All I Ever Need to Know I Never Really Learned*
Every fall, for many years, I have set myself the task of writing a
personal statement of belief. You might call it a “creed” or a “credo.”
You might call it a laundry bag. That would, of course, be inaccurate. Anyway,
when I was younger, my laundry b…I mean my credo, was very long, running for
many pages, covering every base. As I have gotten older, the credo has gotten
shorter. Shorter, and more cynical. In fact, it was so short last year I couldn’t
even call it a credo. It was more like a “cred,” or even a “cre.”
Recently I set out to get the credo down to one page.
However, I just don’t have the time for that every fall, and so I’ve decided
to limit it to just one word. But how to decide just which word it should be? Do
you have any idea how many words there are? A lot, I can tell you. I tried
counting once, but I got as far as twelve and just said the hell with it.
Anyway, here is a list of the things you need to know
about how to live and what to do. Don’t ask me to explain any of these, or
tell you where I came up with them. Just trust me:
- Share everything.
- Play fair.
- Don’t talk to guys named “Maurice.”
- Don’t take my stuff.
- Eat no squid.
- Drugs are bad for you, but so is the sun, and what are you going to do, spend the rest of your life inside?
- Do not flush the toilet while standing in it.
Let me tell you about my next door neighbor, Pauline.
Pauline hated everything. “I hate everything,” she used to say, “especially
this.” It didn’t really mater what you were talking about -- Pauline hated
it. Consequently, Pauline was not very popular. “Popularity sucks,” said
Pauline. “I hate it. Unfortunately being friendless sucks too. Oh what to do!”
She decided to go to a magician.
Mark never thought of himself as a magician. More like an
accountant who also does magic. “Accounting is my life. Magic just pays the
bills.” Anyway, Mark was standing behind the counter of his smallish magic
store over on Bleaker Street, minding his own business, looking at the jar of
small blue pills which stood next to the jar of small pink pills, playing with a
plantain colored Koosh ball he got from his mother before she died. 23 years
before she died. Suddenly in came Pauline.
“Hi. My name is Pauline and before we start I would just
like to say that I hate magic, I hate you and I hate that plantain colored Koosh
ball.”
“I see. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Probably not.”
“Well then perhaps leaving here immediately would be a
good idea,” said Mark.
“That idea sounds particularly distasteful to me,” she
responded.
“What do you want, lady? I have a headache.”
“I hate everything.”
“Go on.”
“I’ve always hated everything. There doesn’t seem to
be anything I can do about it. I hated E.T. I hate ice-cream. I hate guys named
‘Biff.’ I haven’t ever enjoyed a single thing in my life. Every time I
have sex I hate it. In fact, I’m not sure why I keep doing it. You’ve got to
help me.”
“Me?” asked Mark. “What do you want me to do about
it?”
“I want you to work some magic on me and make me stop
hating stuff all the time, you in-grown toe-nail.”
“Please don’t call me an in-grown toe-nail.” Mark
took a deep breath and spoke with grand gestures. “You see, hate is in the
heart. One must learn to love in order to learn not to hate. One must explore
the inner recesses of one’s own soul, the stuff of one’s being, the pith of
one’s very nature before being able to. . .oh just eat one of these.” He
hands her a small blue pill.
“What does this do?”
“It cures the heart. It purges the soul of all unwanted
spirits and opens you up to beauty and love. It grants wishes. It gives you
everything you want, everything your mind longs for and body aches for. It
delivers you from the pits of hell and lays you gently at heaven’s gate. It’s
a good pill.”
“What does the pink one do?” asked Pauline.
“It’s for asthma.”
“I’ll take that one.”
“You’ll take that one?” asked Mark, amazed.
“What I’m offering you will rid you once and for all of the hatred that has
infested your life!”
“Yes, but I also have really bad asthma.”
“The blue one will also cure your asthma.”
“’The blue one will also cure my asthma’?”
asked an incredulous Pauline.
“Yes.”
Pauline folded her arms and frowned. “You expect me to
believe that this one pill, this one little blue pill cures the heart and
cleanses the soul and fulfills all your greatest wishes, and it cures
asthma?”
“Lady, do you remember me telling you about my headache?”
“Why don’t you take this little blue pill?”
All of a sudden, in bursts Din!
“Hey!” he exclaimed. “I’m Din! And don’t forget
it! You’re all a bunch of scrubs!”
The Scrubs
Back in the 90s, the scrubs were everywhere. You couldn’t
swing a dead cat without hitting a scrub. “Yeah,” they would say, “I’m a
scrub. You got some problem with that? And watch where you’re swinging that
dead cat.”
