Woman behold thy daughter, daughter thy mother, & BOTH OF YOU LOSE MY NUMBER!

The BBQ Pit
281

“One (1) Dutch Oven, weighing approximately 18 pounds, of German manufacture, disappeared during the Korean Conflict
One (1) set of post hole diggers, slightly rusted, disappeared around 1954
One (1) pair of two (2) oxblood colored Oxford dress shoes, acquired around 1932, disappeared from my bedroom on or before Christmas Day, 1968
One (1) galvanized zinc washtub, with my initials of SMS scratched in nail in the side, disappeared from my yard on or before Labor Day of 1964
One (1) washboard with glass ridges, American Bath Company, disappeared from my porch on or before January 1970
One (1) synthetic grass rug made of high grade plastic of the sort for wiping feet and with a plastic daisy as decoration, disappeared from my yard in or about November of 1978”

“Hell Muh, you stole that damned plastic grass rug from my house yourself.”

“I did not! Your wife had thrown it out, I just drug it down here.”

“She hadn’t thrown it out.”

“It was laying face side down on the sidewalk in front of your house with dogs laying on it.”

“She had just put it there to clean. She was going to hose it off when she got home from school She gave me hell about that damned thing for a year.”

“Well she should be more obvious in her desires as relates to her belongin’s. I like to have wore myself out dragging that damned thing home.”

“How do you think Ruby must have felt? She was on a walker by then, had one blind eye and couldn’t see out of the other one and hadn’t known what day of the week it was since before Wallace was shot.”

“You don’t need all your faculties to steal. Just proves my point. By that time she was so acclimated to helping herself to my belongings it didn’t even matter what they were, long as she got something she reckoned the raid was plunder was worthwhile.”

“She was half dead by then…”

“Well they sent her to that nursing home the next month, that damned grass mat probably took her last moment of strength.”

“Just keep reading.”

“One (1) light brown cosmetics case, very sturdy, of the sort used on trains, with brown clasps, disappeared from my 2nd bedroom in or before May of 1972 and with the initials BGS”

“That was Blanche’s too! She looked for that damned thing for frigging years!”

“ONE! PARENTHESE NUMERAL ONE PARENTHESE! Large black umbrella… let’s see… where’s the next page…”

And so on and so on until she had cleared the three very detailed pages, concluding with

“As my memory enjoys greater periods of recollection I will make addendum to this list, but the return of these items would be seen as a most neighborly and welcome beginning of the restoration I expect of all items heretofore and to be listed. It is my home that restoration of a divine nature awaits you and your mother in the Days that Are to Come, and that until then you enjoy the blessings of Divine Providence and human endeavor. Yours in anticipation of the receipt of my belongings and a state of extreme condolence, Mrs. Sybil Morehouse Sampiro*, of Rt. 1, Weokahatchee.
P.S.
One (1) brass plated lamp, broken, disappeared from my living room, on or about Easter, 1973.”

She looked up with satisfaction as if waiting for applause for such a heartfelt and warm accusation of continual larceny.

“Muh…” huge snort and a deep draw on his cigar, “you need to get down on youre bony knees and thank whatever angel thou yet dost serve… that I taught Carol Ed Hawks’s two boys and Blanche taught her daughter and her oldest grandson, and that she knows the crazy runs through your family like pork fat on a string through a flock of geese, because if she hadn’t your old ass would be out on that street while sheriffs deputies sold off everything you have to pay for the judgment against you when she sued you for libel and false accusations and emotional damage and any other damned women’s malady she she could think of down at the county courthouse, cause she’d have won! Especially when you got up there saying you never wrote it in the first place and then saying you forgot to mention that can of Pork’n’Beans from 1963!”

“It was a gallon sized can of brand name pork’n’beans and it was from 1958!”

TBC

282

Her surname was no more Sampiro than mine is, of course, but throughout I’ve changed names. And certainly I don’t remember exactly what was on the list [save for a couple of items, one of which will be important], but it really was that detailed.

283

I was born in Montgomery, raised in Ellenwood and Newnan, GA, B.A. from LaGrange College, now live in Columbus, GA.

