

“Dude, snap out of it!” I yelled, smacking him across the face.

“Gollum!” he coughed, jumping out the door and running into a cave, where he would spend the next 2,000 years worshipping his precious cell phone in the shadow.

These are the kind of people who make calls not because they have something to say, but because they still have 20 free weekend minutes to use. Rather than restrict their cell phone to emergencies (like getting eaten by a bear), my friends walk around with their itchy little trigger-fingers quivering on the speed dial button at all times, because you never know when you’ll come up with a real zinger.

“Thank you for calling Fly Magazine, this is Jeff.”

“Hey, Jeff – what do you call it when Plain people take classes in higher mathematics?”

“ ... What?”

“Trigonamish! Get it? Trigonomics and Amish? Trigonamish?”

“You’re an idiot.”

I personally have a cell phone plan that allows no more than 60 minutes of calling time a month. I refuse to pay my cell phone company $20 more a month just so my friends can call me every time they pick a booger that looks like Regis Philbin. And, given that bear attacks are not frequent in my part of the city, one would think that 60 minutes would be adequate for me.
Sadly, this is not the case, since my friends persist in calling my cell phone every five minutes, no matter how many times I threaten to list their names (Jeremy) and phone numbers (293-9772) in my columns. So instead, I end up paying my cell phone company $120 more a month for going 10 minutes over my limit.

I’ll be in the kitchen slaving away as usual – baking cookies for orphans – when I’m rudely interrupted by my cell phone ringing from the next room.
I throw down my oven mitts and go running into the living room.

“Hello?”

“I ... aff ... ot ilk ... ose!” says the caller.

“Hold on, I don’t have any reception!” I yell into the phone, running up the stairs to the balcony.

“OK, try again!” I pant, doubled over. “Hello? Are you there?”

“I ju ... ard ... out ... ose!” the caller replies.

“Hold on!” I gasp, galloping out into the doody minefield I call my backyard.

“Are you there? Hello? Hello?” I yell.

“Hi, Jeff,” says one of my friends.

“Hey. I’m in the middle of baking cookies for orphans. What do you need?”

“I was just laughing so hard that I shot milk out my nose!” he says.

“That’s crazy. So, what are you calling about?”

“Um ... I was just calling to tell you how I was just laughing so hard that I shot milk out of my nose.”

“You idiot.”

The bottom line is, these cell phone violators have got to be stopped. And it just so happens that I have the perfect solution, a plan that is sure to vanquish our dependency on cell phones once and for all. It’s so simple! All we have to do is ... oh, hold on, I have a call ...

That’s a great question. The answer is quite simple: paperclips. I contol them. Every last one of them. The power can be intoxicating.

You see, among my job duties each month is a task of immeasurable importance, without which the entire business would surely crumble. Some call it data entry; I prefer to call it Computer Input Science.

The workflow in our office is such that, in the process of Computer Input Science, all of the paperclips end up at my desk. Naturally, I hide them where nobody can find them.

Consequently, my coworkers spend the beginning of each work cycle frantically tearing up the office in a desperate search for a way to bind their papers together. Eventually, one of them bursts into my office, a loose paper in each hand, shaking like a junkie with bloodshot eyes and little beads of perspiration on his upper lip.

“Hey Jeff, is there any chance that I could get a paperclip?” he says, clearing his throat nervously and staring down at his shoes.

“Hey who?” I say menacingly, arching my eyebrow and leering at him from the corner of my eye.

“Oh Captain, My Captain, Lord of the Office and Supreme Ruler of Supplies,” he recites, his voice breaking. Dark stains begin to form in the armpits of his dress shirt.

“That’s better,” I say, reaching under my desk and picking up my Siamese cat, which purs demurely as I begin to stroke it with one gloved hand. “What was it you wanted from the Captain?”

“A paperclip, sir. Please. If you can spare one,” he murmurs, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

I lean back in my leather chair to ponder his request. With slow, deliberate motions I lift the lid of my humidor and withdraw a Cuban cigar. Are they illegal? Yes, but you have to understand, once you achieve this level of power, laws become more like suggestions. Returning my steely gaze to my coworker, I insert the cigar into my cutter and deftly lop off the end. He winces and lets out a small whimper.