Din was a scrub. Not a bad guy overall, if you don’t
mind phlegm, but a scrub nonetheless. Din had a question. This question had been
bothering Din for most of his life, and one day he decided to do something about
it. So he climbed up to the top of the highest hill he could find and started
shouting.
“Hey, God! Hey, God! Yoo hoo, God! Hey! God! Yo, God!
Down here! Hey! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!”
He started jumping up and down.
“God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!”
“What already!” cried an exasperated God.
“I got a question!” yelled Din.
“No kidding. You don’t think I know that? I’m only
God, you know.”
“So what’s the answer?”
“Oh, like I’m going to tell you the answer.
What are you, some kind of freak? Go away.”
“Go away?” demanded Din. “Go away?” No answer. “Hello?”
Still no answer. “Hey! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!
God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!”
“Oh alright!” yelled God. And then, God told Din the
answer.
“What do you mean we’re all a bunch of scrubs?”
asked Mark. “I’m no scrub.”
“You heard me. You’re all a bunch of scrubs. The two
of you.”
“Yes, but what does that mean?” asked Pauline.
“What do you mean, ‘what does that mean?’ What could
it possibly mean? You’re both scrubs, that’s all.” Replied Din.
“And you burst in here just to tell us that?”
“Listen. I’ve got a story for both of you,” said
Din. “It’s not very interesting. Also, I’m going to tell it in play form.
Here we go”
Jane: God, I hate my job.
Veronica: What?
Jane: You heard me, you drunken slob-o-matic.
Veronica: What?
Jane: Look, you petulant, diseased being, get out of my breath!
Veronica: Ffwat?
Jane: For the last time, die!
Veronica: Pfwatt?
Jane: Arggg!!!
Veronica: Tptptlwadd?
Dave: Yo, home-boy!
Home-boy: Yeah?
Dave: Where have you been all day?
Home-boy: Home.
Dave: Boy, that’s weird.
Home-Boy: Why?
Jane: Yeah, why?
Veronica: Ptltlteahh, ffpltelgwaeeeey?
Dave: Why not?
Home-boy: Because the Cartesian plane theory requires that it is so, that’s
why!
Veronica: It does not.
Home-boy: Does so!
Veronica: Does not!
Home-boy: Does so!
Veronica: Look, if you don’t believe me, ask your dad.
Home-boy: Okay! Dad?
Home-man: Yes, son?
Home-boy: Answer the question that is-a-plagin’ me.
Home-man: Go ask your mother.
Home-boy: Okay. Mom?
Patrick Ewing: I’m not your mother.
Home-boy: I wasn’t talking to you. Mom?
Mom: What?
Home-boy: Give-a-me the answer, you little pipe wielder!
Story Guy: I got a story to say…
The Big Thing
by The Big Guy
“Oh what a tangled web we weave-a-roony” said Fritz,
president of the National Rifle Association. “I never knew it could be so
cold.”
“What, the ice?” said Punchy.
“No, not the ice, you idiot. There’s a . . there’s a
. . .”
“A what, sir?”
“A whatchamahoozy. What’s it called? A whatchamahoozy.”
“Oh I see, sir . . . A whatchamahoozy?”
“You know, a . . a . . whatchamahoozy.”
“Ah. Yes, sir.”
“We all have it, you know,” remarked Fritz.
“Of course we do. We all do.”
“Except the women.”
“Excuse me?”
“Not the women. The women don’t have a whatchamhoozy.”
“Sir, perhaps we should discuss tomorrow’s convention.”
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave-a-mahoozy.”
“Now, Mr. Furgenson will be giving the opening speech in
the banquet hallway. He thinks it’s important that there is assigned seating.”
“Well, of course. We can’t have Congressman Perkins
and Congresswomen Morgan sitting too close. You know, I really prefer more
bubbles.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Punchy. “Should I add more soap?”
“Yes. Do you think Parkenson will have the report on the
new AK-47 by Thursday? Stop kicking me!”
“Sorry, sir, I can’t help it.”
“What do you mean you can’t help it? Keep your grubs
off me.”
“But sir . . .”
“Look, Punchy, I am Fritz Erlichson, President of the
National Rifle Association, the single most dangerous lobby group in America. So
watch it!” He splashes him.
“Really, sir, I . .” Punchy pauses. “I . . . I . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Weren’t you going to interrupt me?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh. Anyway, I prefer the blue stuff.”
“The what?” asked Fritz-o-matic.
“The blue stuff.”
“You’re not making any sense, Punchy. Have you been
doing drugs?”
“No sir,” admitted Punch-o.
