387. Lines

“How do I look?”

What could I say? C.W. looked like weird, even for him. Remember those male models they used to put in the old Sears catalogs? I’m talking about the men advertising work wear, guys who looked like lawyers wearing work shirts, work pants, and steel-toed boots. Only he had this orange tint on a face topped off with a red baseball cap that said, “Make Everyone Reject Democrats,” under the large letters spelling out “MERD.”

“You look … uh, … swell.”

“I thought so. Are you ready to go?’

“I’m not sure I can. I have a lot to do around here.”

“Nonsense. You’ve got to be my modified forelimb that bears large feathers man.”

“I’m not sure I want to be your ‘wing man’ in that getup.”

“Nonsense. We’re going to score on some chickee babies, grab ‘em you know where.”

“I’m not sure my wife would allow that. Besides, I’m behind on my chores.”

“Nonsense. We’re going to wow the babes. I guarantee it.” He paused. “Oh, and speaking of Mrs. Big Dope, is she going with us?”

“Hardly. Don’t you remember? She said she would never be seen in public with you again after last time.”

“Nonsense. That wasn’t my fault. How was I to know that woman was a TV evangelist?”

“The forty pounds of jewelry and five layers of makeup, along with hair standing up a foot high might have given you clues.”

“I though she may have been a politician, state senator or something.”

“Your pickup line didn’t help.”

“I forget what it was.”

“Pardon me miss, didn’t I meet you at the meeting of the Existentialism Club last night?”

“Oh, yeah. Didn’t work too well, did it?”

“It got worse after you did realize what she did for a living.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Would you get on your knees for Jesus?”

“No. Really?”

“And go with him, with him, all the way?”

“I was just trying to speak in her vernacular. I don’t know why she got mad.”

“That’s the trouble.”

“What do you mean?”

“She didn’t get mad. Don’t you recall?”

“She’s not the one who …?”

“Yeah. She’s the one.”

“She had a nice house.”

“It took us forever to find you.”

“It had over forty rooms.”

“Do you want to go back?”

He blanched and shook his head. “No,” was all he said.

“Now you know why I don’t want to go with you.”

“Nonsense. Bar springing lightly is fun.”

“Bar ‘hopping’ is far from fun with you, and besides, that wasn’t your worst pickup line.”

“Oh? I had others you didn’t like?”

“Let’s cut out the small talk and start some serious bargaining. I bid one kiss on the ear.”

“I used that one?”

“I like sex infrequently. Care to find out if that’s one word or two?”

“No, really?”

“A quiver-full begins with a quiver. Want to help string my bow?”

“I’m not believing I said that.”

“Oh, it gets worse.”

“Nonsense.”

“Remember the one about the difference between walking up and sticking it in, and sticking it in and walking up?”

“I don’t remember that. Besides. I’ve learn about salvation through sincere contrition and penitence.”

“Redemption? From whom?”

Please. Don't ask. - C.W.

“Big hair.”

“She taught you about redemption?”

“Oh, she taught me many things that have made me a better person, or imitation person, or whatever.”

“I still don’t want to go with you.”

“I’ve learned my lesson. Trust me. I’ve gone straight.” He stopped, thought, and grabbed a pad and pencil from his pocket. He began to write and nod, saying “How would you like to get something straight between us?”

A scene from a famous movie flashed before my eyes. Click here and you will understand.

See also:

Delta Dreaming

All Hat No Cattle

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329. Slang

It’s never my favorite day. Once a month, C.W. sits me down for what he calls “Idioms for Idiots” training, or sometimes. “slang for the species.” I can always tell when the time has come since he shows up in his college-professor guise—his version of how he thinks a professor would look: dark-rimmed spectacles, a small goatee, and a mismatch of clothes set off by a sport coat with leather patches on the elbows. No … really, the full nine yards.

Anyway, it was time and I dreaded it, for in these moments he can worry the horns off a billy-goat. He eased in cautiously, an unlit pipe in his hand. “I think,” he said, “that Mrs. Big Dope just insulted me.”

“Oh? I can’t imagine that. How?”

“She said that I ‘made her ass want a dip of snuff,’ and I don’t think she meant it as a compliment.”

“What was your first clue?”

That stumped him. He said, “She didn’t offer any clues, she just said …”

“I know. I know. I think she meant that you were getting on her nerves.”

He pondered this. “How does on ‘get on’ a bundle of fibers that transmits impulses of sensation to the brain or spinal cord, and impulses from these to the muscles and organs?”

“It’s a saying.” I said. “You have to take it with a grain of salt.”

“Sodium chloride effects this neurological miracle?”

“Let’s just say that I think you were bugging her.”

“You mean I turn her into a suborder Heteropera of the order Hemiptera?”

I sighed. “Why don’t you just give her some space for a while?

He bristled. “One doesn’t give away space. One travels through space.”

“Do you have any other terms that are making your pillow lumpy?”

“That would be pillows, plural,” he said. “I like to sleep in my natural state. I order them on-line and they are never lumpy.”

“Whatever. Now what terms are giving you trouble?”

“Well,” he said, pulling a notepad from a coat pocket, “I did overhear this in a bar.”

“You’ve been going to bars again? I thought we put that notion to rest.”

He started to respond, thought better of it, and read, “I don’t know where that ‘thang’ has been.”

“You heard that in a bar?”

“More than once. What does it imply?”

“Uh,” I said. “It probably implied that someone wasn’t going to get lucky that night.”

“Lucky? It wasn’t a casino. It was a bar.”

“Do you have another one?”

“Let’s see … oh yes, ‘She was squirmin’ like a worm in hot ashes’ or something like that. What’s that all about?”

“I don’t think you need to know what that is all about,” I said. “Don’t you have any examples from normal conversations?”

“Let’s see.” He read down. “Oh,” he said. “Here’s one. Two men are talking and one says to the other, ‘That farmland I own is as rich as five feet up a bull’s ass.'”

“That means it is good land,” I said. “The best.”

“Why didn’t he just say that?”

“Do you have more, or are you just jerking me around?”

This seemed both to confuse him and hurt his feelings. “I only do this,” he said, “because the Falloonian elders make me.”

“We all have our crosses to bear.”

Something tells me that she isn't falling for
that, "Did you fall from Heaven?" line. - C.W.

He brightened. “Now,” he said, examining his notes, “I heard that expression in a bar.”

“A bar?”

“A bar.”

“How?”

“A man told a woman that he was trapped in an unhappy marriage and she told him …”

“That we all have our crosses to bear.”

“Yes,” he said. “What did she mean?”

“She meant,” I said, “that he wasn’t going to get lucky that night.”

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