“No, I don’t think so,” I say, flicking open my diamond-encrusted Zippo lighter and propping my feet up on my solid oak desk. “I don’t think I have any paperclips to spare.”

“Please! I’m begging you!” blurts my coworker, running a sweaty palm through his hair. “Just a few paperclips to get me through my day. You know I’m good for it!”

“Do I? Do I know that?” I say, rising from my chair. “Last month I lent five paperclips to Eric. Five paperclips! And did he ever pay me back? Did he?”

“No,” he mutters.

“No who?”

“No, Captain, My Captain.”

“That’s right, he didn’t!” I bellow. “And do you know what happens when people don’t pay me back? I get upset. And what happens when I get upset? Certain people have unfortunate accidents. I’d hate for you to have an unfortunate accident!”

To drive home the point, I unlock the bottom drawer of my desk, draw out a dark object and toss it at my coworker’s feet. It takes a moment, but he soon recognizes the carnage as the remnants of Eric’s missing stapler. The base has been savagely dented, the black enamel coating has been sadistically scratched off, the staples hang grotesquely like loose teeth. No mercy has been shown to this stapler. My coworker barely makes it to a trash can before forfeiting his breakfast.

“You monster!” he cries between retches.

I throw my head back and release a sinister laugh. “It’s just business, my boy,” I shrug. “Perhaps you and I can come to an agreement.”

“Name your price,” my coworker hisses, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“I’m feeling generous today,” I say, dropping a pinch of food into the tank of tropical fish that rests between the mini bar and the plasma-screen TV. “The paperclips will only cost you 10 percent of your paycheck, plus you have to wear a bra on the outside of your clothes for the rest of the month.”

“Is that it?” the coworker winces.

“What can I say? I’m in a good mood,” I reply.

“Looks like I’ve got an appointment with my wife’s lingerie drawer,” he sighs.

“That’s my boy,” I say, dropping three paperclips into his outstretched palm.

“It’s funny – I never realized how truly gracious you are with your power,” my coworker exclaims. One by one, the rest of the office staffers gather behind him, nodding their heads in agreement.

“Week after week, you carry this entire company on your back without a single complaint!” shouts another coworker.

“Well, yes, it’s not easy,” I say humbly.

“You do more work than 20 of us added together!” offers another.

“I guess I can’t argue with that,” I say.

“On behalf of all of us,” says another, “I’d like to apologize for failing to recognize your invaluable contributions to our team. You just can’t be topped when it comes to data entry.”

“It’s called Computer Input Science!” I shriek, swatting the paperclips from their hands and chasing them all from the room.

I guess some of us were just meant to suffer in quiet dignity, secure in the knowledge that, whether our coworkers realize it or not, we are the ones who are really in control. We don’t need praise, we don’t need accolades. We just need the paperclips.

A few weeks ago, I decided that I was tired of looking like I was carrying around Danny DeVito under my shirt. I was going to lose some weight, and I was going to do it before one more person accused me of shoplifting a cantaloupe.

The question was, How?

I’ve already failed miserably on the annoyingly popular Atkins diet. I did manage to lose a total of eight pounds on the diet, but somehow ended up looking even fatter than when I started. While the scale said yes, my jeans with the 30-inch waist said, “Back off, tubby!” Wait, no, that was my wife. Anyway, I concluded that all eight pounds must have come from my self-esteem. Three months of being silently judged by food service employees will do that to you.

“No bun on your burger?” the confused McDonald’s employees would gasp.

“That’s right,” I’d say.

“No bun at all?”

“Nope.”

“Just the burger, without the bun?”

“Yep ...”

“Supersize the fries and milkshake?”

“Of course.”

“Apple pie?”

“Two, please.”

Of course, as soon as I quit the diet, every restaurant on the planet added Atkins-approved items to its menu. That’s like spending three months in jail, only to discover upon your release that it’s since become completely legal to shave your neighbor’s cat. For example.

It’s possible that the fault is mine that the diet didn’t work. I’ve never been very good at things like “avoiding sweets” or “easing up on the carbs” or “not eating cake for breakfast.” I’m just a man, after all. A man with child-bearing hips.

Dieting just wasn’t doing the trick. I knew that in order to lose weight I would have to do something I’d been meaning to do my entire life. Iron my shirt? No, that’s not it. Stop my hairline from receding? No, but thanks for noticing.