“You idiot! I told you to shoot up! Take ‘Ex’! Smoke
crack! Pot! Anything! I’ll bet you haven’t even had any tobacco, have you,
Punch?”
“No. I have had a lot of gum,” noted Punch-ville.
“Gum? Saccharin or Zorbital?”
“Nutra-Sweet.”
“Nutra-Sweet?” poked The Fritzter. “Big deal. Nutra-sweet
doesn’t do anything at all.”
“Well, I have heard that it may cause brain damage.”
“Has it?”
“Not yet, no.”
“Well, keep trying.”
Suddenly, Punchnik jumped to his feed and cried, “Good
Lord, I’ve suddenly jumped to my feet!”
“Excellent, old chap,” said Fritzley, “you may go.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Fruit-Punch, stepping out of
the tub.
“Oh, put on a robe.”
And as Him Whom Is Called Punch walked away, his glorious
silhouette pirouetting in the refulgence of the setting sun, he stopped off at
the meat market for some sweet bread.
And then there was none. Or, one, really, if you consider
Fritz, but who does? I mean, really. Anyway, then there was none (except Fritz),
and when there is none, that is, none other than Fritz, it can only mean one
thing. But what? We asked our man in the street, but he was hit by a car before
he could tell us. The moral of the story? Look both ways before doing an
interview. So we asked our man in the hospital, but he was hit by a nurse. So we
asked the nurse.
“Pardon me?” said the nurse.
“What could it mean?” we repeated.
“What could what mean? You can tell me, I’m a nurse,
you know.”
“Well certainly you’ve heard.”
“Heard what?” said the nurse.
“Why, that there was none left, of course.”
“None?”
“Not a one.”
“Not even…Fritz?”
“Oh, well, yeah, Fritz. But no one else, though.”
“But I thought..”
“I know..”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“But…”
“Quite.”
“And..”
“Also.”
“In.”
“From.”
“Tall”
“Septic.”
“Bermuda.”
“I see. Well it’s been nice talking to you.”
“Oh, no!”
“What? What is it?”
“I’ve forgotten who’s speaking! Am I the nurse of
the interviewer? It’s been so long since that idiot writer mentioned anyone’s
name that I’ve lost track!”
“Me too. We’ll have to count back. Hmm.. The last
thing the nurse got credited for saying was ‘Heard what?’ and you said that.
So that means I must be the nurse!”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. You sure know a lot about medicine.”
“That’s why I get the big money.”
“Okay, you be the nurse and I’ll be the other guy.”
“But I wanna be the nurse!”
“Okay, but then I get to be the unctuous inspector Rip.”
“But then who will be Paul, the idealistic pawn broker?”
“Why, I should think that would be obvious, but I don’t.”
“Well, so long as I’m not Dave, the card carrying
member of the ACLU.”
“How about Mary, the happy-yet-miserable housewife?”
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…
Yet Another Thing
by Paul, the great big mechanic
I once knew this guy named Frank. Frank drove his pick-up truck like a bat
out of hell. That’s right, a bat straight out of hell. Imagine a bat coming
out of hell. Now you’ve got an idea of the way Frank drove his truck. One day
Frank decided to pick up a hitch-hiker. Her name was Gracie, and she climbed
into Frank’s rig, sat down and fastened her seat-belt like a bat out of hell.
“Hi,” said Frank.
“Hi,” said Gracie. “Do you always drive like this?”
“Like what?” asked Frank.
“Oh, you know, all out-of-hell-bat like.”
“My name’s Frank.”
“Hey! I didn’t ask for your life story, fella!” snapped Gracie.
Frank was saddened by Gracie’s attack. What had he done to deserve being
treated this way? Wasn’t he being kind, offering her a lift, telling her his
name?
A New Thing
by a new guy
Janet was a very very very very very very very very jumpy child. “AAAHH!”
she used to say. “AAAAHHH!” whenever anybody approached her, whenever
anybody said hello. Finally one day she was shot by Fruppy LaRoom, a young man
with a gun.
“Hi. I’m Fruppy LaRoom, but everybody just calls me Gregory. This is my
gun.”
“Gee!” said Gip. “By the way, my name is Gip, but you can call me Mr.
R. K. Whitehead. You seem to have shot what’s-her-name.”
“Janet” said Fruppy.
“AAAaaah..” said the now understandably jumpy Janet.
“Actually I feel kind of bad about it now.” Said Fruppy.
“Gee,” said Gip, “that’s positively lugubrious.”
