Dave Barry Talks Back

by Dave Barry

  We sincerely wish that we could show you Figure 1, which is a truly wonderful drawing of a standard person with dozens of little Smell Arrows shooting out of his body. Looking at this drawing reminded us of one of the highlights of our life, which is the time that we were with two friends of ours, Randall and George, in a bar that was empty except for two women at the far end of the room, and George, after maybe 17 Miller High Lifes, decided to Make a Move, which was pretty funny because George, even on those occasions when he has total control over his dentures, is not exactly Paul Newman, or even Mr. Ed.

  But he went lunging over there and, with all the subtlety of Hurricane Gilbert, attempted to strike up a conversation, which the two women were clearly not interested in. So they were quiet, and after a while George got quiet, and we were listening quietly, so the whole bar was very quiet when George had an unfortunate bodily event. It’s the kind of event that can happen to anybody, except maybe Margaret Thatcher, but it rarely happens with the magnitude that it happened to George. You talk about Hurricane Gilbert. Of course, in those days we did not have modern measurement techniques, but we’re sure that this event was completely off the scale on the Olf Meter. We’re only sorry that we didn’t get to see the two women virtually sprint from the bar, because we were lying flat on the floor laughing so hard that we thought we were going to suffer a heart attack, which every American should know the Six Warning Signs of.

  TODAY’S MEDICAL TIP: Never undergo any kind of major surgery without first making an appointment.

  ATTACK OF THE CARTOON ANIMAL HEADS

  It’s a Sunday evening, and we’re driving home from Orlando, where we have taken our son, Robby, and his friend, Erik, for a special birthday weekend of fantasy and fun and hurling money at random around the Official Walt “You Will Have Fun” Disney Magical World of Theme Kingdoms and Resort Complex.

  We’re taking what the American Automobile Association has designated as the “scenic route” back to Miami, through south-central Florida, a region that used to cater primarily to frogs but that has in recent years sprouted dozens of “adult” (which we used to call “retired person”) communities with names like Belle Harbour Vista Manour Downes Estates Centre West II, consisting of what we used to call “trailers,” and later we called “mobile homes,” and still later we called “manufactured houses.” I don’t know what we call them now. Probably something like “countrie townehome villas,” as in “Hey, Ed! Lester’s cow knocked over your countrie townehome villa again!”

  We’ve been driving for three, maybe eight hours. In the backseat, the boys have finished writing on their forearms with Official Walt Disney World souvenir felt-tipped markers, and are now passing the time with a little game they have invented with their soaring childhood imaginations: spitting on each other.

  Ptooo, goes Robby.

  Ptooo, goes Erik.

  Ptooo, goes Robby.

  This little game of saliva tennis is clearly audible in the front seat, but Beth and I, the Parental Authority Figures, say nothing. We are both thinking the same thing: At least they are taking turns. That is how low we have sunk on this car trip. We frankly would not mind if they were back there shooting a high-powered rifle out the window, as long as they shared it. But, of course, they wouldn’t.

  “No fair!” Robby would shout. “Erik got three shots and I only got two but he won’t give me back the rifle!” And Erik would say, “But Robby hit the farmer and I didn’t hit anybody!” And Robby would say, “You did too! You hit the policeman!” And Erik would say, “Only his hat!” And finally one of us Authority Figures would whirl around and snap, “If you can’t share the rifle, we’re going to take it away and and then NOBODY WILL BE ABLE TO SHOOT ANYBODY.”

  We always get irritable like this when we return to harsh reality after a couple of days in Walt “You Are Having Some Fun Now, Yes?” Disney Resort and World and Compound, a place where your dreams really do come true, if you dream about having people wearing enormous cartoon-animal heads come around to your restaurant table and act whimsical and refuse to go away until you laugh with delight. This happens to you constantly at Disney World. I think it’s part of a corporate discipline program for Disney executives. (“Johnson, your department is over budget again. You know what that means.” “No! Please!” “Yes! Into the Goofy suit!”)

