COFFEE WITH A FRIEND

I ran into a friend a few months ago and decided to catch up by having coffee with him. It turns out he was quite distraught due to the fact that his marriage of 37 years has just ended with his now ex-wife having tossed him aside for another man. It turns out my friend had known this other individual which is not all that uncommon, I guess. The two had shared many conversations over a period of several years. My friend recalled one time that this other guy had commented that a light bulb had just come on in his head. My friend assumed it meant that the guy was expressing that he’d just come up with a thought. Later, my friend discovered that the guy was really a robot and a light bulb actually had come on inside his head. To this day, he doesn't know if that’s what attracted his ex-wife to this guy or not. My friend has suffered greatly, not only because he feels a lesser man after losing his wife to another. But, given the fact “the other” was a robot, he’s totally demoralized! I told him that in my opinion, the light bulb turning on inside this guy’s head probably was a thought, and the thought was to run off with my friend’s wife. I though this would add a little humanity to the problem. I haven’t heard from the guy since.

WAR ON HETERO-SEXUAL MARRIAGE

It was a few years ago that I recall Bill O’Reilly declaring that he was going to lead the fight against the War on Christmas. It was a war envisioned only by the uber far-right- super-paranoid. They had become convinced that because clerks in large box department stores were overheard saying “happy holidays” rather than “merry Christmas” and because a stock boy named Jesus Rodriguez had allegedly been asked to hide his name badge by some hairball manager who feared customers would be offended by his first name that there was a massive cultural onslaught to wipe Christmas, if not the entirety of Western culture, from existence. This so called war played out with an array of mental pygmies like Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity jumping on the bandwagon as super patriot warriors who were willing to lay down their collective…well I don’t really know what it was as their lives were certainly never in jeopardy…essences to win this greatest of all battles. Shortly thereafter, Bill O’Reilly declared ‘victory” on his radio program upon learning Jesus was allowed to again wear his badge after an abundance of negative publicity hit the store where Jesus Rodriguez worked. As a result of this great victory, we are all the beneficiaries of 30 pound newspapers hitting our doorsteps a full month prior to Thanksgiving as well as an array of tasteless and tacky blow-up yard ornaments depicting such iconic religious symbols as Santa Claus, Frosty the Snowman, Dick Cheney and others, to name a few. As we have become a nation inclined to a permanent state of war, we were to suffer no reprieve from such after the conclusion of this decisive and quick victory in the war on Christmas. I am the proud uncle of a niece and nephew, both very good kids, who have met their soul mates and are scheduled to be married a few mere weeks from one another. At first I thought this quite the coincidence. Upon further examination, however, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are reacting to the current spate of news concerning the momentum with which various states and the country as a whole are accepting the concept of gay marriage. Now, gay marriage is an issue with which I have no complaint. If folks are willing to fight our wars and pay their taxes, then I’m for letting them marry whomever they wish. What I fear is not gay marriage. What I do fear is the thundering gallop of pandering politicians who will jump on any band wagon in order to garner votes by taking positions which will favor such regardless of what they themselves believe. It is with this in mind that I fear the declaration of the next cultural war, and it will lead to the taking of many prisoners. The war of which I speak of is the War on Hetero-sexual Marriage! It’s bound to happen as we are already going down that slippery slope with the permissiveness of gay marriage, childbirth out of wedlock, individually packed coffee pods, and electronic smokes. When will it end? It’s as if I can already hear these politicians railing against the concept of one man marrying one woman as going against everything in nature as if a horse married a camel or an elephant married a hippopotamus. “If men were meant to marry women, God would have ordained it,” would be pronounced by a mainstream politico most likely from some place like Texas. “Why, it’s akin to full-noodle frontity”, they will proclaim. Rick Perry will be outraged…“I’ve been married to a woman, the same woman, for over 35 years and let me tell you, it was a horrible mistake!” Shoot, even Vladimir Putin is jumping on the bandwagon. Finally, I will go to the marriage ceremonies of my nephew and niece with the comfort of knowing they got in just under the wire, not having to live in the quiet desperation of hetero-sexuals, being men who love women, women who love men, hiding such facts in the closet for the rest of their lives. These may well be the last hetero-sexual marriages allowed in this country. Where’s the humanity? Oh, where’s the humanity??? And, God bless Bill O’Reilly.

