Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Aug. 13, 2012
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Manners and other moot points Let us get right to the Mannerly Man questions without any introductory paragraph, which is usually just a waste of time anyway. Q: Mr. Mannerly Man, this ain’t exactly a question but only something to cheer you up because I know sometimes it must seem to you like nobody else in the world cares nothing about manners. But Momma said Aunt Arlene told her she heard Larry Bella Fonty say on TV that his career wouldn’t of gone nowhere without manners. He said manners meant the world to him. How about that? A: How is your mother’s hearing? Q: It ain’t so bad when she has her earpiece in place. Why? A: My guess would be your Aunt Arlene said “nanners,” not “manners.” Q: I don’t get it. A: You know, “NANNERS.” As in “six foot, seven foot, eight foot” bunches of ‘nanners.’ It’s the Belafonte Banana Boat song. Q: Oh. Well then, never mind. A: That’s okay. I appreciate the effort. Q: I had a friend tell me a joke about two old boys sitting at a restaurant when the lady at the next table got to choking. So one of the boys he run over to her table and I won’t say what he done, but if you know the joke then you already know that it worked, and the punch line, which occurred after he come back to his table, was when his friend said “I heard of that Hind Lick maneuver before, but I never seen it done.” So I e-mailed the joke to some friends, and I could tell from what they wrote back that they didn’t a one of ‘em get it. A: What did they say? Q: Arvis he said he thought he knowed which restaurant it was, and their prices was low because they had meat which was almost always very grizzly. Harold he said if one of them boys had of done that in Piedmont, they would of locked him up and shut down the restaurant. Noreen she said her momma always licked her with a hickory stick. Lester he said he usually got licked with a razor strop, and Kyle he said his daddy always used his hand, which was very big, and one day he knowed he had a licking coming so he opened up a Beloved Hymns Baptist songbook and stuck it down the back of his britches and this made his daddy holler and then he took it out and proceeded to give him the worst licking he had ever got. And Celia she said she wasn’t trying to be smart, but she knowed full well that whatever that Hind Lick “manure” was, it didn’t have no “v” in it. Didn’t none of them get the joke. What did I do wrong? A: It probably had something to do with the way you told it. The next time you tell that joke, try to mention a duck in there somewhere. Ducks are always funny. Q: Speaking of choking in restaurants, did you read the August 5 article in the New York Daily News about how the Kung Fu Kitchen in Miami’s Catalina Hotel and Beach Club is now offering sushi served on naked human bodies? A: Yes. Q: So is that mannerly? A: Mannerly or not mannerly is a moot point. And you should always keep your points sharp, not moot. There are all kinds of human bodies, but sushi is always RAW FISH! When I was younger, I cleaned a lot of fish. I never, ever, looked at one of those recently cleaned fish and said to myself, “Gee, that bluegill looks so good I believe I’ll have a bite right now, before Mom ruins it in the skillet!” Even if the most beautiful girl in town had climbed onto that cleaning board and offered me some raw fish right off her most delightful naked body parts, I would have declined. Fried chicken, potato salad ... even broccoli, maybe. But RAW FISH is RAW FISH! (Forgive me, but I get all worked up on the subject of sushi.) Q: Momma used to whip the fire out of me when I was a boy, sometimes just because she didn’t like the way I looked. But now, when it comes to her grandson, little Monroe Junior, she has become this gentle old lady who don’t believe in spanking. “Don’t you ever raise a hand to that dear child,” she says. “He’ll tell me if you do, and you’re still not too big for me to knock down.” She is very spry for an old woman, and I don’t doubt she could do it. Of course she only sees him two or three times a week, and he always smiles very sweet and says “Yes, ma’am” and “Thank you, dear Grandmother,” and compliments her on how she looks almost exactly like Loretta Lynn, only prettier. She don’t never see the other side of him, which is where Satan lives. She wasn’t around when he ruined my electric razor, and nearly ruined our poor tomcat, when he tried to shave old Jim to look like the MGM lion. Or when the parakeet fell off its perch because little Monroe had got it drunk on NyQuil. And she wasn’t around last month when he plucked all my fine, juicy Big Boy tomatoes off the plants and spray painted them with navy blue Rust-oleum, neither. Me and Lisa has tried sending him to his room for time outs, but he has so many video games in there that it ain’t no punishment at all. Is there a mannerly way I can explain to Momma that all these years of not spanking has turned little Monroe Junior into a demon on wheels? A: Probably not. She is a grandmother, and grandmothers tend to lose all sense of perspective. You might try sending him to live with her for a month or two. Put some electric hair clippers and a can of Rust-oleum in his suitcase. You know, just to see what happens when she dozes off on the couch. Keep those questions coming. If they are tasteless and inappropriate, then that’s just what we’re looking for. |