Sure do wish my moma was around to read this. She would have loved it as much as I do.

284

“Why in hell would Ruby even have wanted anything of yours? Her kids took care of her. Shirley’s a teacher, Mayvis works in an office somewhere, Perkins owns his own 18 wheeler and Wyatt sells cars and Carol Ed’s a secretary for the State Treasurer, they all got good incomes, they took care of her, hired her a cleaning woman to look after her, paid her bills…why the shit would she steal from you?”

“There’s other reasons to steal than cause you need it. I think Roguin’ Ruby just got to where she couldn’t help it. It was vindictiveness and spite and bile, pure and simple. I don’t think that old woman ever forgave me for running over that damned retarded daughter of hers. And hell, that shit happened thirty years ago. Not like it killed her any, just broke her leg and scared her cars, and she shouldn’t have been running around in the road anyway.”

“She was in her parents’ driveway…”

“And a driveway is a WHAT! A ROAD! THAT’S WHY IT’S GOT THE WORD DRIVE IN IT IS CAUSE YOU DRIVE IN IT! Taking her side over your blood.”

“Ruby had a broken hip and was blind, I want you to tell me how she got into your bedroom, while you were here at the house, and got through these 8 foot piles of shit and went through two bedrooms to get into your hall and into your bathroom and get that train case.”

“Probably came in through the bathroom window.” (My grandmother would have had no knowledge whatever of the Beatles’ song.)

“The bathroom window’s five feet off the ground?”

“Well if you’d been listening you’d have known one of the things she stole was my step-ladder!”

“There is no way an old woman could climb in a bathroom window even with a step-ladder…”

“I’m 82 years old and I could do it all day long!”

“Show me. You show me and maybe I’ll start to believe you.”

They try to stare each other down for a moment, then Grandmother takes the bluff. “LUCY! LUCY! Get out here and fetch this damned piano bench! I’m going to break into my bathroom window to steal that traincase that isn’t there anymore!”

The back of Grandmother’s house was a miniature rain forest of wild grass with spare tires and discarded household items (including a galvanized zinc washtub with the initials SMS scratched with a nail overturned but clearly visible near the treeline) with sounds of rustling that with any luck were cats. By the time the octagenarian pyromaniac and her septugenarian lobotomized sister had gotten through with the help of a machete (swear to Og) and positioned the piano bench under the bathroom window my father had had time to call our house and have my mother, brother and sister (both in college but home for the weekend) to drive down (it was only a quarter mile) and gather around to watch what promised to be the most entertaining show of that pre-cable month.

Grandmother stood up on the piano stool, about breast level with the windowsill, and did some calculations. She stepped back down.

“There’s no way Ruby could do it could she?”

“Like hell! You just have to get yourself a plan. I’m too heavy. Let me take some of this stuff off…”

Off came the cape, the CPO jacket, the STAR WARS T-shirt, the hooded sweatshirt, a John Calvin Christian Academy Football Team T-shirt that my brother had noticed was missing some while ago and even let her beloved hatchet fall to the ground along with the belt that held that and everything else to her bony waist. She was now wearing just the bottom two men’s undershirts and the faded jeans. She climbed back on the piano bench…

“Somebody give me a boost!”

“Ruby wouldn’t have had a boost, Muh…”

“She had that colored woman worked for her didn’t she!”

“That colored woman was five feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds, I don’t think she’d have made it back around here without anybody seeing her.”

“She was one of the Haney n!gras from over in Coosa County, they were so crooked they’d pick your pocket three days after they died, she’d have figured out a way to make it. Probley her accomplice all along.”

“Oh hell, for the sake of the argument…” and my Orson Welles-as-Hank Quinlan father, never taking the cigar from between his teeth, goes to bend and let his bony crime scene reenactor mother step on his shoulder. An almost fatal distraction occurs as a terrifying, feral sound breaks out, one we quickly trace to the filthy Weeble like lobotomized sister, who is watching this and literally howling with laughter, tears running down her eyes. This alone is worth the price of admission. (Poor Lucy- the way she got committed in the first place and… another time.)

“I can’t get the window open!”

