Ring...ring...ri
"...PJTT...hey, hey, Quinn, how you doin'? I haven't heard from you since that Girl Scout cookie fiasco last year, what's new, buddy?...yeah...yeah...hey, so what's new in the legal world?...no shit...hey, how's Octavia?...great...she still pissed?...yeah, I'll bet...so what's up, what can your Pope do for you?"
As the Supreme Commander of the Galaxy, I am in charge now, wait, that's the wrong title, hang on...okay, here we go:
As the Pope of the All John All The Time World Church, I have the opportunity to meet all sorts of interesting people, and many space aliens as well. One of my favorite "meetings" was with a young man from Chicago named Quinn Tupletts, an attorney by profession, and a slightly crazy guy by disposition. We met some years ago at a Hooters Bikini Girl Contest out in San Diego; I was there representing the AJATTWC (no, really) and Quinn was there, acting as agent for one of the contestants, a young lady with two rather remarkable claims to fame: a) well, let's just say that her bra size needed more letters than numbers and b) her name was Rub Meallova. (The "Rub" was short for Ruby; nice girl.) It was an interesting three days.
Anyway, Quinn is a judge now and behaves himself. Mostly.
He's married to great gal as well; her name is Octavia (we all call her Oc for short), and she's a three-handed Scklorn Mutant from the Anopholes Nebulae (no she's not) and her fun-loving husband and I had an occasion some years ago, at a 4th of July backyard barbeque/gerbil golf tournament, to have some fun with the lovely Ms. Tupletts.
It all started when Quinn bet me 5 bucks that I couldn't roll a quarter off my forehead, down my nose and into a funnel tucked into the front of my pants. (Ever have Vodka Lemonade Slushes? You know, a quart of Stoly, three drops of lemonade and crushed ice to taste, right? Ever had one of those? Yeah? Then you know why this was happening.) That we were in collusion prior to the bet is an important factor to remember later in this story.
So I pulled a quarter out from behind Harley's ear, (see pic -->) which he hates, because he can't figure out how I do it, and Oc went in the garage and came back with a 6" funnel. I placed the business end of the funnel in the waistband of my surplice (hey, I'm the Pope Dude, remember?), and the game began.
I stood back from the crowd, tilted my head back, rested the quarter on my forehead just above my nose, took a downward glance for aim, and let'er rip.
First try, nothin' but net.
The lovely Ms. Oc was watching all this with some fascination (she also was suffering from the effects of SEVERAL Vodka Lemonade Slushes), and as her scheming husband and I had predicted, within seconds of my digging the quarter out of my pants (I asked for volunteers to assist me but got no takers; wait 'til that bunch tries to get into heaven, hah.), Oc says, "Hey, let me try that." (Thank you, P.T. Barnum; there's one born every minute.)
So I handed Oc the quarter and the funnel, explained the rules again (no hands, no body English and no iguanas) and bade her good luck. She positioned the funnel properly down the front of her shorts, set the quarter on her forehead and...
...while Oc and I had been talking and getting her ready for her attempt at coin-rolling immortality, with of course the enthusiastic support of the 12 or so other drunken revelers in the backyard, Quinn had walked quietly over to the "refreshment" table and grabbed the metal pail we had been using to chill some beers. It was your standard, everyday "metal pail with handle", and it was about two-thirds full of ice and melted ice. (That would be very cold water. And no beers.) So Quinn, equipped with the aforesaid bucket, snuck around from behind Oc, and...
...just before she could release the quarter, he stepped up and calmly dumped the entire contents of the bucket into the funnel.
Needless to say, the reaction was immediate and violent. Now you understand why I asked Quinn if Octavia was "still pissed" back there in the first paragraph.
Full disclosure: this all happened prior to my becoming the Pope of the AJATTWC.
"I heard an interesting case last week, a divorce/custody case involving a little eight-year old boy from Berwyn," he told me, and I could tell by his tone of voice he wanted me to ask.
So I did.
"Okay, what's so special about that?"
"Well, it was a custody battle between these two goofballs who were the parents of this poor kid. The kid didn't want to be with either one of them, and they were fighting over him just to be assholes."
"So I get everybody in court last week, and the lawyers start arguing and the parents are pointing fingers and I finally said, enough, and I had the bailiffs escort the parents out of the courtroom. When they were gone, I had the bailiff bring the little boy up to bench, and sat him in the witness chair."
"I said, 'Mikey, where would you like to live, with your Mommy or your Daddy?'"
"Mikey kind of shrugged his shoulders and didn't say anything."
"'How about with Mommy?' I asked him."
"He looked up at me on the bench and said, 'No, my Mommy beats me.'"
"Now everyone in the courtroom knew that this statement wasn't true; the child had never been harmed by either parent. But I decided to play along with him."
"'Okay, Mikey, how about if we send you with your Daddy then? How would that be?'"
"'No, Judge,' he says, 'please not with my Daddy, he beats me too.' Mikey let a small tear roll down his cheek as he told me this."
"Now I thought maybe the father was the final choice, when Mikey told me about his mother; now I'm not sure where I'm going. I think what he really wanted was to go back to his grandmother's."
"'Okay, Mikey, I'm sorry, but you can't go back to Grandma's, and you don't want to go with your Mommy because you say she beats you, and you don't want to go with your Daddy because you say that he beats you. Mikey, where do you want to go, please tell me?'"
"And so help me, Pope, he sat and thought about it for a long moment, then he looked up at me and got this real solemn look on his face."
"'Judge,' he says, 'I want to go with the Chicago Cubs. They don't beat anybody.'"
"I tried for several minutes to get the courtroom back in order, then I finally gave up and adjourned for the day. Mikey is still with his Grandmother for the moment. She's a White Sox fan."
He swore to me that it was a true story; I think I got hosed.
Love and homeruns,
PJTT
copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.
No comments:
Post a Comment