I had to exercise. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

Late at night, after my wife was sound asleep, I raided her closet. Headband? Check. Sweatpants? Check. Dignity? Nowhere to be seen. I was ready to go!

Down the stairs I crept like a spandex bandit and quietly popped my wife’s yoga tape into our VCR. On the screen appeared a perky, unitard-clad woman smiling from cheek to cheek as she slowly started folding herself in half and stuffing herself into her own purse.

“Namaste!” she exclaimed, pretending to just then notice there was a camera in the room. “Welcome to the new you!”

The new me! Yes, today was a new beginning! The world was going to see a brand new Jeff, a slim Jeff, a Jeff who could no longer use his own belly as a TV tray. I plopped myself down on my wife’s yoga mat and waited for the magic to happen.

“OK, we’ll start with some simple warm-up exercises,” the instructor said. “With your legs stretched out before you, bend over and touch your toes.”

So far, so good. I mean, I could only reach my knees, but I could already feel what professionals call “the burn.” I figured I had probably already lost a pound or two. Exercising is fun!

“Now,” said the instructor, “lift your body off the mat with your tongue and do 10 push-ups. Lower yourself back down, do a split, and rotate your head 360 degrees to the left, like this. Good. Now clap your hands in salutation to the sun and remove any excess wax from your ears with your pinky toes.”

That’s when things started going downhill. As it turns out, not only do I have the upper-body strength of a Twix bar, but my sense of balance falls somewhere between that of a drunk toddler and a one-legged cat on a treadmill.

Approximately 30 painful minutes of yoga later, I lay paralyzed on the floor, panting and drooling like a teenage boy at the Super Bowl halftime show. Fortunately, my dogs were there in my time of need to provide a number of helpful services, like trying to perch on my forehead and bury their noses in my most private of places.

The pain I felt where my “abs” were supposed to be was comparable only to, say, shoving a jalapeño pepper up your nose. But I wasn’t discouraged. I could hardly wait to drag myself to a mirror and inspect my new, chiseled physique. My wife would hardly recognize me in the morning. “Don’t be scared, honey,” I’d have to say, “It’s me, your husband.”

“Jeff?” she’d gasp in wide-eyed wonder. “But you look so ... so ...”

“I know,” I’d say with an alluring smile, flexing my enormous quadriceps and then reaching out to steady my swooning bride.

Once I was able to feel my legs again, I brushed the various cats and dogs off of my lap and rushed to the bathroom mirror to admire the fruits of my labor. Imagine my disappointment when all I saw staring back at me was my old body, only redder and puffier after being subjected it to a half-hour of positions that I’m pretty sure are outlawed in several states.

Clearly, exercise was not for me. Like Anna Nicole Smith and literacy, some pairings just aren’t meant to be. For 30 long minutes, I gave my all to exercise, and exercise gave nothing in return. I knew I could never be happy in a one-sided relationship like that.

But at least the night wasn’t going to be a total bust. If I stayed awake for just a few more hours, I could be first in line for fresh Krispy Kremes!

The flu? Worse! Anthrax? Way worse!

No, this is a virus far more terrifying that hits much closer to home. It’s name: baby fever.

Everywhere I look, babies are popping up like bread from a toaster. My sister, co-workers, friends – it seems like everyone I know is suddenly plummeting into the dark abyss known as parenthood, the new mothers glowing beautifully, the new fathers walking around in a daze like someone just gave them a surprise root canal. And the fever is spreading faster than STDs on Kid Rock’s tour bus.

Pop! Oh no, there’s another baby!

Pop, pop! Oh man, sounds like twins!

Pop! Oh, whew! That one was just the sound of Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl halftime show.

My entire world is turning into a big game of Whack-a-mole. Only instead of moles, it’s babies, and instead of whacking them on a head with a mallet, you have to tickle their chins and say things like, “What a widdle bitty cutesy bootsy boo!” This can be a little uncomfortable for someone whose vocabulary doesn’t normally include words like “widdle” and “bootsy.” But spend more than five minutes in a room with a baby, and you’ll be talking that way, too. It’s a proven fact that, in the presence of babies, our IQs automatically regress to that of a monkey and/or President.