  We saw a lot of Goofy. Every time we sat down to eat, there he would be, acting whimsical. It got so that Robby and Erik, busily playing with their action figures, hardly even noticed him.

  “Look, boys!” we would say, food dribbling down our chins. “Here comes Goofy! Again!”

  Robby, not even looking up, would thrust one of his figures toward Erik and say: “This guy sends out a laser beam that can MELT YOUR EYEBALLS.”

  “Oh yeah?” Erik would say. “Well this guy makes a noise like, mmmmmmPAAAAAH!, that goes through your ears and EXPLODES YOUR WHOLE HEAD.”

  Meanwhile, right behind them, encased in a heavy costume, this poor person, probably the executive vice president for group sales, would be writhing around, trying desperately to fulfill the boys’ innocent childhood fantasies. Finally we grown-ups would have to let him off the hook. “Ha ha, Goofy!” we would say, speaking directly into the saltshaker, which is where we figured the microphone had been hidden by the Walt Disney World Whimsy Police. “You sure are causing us to laugh with delight!”

  Don’t get me wrong. I like Disney World. The rest rooms are clean enough for neurosurgery, and the employees say things like “Howdy, folks!” and actually seem to mean it. You wonder: Where do they get these people? My guess: 1952. I think old Walt realized, way back then, that there would eventually be a shortage of cheerful people, so he put all the residents of southwestern Nebraska into a giant freezer with a huge picture of Jiminy Cricket on the outside, and the corporation has been thawing them out as needed ever since.

  Whatever the secret is, it works, and I urge you all to visit Disney World several dozen times. Afterward, I recommend that you drive down to Miami on the “scenic route,” although if you notice two boys, ages 6 and 7, standing on the side of the road spitting at each other, my advice is not to pick them up.

  DON’T BOX ME IN

  We’re moving again. We’re not going far: Maybe two miles, as the heat-seeking radar-equipped South Florida Stealth Mosquito flies. It’s hard to explain why we’re doing this. Call it a crazy whim. We just woke up one morning and said, “I know! Let’s put everything we own into boxes!”

  And that’s what we’re doing. The giant cardboard mines of Peru are working overtime to meet our box needs, because we have a LOT of stuff that we need to take, including many precious heirlooms such as our calculator in which all the keys work perfectly except the “4,” and our complete, mint-condition set of 1978 VISA statements (try replacing THOSE at today’s prices). Stuffwise, we are not a lean operation. We’re the kind of people who, if we were deciding what absolute minimum essential items we’d need to carry in our backpacks for the final, treacherous ascent to the summit of Mount Everest, would take along these aquarium filters, just in case.

  The humorous part is, we never finished unpacking from when we moved in here. The other day I watched my wife, Beth, as she opened a box that has been sitting around, unopened, since our last move, removed the contents, and carefully packed them, every last one, into a new box. I grant you that these are not the actions of a sane person, but you wouldn’t be sane, either, if you’d spent the last few weeks doing what Beth has been doing, namely trying to get hold of workmen. The workmen are playing an elaborate prank wherein they come to our house and do a tiny smattering of work and then run off and hide in the Everglades for days at a time, breathing through hollow reeds and refusing to return Beth’s phone calls. Every now and then one of them will come sneaking into our kitchen, frogs clinging to his hair, and shout, “nyah nyah nyah” at her, then sprint off before she can hurdle the boxes and grab him.

  We need the workmen because we’re trying to make our
current house look domestic so that somebody will want to buy it. We’re making a lot of simple, obvious improvements that never would have occurred to us to make while we actually lived here, because, tragically, we both happen to be domestically impaired. If we were birds, our nest would consist of a single twig with the eggs attached via Scotch tape. We lived for 11 years in a house with a light fixture that we both agreed was less attractive than if we had simply suspended a urinal from the ceiling. But of course we never did anything about it until we moved, just as in our current house we waited until now to clear out the giant tropical spiders who live next to the front door, subsisting on Federal Express men; or to replace the electrical ceiling-fan switch that has three positions, “Low,” “Medium,” and “Burn Down House;” or to eliminate the violently pink carpet that made our bedroom look as though an Exxon tanker had run around there and spilled millions of gallons of Pepto-Bismol. Yes, we have plenty to do, and we’re doing everything we can to attract workmen, including tying a string around a small bundle of money and placing it on the lawn as bait. When a workman approaches, we tug it slowly toward the house, and when he gets close enough we slam a box over him.

