Just Having Fun

    A couple of years ago, on my day off my friend Mac and I went across the lake to look at some military trucks in Keesville NY. After looking at the trucks we stopped at a Subway for lunch. While waiting for my order, a couple of guys walked in with a girl, they were all wearing black lipstick, more hardware in their faces than I had in my pockets, and one of the guys had his hair sticking up in spikes of orange, green, red, blue, yellow, and purple. He caught me looking at him and said, “What’s the matter old man, haven’t you ever done anything crazy?” 

   I thought about all the crazy things I’d done in my years and responded, in my best Australian accent, “Yep, thirty years ago when I was in the Australian Navy I got really drunk one night and screwed the Captain’s parrot, for a minute I thought you were my son.” I never knew Mac had the ability to make Pepsi come out his nose.
   Mac is a pretty good friend and always willing to have a good laugh, one day we decided to do the Mr. Mud & Mr. Geek routine from Richard Marcinko’s book Rouge Warrior. We were having lunch at the company cafeteria at one of our shippers while waiting for our trucks to get loaded. We went through the chow line, got our trays and food and found a table to sit. Mac does a pretty good job of emulating the sound of sucking up a lunger and spitting. So after finding a place to sit, Mac went to get himself coffee, “Coffee, Mister Mud?” He asked me.

“Yes, please, Mister Geek.” Mac brought two mugs of coffee to the table, set them down and sat.  

   He put cream in his coffee and asked, “Cream, Mister Mud?”

"No thank you, Mister Geek.”

“Sugar, Mister Mud?”

“No thank you, Mister Geek.”

“Honker, Mister Mud?” and he sucked up a lunger and spit in my coffee.

“Thank you, Mister Geek.” I picked up the mug and started drinking the coffee. People around us just started leaving. Imagine how fast he could clear the table if he could suck spaghetti up his nose.
  

   I had a friend who owned a Chinese restaurant, he wanted me to bring my cat and meet him at another Chinese restaurant, the competition. On a Friday evening we met outside this Chinese restaurant, him in a chef hat and apron holding a meat clever and me holding my cat. “Six dollars a pound. This isn’t road kill! This is live cat!”
“Thee dolla, thee dolla.” He replied. He never told me what they had done to him, but judging by the number of people who arrived and left without going in, payback was a b***h. “Thank you Otter, come up for dinner, bring kitty, free dinner for both of you.”
 

   Nervous flyers are one of my favorites, my fixed wing instructor was a striking 727 Captain from Eastern Airlines, I borrowed his jacket and hat and went to Bradley International Airport to sit in the lounge. I drank Pepsi, loosened my tie, pushed the hat back on my head and waited for the nervous flyer to come in for a couple of drinks before his flight boarded.

   Sure enough, this guy comes in asks for a double something, bangs it back and orders another and bangs that one back. “Where you going?” I asked him. “I’m on the 317 to Seattle.” He said looking at his watch.
“That’s my flight!” I told him. He looked at the hat and jacket and asked, “Are you dead heading home?” “No, I’m the Captain!” I said, looking at my watch, “I’d better get upstairs for my weather briefing, last time I forgot!” I stood, knocking over my barstool, then slipped and fell trying to pick it up, then staggered out. The look on his face as I stumbled out of the bar was priceless.
 

   Then there’s Linda, cute, blond, tall, temperament of a pit bull. Linda was the kind of woman that you wanted to screw just so you could repeatedly bang her head on the headboard. Linda worked for the company that I drove for before I moved to Vermont. We were in the corporate fuel business; companies would have accounts where they could send their employees to gas their company vehicles, 24/7/365. One day while typing on the typewriter facing the window, Linda on the computer behind me facing the wall, when a couple of guys from one of our gas customers came to the office. As they walked in, I said, “Of course they call it a blow job, but you’re supposed to suck.” I picked up my paperwork and walked out, leaving her red faced and shooting daggers at me with her eyes.
 

   I don’t always mean to be rude or offensive, sometimes it just happens naturally, like last week when I was at the barfette in the Flying J. This heavy woman next to me at the salad bar said, “Where’s the mushrooms?” Without thinking I said, “Waddle around to the other side, between the tomatoes and peppers.” “You calling me fat?” she demanded. I haven’t missed too many meals in my days so I don’t say much about how fat others are but at least I can still see my shoes.
 

   Speaking of fat. A friend, Lisa, used to work for an airline. One day this woman buys a ticket to Fresno Ca. Checks her bag, Lisa puts a tag on the woman’s bag with the three letter airport identifier FAT. The woman starts giving Lisa a hard time, “I know I’m fat! You don’t have to put that on my suitcase!” Lisa started laughing. The woman got pissed at her, “Can’t you put something else on my suitcase instead of FAT?” she asked,

“Sure can,” Lisa told her, “Where would you like me to send your bag?”
   Some people invite abuse, it would be rude not to accept.