“Then Ruby couldn’t have got it open…”

“House has been painted since then. It stuck the windows.”

“House hasn’t been painted in twenty years.”

“Well somebody hand me my hatchet…”

“Miss Ruby didn’t have a hatchet…”

“She stole one of my hammers! Little Jon, hand your Grandmother her hatchet!” and I complied. A few loud bangs later and the window was unstuck.

“You see, I’m halfway there! Ruby could have done this.”

“Hee-HHEEEEEEEEEEEEE, Hee-HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” from the lobotomy gallery.

The window is raised, Grandmother now pretty much standing on my father’s back, his face red from sweat and anger and suppressed laughter, but for once promethic enough to yell “Muh, you wait a second. Kathy! Go round inside to the bathroom. Get ready to pull your Grandmother in so she doesn’t bust her head open!”

“Daddy, I just took a bath! I don’t want…”

“Do’s I say, girl!”

Kathy complies.

“You in there Kathy?”

“YES!” with cold hot fury.

“You ready Muh…”

“I’m as ready as that roguin’ Ruby was…”

“Here we go…”

And Grandmother, half through pulling herself and half through hoisting starts through the window.

And halfway through, one of the most disturbing sites I’ve ever seen.

When Grandmother had stripped down prior to reenacting the heist she’d been left wearing two undershirts, both wife-beaters, through which her “They went that away and that away” pointing squash shaped hooters had been visible and that was disturbing. But the sight of her when the blue jeans fell down around her ankles, and the revelation that underwear were the one item she didn’t wear in profusion, was somewhere between nauseating and the doorbell of the Apocalypse.

I believe firmly that there is a physiological component to being gay. I have always suspected I was gay on some level, even before I knew there was such a thing. By this time of my development, when I was 14, I was already enjoying myself in a way I knew I shouldn’t to fantasies of The Dukes of Hazzard that involved cousin love but no short-shorts. I am glad of this, because had this happened two years earlier I would have had absolutely no doubts whatsoever that this was the moment I became gay. It was absolutely revolting, terrifying, sickening, memory searing, and really really saggy and white. I wasn’t the only one about to vomit- my mother had to turn her head, my brother just said “Shit! Goddamn! Oh fuckin’ hell!” and my great aunt Lucy said

“Hhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” and pulled up her own dress to waist level and peed on the ground.

Other families just don’t do this, I thought to myself. They just don’t. If I mentioned this at school on Monday, which I won’t, but if I did, I would not find one other family that hoisted their nekkid grandmother on their bent over daddy, still wearing his corduroy work suit, halfway through a window, in broad open daylight, while a half-nekkid nasty old Weeble pissed on the ground giggling, while a sister pulled her through screaming “God I can’t believe I’m doing this! I hate this damned farm!” and the same nekkid (save for two ragged undershirts) Grandmother proudly looked out the window and screamed “I guess I showed y’all!” with absolutely no appreciation of its double meaning.

The eighties are sometimes I blur and chronology is something I
reconstruct by remembering who was dead at the time. That lets me know that it must have been about 1987 when one day I just couldn’t take my mother and Carrie at the house anymore and had to go for a walk of no clear destination. It was daylight, hot but overcast, like the entire 80s in my mind, and I just walked down the driveway, between the scuppernong bush and where Crow’s children played, hooked a right, down the middle of the road past the haunted woods, past my grandmother’s house (now deserted as she was finally gracing South Haven Nursing Home her own self after the weird accident and the strangely uplifting subsequent disposition of Lucy) and up to the Highway. Hooked a right, to the pasture, now empty of cows, went down to the dry creek bed to see if Belle Starr’s skeleton was still there (it was, whiter than ever, though I’d taken the horns to make powder flasks years and years before), back across the highway, sat on Kitty and Carrie’s porch, which still smelled of cats 5 years after it had been abandoned (and whose front room had been robbed of its antiques but still had the remains of the blackened skeleton of a chair that had caught on fire when Kitty did as well as the newspaper ashes that had caught on fire when she rolled around), went into their barn to look at the remains of the old wagon, thought better of it when a rat the size of a possum ran out, then walked back north up the Highway and for shits and giggles walked up to Miss Ruby’s old place, totally abandoned for almost a decade by that time and the backyard taken up by a cylindrical water tower (the tower was visible from our house and bordered our land but we were ineligible to receive “city water” from it because the lines only ran north and south and we were west).

