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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
When you live a life like mine, people are constantly saying things to you. Things like, ‘Not again!‘ and ‘Get that thing away from me!‘ and ‘You were dropped on your head a lot as a child, weren’t you?‘
You get used to it. ‘Slings and arrows’, and all of that. They’re just jealous, clearly.
“When I’m mentioned in the same breath with ‘wind’, the connotation is never nearly this pleasant.”
What really hurts, though, are the things that aren’t said. You hear certain cliches and phrases all the time — on television, in movies, and in that fancy loud music the kids are listening to these days — but no one’s ever saying them to me.
Just once, I’d like to be hanging from a cliff, or sliding off a high-rise or down a waterfall, clinging desperately to someone’s arm, and hear them say:
‘If you go, I go.‘
But do they? No. Not even once. Instead, they say:
‘Hey, this is watch is expensive. Would you mind not clawing at it, jackass?‘
Hardly quoteworthy. But certainly typical. Here are a few other common encouraging phrases no one’s ever said to me:
‘You’ve got a good head on your shoulders.‘
(Never heard this. People only say mean and nasty things about the head on my shoulders. But hey — at least they’re not badmouthing my shoulders. That’s something.)
‘I expected you, of all people, would understand.‘
(Nobody expects me to understand. Or even listen. Most people are happy if they can use me as a coat rack.)
‘You are the wind beneath my wings.‘
(When I’m mentioned in the same breath with ‘wind’, the connotation is never nearly this pleasant.)
‘Where have you been all my life?‘
(Instead, people usually say, ‘Where are you going to be for the rest of my life? So I’ll know where to avoid.‘ Bitches.)
‘I didn’t know where else to turn.‘
(There’s always somewhere else to turn. I’ve seen people seek advice from asylum patients before turning to me. Comatose asylum patients.)
‘I could never say ‘no’ to you.‘
(It’s apparently very easy to say ‘no’ to me. I get strangers walking up to me all the time, shaking their heads sadly and telling me ‘no’. No, what? I have no idea. Just a blanket refusal for good measure, I guess.)
‘You’ve given me the greatest gift of all.‘
(Just once, it’d be nice to hear this. On the other hand, musical greeting cards and homemade ceramic ashtrays probably aren’t the ‘greatest gifts of all’, so maybe people have a point.)
‘I always knew you’d come back for me.‘
(At the time someone would want to say this, I’m probably off somewhere watching Sanford and Sons reruns, completely forgetting about coming back for whoever’s in trouble. This is why nobody ever says any of the other things to me, isn’t it?)
Meh. Well, at least there’s always ‘Boy, what in the hell is the matter with you?‘ and ‘What is your major malfunction?!?‘ to keep me company. *sigh*
Permalink | 1 CommentThe missus and I have had a house guest for the past few days — a friend of my wife’s, from back in graduate school. The two go way back — two cities, several jobs, and a number of years, in fact — and the friend is moving out of the country soon, so I’ve been giving the girls a bit a space to do some catching up.
Okay. To be fair, I’ve steered clear of the estrogen-fest nearly completely, due mostly to scheduling conflicts. And my deep-seated instinctual fear of estrogen-fests. When confronted with the presence of multiple women — not to mention multiple women with alcohol — a man’s ‘fight or flight’ reaction kicks in rather quickly. And since we’re not allowed to hit girls, we usually run like hell in the other direction.
(This doesn’t apply to young single men, of course, who spend most of their waking moments looking for multiple women, together in one place with alcohol.
It’s one of life’s little ironies that guys can never catch a break when we’re looking for a woman, but when all we want is to sit on the couch in our underwear and watch baseball, they’re everywhere. It’s like they can sense that we’re being lazy pigs somehow. It must be some sort of slob-dar.)
Although I’ve managed to stay mostly out of the way this week, I did have one interesting encounter with our guest. It was triggered, oddly enough, by our toilet clogging up on the night she arrived.
“It’s one of life’s little ironies that guys can never catch a break when we’re looking for a woman, but when all we want is to sit on the couch in our underwear and watch baseball, they’re everywhere.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not pointing the plunger in anyone‘s direction here. All I know is that I came home that night, spent several hours not using the bathroom, only to be informed by my wife that the toilet was essentially non-functional. How it got that way, what was stuffed into it, how many bean ‘n’ bran burritos the ladies had been eating — I don’t pretend to have those answers. I was uninvolved, until unclogging time came around. That’s all I know.
That ‘unclogging time’ happened to be the next day. By the time we’d identified the problem that night, we were too tired to tackle it. Plus, we have a perfectly serviceable second set of facilities downstairs, so there was no real emergency. We went to bed, and the problem was forgotten for a few hours.