“No it isn’t. Lugubrious is any of various herbivorous marsupials of the
family of
Macropodidae, of Australia and adjacent areas, with short forelimbs,
large hind limbs adapted for leaping, and a long, tapered tail.”
“No, you’re thinking of a kangaroo. Lugubrious means Mournful, esp. to an
exaggerated or ludicrous degree. [Lat lugubris < lugere, to
mourn.] lu-gu’bri-ous-ly adv.”
“You suck.”
Suddenly, David Letterman showed up. “Hey!” he said. “Hey! Hey! Hey!
Hey! Hey! Hey!”
“Gee,” said Gip, “it’s Hair Club for Men member David Letterman!”
“Hey!” said Dave to Fruppy. “Gimme that damn gun!” Suddenly Dave
lunged for the gun that Fruppy was holding. “Where is that bitch!!?!”
“Who?” said Gip.
“I’m gunna mess her up - but good!”
“Whom?” said Fruppy.
“There she is!!”
“Oh for Christ’s sake. Who?”
“Aaaaeeeiiii!!!” cried Dave as he ran off into the distance.
“Whom!” said Fruppy.
“I’m telling you it’s who.” Said Gip.
“Don’t be ridiculous. He said ‘I’m gunna mess her up’. ‘Mess up’
is a verb, and like all verbs, it takes the accusative. In this case the object
of the action is the inquisitive pronoun. And, as you know, ‘whom’ is the
objective form of ‘who’, ‘I’m gunna mess up whom’ not ‘I’m gunna
mess up who’.”
“Nobody says ‘whom’ anymore. Grow up.”
One Christmas I didn’t receive many Christmas cards. I think it might have
had something to do with my Thanksgiving Day Spitting Contest. Or perhaps it was
the fire, although that really wasn’t my fault -- Ms. Lipscumb shouldn’t
have mouthed off like that. Anyway, I came to this fetid realization - you know,
the one about the Christmas cards - one fetid March afternoon.
“Mother of Pearl!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t get my usual assortment of
Christmas cards this year!” Immediately I began planning my revenge. True,
revenge isn’t really in the Christmas spirit, but it was, after all, March,
and anyway I do whatever the hell I want. The question was, who to start with?
Ms. Barowitz was an easy target, 96 years old and no limbs. I thought for a
while about strangling her hamsters. True, it wasn’t her hamsters’ fault
that Ms. Barowitz failed to send me a Christmas card, but on the other hand,
what do the hamsters ever send me?
“There are a variety of ways to kill a hamster,” the man from Radio Shack
once told me. “Bazookas are good, but make sure you have them pointed in the
right direction. Are you going to buy anything?”
I decided to forget about Ms. Barowitz and her hamsters, and instead turned
my thoughts to Alicia Silverstone. True, I have never met Alicia Silverstone and
there is no reason why she should send me a Christmas card, but I really like
thinking about her. Especially when I am upset. Another thing I like to think
about whenever I get down, whenever I feel really depressed, is that thing my
father used to tell me. “There are 250 million people in this country, and yet
only one of them is Rush Limbaugh.” What are the odds of that? Well obviously
it’s one in 250 million. Simple math tells you that. That’s the good thing
about simple math. It’s so much easier than that “complicated” math that I
was never good at. How could I be? I mean, all those numbers.
“Women! Can’t live with them, or at least they won’t let me,”
said Bernard as he got kicked out of his house for the third and final time.
Bernard didn’t mind admitting that he was slightly surprised by it this time
around. True, he had not gotten along very well with his wife, Mrs. X, for a few
years now, but she usually managed to hide her resentment for him under a veil
of fervent hostility and violence.
“Bernard is okay,” she used to say. “What he lacks in intelligence he
makes up for in intense stupidity.”
Bernard didn’t want the marriage to end, but there didn’t seem to be much
he could do about it. Even dragging his wife to a marriage counselor didn’t
help. “Bernard,” the counselor said, “after talking to you and your wife
for these past few months, my suggestion to you is to try to be more helpful,
try to be more understanding and sensitive to your wife’s desires, and make
that extra effort to go that one last mile to make things work between the two
of you. For you, Mrs. X, I suggest immediate divorce.”
Oh No
Greg Tormo was 25 years old. His new job at the firm of “Mckenzie Mckenzie
& Mckenzie & Mckenzie” started tomorrow. Law School was over, the bar
exam was over, the job hunt was over, everything was over. “Life is like
watching 50 gallons of molasses roll down a hill,” he liked to say. He sat on
his bed and stared at the television. It was not on.
“Nothing ever happens,” said Greg. He took a deep breath. Then he sighed.
