Road Apples by Tim Sanders
March 26, 2012
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Best Laid Schemes Robert Burns once said “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.” Burns was always dropping colorful phrases like “gang aft agley,” “auld lang syne,” and “hoot mon, hoot mon, hoot hoot” into his poems. These phrases may have endeared him to 18th Century Scotsmen, but they only confuse modern readers and make them suspect that he suffered from a severe case of Tourette’s Syndrome. So my point here is that I’d laid out a scheme to write about my solution to our nation’s high gas prices, which involves using an energy-efficient, solid oak, reversible ratchet cider press to extract oil from stray tomcats, of which we have a surplus roaming around our neighborhood, leaving their calling cards behind them. I’d gladly donate a few dozen to the oil companies if I could catch them. The cats, that is. But even though my scheme seemed foolproof, it “gang aft agley” when I ran across an article in the March 22 Tampa Bay Times. That article drove the cat oil extraction proposal right out of my head. When I read the article, by Times Staff Writer Erin Sullivan, I was inspired, and realized that it contained several moral lessons. The article is titled: “Pasco man in jail for calling 911 because wife wouldn’t leave him alone” “Doyle Hardwick found himself back at the Land O’Lakes jail this week, this time for 60 days, all because he wanted to check his Facebook page in peace. The trouble began brewing the evening of Sept. 23, as Hardwick plied his wife with beer, hoping she would go to bed. She drank. And drank. But didn’t feel like going to sleep. So he called 911.” The article then quotes the 911 transcript, which includes: “CLR [Caller] is upset because she won’t go to bed. Now they are bickering over who has been drinking. CLR has had 4 beers. Wife has had 8 beers. ... CLR is upset because she wouldn‘t let him look at Facebook peacefully.” Then the article explains: “Doyle Hardwick said he ‘called 911 because he was upset about his wife sitting next to him and not going to sleep after he gave her beers to go to sleep,’ the deputy wrote. ‘His wife was supposed to go to sleep after he gave her the beers because that was their agreement. He wanted me to make his wife not sit next to him and go to bed like she was supposed to.’ ... Julie Hardwick told the deputy ‘her husband asked her to not sit next to him and she told him she didn’t feel like sitting anywhere else,’ the report states. ‘Her husband told her if she didn’t quit sitting next to him and go to bed, he was going to call 911 and the police were going to make her. She told her husband not to call 911 or the police and he did.’ Hardwick was arrested that night on a charge of misuse of 911. He pleaded no contest in February and was sentenced to 60 days in jail. He never showed up to face his time, so an arrest warrant was issued. Hardwick turned himself in to the Pasco jail on Tuesday to serve his sentence.” And as if that weren’t enough: “This was not his first act of misuse of 911. He pleaded no contest in 2010 to the same charge and was sentenced to 10 days in jail, court records show. That time, he repeatedly called 911 demanding to speak to someone in code enforcement ‘regarding neighbors defecating into old vehicle fuel tanks for the past three weeks,’ a report states. He also asked the responding deputy for a ride to his daughter’s house.” And there are moral lessons a’plenty in this little article: • We strongly suspect that there was something on his Facebook site that poor old, gray-haired, 57-year-old Doyle didn’t want his wife to see. You know, a profile photo of a youthful Brad Pitt and personal information that strongly indicated that he was a 27-year-old bachelor interested in meeting young women, and he lived in a luxurious beachfront mansion, not a mobile home, and personally owned a brand new 2012 Camaro ZL1 Supercharged V-8 with 580 HP and no, he’d never drive a twenty-six-year-old Ford Escort with a bad paint job regardless of what anybody said. When it comes to Facebook, be sure your sins will find you out, Doyle. • Trying to get a woman into bed with 8 beers may sound like a reasonable scheme, unless she is a) your wife, and b) you don’t plan to accompany her. • If you continue to call 911 for things like your wife not allowing you to read your Facebook site in peace, or neighbors defecating into their fuel tanks, the authorities will pay no attention to you when you really have a serious problem. Like, for example, when you don’t get all the McNuggets you ordered at McDonald’s, or when your goat gets into your underwear drawer and leaves you without any boxer shorts to wear to the beach. • Doyle’s wife “told her husband not to call 911 or the police and he did.” That word “and” is a dead giveaway. Mrs. Hardwick knew exactly what she was doing, eight beers or no eight beers. Had she encouraged him to “go ahead and call 911 and the police,” he’d have thought better of it. But you never, ever forbid your husband to do something unless you actually want him to do it, and hope he gets arrested and winds up in jail for 60 days. Hahaha. • As to the neighbors who were defecating into those “old vehicle fuel tanks,” we have no earthly idea how they managed to do that, but we would’ve advised a little patience on Doyle’s part. They were only showing off. [NOTE: Since I promised a friend I’d use “panoply” in this week’s column, there it is–our word for the week. Panoply, panoply, panoply. My friend knows what it means, because he was a pianist before his knuckles went bad. If you want to know what it means, you’ll have to look it up.] |