The next morning, I woke up. With needs. Toilet-based needs — not the other kind. A man’s got to have his priorities, you know. First things first.
Now, I’m not a morning person, under any circumstances. If you need to talk to me before ten AM, you’d better be sending a message via Freddy Krueger. And having had just a few hours’ sleep the night before, being somewhat out of my normal routine, and really needing a bathroom, I was even less coherent than usual. Assuming such a thing is possible without an ice-pick lobotomy.
So, I shuffled my way to the bathroom, where I found a reminder note from my wife, written on a Post-It and pasted to the toilet lid:
‘NO POOPS!‘
Sweet girl. She knows my considerable limitations, and she’s looking out for me. She’s a keeper, that one.
She also knows that I’m not a morning person, and gives me some time to degroggify, before turning on the sunshine. Her friend — the one whose arrival coincided with the out-of-ordering of the commode I was just steered away from, remember — had no such knowledge. I passed her as I shuffled towards the stairs, to find the other bathroom. She’d apparently already had her coffee for the morning — and for the next three weeks, too:
‘Good morning! Beautiful day, isn’t it? Man, I can’t wait to get out there and get the day started! Come on, sleepyhead — up and at ’em! Hah!‘
I looked at her with the one eye I was able to open. I didn’t want to be rude, certainly not to a guest… but really, what choice did I have? She’d bright-‘n’-earlied me into a corner, and none of my conversation filters had come online yet. I tried to respond with a cheerful:
‘You got it, sister. Let’s go get ’em!‘
Instead, what escaped from my lips was a guttural, rasping, Sling Blade-style:
‘You ought not clog our terlet with yer offal. Mmmm-hmmm.‘
And I moved along to the restroom.
We didn’t see her for a while after that. Eventually, my wife found her hiding under the guest bed with a kitchen knife in one hand and ‘9-1’ dialed on the phone in the other. By that time, it was after noon and I was able to cheerily invite her out for lunch.
Quite naturally, she declined.
So, I left the girls alone and fixed the toilet. I’m still not sure what happened with it, but the timing of the clog was… let’s just call it unfortunate, for all involved. And if that poor girl wasn’t moving out of the country before, she’s sure as hell buying a ticket out now.
It probably didn’t help at dinner tonight, when I passed the bread to her and said:
‘Some folks calls these Kaiser rolls. I call ’em sling rolls. Mmmm-hmmm.‘
Those conversation filters should be kicking in aaaany time now. No, really.
Permalink | 4 CommentsBecause I was taught that a follow-up letter is always appreciated after an interview…
Dear ‘Sprinkles’,
Thank you very much for visiting with us on Saturday afternoon. I know I speak for my wife when I say that we truly appreciate you taking time away from your busy schedule of cage-pacing and nervous drooling to learn about our organization. The feedback from our end was uniformly positive, and we look forward to the opportunity to move forward with you in the hiring process.
As we mentioned on Saturday, we currently have a position available on our team for an Associate Domestic Canine. We feel that you obviously have the requisite experience and qualifications — i.e., four legs, shaggy hair, kibble breath — to find success in this position. As your resume indicates, you have been a canine for nearly two years now, which more than adequately meets the minimum requirements for the current opening.
The Associate Domestic Canine hire does represent a relatively junior position on our staff, but we offer ample opportunities for career advancement. By reaching certain employee milestones — pooping outside the office is a huge goal, for instance — you may soon be promoted through the ranks to Domestic Canine, Senior Domestic Canine, and Lead Domestic Canine. With years of hard work, paper-training, and slipper-fetching under your collar, you might even rise to the level of CEO — Canine Executive Officer.
(It’s a mostly honorary title, but it does come with a full sixteen-hour daily naptime, and a squeaky chew toy every afternoon. Something to shoot for.)
“For these services, there is the small and affordable copayment of having a strange person’s fingers inserted briefly into several of your orifices, and of being forced to eat heartworm pills, respectively.”
In terms of compensation, we feel our employment package is very competitive for our industry. We offer two bowls of dry kibble per day base salary, with generous biscuit and rawhide performance bonus plans. We are prepared, right now, to offer you a signing bonus of one hundred delicious Snausages, with payment to be spread throughout the first three months of employment. Additional incentive-based plans involving peanut butter, jerky strips, and the bones of large tasty animals are also open for negotiation.