Friends who just a few months ago were capable of holding entire conversations about how people who drive Hummers should be fed to lions are now reduced to goofy-talk about who would win in a battle between the Power Rangers and the Powerpuff Girls. Which is so stupid, because the Powerpuff Girls’ ability to fly clearly gives them the advantage.

There are only a few things left in this world capable of snapping our poor friends out of their sleep-deprived stupor; by far the most exciting of these is when the baby “makes.” One whiff of baby doody, and our friends start doing cartwheels up the stairs like they just won the lottery, their eyes dilated in parental glee. “Oh, look! Baby made a poopsey-woopsey! Hurray for poopsey-woopsey” they holler, shoving the diaper up to my face. “Would you like to see the poopsey-woopsey?” No, I would not like to see the poopsey-woopsey.

We have entered baby mode, when even the most NASCAR-watching man develops a little lisp (pronounced “widdle wisp”) and addresses the baby in a falsetto squeal. “Apple” becomes “apple-wapple.” “Blanket” becomes “blankey-wankey.” “Beef jerky” becomes “Jeff, I can’t believe you just fed that to my baby!”

Now, I don’t really have a problem with the whole concept of having babies, provided that you keep them properly muzzled and caged. It’s just a little unsettling to think that my friends are the ones producing them. It’s like the first time you realize a teenage girl would find it officially icky if you started talking to her at a party; you always knew it was coming some day, but it’s still a kick in the old-man shins when it happens.

The fact is, these babies are multiplying faster than ignorance at a Toby Keith concert. I’ve been trying to resign myself to the fact that I’m entering a new phase of life, that inevitably my social events will involve not red wine, but red juice; not tailgating parties, but Teletubbies; not dinner and a movie, but karaoke singalongs to Disney DVDs while snacking on the Cheerios the baby spilled between the couch cushions.

My wife and I plan to have children ourselves in a few years, but I have some concerns I’d like to address first. Among them is the fact that my little Jack Russell puppy finds babies to be both chewable and delicious, second only to the cat’s litterbox on the doggy taste-scale. So obviously we can’t have a baby yet, because our dog might eat it, and that could make his tummy really upset.

A second concern is that my baby might not be cuter than my friends’ babies. There are those who argue that all babies are cute, and that you love them no matter what they look like. These people are lying, and probably have ugly babies. The truth is, having a baby is a real crap-shoot. As my wife and I have witnessed, even our most beautiful friends are capable of producing a baby that looks like Elmer Fudd sucking on a lemon and vinegar popsicle. (For any of my friends reading this, of course I’m talking about someone else’s baby. Yours is cute as a button. Wutton.)

So until science has invented a dog-proof, ugly-proof baby, I’ll do everything in my power to avoid this new and powerful strain of baby fever. Although babies can be awfully cute. And fun. And loveable. And ... oh, crap.

The other day, as I tried to maneuver my little car through the snow in a relatively busy shopping area, I suddenly noticed in my rearview mirror what I could only assume was a battleship that was terribly, terribly lost. Noting that the battleship was about two inches from my bumper, I thought it best to switch lanes and allow it to pass.

As I swerved into the slow lane, the battleship rushed past me and blared its horn so loudly that I couldn’t help but pee a little. I peered up to where I imagined the cabin would be, but rather than finding a stately sea captain gazing off into the horizon, I saw a red-faced, bug-eyed businessman grinding his teeth and giving me the one-finger salute as he blew past me in his sparkling, new Hummer.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with Hummers, I’ll do my best to summarize them in the most fair and objective way possible.

A Hummer is like a four-ton Viagra pill on wheels, usually driven by a guy with a temper shorter than Justin Guarini’s singing career. They weigh 6,500-8,500 pounds each and are about as aerodynamic as Anna Nicole Smith, which is most of the reason why they average 8-12 miles per gallon. I’m also pretty sure that they promote back-hair growth and shrivel one’s sexual organs, although I can’t prove it.

After being popularized during the Gulf War, these enormous military vehicles are now being marketed for $106,185-$117,508 to ordinary civilians, by which I mean people who make more money than the New York Yankees. Now, I’m not trying to judge anyone for the kind of vehicle they drive. Our Constitution gives every American the right to destroy the environment to the degree that he or she sees fit. All I’m saying is that people who drive Hummers will never, ever get into Heaven.