HORSES, MOTORCYCLES and CELL PHONES

I just got back from the eye ball doctor. I had lost my glasses and needed a new prescription. Well, they weren’t working so well anymore anyway. It turns out my right eye has deteriorated badly, which I knew because the glasses were no longer doing the trick. The eyeball doctor said, or so I thought she said, that I had “masculine deterioration”, which you can confirm by how I just spelled that word. For a few moments I thought it was just another of life's unfair deals like why should I go blind in one eye simply because I was a masculine?

Well, it turns out she said “macular deterioration” and not “masculine” and it had nothing to do with being a guy. She asked if I’d ever been a sun gazer or a welder as I had a scar in my eye right in the dead center, and the scar had grown. I said no because it was the correct answer. My left eye is perfect…like I’m 16 years old in the left eye….Who was that Hispanic girlfriend of ex-NFL player Andre "the Jerk" Rison who tried to shoot him and because there’s no justice, she missed. He was an ass. His right eye is probably OK. Her name was something left-eye Lopez. That’s me now…Ralph “Left-Eye” Toynbee. Where’s the money?

So, they took pictures of the inside of my eyes which means they dilate them and then put a big light in there and photograph them. It’s like looking into the sun or welding. Then you go outside where the sun is so damned bright you can see NOTHING and you proceed to drive home. That’s when I saw the craziest thing ever.

At a busy intersection, a guy in front of me is making a left turn. He can barely control his vehicle. It’s 10 in the morning and I figure he’s about to smack right into a sign when he gets the damned vehicle back under control. Of course, he’s talking on a cell phone with the other hand. Now, here’s the clincher……..THE IMBECILE IS ON A MOTORCYCLE!!! Of course, he also had no helmet because in Kansas you do not need a helmet. Kansas is the place where the legislature also says there has been no evolution. In Kansas, they are right. This guy sure hasn’t evolved. In fact, why would he need a helmet? His head already doesn’t work. I haven’t driven a motorcycle for a long time. But, the little I remember about it was that two hands really helped a lot….especially because as the driver, you already have your crotch wrapped around a 50+ horsepower engine.

I’ve never tried that one before and won’t. The closest I ever came was to ride a horse with no saddle or reigns once up near Tongie. I had a boss who had horses and said to come up to the farm and ride anytime I wanted. So, one day I showed up. I’d ridden them enough to feel OK about it but never bareback and especially without reigns. It isn’t very pleasant because on a hot day, they sweat a bit and you’re slopping around in it. So, Kenny, my boss, says the horse is a good horse but stay close to the neck because if I sit back very far, it tends to buck. Well, my God! What kind of a deal is that?

So, I’m out riding across the pasture and am galloping along really good and when you want to turn left, you just pull the mane real hard to the left and the horse turns OK….I felt just like Tonto now. Then my friend Chas, who’s nuts, and has his own horse thought it would be great fun to stick his horses nose half way up the ass end of my horse….which he did! My horse bolts like a bat out of hell and there I go flapping in the breeze like I’m hanging onto a run away lawn tractor or something. (A different story altogether).

Naturally, I have no control over where and when I’ll go up and down on the horse which by now seems about five times bigger than it did when I got on it. Furthermore, had the terror gone on much longer, I’d have been singing soprano in the “They Used to be All Boys” choir, if you catch my drift!

At this point, I’m frightened to death and exhausted. The damned horse runs as fast as a car and I’ve rolled all the way underneath his neck and am just hanging onto its upper neck with my arms and have my legs wrapped around its lower neck. I’m contemplating dropping on off but it’s still moving pretty fast and I figure it will just stomp me now. (At least I’m not singing soprano any more). Then, just as I’m ready to give up, it charges to a fence, stops on a dime, hurling me into the fence.

I never did get back on the horse. (I’ve never gotten back on ANY horse). I just walked back to the farmhouse, told Kenney where I thought he’d find his horse and waited for Chas whose future was going to involve taking a real beating from a much smaller guy than he. When he rode up, still on his horse, he was just amazed. He said it was the greatest exhibition of horsemanship he’d ever seen and could not believe I stayed on it in all those positions. He said when I went around the horse’s neck, I looked just like Tonto. TONTO, MY ASS!
I was scared to death.

Anyway, I’ve got a real respect for anything I wrap my legs around that’s stronger than me and no way do I ride a motorcycle and talk on a cell phone at the same time.


RALPH

The HOMELESS GOT MORE THAN THEIR SHARE

An anonymous friend of mine named Norbert was recently confined to Lawrence Memorial Hospital in a semi-private room. Much to his dismay, he spent a week in that room next to a homeless man (or so he claimed) who after a few days began to open up about his personal life. The weather had become much colder and the guy figured out that he could feign some soft tissue injuries which were really hard to diagnose, pretended not to walk, and act desperate. He was admitted to the hospital for observation and had extended the stay to four days.