Our benefits package is world-class for an organization of our size, with fresh drinking water, daily walks, flea collars, tug-of-war sessions, and professional tummy rubs fully covered and offered at no out-of-pocket cost whatsoever to qualifying employees. Our healthcare plan covers twice-yearly checkup visits to a veterinarian, as well as heartworm pills as needed. For these services, there is the small and affordable copayment of having a strange person’s fingers inserted briefly into several of your orifices, and of being forced to eat heartworm pills, respectively. For the latter, cheese will be provided at no additional cost.
We appreciate that in today’s competitive market, you may have other offers of employment. In particular, we noticed the Johnson family waiting to speak with you as we left on Saturday. Far be it from us to malign our competitors, but in our honest opinion, the Johnson firm doesn’t seem to be the best fit for your talent and experience. We hear the Johnsons don’t even have a yard. And the kid, Danny — he’s an ear-biter. You can just see it in his eyes.
We hope that you’ll seriously consider our offer, and join us for an exciting and productive relationship with our organization. As I mentioned, my wife and I are very excited at the prospect of bringing you on board, and I know our current canine employee — Sir Digs-A-Lot, Executive Vice Canine and Director of North American Bone-Hiding Operations — is anxious to meet you, as well. ‘Diggsy’ will be happy to show you the ropes around the office — which strangers to bark at, where to find the best sunbeams for naps, the key to the employee newspaper room, that sort of thing.
As a final formality, we would like to request a list of references that we may call for more information. The kennel master at your current position has already given us a fairly glowing review (‘glossy coat… don’t bite much‘), but another reference or two would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps there’s another employee who cleans your cage? Or perhaps a coworker — the terrier in kennel #6 would be fine, assuming you’ve worked together on projects in the past. We can contact him either by email or phone; just let us know which would be best.
Please feel free to bark back with any questions or concerns you may have. Nothing would please us more than to reach an employment agreement with you, pay to have your testicles surgically removed, and bring you into our organization. We welcome the opportunity to speak with you further, and look forward to our next face-to-muzzle meeting. Please consider the enclosed filthy tennis ball as a small token of our continuing interest. Thank you so much for your time.
Sincerely,
Charlie
Sr. Director of Human Canine Resources
Charlie Industries, Inc.
*Charlie Industries is an Equal Opportunity Canine Employer (EOCE)
Permalink | 2 CommentsA while back, I made an appointment to sit for headshots. The old standup comedy career was going nowhere, so that had to be the problem, right? No professional headshots to give out. That must be it.
(News flash: That wasn’t it. Go figure.)
I chose a pic to use out of the dozens sent back by the photographer. But why let all those rejected portraits go to waste? No booker or club owner will ever see them, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a chuckle at my expense.
Or, to be exact, thirty-three chuckles. At thirty-three Charlies, not including the ghoulishly grinning me you passed by at the top of the page. I’ve taken the liberty of captioning each photo — mostly so you won’t feel tempted; I’m far more gentle and tactful with such things than you, you know. Still, if you just can’t resist a potshot at one of my puckery pusses, feel free to leave me a comment. If you make me giggle, I’ll add it permanently to the page.
But be kind. That’s my face we’re talking about here. I’m stuck with the thing for life; the photographer only had to deal with it for an afternoon. And still, he broke three cameras. Meh.
#1: Such a
nice boy!
#2: “Yeeeeesss?”
#3: Well gawrsh,
Sgt. Carter!
#4: I tried to
tell ya, mister!
#5: You are
getting very
sleeeepy…
#6: “I’ve got
boobies!”
#7: You ch-ch-
chooooose me?
#8: “SUPPLIES!!”
#9: What’d you
just call me,
bitch?
#10: Poker? I
barely even
KNOW her!
#11: I am so
sitting on
my testicles.
#12: Don’t make
me come
over there.
#13: “I know
you didn’t
just fart.”
#14: “I’m a
little teapot!”
#15: Hey, bebby.
What’s your sign?
#16: Those…
aren’t…
PILLOWS!!!
#17: “Takin’
pitchers
is FUN!”
#18: These X-ray
contact lenses
are great!
#19: Ohhhhh,
you!
#20: Do these
stripes make
me look fat?
#21: Is that beer?
I smell beer!
#22: Who’s a
cheeky
little monkey?
#23: You and me.
Copier room.
Ten minutes?
#24: “Ruh-row,
Raggy!!”
#25: “There’s no
film in the
what, now?”
#26: What’re you,
retahded?
#27: I’m all
mysterious
and shit!
#28: “You know,
I’ve got candy
in my van.”
#29: “I vant
to suck
your blood!”
#30: Dude, you’re
creeping
me out.
#31: What’d I
tell you
about that shit?
#32: “You’re on
thin ice,
mister!”
#33: “I’ve got a
whole BAG
of ‘shush’ here.”
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