Hummers aren’t all bad, of course. For example, because of their tremendous size, most people whose cars collide with a Hummer are killed instantly. Wait, that isn’t right. What I meant to say was, because of Hummers’ ridiculously bad visibility, statistics show that Hummer owners as a group have developed the regrettable habit of backing over their own children in the driveway. Boy, this just isn’t coming out right.

But you know what’s boring? Facts. Let’s leave the indisputable truth behind (you know, like how SUV drivers tend to be “insecure and vain” and are “apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed,” according to market research conducted by the automakers themselves*) and try to concentrate on more ambiguous matters, like what attracts people to Hummers in the first place.

As far as I’m concerned, driving a Hummer anywhere in Central Pennsylvania is like trying to pick a piece of broccoli from your teeth with Ruben Studdard – sometimes the situation just calls for something a little smaller. Like Clay Aiken. I mean, maybe, maybe if you’re living in the frozen tundra, then perhaps you need a vehicle with a little more oomph to it. Something with an engine the size of, say, an Alaskan oil drill. But otherwise, driving a Hummer down our Pennsylvania streets is like trying to remove a splinter from your thumb with a bazooka.

In theory, sure, Hummers make for a great off-roading experience. But the truth is, not many of the Hummer drivers you see hogging up both lanes of our city streets are en route to an off-roading adventure, unless you count the speedbumps in the grocery store parking lot. And I don’t blame them – if I spent $100,000 on a car, I’d be afraid to get it scratched, too. For similar reasons, I’ve been a little hesitant to wear my new cashmere gym shorts when I take my dog to the dog park. I usually leave them at home, safely folded beside my diamond-encrusted jock strap.

Now, I’d be lying if I said that Hummer commercials didn’t resonate with my inner-frat boy. What red-blooded man doesn’t want a vehicle that is both as large as a tank and nimble enough to drive over a mound of Green Party protesters, should such a mound happen to cross your path?

I mean, with their size and agility, Hummers are one pair of bikini briefs away from being a professional wrestler, give or take a few IQ points. It’s like strapping a saddle on Stone Cold Steve Austin and riding him around town like a big, bald bronco – but in a totally chummy, hetero kind of way. But as attractive as that image may be to Hummer owners, certainly there are other, less destructive avenues of expressing one’s manliness, like refusing to shut the bathroom door when you pee, or eating your weight in beef jerky.

Now, there are those who would argue that men who drive such enormous vehicles are trying to compensate for certain shortcomings in their lives, if you catch my drift. I, for one, am not going to stoop to that level, primarily because I don’t think that Hummer drivers’ teeny little bits and pieces have anything to do with it. Nope, I don’t think that their itty-bitty twigs and berries have any bearing on this situation at all. As far as I’m concerned, there’s really no need to even mention their wee little pigs in a blanket. Let’s be mature and not drag their baby peas and carrots into this.

I’m sure that once this article comes out I’ll be getting plenty of friendly fan mail from Hummer owners, mostly to the effect of, “I’m going to drive over you with my Hummer.”

To which I boldly reply, “Please don’t.”

* “High and Mighty,” Keith Bradsher

It’s my belief that, if you’ve already got one bad dog dominating your home life by eating, then puking up, then re-eating everything in your house that’s not chained down, then one thing you clearly do not need is a second bad dog. Four out of five doctors agree that a second bad dog, when added to the first bad dog, would make a total of two bad dogs, which also means twice as much destruction and puppy vomit waiting for you when you get home from work.

The fifth doctor is my wife.

At some point, my wife got the idea into her head that a second dog is exactly what we need to cure our first dog’s behavioral problems. And not just any second dog will do. What my wife wants is a pug dog. A stupid, stupid pug dog.

For those of you who don’t know, pug dogs have the mental capacity of a washrag, which in turn has the mental capacity of Anna Nicole Smith. Which is why no one keeps Anna Nicole Smiths as house pets. Not anymore, anyway.

If you put a pug dog and a pair of gym shorts at the beginning of a maze, the gym shorts would find their way out first. Then the pug dog would eat them. Then he’d throw them up on your slippers.