The porch and the roof had collapsed, the windows had been covered with tin sheets that had now rusted, but I was able to climb up via the back steps. I hadn’t set foot in this house in 16 years by this time, not since I was still one of her pre-school charges, and I walked through to see if anything looked familiar. It didn’t, and few things are scarier than an abandoned house that belonged to poor people when it was occupied, so I quickly left. The weeds had grown under the porch of course, and all around the rest of the house, though I did see a pile of rubbish in the sideyard that was of broken furniture and odds and ends evidently tossed out by the family when they cleaned out the house. It was all filthy of course, having weathered God knows how many years, bleached by summer suns and drenched by winter rains, but it’s original form still recognizable.

On the half-mile walk back to the house I wondered aloud “How the fuck did Mama’s traincase wind up at Miss Ruby’s place?”

285

[SIZE]I just need 160 more hits… c’mon Grandmother, you never did anything for anybody while alive so now’s a chance to get your wings {or a feather anyway}.[/SIZE]

286

Sampiro I have now decided this needs to be a mini-series. I wonder if Turner South would be interested. It could be titled “Other Families Just Don’t Do This.”

287

It’s official. I have pissed myself laughing.

288

**YES! YES! FOOKIN’ A!SECTUMSEMPRA, POTTER THREAD!

YOU GUYS ARE WONDERFUL!**(turns and applauds the audience)

Thank you, thank you, thank you… I can actually go back to being semi-productive at work for the next few days now.

There are so many more that I’d love to tell, like “RETARDED RUDY: THE IHOP EXPERIENCE”, “KATHY AND THE ROMANOVS” (that one’s really long though and requires almost as much history of the Romanov Dynasty as it does my sister [the two are relevant to the story]), LUCY AND THE DAILY CRISCO PISS CAN SUN SALUTATION, GRANDMOTHER’S FIERY PAST (about the time she burned out 60 acres of wood, almost burned down our house, and revealed a terrifyingly fascinating aspect of her past), BELA THE SIAMESE GOD KING (a rather impressive cat we had who would be 30 if he’s still alive but I can’t imagine that he isn’t), KITTY & CARRIE’S TRIP TO THE BEACH, BICENTENNIAL MINUTES (a wonderful if sometimes horrifying trip to Philadelphia for the Bicentennial that resulted in one of my mother’s best 12th degree bitch fits ever and turned my father’s Cadillac into a brine shrimp Gehenna), THE NIGHT THE DOOR OPENED (first ghostly encounter after my father’s death, more interesting than it sounds), PAPA MUSTANG’S FINAL DAYS (spooky but also oddly pornographic), MEEMAW’S DATE WITH LITTLE JOE, etc., or of the years I lived in the apartment complex for schizophrenics (where at one time we had- not making this up- one resident who thought he was a CIA agent and another who was paranoid and thought the CIA was bugging him, and they tried to kill each other, or the guy who made the sacrifice to Elvis or the time that I had to deal with a resident having a major manic episode while having to secretly control my mother’s major manic episode in the other room of the apartment, etc… or the tales of He Who Must Not be Named and how/why I went back into the closet for 8 years, or…

Ah, so many stories, so little time, but for now I must turn attentions to what my heart wants to tell, that being in the Government Printing Office Manual that I’m writing Chapter VI subsections D & E of (may not sound interesting but… it do pay the rent).

Many thanks, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the encouragement. It’s really weird that compliments from people I can’t see are oddly more valuable than those from my best friends in the Waking. More tales later, but not for the next few days. Except one, which is for Swamp Bear. I wasn’t in Albany long enough to collect many experiences, but I did collect this one (and maybe he’ll know the dentist):

WE’RE ALL GOING TO HEAVEN, BUT MY HAIR WILL GET THEIR FIRST!, or THE ALBANY FISHAGRAM

The truck accident wasn’t as harmless as I originally thought; it cracked two teeth that I eventually had to have worked on and receive a bridge for. When I’d been in Albany for about a month, the bridge started coming loose and making me really uncomfortable so I went to a dentist.