Then he said, “Hmmm…” The clock on the VCR under the television was
blinking the number “12:00.” Greg looked at his closet. “Aaa..” he said.
Then the phone rang, disrupting him forever.
“Hello?” said Greg after picking up the receiver. “Yeah…what?…what?
.. nnn... wha?….why...…what?……..Oh, all right.”
Meanwhile, the Earth sped around the sun at two thousand miles an hour and
Claire Drake held on like an inchworm on the side of a speeding Ferrari. “All
the time I feel like a salad bar with the sneeze guard missing,” she once told
her therapist. To which, if Claire’s memory served her correctly, he replied,
“Your hour is up, get off my couch.” And then he added, “That’ll be
three hundred and eighty five thousand dollars.”
Claire was pacing back and forth in her bedroom when she heard the sound of a
pebble hitting her window. She opened it.
“Greg? Is that you?”
“Yeah,” replied Greg. “Come down.”
“Why?”
“We have to go to Nicky’s”
“What? Why?” she asked.
“Look, I don’t have time to explain this, but you and I have to go down
to Nicky’s Pizzeria to meet Adam.”
“It’s 11:30!” she argued.
“I’m aware of the time at this present moment. Can we go?”
“No, we can’t go. I don’t have time for this. I have to go to sleep
immediately.”
“He said it was an emergency,” said Greg.
“Is he ok?” asked Claire.
“He wouldn’t tell me. All I know is you and I have to go down to Nicky’s
right now, or there will be some sort of trouble.”
“Aaaaarg!” yelled Claire. “That guy is always fucking things up!” And
with that, Claire slammed shut her window. 12.04 seconds later she was out her
front door. “Lets go.”
As they walked down to Nicky’s, Claire and Greg had an argument. “Give
that to me,” said Claire as she grabbed the Rubik’s Cube away from Greg.
“Hey, I was getting close!” complained Greg.
“Just walk. I’m getting tired of watching you stare at this thing. All
you do is this, this, and this.” And with that, the Rubik’s Cube was solved.
“Here,” she said, handing it back to him.
“I can’t believe you just did that!” yelled Greg, more than a little
angry. “I’ve been working on that for weeks!”
“Well you should be happy then,” said Claire. “I solved it for you.”
“But what good is that?” he said. “I wanted to do it myself!” And
suddenly, Greg had established that he doesn’t like other people solving his
problems for him.
“Yeah, well I’m a very ambitious feminist,” Claire replied, to nothing,
really.
The two of them continued to walk down the road, Claire’s tiny legs moving
much faster than Greg’s larger ones but getting just as far.
Nicky’s Pizzeria was a happening place about ten years ago. All the kids
used to go there to get their pizza, or, if the mood struck them, a calzone.
Then one day someone found a bloody rat in the bottom of a cup of soda. Word
spread pretty quickly, and everything changed. Now, instead of being called “Nicky’s
Pizzeria,” the restaurant was called “Nicky’s Pizzeria, the place where
someone found a bloody rat in his soda.” Business suffered. “That rat, it is
the bane of my existence!” says Nicky, but in a funny Italian accent.
When Greg and Claire walked in, Adam was waiting for them in a booth with a
goofy smile on his face. He was happy to see them and ushered them in.
“Hey guys. How you doin’? Have a bite of this pizza. It has three kinds
of cheeses.”
But Greg and Claire were not in the mood for three kinds of cheeses.
Furthermore, they had just spent the last fifteen minutes walking in the cold,
arguing, and establishing each other’s character. They were in no mood for
pleasantries.
“What’s wrong?” he asked them.
Claire took this opportunity to do a little venting. “What’s wrong?”
she mimicked. “You call us down here at midnight, give us no explanation of
why, and expect us to snap right to it. We had to walk down here, are you aware
of that? I was about to go to sleep. But you don’t care. You’re only
concerned with your own petty problems. You do this constantly. You get yourself
into some kind of trouble, you decide you need something from someone, and you
expect everybody to drop whatever their doing to attend to you. You’re
insensitive, egotistical and unbelievably vain. It’s like you think you’re
the only thing that matters in the world! I, for one, have had enough. I’m
very tired.”
“Well then I’ll get right to the point and tell you what I wanted to tell
you” said Adam.
“And what’s that?” asked Claire.
“I’m God.”
Greg sat there motionless as Claire struggled over the proper way to look as
annoyed as possible. But before she could speak, Adam continued.
“Look, I’m God, and I really don’t have time to fuck around. So let’s
dispense with the usual silliness that typically occurs in these types of
situations and get right to it. What can I do to prove to you that I am God?”
* Apparently
(c) 2002