“Du-UUUUUUUUUDE!!”
“Jeez, dude! What is it?”
“Omygawd, dude, it was horrible! Horrible!!”
“It must have been, dude. You’re shakin’ like a leaf. What the hell happened? Did ‘World of Warcraft’ crash?”
“Worse.”
“Did you wipe out on your skateboard?”
“Worse!”
“Are you out of w …”
“Worse!!”
“What, then?!?”
“I don’t know if I can tell you, dude! … I was sittin’ in front of the TV, flippin’ channels, duckin’ the commercials – y’know, like normal people do.”
“I’ll let the ‘normal’ go for now. Yeah?”
“Yeah, well, so a show I’m kinda watchin’ goes to a commercial and I hit the clicker. And it won’t click!”
“Finally wore it out, didya, dude?”
“It ain’t funny, dude! So I go click again. Nothin’. So I clickclickclickclickclickclick. Still nothin’. I’m about to get up to try to find the channel changer on the box when the screen goes blank.
“And then this big dude shows up on that screen. And I mean big. Pecs out to here. And he’s got the bald head goin’, and the three-day scruff, and the shades, and the leathers. The baddest big dude I’ve seen outside a hip-hop club. And he points the finger at me!
” ‘Yo. Dude.’
” ‘How’d you find out who I am?’
” ‘We been watchin’ you. You ain’t been watchin’ our ads.’
” ‘Um, no …’
” ‘You know that’s how we make our bread, right?’
” ‘Man does not live by bread alo …’
” ‘But that’s where we start, turkey. You watch our shows but not our ads, you ain’t payin’ for the shows. That’s stealin’. We don’t like people stealin’ from us.’
” ‘What the hell you call the cable bill, then?’
” ‘Chicken feed. Don’t even pay the cable guy.’
” ‘Fine. I’ll call the cable guy and tell him to take all this stuff away. Feed that to your chickens!’
” ‘We don’t think so, turkey. You been clickin’ for awhile now. A long while. You owe us. Big time.’
“He goes away, and the TV starts playin’ commercials. I try to change stations. Nothin’. I hit the remote’s off button. Nothin’! I pull all the plugs outa the wall! Nothin’!! And the commercials kept gettin’ louder, and louder, and louder …!!”
“Wha’d you do then, dude!?!”
“I woke up.”
“You woke … That’s it, dude! No more pizza with anchovies before bed for you! I should wring your scrawny little neck!”
“OK, dude, but … one question before I go?”
“What?”
“Did you pay the cable bill?”
============
This post inspired by Kirsten and the George Saunders short story, “My Flamboyant Grandson”. Neither paid Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba a dime.
Turkey ?!? It must be that time of year, again. I was just talking about Thanksgiving at Quintessentially Quilly’s House yesterday !!!