Or “The Obliviousness of My Wife Never Ceases to Amaze Me”
Often during the Christmas season, my wife likes to sit down with Li’l Chief and me to watch one of her Christmas DVDs. By now we know 'em all by heart, but it’s a “family thing” in the “spirit of the season,” so’s Li’l Chief and I normally give her a pass and settle in for an evening of cracking on Capt. Pikkard as Scrooge or Burl Ives as the funkadelic snowman. Last night my wife says we’ll be watching Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. No sweat, thinks I.
“I love Mr. Magoo,” my wife asserts, “He’s so funny! He’s one of my favorite cartoon characters.”
We get past the lame, circa 1960’s opening number and Mr. Magoo enters a restaurant mistakenly thinking it’s the stage entrance.
My wife asks, “Why do they show a sign for restaurant when Mr. Magoo is reading a sign aloud that says ‘Stage Door Entrance’?”
<Blink-blink>
“He’s blind, mom. It’s a joke,” my son explains using a tone of voice usually reserved for addressing the mentally handicapped.
“No, he isn’t,” my wife says, not wanting to have her leg pulled yet again by the ChiefScott and Li’l Chief Comedy Troupe.
You have got to be shitting me! Li’l Chief looks at me, and with just a glance tells me to do something with my wife.
“Dear,” says I, “Mr. Magoo can hardly see. His poor eyesight is the basis for just about *every single * joke in a Mr. Magoo cartoon.”
“Really? I never noticed before.”
“How could you not notice?!! Do you remember the beginning of every Mr. Magoo cartoon when he’s driving his old-fashioned car?”
“Yes.”
“Where was he driving?”
“In traffic and up on a building being built.”
“Did you think that was funny?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought it was funny because his eyesight was so bad that he didn’t know he was causing traffic jams, didn’t know he was driving on telephone wires, didn’t know that he’d driven onto a beam being carried up to a building under construction and all the while he was oblivious to the danger he was in!” I explained.
“Oh. I never got that. So he can’t see too good, huh? Let’s watch the movie now.”
How in the Hell, can Mr. Magoo be one of your most favorite cartoon characters and you not know that he’s as blind as a bat! My son and I were kee-rackin’ up! And he did me proud by piling on:
“Hey, mom? Didja ever notice that whatever the coyote sets up to catch the roadrunner backfires on him?”
“Hey, sweetie? Didja ever notice that Elmer Fudd never caught that wascally wabbit?”
Whadda hoot!
Anyhow, we eventually settle down and begin to leave her alone. After the four ghosts had visited him and Scrooge becomes a new man, he grabs a bag of coins and gets ready to leave his house in his nightshirt. He then says something to the effect that he’d forgotten to get dressed. He returns to his room, then reappears still dressed in his nightgown but now wearing a top hat!
He stops at a bust of a Scooge forefather who’s also wearing a top hat and mutters (Jim Baccus was great at the muttering) “Ah, yes. That’ll do.”
Mrs. Chief then says, “Oh, I get it. He thinks he’s looking in a mirror.”
Not much gets past that wife of mine…
*Note about the use of the word ‘maroon’ in the thread title in case Contrapuntal peeks in. ‘Maroon’ is not used in it’s defined sense of a reddish-hued color or a person who is marooned, but in its “Looney Toon” sense of a moron.