It’s a regular dentist’s office from the look of it, both inside and out. The woman I assumed was the receptionist (mainly because she was sitting at the receptionist window) is very sweet but has ethereally glazed eyes, rather like she’s remembering her nurse bathing her outside on a sunny day, and really stoned. She also looks likes she’s soon to star as Flo in The Dougherty County Players production of The Best of ALICE- great big hair of a shade of red that doesn’t appear in nature or the visible spectrum of all humans, slightly too tight jeans and age inappropriately low cut blouse, and rings that are probably zirconium because if they’re real, could easily be sold for enough to finance a small war or two. The floozy look, however, is strangely offset by the necklace she’s wearing, a very roughly done ICTHYS necklace with Greek letters with a patina and general look that indicates it’s really old. (Today even very cheap metal jewelry has smooth edges and even lettering, and this has neither, but at the same time it doesn’t look commercially distressed- very attractive and tasteful peace, really.)

She leaves the desk for extended periods of time, returning for a while, then leaving again for several minutes, etc… I’ve been in the waiting room for well over an hour (I was a “squeeze in” appointment) when she came back and started a conversation.

“So you new in Al-binny?”

“Yes, I am.”

“What’cha do here?”

“I’m a medical librarian at Phoebe.”

“I always thought it’d be wonderful to be a lib’arian”

[/VALVE]

“getting’ to read all the time…”

Natural progression somehow to “You’re gonna love Dr. Dick. He’s such a sweet and wonderful man.”

I don’t remember his last name (and probably wouldn’t give it if I did, but it was something like “Dr. Richard Jenkins”. Hearing him called “Dr. Dick” both made me a giggly third-grader again and gave me a great idea for a specialized medical call in show, but I held it together. I asked about her necklace.

“Is that an old piece? It’s very pretty. It looks like an old piece.”

She becomes instantly serious, leaves the receptionist window, comes into the waiting room, and sits on the sofa next to me. I’m trying to politely communicate “No, no that’s quite alright, you can tell me from there, I really don’t mind…” with body language and facial expression but apparently I speak a different dialect.

Caressing the fishy then holding it towards me she begins, “Let me tell you about this necklace and what it means. This is an anagram, meaning the letters stand for words, just like NAFTA or COBRA. This is Latin and stands for…”

And I tell her, very politely so as not to disappoint her (but my mouth hurts and I don’t like being witnessed to under the best of situations) “Yes, I know actually…uh… it’s the … Latin… for ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour’”. (Yes, yes, I know… but if you don’t understand Dixie Bushido [courtesy is at least as ritualistic and formalized {though uncodified, which can be dangerous} as it is among the Samurai or Bedouins] then you may not realize that to have pointed out that it’s Greek, not Latin, and an acronym rather than an anagram would have been pointlessly rude- insulting even- and could have hurt her feelings, while Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter would have been showy, a lesser offense but an offense no less.) “But that partic…”

“If you know that” she says with a real glow, “then you must know Him! Isn’t He wonderful!”

Oh… she’s expecting a reply… um… what to say that doesn’t betray my own beliefs…

“Ah yes”, then with a more reflective tone, “yes he is.” I particularly liked his Gethsemane number . Except for that creepy pus pocket Jeff Fenholt ’s version… ew. “But that particular necklace… it looks old… is it.”

“I’m really not sure” she nods (?). “Dr. Dick brought it back to me when he and his wife went to the Holy Land. I just love it.”

She takes me into the examination room where I’m dressed in lead temple garments to meet Dr. Dick. This is where I learn the reason for her absences- she’s not the receptionist (or at least not just the receptionist), she’s also the hygienist. She puts on her own garb and does the X-rays.

Dr. Dick comes in a little later. Dr. Dick is 40ish (looks younger except from close-up) and very tall and very handsome. He has a game-show host smile that I suppose he can write off as advertising and a very ornate wedding band. Then, to borrow an expression I’m sure is old but I only heard for the first time recently, he “opens his mouth and his purse falls out”. We’re talking Nellier than Allison Arngrim ever tried to be.

