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.
Obviously, none of these people have ever burned the inside of their noses with a jalapeño pepper.
I should probably explain.
A few weeks ago, I was busy in the kitchen cooking dinner for my wife, which as far as you know is something I do on a regular basis. You could say that I really know my way around the kitchen. You could also say that there’s no way I could eat my body weight in Krispy Kremes. You’d be terribly wrong on both accounts.
The truth is, the minute I open a cookbook, my brain shuts down and I’m left with the mental capacity of a toddler and/or Jessica Simpson. Any recipe that involves more than one pan and five ingredients might as well be written in hieroglyphics. Or, in Jessica Simpson’s case, English.
Let me preface the rest of this story by saying that, while I have about as much competence in the kitchen as Anna Nicole Smith has at a chess match, this is a mistake that could happen to anybody. In doing my usual extensive research for this month’s article, I was appalled to discover that nowhere on a jalapeño pepper is it written that you should wear gloves when chopping them. Clearly, I am a victim here.
We journalists are the last watchdogs of society, and I am here to throw up a cautionary flag about the jalapeño pepper industry. If we allow this corporate giant to continue with such negligent behavior, we are opening the door to anarchy.
Before you know it, we’ll be living in a world without warnings, where some kind of “magic intuition” is supposed to let us know that our carry-out coffee is hot and our hairdryers should not be taken into the bathtub. And to that world I, for one, say, “No thank you!”
Sure, my wife might have offered up a few ambiguous warnings. “Honey, you should wear gloves when you’re chopping the peppers.” “Honey, you really should put on some gloves.” “Honey, you’re an idiot.”
But I made the mistake of assuming that my wife’s need to wear gloves while chopping peppers was like, say, her need to wad together an entire roll of paper towels in order to squash a spider. Because I’m so tough, I figured that the “terrible burning sensation” she was babbling about wasn’t going to be a big deal. I was wrong.
After a few minutes of dicing and slicing, I started experiencing a pain that I can only compare to shaving your entire body with a rusty straight razor and sitting down in a tub of rubbing alcohol. Not that I would know what that feels like.
I started shaking my fingers around in the air, knocking a few dishes onto the floor in the process. My eyes were tearing up a little bit, but in a totally manly way, like when your team loses the Super Bowl. The tearing up, of course, led to sniffling, and the sniffling led to me grabbing a tissue and blowing my nose, and blowing my nose led to me shoving a burning jalapeño finger right up each nostril.
My entire world was consumed by flames. If you’ve ever been walking near a fireplace and tripped and accidentally speared yourself in the nostril with a red-hot poker, then you have at least a slight idea of the pain I was experiencing. I ran to the sink and tried to invert my head under the faucet and snort water up my nose. It didn’t really help at all to dull the burning sensation, but it did almost make me drown, thereby distracting me for at least a moment from the hideous pain in my nostrils.
Then the flames came back even worse than before. “Fire!” I yelled, running in circles and fanning my nose. “Fire! I need a hospital! Get me a doctor! Fire! Call an ambulance!”
Meanwhile, my wife had entered the room to see what the commotion was. It was a relief to me just knowing that she was there for me during my time of need and would call the paramedics just as soon as she was able to stop laughing and pick herself up off the floor.
“You burnt it? Your nose? The peppers?” my wife howled, barely able to speak. “Did you? Your nose? With peppers? You did?” It wasn’t the consolation I was looking for.
Fortunately, my little Jack Russel terrier, Henry, was there to comfort me, by which I mean pee on the floor. Then he jumped up on me and tried to chew the wedding band off my finger. The one with jalapeño peppers all over it.
All of the hair on my dog’s back stood straight up. He started running around the room, grinding his face into the floor and shrieking like a piglet.
The good news is that my dog was eventually able to stop the burning in his mouth. The bad news is that he did it by climbing into the cat’s litterbox and helping himself to a deliciously soothing piece of doody. I decided to try other methods.
Methods that did not work: cramming ice chips into my nostrils; putting Aloe Vera up my nose; shooting water up my nose with a turkey baster.
Methods that did work: none. The fire burned on, constantly perpetuating itself in the coal mines of my nostrils until eventually, two days later, by the mercy of God, it slowly petered out. Sure, maybe I still haven’t recovered all of the feeling in my nostrils, and maybe I lost my sense of smell for half a month, but I survived it like a man.
Now, the second time I burned my nose with jalapeño peppers ...