In summary, trying to fix our dog’s problems by getting a pug dog is like trying to cure Keanu Reeves of bad acting by making him study old Patrick Swayze tapes.

Our first dog, Henry, is a Jack Russel terrier, which is basically like a tiny alligator that’s covered with fur and never stops bouncing. Although they sometimes hide it very well, Jack Russels are known for their intelligence and ability to be trained. For example, if we command Henry to stop chewing on that defenseless baby and put it back where he got it, and to cough up its shoe, plus its rattle, and its brother, nine times out of 10, he’ll do it.

A pug dog, on the other hand, would just stand there with the baby in its mouth, snorting and looking all crazy with its bug eyes rolling around in different directions. Then he’d throw up on your slippers.

My wife’s idea, which actually started making sense after a while, was that our two idiot puppies would spend all day jumping all over each other while mommy and daddy were at work. Then, when we came home, our two exhausted puppies would lay at our feet, all tuckered out from a long, hard day of hiney sniffing.

Enamored with the idea of spending an evening at home that didn’t involve prying our dog’s teeth off of the neighbor kids, I agreed to a test run with a pug dog belonging to a friend who, for reasons that are obvious to me now, was looking to dish the the little drool factory off on someone else.

I knew we were going to have problems when, by the time he had waddled from our friend’s car to our front door, the little pug was snorting harder than George W. at a frat party. His bug eyes were bulging out of his head and his entire body was shaking like Rush Limbaugh stumbling past the pharmaceutical counter at the supermarket. (Jeff 2, republicans 0).

See Henry. See Henry run. See Henry bulldoze the little pug dog and jump on top of him like he was the last defenseless baby on earth. See Henry step on the pug’s face, bite his legs, shove his nose where no sun shines, and sit down where the pug’s neck ought to be.

“Oh boy, oh boy, this is gonna be fun, fun, fun!” said Henry, rolling the pug across the carpet like a White House intern. (Jeff 3, democrats 0)

“Snort, snort, wheez!” went the inverted pug, gasping for air and pedaling his legs like he was trying to get his imaginary bicycle up a very large imaginary hill.

I started to panic. Do dogs get heart attacks? If he doesn’t survive, could we be charged for involuntary dogslaughter? I’m too young and pretty to go to jail!

Our obviously appalled friend snatched up her dog and bolted out the door. As she fled to her car, she looked back over her shoulder, where she saw Henry popping up and down at our front door like the devil on a pogo stick.

True story: we never saw that girl or the pug dog again.

After the pug dog episode came the three-legged dog episode, which some of you might remember from a previous column. To recap: my wife tried to kidnap a three-legged dog she found in a parking lot. Why? Because it had three legs, and she loved it.

So, we had almost killed a pug dog, and we almost got caught trying to kidnap a three-legged mutt in the middle of a rain storm. Was fate trying to send us a message? Don’t be ridiculous.

As we speak, my darling wife is making arrangements for another test-run, this time with my sister’s geriatric cocker spaniel. She’s also decided that she wants a pair of ducks (like, actual living ducks) and a goat. Seriously.
But sometimes a man’s got to put his foot down. I draw the line at goats. The choice for me is goat-free. I’m laying down the law here.

Which means that we’ll probably have a goat by the end of the month.

(Goat 1, Jeff 0)

I mean, sure, her car looks like it just lost a wrestling match with Anna Nicole Smith over the last Twinkie on earth. But for all we know, all of the damage to her car was caused by a series of completely unavoidable accidents. Maybe it wasn’t really my wife’s fault at all.

Like how her front bumper is twisted up like a pretzel and practically dragging on the ground – I think it would be a mistake to just assume that this was caused by my wife’s allegedly terrible driving. Maybe her car was charged by an angry rhinocerous, and she was lucky to escape with just a busted bumper. Or maybe she saw a bank robbery in progress and rammed the getaway car to foil the crime. You can’t rule that kind of stuff out.

Or how her right tail light has been shattered – who says it’s because she backed into a telephone pole because she never, ever, ever looks behind her before going into reverse? For all we know, she was outside doing some gardening one day when suddenly she saw a senior citizen in a wheelchair speeding wildly down the hill without any brakes, so she jumped in her car, raced down the hill, surpassed the senior citizen, let the wheelchair gently bump into the back of her car, and eased the old man to a stop mere yards from the dangerous intersection at the bottom of the hill.

