As an Early Christmas Gift, Val Presents You With Front Row Seats for the Theater of the Absurd

Please proceed at your own risk. Remember, what has been read cannot be unread.

We took Hick out to dinner tonight for his birthday. A local all-you-can-eat catfish house was selected as the venue. That establishment might have made money on The Pony's appetite, but not on mine and Hick's.

There we sat, WAITING for our food to arrive at the table. Seriously. I say there is no excuse for that. It's all you can eat, for cryin' out loud! We sat down at 4:55. Do the people who run that place not understand that a lot of people will be coming to eat all they can on a Friday evening at that time? Should they not have a plethora of fried foodstuffs ready to carry out? They only do three main dishes: catfish, chicken, and shrimp. The dining rooms were not even half full. Surely there was some food stacked in the kitchen, ready for dispensing. It's not like we were asking for a baked potato at 2:30 in the afternoon.

Anyhoo...while we waited for 15 minutes, Hick busied himself by eating the platter of sliced onion, bread-and-butter pickle chips, and dill pickle slivers. They are meant as an accompaniment to the meal, you know. But as one who has eaten butter-pat candy off the Playboy Club table, Hick knows what he looks for in an appetizer. He stabbed a pickle chip, chewed it, and said, "Eww! Bread-and-butter pickles! I never did like them." Then he ate some more. And two slices of white onion. And started on the dill pickle sliver. Let the record show that Hick was using a fork and butter knife to cut up his pre-meal treat. Criminy! You'd think he was Mr. Pitt, sawing away at a Snickers bar!

Next thing I know, intent on a conversation with The Pony, seated across from me, a chunk of something shoots off Hick's plate and onto the table. He had tried to slice that dill pickle sliver with his butter knife, and a section of it got away from him. We're lucky it didn't fly across the room and clobber somebody. And luckier that when the food came, and Hick continued his hoity-toity ways with the catfish pieces, chicken tenders, and fried shrimp, which are, in my opinion, and all other diners' as well...made for eating with the hands, nobody complained and asked for him to be removed.

We have been talking about buying a new car again. On the way home, Hick professed that I may not want a big car like T-Hoe this time, but maybe an Arcadia. That's what he said. "Arcadia."

"You mean an Acadia. Not ARcadia. Acadia. Without the R."

"I know that."

"Then why did you say 'ARcadia?' If you knew that."

"I didn't."

Well then. Hick might as well be Elaine, declaring she never said that a certain guy was a real "Sven-jolly." WE ALL HEARD IT!

But that's not the climax of this little vignette. Please remain seated. No intermission.

When we got home, I was busy doing what the lady of the house does, sorting through the mail, dealing with a medical statement that has been paid once and billed twice, writing in Hick's birthday card, goading The Pony into getting his own card, stacking the printouts of the prospective auto purchases we might pursue, moving the long-necked pink fuzzy flamingo hat The Pony paid a dollar to wear on fundraiser Hat Day yesterday...when nature called. I walked into the master bathroom and immediately back out and to the hall closet.

"Looks like I'm the only one who knows how to get a new roll of toilet paper around here. Because obviously, I'm the only one who uses it."

And then he did it. Hick let loose a lie more untruthful than the 75-year-old, five-foot-two real estate agent who was called as an expert witness at my very first jury trial, and perjured herself severely by announcing that she had taken a tape measure and climbed down into and back out of a 15-foot deep hole to measure how big the gas tank of the former gas station had been. ALL BY HERSELF!

More untruthful than George Costanza declaring to an unemployment official that he applied for work as a latex salesman at Vandelay Industries.

Hick said, "You are, Val. I don't use toilet paper. If I take a poop, I just get in the shower and wash off."

LORD SWEET PAPPY JOHNSON WITH AN EREC--

That Hick is a regular real-life Jon Lovitz Tommy Flanagan pathological liar!

He'd better be.