He further iterated to Norbert, my unnamed friend, that he had pulled such stunts before, having chosen in the past to spend time in jail. By his own admission, he found the experience to have been worse because the host of characters occupying space with him, many homeless themselves, did not live up to his social standards. So, he developed his hospital stunt. By the end of the 4th day, he had become quite a nuisance to Norbert who had decided to turn the guy in to the hospital officials. Norbert had been paying over $400/month for his family health insurance coverage. The weather had improved and the homeless man said the only reason he was now staying was because of the women (nurses I assume) which were nowhere to be seen in jail.

The problem compounded itself when Norbert relayed this scam to officials who were quite skeptical of his story. Norbert had been admitted to the hospital after suffering a large gash near his left eye which he had explained to the admitting desk was the result of being shot by a Macadamia nut or something of a similar nature which he assumed had been fired from a spud gun by a bunch of West Lawrence hooligans.

A spud gun was a prankster’s weapon made from a tube of PVC piping, several feet long and sealed off at one end. A small hole was drilled into the sealed off end so that the prankster could spray the flammable contents of a common aerosol can into the tube. A potato was dropped into the open end and a match touched to the hole in the capped end. This caused an explosion within the tube which resulted in the tube becoming a cannon and the potato serving as the projectile. A good cannon could launch said potato several hundred feet at a high velocity. Norbert had stumbled upon the cannon, a pile of matches and a bag of Macadamia nuts while looking for wild Morels. Apparently, the hooligans had run off to the store for more aerosol and left the rest of their equipment in the field which Norbert was in the process of crossing.

So, a little while later, Norbert claims he was bending down to pick up a Morel when he was bitch-slapped upside his eyebrow by a hard woody object. He heard a loud bang and then lost consciousness. When he awoke, he was disoriented and found to be walking from the field with all the coordination of a sailor just returning from a thirty day R & R sabbatical in Bangkok. He was rushed to the hospital by authorities who had responded to a 911 call from concerned neighbors who complained there appeared to be an injured sailor in the neighborhood.

Well, these geniuses at the hospital told the police who later came to take a report that they discerned that Norbert's story was indeed a fabrication because Morels were out of season. As long as I have known Norbert, I have never known him to be a hunter of mushrooms. He probably doesn't know what the season is. Anyway, the police gave his story no credence at all and upon Norbert's complaining about the homeless guy, the hospital officials decided to kick Norbert out. Whatever did really happen, it was clear that Norbert had nearly lost his eye. Nobody could ever really figure out if the homeless guy was ill, injured or what. For all we know he was only there for the women.

To this day, Norbert has little good to say about the homeless. I cannot totally disagree with him, although I try not to paint with too broad a brush. One thing I am certain of is that homelessness probably cuts into ones dating big time. So, what looks like a remarkably attractive lifestyle with all the handouts and booze can really have a major drawback in another area and people should consider this before deciding to become homeless.

BILL CUNNINGHAM: Makes dirt look smart!

There's no shortage of dumb radio talk show hosts these days, and when they aren't dumb, they're nuts! First, start with Bill O'Reilly. Most likely, he's the most educated of the lot. Unfortunately, his ego is big enough to be the next undiscovered moon of Jupiter. When he's not taking credit for the successes of every positive event in the nation's history, he's screaming like a lunatic. "That's why I always win the debate!", so he says. Really, it's because his producer has his finger on the squelch button and whenever anyone calling in is on the verge of a valid retort, their voice disappears. That's how he wins debates. Were he to ever appear on a really balanced forum, he would be dragged off stage in a butterfly net before the program ends.

Next, there's Rush Limbaugh. He's the most talented of the lot. He's the fat boy who's pro-military, a supporter of family values and would show no mercy when some poor and uneducated black kid succumbs to the ravages of drugs. But remember, he's also the guy who could never get his own sizable posterior into a uniform during the Vietnam war, blew through three marriages like a hot knife through butter, and bought illicit pain killers from his house keeper who was apparently a physician on the side. Rush likes to say his brain is on loan from God. He might add that his girth is on loan from the Hindenberg.