  During this difficult time we have received a large mound of assistance from our two dogs. Using their keen, nearly asphalt-level intelligence, they have sensed that something important is happening, and have decided that their vital contribution will be to kill anybody who comes near our house. This means they have to spend a lot of time shut away in my office, barking. They’ve reached the point where they automatically start barking as soon as we shut them in there, whether or not there’s anybody to bark at yet. It’s their job, barking in my office. Somebody has to do it! They produce approximately one bark apiece every two seconds, so if I leave them in there for, say, 45 minutes, then open the door, I get knocked several feet backward by the escaping force of 2,700 accumulated barks.

  Sometimes prospective buyers come to our house to look at it, and we have to go hide in the Everglades with the workmen. Buyers don’t want you hanging around when they look at your house, because they feel free to make frank observations such as, “What are these? Toenails?” They would make this remark in my office, which contains many large unexplored toenail deposits that have built up over the years because I’m a professional writer, which means I spend as many as five hours a day engaged in foot maintenance while waiting for professional sentences to appear in my brain. But the rest of the house is looking real nice, thanks to Beth. In fact, she’s starting to make me nervous: Yesterday she put some magazines on a table in a fan arrangement. This is of course one of the early symptoms of the dread June Cleaver Disease, which ultimately leads to the appearance, in your bathroom, of soap shaped like fruit. So I’m hoping we sell this house soon. Make us an offer. We’re motivated. We’re reasonable. We’re accommodating. You get the dogs.

  UN NINTENDED BENEFITS

  OK, I bought my child a Nintendo video-game system. I realize I should not admit this. I realize the Child Psychology Police may arrest me for getting my child a mindless addictive antisocial electronic device instead of a constructive old-fashioned educational toy such as an Erector Set. Well let me tell you something: All my childhood friends had Erector Sets, and although I am not proud of this, I happen to know for a fact that, in addition to the recommended educational projects such as the Truck, the Crane, and the Carousel, it was possible to build the Bug Pulper, the Worm Extender, and the Gears of Pain.

  And speaking of pain, you have no idea how hard my son made my life before I caved in and bought Nintendo. The technique he used was Power Wistfulness. Remember the old comic strip “Dondi,” starring the little syndicated orphan boy who always looked heartbreakingly sad and orphanous and never got adopted, possibly because he had eye sockets the size of manhole covers? Well, my son looked like that. He’d start first thing in the morning, standing around with Dondi-like eyes, emitting armor-piercing wistfulness rays and sighing over the fact that he was the only child outside of the Third World who didn’t have Nintendo. Pretty soon I’d be weeping all over my toast, thinking how tragic it was—my own son, an orphan—until finally I just had to go to the Toys “Я” Approximately a Third of the Gross National Product store, because after all we’re talking about à child’s happiness here, and you can’t put a price tag on … What? It cost HOW MUCH? What does it DO for that kind of money? Penetrate Soviet airspace?

  No, really, it’s worth every penny. I know you’ve probably read a lot of articles by Leading Child Psychologists (defined as “people whose children probably wet the bed through graduate school”) telling you why Nintendo is a bad thing, so let me discuss some of the benefits:

  Benefit No. 1—Nintendo enables the child to develop a sense of self-worth by mastering a complex, demanding task that makes his father look like a total goober.

