Friday, April 27, 2007

The Slurpee Defense

I am certainly not the smartest guy in the room. On occasion, I am the smart aleck in the room, but that’s a whole other topic. At any rate, in my time here on this planet I have come to learn a number of things that help me to know that the world is in balance, if only precariously. These little things are the constants in life that we can count on like gravity keeps us from floating up in the air and water is wet. Without them, we feel a certain uneasiness. Let me share them with you:

1. Asparagus will make your pee stink. Try as you might to dilute it with large quantities of alcohol or a cherry slurpee, that little green vegetable’s odiferous power will not be masked. You might as well just stop trying and move on.
2. If a man has a mustache – no other facial hair – it’s a 98.72% likelihood that he’s a cop or a firefighter . . . or it’s Tom Selleck reprising his role in Magnum P.I. Little known fact: Adolf Hitler went to his college career advisor to ask about how he could become a police officer and found that the waiting list was three years long, but there were immediate openings in the dictator department.
3. When you walk into a men’s public restroom, four out of the five seats in the stalls will be peed on – the one that’s not was last used by a married man but is most likely left in the “up” position. And three of the other four were most likely used by married men, too, who have been wed less than five years.
4. You will never become a millionaire, lose seventy-five pounds, or grow your hair back as a result of something you heard about through junk mail.
5. Regardless of your college major and the subsequent career field you pursue, the things you learn in your Political Science 202 class will only come in handy when watching or competing on Jeopardy.

I defy you to prove these universal constants wrong. Sure, you’ll come back and say things like, “I rather enjoy the effect asparagus has on my bodily fluids” and “Hall of Fame pitcher Rollie Fingers had a handlebar mustache, and he was never in law enforcement or public safety.” First off, on the asparagus issue, eeeewwww! (Please don’t invite me over to your home for Sunday dinner.) As for Mr. Fingers and others of his mustachioed ilk, they comprise the other 1.28% - I have statistics to back me up. What have you got?

As is true with all scientific truths, there will be exceptions that don’t so much as disprove but amuse or confuse. For example, you may be watching one of the upcoming presidential debates and one of the candidates will make sense. Or, you’ll be standing outside and the sun will be shining without a cloud in the sky, and you’ll suddenly feel rain drops falling. I can’t explain that one – nor can I explain how a candidate would make sense.

My recommendation is that you take comfort in these simple truths that I have outlined. Lay your head on your pillow at night and dream sweetly of a world that makes sense in its own weird way. And if in those dreams you suddenly find yourself on Jeopardy competing against Tom Selleck and Adolf Hitler, rest assured they won’t know Plato’s Theory of Forms either.

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