Confusion 8

PROFILES IN CONFUSION 8

Best of Volume Two

2006-2007

Before you leave tonight, Thelma, you will believe that a man with hands as small as these can love you—can love you with a heart as big as a bear, with legs as strong as a horse, with a beak as straight as an eagle, and with a trunk as ambidextrous as an elephant! Before this night is through—with God as my witness—you will believe!

Who’s oily head print be dis on ma pillar case? I don’t know’d anyone wid a head this paultry! Sum’un wid a head naw bigger than a cat’s teat is sleepin’ in ma bed whiled I’m off workin’! Sum’um one who ain’t got the sense God gave a two-legged stool—dat’s who! Sum’un who ain’t got da sense to worsh dare head in a blue moon!

I disapprove of food talking as a general rule, so keep your mouth shut, food. You had no business combing my hair while I slept. And I guess it was you, food, who used up my whiteout pen to draw snowmen on construction paper? That pen is for doctoring my résumé, food, not for making inane Christmas cards in the middle of April!

Come, come, madam. Even cockroaches like five-star restaurants. We know you and your kind, Miss Webber. (Or whatever it is you are calling yourself these days.) You can’t hide the stench of your lowly birth behind five pelts of dead mink and think we wouldn’t notice. We all know how you came by your money, and it doesn’t fly here. You can drop the phony accent. And while you’re at it, you can go in the bathroom and wash that pricey perfume off your neck.

I wanted either the police bear or the firefighter bear. But all they had left were the postal worker bears. I told him I didn’t want a postal worker bear. Who thought of that one? He said, “If you wait a month, we’ll have wedding bears and an Elvis bear. I asked him if he could backorder on “The Bears of Nine Eleven.” He said, “No.” I asked him, “Are you sure?” He just looked putout. I stormed out of the post office at that point. I was livid! L-I-V-I-D!

Be not a-scared of me, for I am Barney. Be not a-scared of prehistory or grape-colored reptiles. It is not ‘bout car rides or animals sacrifices dat I come, but ‘bout brushin’ and a flossin’. Barney are friend. Barney hate only plaque and gingivitis. Barney are friend.

We almost missed each other. Almost missed our appointment with destiny. How many people in this town talk on walkie-talkies without batteries in them? Talk to Abraham Lincoln and people buried alive in coffins? How many people are there in this world whose favorite film is “Children of the Corn”? It was written in the stars that our paths should cross, and that the little voices in our heads should exchange phone numbers. Surely providence brought us here tonight, with filed-down serial numbers and enough baby wipes to kill off every designer germ the US Government can throw at us.

Gaze deeply into my plumber’s butt, my pretty. See your fate written there. See the life that was yours but is now mine flash over its fleshy, pitted surface. See me wearing your pink chiffon prom dress—the one you and your mother drove to the city especially to pick out. See me wearing your high school class ring. See me having my picture taken with your boyfriend, hunky Matt Tracer, in the society section of the local newspaper. What was yours is now mine! Wickedly, wickedly mine!

Buster’s in heaven with Gramps now. Ain’t he Ma? Buster’s chasing rabbits in Glory, and racing Gramps down to the fishing hole. Right?

You only see them when the crowd thins, like seeing flies on a wedding cake. I’m talking about the guys in the white tee-shirts. Shirts too white to work with their hands, but too tee-shirt to be up to much. They’re always working the room, though, chatting people up and sweating even in February. They’ll engage you in inane conversations about the storage capacity of freezers. Or they’ll give you detailed biographies about obscure signatories of The Declaration of Independence—people they could be making up for all you know! I mean, how many wealthy Virginia landowners’ wives died in childbirth? It sounds plausible. These guys aren’t stupid, mind you. They’re just messed up. They need girlfriends.

Let me thank you for entrusting me with the job of painting your baby’s nursery. Let me thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for inviting me into your house. And let me pledge to you (in light of your three teenage daughters) that I will not spirit them away by nefarious means and make them my common law wives. This I can assure you: They will not live with me in the shadowy recesses of the municipal aqueduct, support me with shoplifting, or service me with coitus cohabitation. I will not force them cover their face and bodies with peach-colored bed sheets and pass out cultist literature at strip malls. Rest easy on this score.

Dang! You look just like my ex-girlfriend! Wow! This is freaky for me! Please forgive me for staring, but this is really weird. Dang!

If you look into their beady eyes, you can see the cogs whirling. They’ve got a memory for license plates, and bear a grudge like a wrinkle in trailer carpeting. Deadbolts and second phone lines counts for nothing with these folks. You won’t smell them—like a gas leak. You won’t see them—like gratitude from a teenager. But it’s an inner ear thing with them, you see. A third eye. An extra toe. Take my advice and stay upwind of them. Don’t leave candy wrappers on the ground. Keep a low profile. No thongs.

Ants at a picnic—not that uncommon. Not until giant ones disembark from a seventy-five Chevy Impala. Now, I’m one of those live-and-let-live fellas, but I don’t think fishing with hand grenades is sporting. These six-legged clowns were out in boats on the lake with explosives—with kids around and grandma out of the nursing home for the afternoon! Nobody was saying nuttin’ about it! I complained to the park manager, and he reminded me that these were red ants and not the more docile black ones. I was furious that these pest were getting a free pass simply because they were a more aggressive species. Rewarding bad behavior only gets you more of the same. First they come for you, and I say nuttin’. Then they come for me, and you say nuttin’. You see how it goes? So I went to the Quickmart up the road and bought me a can of Black Flag. Time I got back, the troublemakers had made like peas and split. I wrote my congressman: two pages front and back.

We’re gittin’ him started early on tattoos. Ain’t these beauts? He’ll thank us when he’s all grown.

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