  The typical Nintendo game involves controlling a little man who runs around the screen trying to stay alive while numerous powerful and inexplicably hostile forces try to kill him; in other words, it’s exactly like real life. When I play, the little man becomes highly suicidal. If he can’t locate a hostile force to get killed by, he will deliberately swallow the contents of a little electronic Valium bottle. So all my games end instantly, whereas my son can keep the little man alive through several presidential administrations. He is always trying to cheer me up by saying “Good try, Dad!” in the same sincerely patronizing voice that I once used to praise him for not getting peas in his hair. What is worse, he gives me Helpful Nintendo Hints that are far too complex for the adult mind to comprehend. Here’s a verbatim example: “OK, there’s Ganon and miniature Ganon and there’s these things like jelly beans and the miniature Ganon is more powerfuller, because when you touch him the flying eagles come down and the octopus shoots red rocks and the swamp takes longer.”

  And the hell of it is, I know he’s right.

  Benefit No. 2—Nintendo strengthens the community.

  One evening I got an emergency telephone call from our next-door neighbor, Linda, who said, her voice breathless with urgency: “Is Robby there? Because we just got Gunsmoke [a Nintendo game] and we can’t get past the horse.” Of course I notified Robby immediately. “It’s the Liebmans,” I said. “They just got Gunsmoke, and they can’t get past the horse.” He was out the door in seconds, striding across the yard, a Man on a Mission. Of course he got them past the horse. He can get his man all the way to the bazooka. My man dies during the opening credits.

  Benefit No. 3—When a child is playing Nintendo, the child can’t watch regular television.

  Recently on the local news, one relentlessly personable anchorperson was telling us about the murder at a Pizza Hut, and when she was done, the other relentlessly personable anchorperson got a frowny look on his face, shook his head sadly, and said—I am not making this quotation up—“A senseless tragedy, and one that I am sure was unforeseen by the victims involved.”

  I don’t want my child exposed to this.

  Benefit No. 4—A child who is playing Nintendo is a child who is probably not burping as loud as he can.

  I mention this only so I can relate the following true exchange I witnessed recently between a mother and her eight-year-old son:

  SON: Burp. Burp. Burp. Burp. Bu …

  MOTHER: Stop burping!

  SON: But, Mom, it’s my hobby.

  So, Mr. and Ms. Child Psychologist, don’t try to tell me that Nintendo is so terrible, OK? Don’t tell me it makes children detached and aggressive and antisocial. In fact don’t tell me anything. Not while the octopus is shooting these rocks.

  LICKING THE DRUG PROBLEM

  What with the recent unsettling developments on the world political scene, particularly in the Middle East, I imagine that most of you are eager for a report on our yard.

  We’ve moved to a new yard, which contains an alarming amount of nature. And I’m not talking about the friendly kind of yard nature that you get in, for example, Ohio (“The Buckeye State�
�), such as shrubbery and cute little furry baby buckeyes scampering around. I’m talking about the kind of mutant terroristic nature we get here in Florida (“The Assault Roach State”), For example, we have a kind of toad down here that, if you lick it, can kill you.

  Now you’re saying to yourself, “Yes, but who, aside from Geraldo Rivera seeking improved ratings, would lick a toad?” The answer is: More and more people. According to news articles that alert readers keep sending me, there’s a brand of toad (not the kind here in Florida) that secretes a hallucinogenic substance when it gets excited, and licking this toad has become a fad in certain circles. Which raises a couple of questions in my mind, such as: Does this occur in social settings? Do you have a group of sophisticated people sitting around a dinner table, finishing their coffee, and one of them reaches suavely into his jacket pocket, pulls out this thing that looks like a giant wart with eyeballs, and then, lowering his voice suggestively, says, “Anybody want to do some toad?” Also, how do they get the toad excited? Show it movies? Give it a tiny marital aid? Also, will Free Enterprise try to cash in on this? Will Anheuser-Busch come out with a TV commercial wherein some rugged-looking workmen, exhausted from a hard day of not showing up at people’s houses, relax by taking some man-sized slurps off a Toad Lite?