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It’s a beautiful day, normal people are doing
normal things, and I’ve just finished a three-hour online debate with
five twentysomething college-student slackers in their seventh year of
undergraduate study. I’m 66 years old, and I’m basking in the
glory of victory. I won the day with my answer: “The funniest thing
on TV is the Burger King commercials.”
I could go out into the real world now, but I need to
do some research on tomorrow’s question: “What is the biggest
possible roadkill?” It’ll take us an hour to define
“road.”
I’m 66 years old, and I’m the only
non-student-slacker allowed in the chat room. All the regular members have
titles — we’re all “dudes.” I am “The Dude of
Ancient Doggerel.”
Not good! I need to be with “standard”
people. Maybe I could get one of those old-retired-guy jobs where you
don’t have to know or remember anything. Maybe I could be a delivery
boy — on Tuesdays. Or maybe I could volunteer somewhere again.
———
I recently volunteered for two days a week at a
social-service agency, helping people with their résumés. All
of the clients had checkered employment histories, and I took some pride in
getting those whom I assisted at least to the interview stage. Easy enough:
Truth can be said in “a different way.”
My question: “When you worked at
Hardee’s, before you went to jail for burning the joint to the
ground, did you ever show a new hire how to work the cash
register?”
The answer: “Once.”
Résumé entry: “Job duties:
point-of-sale systems training. Reason for leaving: The business
downsized.”
Larry Oliver Perkins was my 13th client. He believed
in, and understood, George W. Bush, president of the United States of
America. After the commander in chief said, “If the
terriers are torn down, this economy will grow,” Larry Oliver Perkins
shot his dog. After W. said “I know how hard it is to put
food on your family,” Larry divorced his wife of 19 years because she
refused to wear mayonnaise pants. After the Decider said, “I think we agree, the
past is over,” Larry packed up all his yesterdays and set ’em
on fire. When George II said, “The only way we can win
is leave before the job is done,” Larry quit his job. I needed to know more about Larry Oliver Perkins
before I could manufacture his résumé, so we talked. Larry
didn’t walk until he was 4 years old, and it was only then that his
father, Big Ollie, bonded with little Larry by putting the lad in a
cardboard box. Larry’s head stuck out from a small hole in the top. Larry’s old man was a stay-at-home-father with
duties eventually refined to (1) drinking beer, (2) watching afternoon Cubs
games, and (3) drinking beer — a fine routine when little Larry
couldn’t walk, but now, at 4, Larry was into everything, so Big Ollie
put Larry Oliver in the box and trained him to get him a beer whenever Big
Ollie hit Larry in the head with a baseball autographed by Ernie Banks. In other words, there was nothing in Larry’s
childhood much different than anything in the childhoods of other children
with Cubs-fan parents — nothing to explain his later Bush affliction.
Larry had worked only one job — he was the
accountant-in-the-last-cubicle-before-the-exit-sign. He was a marginal
employee, but they needed someone to make simple journal entries, so they
kept him on, and then George II told him to quit. Other than a marriage to someone who would not wear
salad dressing, nothing whatsoever except simple journal entries happened
in Larry Oliver Perkins’ life between the last time his old man hit
him in the head with Ernie Banks and now. I had both résumé problems and
interview problems. Larry wouldn’t plan and wouldn’t make
decisions, because George II had said, “We don’t believe in
planners and deciders making decisions on behalf of Americans.”
He gave up having even low expectations when the
president said, “I am the master of low expectations.”
I couldn’t budge Larry, nothing worked, and my
failure absorbed me. I stopped helping other folks, paid no attention to
other business needing my attention. I was bogged down in a confrontation I
could not win, and I could not admit my mistake and still save face, and
then — the epiphany! — I, too, came to understand George W.
Bush. I declared “Mission Accomplished” —
and, using my new found Bushspeak, I “disvolunteered.”
———
Today’s chat-room topic is: “Best cartoon
boy — Butters from South Park or Stewie from Family Guy?”
I gotta get out of here and maybe get one of those
old-retired-guy jobs where you don’t have to know or remember
anything. Maybe, now that I understand the president, I can be the attorney
general — on Tuesdays. I’ll work on my résumé.
I’ve been arrested a few times — I can use that as “legal
experience.”
Contact Doug Bybee Sr. at dougbybee@sbcglobal.net.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2007.