I know that not all effeminate men are gay (any more than all gay men are effeminate), but I would definitely venture to say that more femme guys are than aren’t, and my gaydar was clicking fast enough around Dr. Dick that it briefly short circuited the X-Ray machine. (Plus, his name is Dr. Dick for Latin Christ’s sake!)

“Heyyy… Jean just told me you- are- neww to good ol’ Al-binny!” (If he’d said this in a muscle shirt while dotting the I’s with glowsticks this might could have been said gayer.) “We sure hope you like it here! Me and my wife sure do!” (He’s the only guy I’d ever heard lisp the word “do”.) “A lot of people think it’s really in the sticks, but we’re from Atlanta and came here and couldn’t be happier!” (I’m guessing that if I were Dr. Dick’s wife, I’d be happy to get him away from Atlanta too, though I might wonder why a guy with a dentist’s income was so carried away with Ryan’s Steakhouse.)

Aside: What the hell is it with Georgia and married gay guys? I’ve met men in Georgia who sweat in scents of lavender and make Liberace look like Robert Blake and yet invariably they have their wife by their side. I’ve met men who weren’t femme but who’ve asked me on dates- yet they’re wearing wedding rings! Many of them weren’t even from Georgia but were academics relocated from other states. I swear that it’s a lambda-dad mecca of some sort. Rural Alabama (which is largely indistinguishable from non-Atlanta Georgia) doesn’t have as many closet case husbands. Bizarre and distressing. (The only date I had when I lived in Georgia was with a 60 year old fellow [great guy, incidentally, but on the rebound from a 30 year relationship that he reentered] because he was the only person to ask me out who was neither married nor with a “we can’t be seen in public because I like to think I’m fooling people” disclaimer. (I did meet openly gay guys in Georgia as well, of course, but they were mostly already partnered, 19, or “no Fatties”, all of which by definition preclude a relationship with me.)

Anyway, back to my mouthful of Dr. Dick-

He prods and examines and does his dentist stuff and then he leaves the room. After a while Jean comes back in.

“Guess what, honey! I think it’s gonna be good news!” She actually clasped her hands on the last part.

“I… uh… like good news…”

“Well…” she pulls up a stool to bridge that alienating patient hygienist gap, “Dr. Dick looked at the bridge and he looked at your X-rays, and it could be one of two things. EI-ther… your bridge could be broken and need replacing, and that would be a bad thing” and to emphasize the seriousness of this she gives a frowny face. “OR… it probably just needs a small adjustment, and that would be really simple, and he can do it in the office today, and it’ll be fine, and he won’t even charge you for the deductible because it’ll be so easy and he’ll be satisfied with what your insurance pays him for an office visit. Wouldn’t that be great!” Smiley face! :wink:

“Yes… it would…”

“Now I don’t want to get your hopes up because he won’t know for sure that that’s what it is til he comes in to examine it again and he’s busy right now with a root canal, but he’ll be back in when he can. So, do you hope it’s the simple one?”

I’m trying to see the downside of simplicity that would even prompt the question. “Oh yes, of course…”

Then she’s serious but ethereal again, and so help me this happened.

The dental hygienist/receptionist/Flo clone gets down her knees, takes my hand in both of hers, and asks-

“Would you like me to pray with you that it’s the simple one?”

Even for a very religious woman in the south, this is loopy. Even my sister would be embarrassed by this one. But I smile and say “No… thanks… I uh… prefer to reserve prayer… for the big stuff” (like that which isn’t covered by insurance).

She half-says, half-mouths “I understand…”, kisses me on the forehead and leaves the room.

Apparently He heard her prayers because it was just a simple adjustment. (Three years later- last winter to be precise- I was eating a pork chop in a theme restaurant in Conyers, Georgia (the strip mall that became a town, or vice versa, I’m not sure which) while a talkative waitress sat at the table telling me about how much she hates Conyers, Georgia, somehow of the impression that I’d asked, when she asked what I did and upon learning I’m a librarian said “I thought all librarians were old women with dentures and buns in their hair”. I give my usual reply of “No, that’s not true at all anymore… we’re not all toothless old women, some of us are gay men” and when I masticate and remove my three toothed bridge is sticking out of the pork chop and she almost chokes to death laughing at my totally unintentional irony. Alas, my insurance won’t pay for a replacement so at the moment I really am a gap toothed librarian from Alabama.)