Sean Hannity is the one who pretends to be informed but generally makes his point by calling folks with whom he disagrees names. He's always asking, "I'd like to know....?" If he could think, he'd probably find out. So, instead, he invites guests on like Dick Morris, resident Clinton basher. Morris used to work for Clinton. He used to brag about calling Clinton in the middle of the night while he was banging away with some hooker. It was the only way Morris could get a date. So, Hannity invites him on all the time to explain what's wrong with liberals. One thing that's wrong with them is that they used to count Morris among their members.

Finally, there must be the lowest of the lot. The one who is found on the underneath side of the bottom of the barrel. That person is Bill Cunningham. He does not like Barack Obama. He also didn't like John McCain until John won the Republican nomination. Now he's the 2nd coming. So, Bill the dwarf with the bad hair piece and a face made for radio is on another train ride bringing on authors who demand that Obama produce a birth certificate because they insist he wasn't born in America. Or, bring in school records to prove he wasn't raised Muslim. If Obama spent his time answering these absurd demands, there'd be no time left to campaign. "Prove where you were at 10:13 pm on Jan. 13, 1997 Obama or you're a commie bastard", and so forth.

Here's the deal Bill. Why not just read Obama's website. When you see his programs all laid out where you can read then two or three times, then you'll know his positions do not represent your interests. Then, go out and vote against him. That's what you're supposed to do. It's normal. And, it's actually a lot easier than making up all the Neanderthal lunacy of which you author yourself. Then, explain THAT to your parrot listeners. Prove for a change that America is not too dumb for democracy. Dare to be brave Bill. Cast off the bad wig, get a pair of elevator shoes and look like a real man for a change.

Have a nice day!

One Giant Leap for Mankind!

Before I had become acquainted with her, I had seen her on the T.V. She had been interviewed by some obscure reporter who was doing an expose’ on extra terrestrial experiences of the third kind, or maybe it was the forth kind. I cannot really remember. I never knew exactly what that meant, “the third kind”, but I do remember the movie with Richard Dreyfuss entitled, “Encounters of the Third Kind,” or something very much similar to that.

Her name was Beatrice VanDerkirk. She was a large and pudgy, two-breasted woman with the complexion of pie crust, before having been inserted into the oven. She was of some kind of Scandinavian decent but it had obviously been many years since she had been mistaken for a bombshell and more recently was more likely to have been mistaken for….well, frankly a ball of pie crust.

She sat on a wooden chair, in the middle of the exhibit, straddling the overstrained antique with her umbrella stand like legs. She wore a blue and white, faded, checkered dress which looked like a hand-me-down table cloth, the kind that grandma used to wear. She said nothing.

I had decided to go to a UFO convention with my friend Thomas. Thomas had seen much in his life as a Peace Corps volunteer, former science teacher and self taught computer wizard. One of the more positive things about Thomas was his open mind. Nevertheless, one of his greatest drawbacks was his open mind. I was intrigued at the thought of attending the UFO convention with Thomas who was plainly brighter than I. I should have, however, been more suspect when I learned the convention would be held in the commons area of a suburban mall.

There were thirty or forty so conventioneers in attendance and all looked like they had just gotten off work from their jobs at the local bowling alley. There was an array of displays of photos of UFOs with all the photos being very amateurish, out of focus or just plain unexplainable. One would think that with all these “scientists” in attendance, at least one of them could have taken a decent picture. I stood before one picture of a flying saucer and the description explained the nature of the structure and the probable use for the spoke-like attachments protruding from the center of the ship. The scale looked odd and against the trees in the background, one could not discern whether the UFO was very large or very tiny, housing little bitty folks from an entirely different universe than ours.

I had heard of the convention on the Art Bell radio program, a program one can only hear between midnight and six a.m. on the AM radio dial. Listeners from all over the country would call at all hours of the night and express their belief that life on other planets existed and that our sole purpose was to do whatever it took to make contact with them. These people never sounded any too bright though as Art had three phone numbers for the listeners to use, one for folks west of the Rockies, one for folks east of the Rockies and then the wild-card line. If you wanted to suffer the wrath of Art Bell, you damned well better NEVER use the west of the Rockies line if you lived east of the Rockies and vice-versa, nor versa-vice which is vice-versa, vice-versa. Not unexpectedly, it would happen that an east of the Rockies listener would call from the west side number and just get reamed by Art Bell. That was one of my favorite parts of the program.

So, the listeners and Art Bell would document extra terrestrial activity which for some reason tended to focus near the area of Roswell, New Mexico where there exists a large ancient crater created by some huge outer space object bashing into the Earth millions of years ago, or as Biblical purist would explain, last Friday at 3:45 p.m.

