Licked

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 11, Verse 17

"Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel."

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

Preamble

I might have used this Proverb already, but I don't think either of you will notice.

Amble

I quote "The Love Bug" a lot.  It's an annoying habit, I'll bet, and I'm right up there with guys who quote obscure Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch lines (I'm not talking "Dead Parrot" like every other Brit-loving asshole, I'm more talking about "Flying Sheep" and "The Architect Sketch") and guys who turn everything into a G&S reference.  But I'd never do that.

What, never?

See?  Makes you want to blowtorch my eyes out, doesn't it?

Anyway, in "The Love Bug", Peter Thorndyke, just before doing something terrible to our star Herbie, turns to his obsequious, horn-rimmed little sidekick and says, "Havershaw, it's times like this where I really don't LIKE myself very much!"  Thorndyke, like all decent, upright Anglo-Saxon villains, says this line while grinning like a psychopath, baring all his thoroughly British fangs disturbingly.  

For he IS an English-MAN!!!

Sorry.  There I go again.

Well, all this to say is that I get where Peter Thorndyke is coming from.  There are times where I really don't LIKE myself very much either, and I don't get quite the delicious charge out out of that self-directed antipathy that David Tomlinson's character does.  I guess I'm just not quite cut out to be a Disney villain from the 1960s.  And, as disappointing as that is to know, better to know it now.  

I really didn't LIKE myself very much at the post office.  I was there on some errant errand, as sometimes happens to one, and I was standing there behind a very well-appointed woman, one might even be so bold and so condescending as to refer to her as "handsome".  She reminded me of a vintage Bentley, or a heavy drapery.  A drawing room or a study.  She was put together in muted, conservative colors, but very tasteful and elegant.  She had obviously just been to "The Beauty Pah-lah" (women of this vintage, no matter where they're actually from and what regionalisms they adopt or eschew, invariably pronounce "Parlour" this way-- it's like a whole thing) and of course she had the obligatory family pearls clasped to her slightly dangly earlobes.  

She clutched onto her clutch and peered over the counter hopelessly at multiple sheets of stamps stapled to the beadboard walls of the post office.

"What about the Poinsettias?" she asked.

She wants Poinsettias.  

Instantly, I felt my heart seize.  Well, unfortunately not exactly "seize", but tighten, as if someone was stone-cold-Steve-Austin heart-wrestling me.  Instead of thinking, "Oh, this interaction will add three additional minutes to my sojourn home", I thought, "Hey, I've heard Poinsettias are poisonous.  I'd like to shove a fistful of them up this lady's handsome drapery ass."

Well, they were October stamps.  Not available till October.  Poinsettias for October.  Hey, what the fuck do I know?  I'm Jewish.  

Then she wanted Harriet Tubman.  Are you fucking kidding me?  Who thinks it's a good idea to put Harriet Tubman on a stamp?  For everything that she did?  The Freedom Trail?  Risking her life and limb?  And we're going to put her on a piece of paper the size of a big toenail that people lick and stick on the envelope that contains their fucking miserable mortgage payment?

Jesus Christ.

Hey!  When are we putting HIM on a fucking stamp?

But I digress.  Now she wants to trade a Tubman for a flag.  

"I'm sorry I'm taking up so much time," she says, in that innocent, begging way that requires the conversational partner to say, "Oh, no, ma'am!  It's not time, it's business."  Then, for good measure, he adds, "monkey business!"

No, monkeycum, it most definitely, assuredly, unmistakably IS MOST CERTAINLY TIME.   

There should be a law.  You want stamps?  Okay.  It's a 1"x1" piece of lickable paper and, on it, it says

LICK

That's it!  They should all be Forever stamps, and they should be white with black lettering, and say nothing but fucking LICK, so you know exactly what it is and you know exactly what you're supposed to do with it and that way you don't go around licking things you shouldn't.

LICK

Now, you might have me pegged as someone who's against personalization.  Well, not entirely.  Don't forget, I'm the guy who took a 2001 yellow VW New Beetle, had it painted white and turned it into Herbie the fucking Love Bug many moons ago-- I personlize the shit out of things.  But not at the inconvenience of anybody else.  You want Yellowstone National Park on your goddamn checks?

GREAT!  Doesn't impact me whatsoever.  Maybe you'd like to name your private parts or have pink shutters on your house?  Awesome.  Feeling the urge to tattoo your mom's maiden name on your left shoulder blade?  I know she and your maternal ancestors would be honored, and I would have absolutely nothing to say about it.  But when it's 4:30 on a Monday afternoon and there's an impatient, sweaty, anxious bastard who's been at work since 6:10 and he's got to get home to his fried wife and his needy twins and his whining basset hound and there's a line a'brewin' back there and you're prattling on in your precious little way about taking up so much time, about POSTAGE STAMPS?  ABOUT THINGS THE POST OFFICE CANCELS AND MAKES SQUIGGLY LITTLE BLACK LINES OVER AND THAT THE MAIL RECIPIENT CARES NOTHING ABOUT-- NOTHING!!!!!!!!-- well, what else can one say but,

Havershaw?  It's times like this where I really don't like myself very much.