289

[SIZE=1]Of course admittedly it probably would be more impressive if half of the hits weren’t from me… and if ewe haven’t noticed, I dew have a problem where homophones are concerned, don’t eye?

290

Heck, if not a book, you should at least package this as a set of short stories. :smiley:
And eye did notice the homophone thing, but it’s knot a big deal. That’s what editors are four!

291

Tell me where to send money. Then one day I’ll get to say I knew the famed Sampiro when he was a poor gap-toothed librarian. :smiley:

292

I’m not familiar with Dr. Dick. Obviously he’s not my dentist. Sampiro when I saw dentist and Albeeeeny in the same sentence my first thought was, “Oh! No! Sampiro went to the infamous walk-in dentist on Palmyra Road!” But that wouldn’t be Dr. Dick. Besides the infamous walk-in dentist’s receptionist/hygienist is his wife. I’ve never been there mind you, but I’ve heard horror stories from those who have. Apparently this man makes his living from one time only walk-in patients. I say this because I have yet to hear of anybody actually going to him more than once as a walk-in patient. The man offers to pull teeth and make dentures for walk-in patients. It’s right there on the sign in front of his office.

Oh and the subject of married gay men. AMEN! Preach it brother! I have a tendency to be a closeted married man magnet. At present I have a good relationship with a wonderful man, who, as far as I can tell (and he could say the same about me), is perfectly sane. And not a closeted married man. The offers still pour in, however.

293

Just got an email from a friend, with the subject line:

MAY YOU BURN-N-N-N WOMAN!

"You should know that you have gotten me hooked on Sampiro posts now. If I lose my job, I’m blaming you! "

Turned my boss onto these, too, and he keeps calling me with some of the choice lines. As do a couple co-workers.

This is turning into a phenomenon.

294

A question: if Sampiro really is serious about publishing this stuff, can he do so after submitting it here? I thought all our posts became property of the Straight Dope and the Chicago Reader, yadda-yadda.

Of course I’m sure he could come up with more stuff if he wants to publish…

295

Since I save stuff to the web before I post (due to a computer that crashed in such a way not even Jesus could heal it) and since scaled down versions of some of these (Hacksaw and PotatoHead, for instance) have appeared in other forms, I can’t see where they’d have much of a case as in a way it’s already copyrighted material (but since they’re my intellectual property it’s not a violation of me to post it).

Of course I’m not a lawyer and I could wind up living in a refrigerator box with Corey Haim somewhere telling police officers that I mistakenly think are with E! “Yeah… that was me… I wrote that Parry Hotter shit too!”

296

The copyright notice explicitly states that republishing rights belong to the author of the posts, so Sampiro’s in the clear.

Here’s to a smooth and fast-moving process on that USGPO publication, Sampiro. I want you back in the harness for the important stuff, quick. :wink:

297

Um, not to be greedy (and please don’t think I am unappreciative of your stories) but I’d like to hear a bit more about your Pyromania Grandma actually practicing her pyromania.

And I wouldn’t mind hearing more about the Lobotomized Great Aunt, either.

(I know you’re not supposed to, but I fear I have dragged up a lawn chair.)

Thank you again for sharing.

298

I would love to hear these stories. I’d love to hear them all, but these ones in particular. Pleeeeease? [wishes there were a puppy dog eyes smiley]

I’ve been lurking in this thread, enjoying the stories and the imagery (“the vocabulary of a drunk Russian sailor on a payday without whores” was absolutely a thing of beauty).

299

snerk

I have my mom hooked on your stories too, and she’s been sending links to her friends. It’s spreading!

300

While it’s true that you retain repub rights, you lose top dollar when you piss away your first publication rights on the Internet.

:: Runs away from the hail of abuse for discouraging Sampiro from posting his stories ::

“But…but…he needs to know!”