These same folks were most definitely anti-government wogs, which explains my friend Thomas’s affinity towards them, even though he was himself a career government employee. A U.S.A.F. caption beneath the flying saucer photo I described above claims the fuzzy photo is not that of a UFO, but it is in fact the photo of a hubcap from a 1958 Mercury Zephyr, a car which has never even existed. Thus, the government’s explanation only served to exacerbate the validity or lack thereof in the argument concerning the existence of UFOs. Additionally, the spoke-like objects in the photo were explained by the government to be exactly that. Spokes!

It was now time for the featured event of the convention, a discussion by Beatrice VanDerkirk of her abduction by outer space aliens. Ms. VanDerkirk explains it as follows:

“I was sitting on the back porch after dark. I had just put some pie into the oven. The crust was perfect! That’s when a large glowing disk-shaped object that looked like a hubcap descended over my back yard and hoooovered for about twenty minutes or so”. (“Hoooovered” is how Ms. Vanderkirk pronounced the word we would know as “hovered” and was probably the result of her assumed Scandinavian background or this author’s laziness in not using his computer’s spellcheck feature).

Ms. VanDerkirk continued, “…well, after awhile, some smallish aliens, which I call beings of another kind, came out of their ship, down a ladder and proceeded to come upon the porch where I was sitting. At first, I had assumed they had smelled the baking pie from their mother ship. But, after awhile, and without saying a word, about a dozen or so picked me up, chair and all, and took me aboard their ship. Then, they closed the door, and the ship took off. Before I knew it, we were in outer space.”

“The spaceship seemed much bigger on the inside”, iterated Ms. VanDerkirk, “and, in addition to myself and the aliens, there were about 8-10 head of cattle. No cattle mind you, just the heads. As I was saying, it’s a known fact that outer space aliens have been mutilating cattle for years and getting away with it. Had I the presence of mind, I would have started to take some notes at this point, but my mind was back home, concerned with my unattended pie and I had completely neglected to bring a pencil and notepad."

“The ship was stocked with T.V. dinners and obviously the creatures had planned on a long voyage. Also, their food wasn’t exactly like ours, but that could have been a result of the meals having spent a long time in the freezer. The aliens were very accommodating with their food and being much smaller than most Earthlings, well, at least smaller than I, they possibly didn’t need the same calorie intake.”

“ While I was eating some frozen pork fritters, or the space version thereof, the ship zipped off and upwards into the sky above the weather. For awhile, I could look down and see some of the more identifiable landmarks on the ground such as Orville Johnson’s Country Buffetteria. Then it faded from sight. In no time at all we were passing by other planets and universes. Then, it happened. I started to feel woozy and became very sleepy. I think my hosts slipped me a mickey, although I never have been quite sure just what a mickey was. Anyway, shortly thereafter, I lost consciousness. And was neither able to rationalize on a high level, nor cipher without using my digits as place holders.”

“Several hours later, I awoke. Once I regained my faculties, I realized what they had done to me. Yes, they had had their way with me in the Biblical sense. SEX! It was a strange sensation. For, they did not have regular sex with me…not the kind we’re used to…I mean the kind I used to be used to. Once upon a time I mean. No, they had DIGITAL SEX with me. It was very highly advanced. Version 2.0…I believe. Anyway, they burned it to a disk and I’ve never made it public. In fact, I’ve even been afraid to watch it myself. Many months later, after returning to Earth, I offered the disk to the government for research purposes. They said they didn’t want it, that they didn’t really believe it. And besides, they didn’t even have computers yet that would read CDs. I’ve thought Nixon was an idiot ever since and it will be a cold day in hell before I’ll ever vote for another Quaker. Ultimately, I mailed the disk to L. Ron Hubbard and have never seen nor heard anything about it since."

“Anyway, I started to digress. I could tell the alien had an eye for me, although I retained some concern in that given he had three eyes, the other two appeared to roam. After our carnal encounter, of the third kind, we shared a smoke and a cup of coffee. It was freeze dried coffee, yes, I believe that’s what they must use in outer space. Folger’s it was I believe.”

The dialog of Ms. VanDerkirk seemed to have started to ramble and we in the crowd started to sense that we may just be dealing with a complete lunatic here. I observed one of the bowlers in the audience begin to scratch his arm pit beneath his bowling shirt with a bit of a frenzy…so much the pack of Camels he had rolled into his shirt sleeve fell upon the floor, dislodging the cigarettes from within the pack. Several others in the crowd scrambled for a free smoke, aggravating the man even more. He began to sputter and quiver a bit as I heard him shout to the lady, “ F-f-f-folger’s you say, Folger’s? And, where pray tell do aliens buy Folger’s in outer space I must ask?”

