A 17th Century Treatise on the Modern Majordomo

Name's Pete, but you can call me Pete, Peter, or just plain Pete. So the other day my buddy Ryan asks me, "Hey, Sam, how's tricks?" I says, "Ryan, you gotta stop referring to me as your dead son, it's time you got help." So Ryan runs off blabbering, tryin' ta pull his hair out and begging God to take him when I spot a pal of mine eatin' a sandwich 'cross the road. I leap across both lanes of traffic and land in front of my pal. His name's Oscar. Oscar says, Good morrow, how's tricks? I point to the squirt bottle I got filled with milk on my utility belt and my plunger. I says, "You tell me." "Holy smokes!" he says is that... "Yep," I cut him off, "it's the Titan." He asks if he can touch it and I say, "Sure, but then I gotta kill ya" and we both laugh and laugh. I'm a pretty funny guy when I wanna be--it's just that mostly I ain't in the mood after fixin' all these toilets. My prices are pretty competetive too. For a milk misting and plunging I charge $80 an hour and only make you drive me to your house, not both ways, as I prefer to jog home. Sometimes people'll spot me runnin' down the street an kinda look at me funny. I just give 'em a look as though to say, "Hey, if I wanted a turkey sandwich, I woulda asked for one, now go back and fix it!"


What else...oh, I get in a fight at a park last week. Some dope had to go and insult my wife and I and I just lost it. Now I'm generally a pretty easy going guy, but when someone starts questioning my wife's genus and species, I have been known to get pretty upset. You see, it all started when I married a squirrel...oh sure, go ahead, make your snide remarks, you can't hurt us..try having your house set on fire in the middle of the night...that'll build some resiliency to that sorta thing. Besides, she's a squirrel-human HYBRID. This is why I get so upset, see? Technically she's only half-squirrel, and believe me, brother, the rest is all woman. Except for her reproductive organs. And her teeth. But we're looking into adopting and dentures, respectively; you'd be amazed at some of the dental options available to hybird-Americans such as my wife, Nancy (although I call her Jim as a joke...what'd I tell ya, pretty funny guy, huh?).


Tomorrow is November 2nd, the busiest day of the year. For some reason, everyone wants their annual milk misting the first week in November. I says, you want a plunging too? It comes with the package but most people just say, no, just a milk misting for the upstars (or downstairs) bathroom. I says, okay, lady, you're the terrorist, not me! People tell me I should go into stand-up because of my personality and rapid fire style of humor. Observe: this one time I'm in line at the supermarket and it's one of those restocking days for me and the missus (Nancy stays at home because she used to get in trouble a lot with the cereal aisle, always eating the nut clusters out of the boxes and carrying on until the manager had to come and shoo her off the top shelf with a broom) and I've got all the greats: the milk, the eggs, the coffee, the pork pieces, the wood block (for Nancy's teeth). So there's this woman in line in front of me and she's wearing one of those big hats, you know, those big hats people wear? And she's got a ton of produce on the conveyor belt and I'm thinking, Oh boy, wunna those loonies, ya know? Wunna them people who wears big hats and eats a lot of produce. Lemme spice it up another level (that's my catchphrase...Emeril famously stole it from me during a pie eating contest...he steals lotsa things from me. For example. this sound familiar? Whammo! See what I mean? He's a catch-phrase thief.).

So I shoot the cashier a sly look, like we're in on a secret together, pick up one of this lady's oranges, wind up and throw it as hard as I can at her head. Well I'm a dead aim and played a little college ball, so I hit her right in the base of her skull and the hat flies off and she goes down hard. She starts screaming, saying how she can't feel her arms and the manager rushes out and the stock boy, stocky little fella, falls off his ladder while he's trying to put up some new boxes of Cream o' Wheat and minor chaos breaks out everywhere (except at the deli counter...that guy is one cool customer). So in the middle of all this, I shoot the cashier another sly look, although he ain't lookin' at me, turn to the manager, who by now IS lookin at me (pretty angry too), and say, "It's ok, I have sex with a half-squirrel, half-woman hybrid! My wife Nancy is half-squirrel!!!" and I smile one of my famous toothy grins (I sometimes wear Nancy's old fake teeth...makes me look book smart). Everyone admitted it was pretty funny, but they were just too concerned with trying to resuscitate the woman I hit with the orange. Yeah, I'm a real funny guy when I wanna be.

TO BE CONTINUED...