Sure, the impact of the wheelchair shattered her tail light, but it was a small price to pay for the life of the hapless senior citizen.

Or consider the countless scrapes, scratches and dents that cover her entire car from dangling bumper to bumper. You can’t just assume that these were the result of my wife being the absolute worst driver ever in the history of the world. I mean, maybe she was on her way to the grocery store one afternoon when ... uh ... an airplane transporting thousands of frozen turkeys flew overhead and ... um ... and right when the airplane was over her car, it was struck by lightening and cracked in half, and all of the turkeys fell out and plummeted through the sky right at my wife’s car, and ...

No, I would never, ever call my wife a bad driver. Because she’s not a bad driver. She’s just a terrible parker.

Watching my wife trying to maneuver her car into our garage is like watching Jessica Simpson trying to work her way into a childproof bottle of aspirin. It’s embarrassing for everyone involved, but try as you might, you just can’t make yourself look away from the carnage.

I’ll be standing in the kitchen, tirelessly slaving over dinner as usual, when suddenly I hear the sound of crumpling metal screeching through the air like Joan Rivers on fire. Through the window, I’ll see a hubcap slowly rolling its way from the garage to the front door.

“Hi honey. How was your day?” I’ll say.

“Fine. How was yours?” she’ll reply.

“Pretty good. Was that our hubcap?”

“Shut up.”

“Honey, you can’t just ...”

“Shut up.”

“How hard is it to just ...”

“Shut up.”

“But ...”

“Shut up.”

Fortunately for my blood pressure, I care as much about our cars as I do about Joan Rivers on fire, which is to say, not much. No, that’s not true. If Joan Rivers was really on fire, I’d probably throw some water on her; if my car was on fire, I’d rescue my box of casette tapes and then toast some marshmallows.

But my wife brings up a very good point just now as I’m writing this: without a functioning car, how in the world would she get to Payless each day to buy a new pair of shoes? This is something I had neglected to consider.

But in order to keep her car in top shopping condition, I have to take it to the mechanic approximately once every 15 minutes, which is about how long it takes for my wife to drive her car home from the mechanic’s and try to park it.

The problem with that is, my mechanic is the devil.

I wouldn’t be as frustrated with my mechanic if I didn’t have the sneaking suspicion that he was making stuff up.

“Unfortunately, it looks like you’ve got a major problem with your pim-pom,” my mechanic reported during my last visit.

“My pim-pom?” I winced.

“Oh, yeah. Big time. You’re lucky we caught it when we did. A few more days of driving, and your pim-pom would probably have been grinding right into your patooter – and you know what that means!”

“What?” I gasped.

“Well, for one thing, the heat from your patooter would have worn your snoozle all the way down to the gingerdoodle!” he exclaimed. “And patooter-provoked snoozle-wear on your gingerdoodle is no laughing matter. Why, you’d be lucky to get another five miles out of this car!”

“Five miles?” I cried.

“Tops.”

“Oh, man!”

“Yeah!”

“Whew!”

“Uh-huh!”

“That was close!”

“You bet!”

We stood in silence for a while, shaking our heads and marveling at our good fortune.

“So,” I said, taking in a deep breath, “How much does it cost to replace my ... uh ...”

“Your pim-pom.”

“Sure.”

“Let’s see ...,” said the mechanic, picking up a clipboard and furrowing his brow. “After parts, labor and sales tax, automotive repair tax, repair-of-automotive tax, charging-you-way-too-much-because-you-don’t-know-any-better tax, breaking-stuff-myself-so-I-can-charge-you-to-fix-it tax, and tax tax, your total would be ... $800.”

I peed my pants a little. “$800? American dollars? Like, U.S. dollars? I need to sit down.”

When your car is worth less than the Backstreet Boys’ autograph, it’s difficult to invest another $800 into it. But my wife brings up another very good point just now: if we spent all of our money on a new car instead of fixing up our junker, how in the world would we be able to afford more dogs and the multiple doggie sweaters, doggie hats, and doggie toys that each of them would clearly require?

Yes ... I hadn’t thought of that.

If only our insurance covered rhinocerous attacks.