The look on Ms. VanDerkirk’s face at once became stoic. Her attempting to process what he was thinking and at the same time trying to formulate a believable answer caused her to freeze in time. She could sense she was about to be outed as a pasty old fraud. There had been no aliens, there had been no freeze dried Folgers and in fact, there had been no digital sex!

“I brought my children here to find out about the truth and all I got was a pack of lies about freeze dried coffee and digital pornography. I think you have some explaining to do you fat old bore!” shouted the soccer mom.

It was about this time mob rule was nearing a take over of the New Centre Mall when my friend Thomas who had wondered away from the seminar blurted out the statement that nearly caused a riot. Thomas had become weary of the old woman and had ambled over to a display of pen and ink sketches which had been put on display by the convention sponsors. These of course were really amateurish renditions of the imaginations of fools. All of the drawings showed aliens to have had two legs, two arms and one head, much like Earth people except some had three eyes or fingers. Why pray tell would beings who had evolved in completely differing environments and different sets of circumstances look so similar in nature to us? Bears and whales and bugs are Earth creatures. Yet, they are not like us so why a being from a zillion light years away would look so similar to us was perplexing. Well, leave it to Thomas to notice one glaring and distinct difference. He blurted out loudly, “Why do none of the aliens have any genitals?”

Parents herded their children. They shot daggers at Thomas with their looks, some even giving him the stink eye. Within a few moments, a public service announcement came over the mall’s intercom system insisting that all patrons of the mall exit the premises at once. Closing time was 45 minutes away. Crowd control must have been the answer. It was the only logical answer. Why close so early?

And so it was. We drove back to our homes in the city, saying not one word to each other. That was over a dozen years ago. I have not seen Thomas since our drive home that night. We simply lost interests in each other’s interests. Although before the drive was over, I had glanced out the passenger window of his ragged old Buick and peered into the night sky. I don’t know for sure what it was that went zipping by at a hypersonic speed, but it looked for all the world like the hubcap from a 1958 Mercury Zephyr, a car that did not exist, followed closely by an Air Force plane. To our left was a field with several headless cattle. The smell of freshly baked pie permeated the air. Still…… Thomas and I said nothing.

The Lottery Just drives me NUTS!!!

Have you ever gone into a convenience store on your way to work, to pay for the gasoline that you’ve already pumped, only to be standing behind Wilfred Brimley’s retarded brother who is buying a fist full of lottery tickets. You’re in a hurry and this fool is spending his fortune from the sale of black market food stamps to invest in the capitalist system. And, once he buys them, he doesn’t move aside to scratch them off, but instead stands right there and scratches them one-at-a-never-ending time, never quite hitting the jackpot, but invariably winning another ticket or two so he can stand there even longer.

What makes matters worse is that he smells like my friend Willie did when he got stuffed into a trash can behind the Do-Drop-In in DeSoto, Kansas back in the 70s after his hippy butt decided it would be interesting to drop into the biker bar and have a beer with the boys. Instead, he found himself floating in a stew of stale beer, moldy French fries and half smoked cigarette butts which all things considered was better than having become the wife of one of the bikers, which he came closer to than getting the desired beer he sought.

So, you call the boss and tell‘em you’re going to need a couple days off because you’ve run into a jam and it’s got nothing to do with Grape Nuts. Now, I’m always hesitant to stop someone from going over to the dark side as there may be very personal and religious reasons for them doing so. I remember once stopping a guy in a truck stop from buying a $20 lottery ticket. I told him that his chances of winning were slimmer than being struck by lightening and that the whole scam was a ruse on the part of the state to tax stupid people who were supported through an array of handouts and welfare programs to placate them, that it was a way for the state to get that money back, and he would only see his family suffer his obvious loss of the $20. He thanked me and stood aside talking.

As we stood there, an obviously successful business type who had driven up in a Mercedes and looked for all the world to have more money than God, approached the counter and plunked down his $20 for the ticket that would have been the poor soul’s who I had just saved. BINGO! Just like that the business man hit a $40,000,000 instant winner and walked away joyously. I’ll never forget the look on my new, now ex-friend’s face.

He has to this day probably never considered the stress that all those winnings would have placed on him and is ignorant of how happy I probably made him. Of course, it could have been worse. I could have found myself in Willie’s trash can or worse yet, become his new sister-in-law.