Don't Fence Us In

copyright-Erin Neary

"There, that'll keep the foreigners out," said Ernie . 

"Why do you want to do that?" said his friend Charles, "we were all foreigners once."

"Not from that country!  Not those lowlifes from that country!"

"But how is this short fence - wide open in the middle - gonna keep anyone out?"

"You forget, everybody in that country is fat anymore."

"Oh yeah.  Eating habits really have gone to hell in the United States." 

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I'm proud to say my eating habits are exemplary, if exemplary is slightly under one six pack of Coke a day.  In any event, what isn't at all fat is the word count in my contribution to the Friday Fictioneers this week based on the picture prompt above, sveltly striding in at a paltry 75 words.

You'll find yourself in Fat City enjoying the lo-cal offerings of the other Friday Fictioneers by clicking above, as you choose, on either the words Fat City or lo-cal above.

"We've never had to put up a wall to keep our people in," said President Kennedy in one particularly memorable moment.  And we don't have to.  If folks around here get any fatter, pretty soon a speed bump will be enough to keep 'em well contained.

The Eye of the Be-Voter

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of the imagination. There's the signpost up ahead --- Emergency Pull-Off, which has always struck me as kind of funny unless you're 16 years old and you're feeling ... 

No, no, wait!   I mean, there's the signpost up ahead, your next stop:

The Twilight Zone

Submitted for your approval, one candidate for the highly elusive office known as President of the United States.  A man who has everything the job seems to require --- a nimble mind, a grasp of the affairs of humankind, and a record of political contribution in one of the great states of the Union.  But this man also has a flaw, a dark forbidding flaw that casts doubt over all he's hoped and striven for.  This man has all the charisma of a room temperature bowl of Cream of Wheat!

One man, one tragic flaw, about to enter The Twilight Zone.

"What a tragedy, doctor!  All that ability, political service in the state of Massachusetts, burning desire for the job and yet ... all the personality of a casaba melon!"

"Even less, I'm afraid, nurse. Our cardiac surgeons have been asking him to give campaign speeches to their pre-operative patients in lieu of an anesthetic.  Seems to be working fine, with way fewer side effects than anything else!"

"Has our treatment worked, doctor?"

"It's too soon to tell.  Charisma transplants have been tried before but none have succeeded.  The last one I attempted was on a stultifyingly boring preppy woman named Martha something or other.  It failed dismally, but I heard she was able to find work on daytime television."

"Nurse!  Nurse, I need you!"

"Yes, sir, I'm here." 

"Nurse, I'm feeling a little stronger now.  I'd like to work on my inauguration speech.  I must know if the charisma transplant has worked!"

"Please, sir, don't try it yet!"

"Nurse, you just don't know what my life has been like! My earliest memory is of people yawning whenever I came near.  In school whenever I was speaking in class, teachers used to put a mirror up to my nose to see if I was breathing!" 

"Even now when I'm making love to my wife, she doodles on my back!  It's been a nightmare, do you understand, nurse?!   A nightmare!!  Nurse?!  Nurse?!!

"Zzzzzzz."

Commercial Message. 

"Now, sir, it's come time to remove the bandages and find out whether the procedure has succeeded. When the last bandage is removed, please begin reciting your proposed inauguration speech."

Round and round the bandages are unraveled. The first rays of light begin to appear to the patient's eyes through the continued unraveling of the layers of bandage, breaking through at last into his private world of darkness.

"Now, sir, begin!"

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country!"

"NO CHANGE!  NO CHANGE!  He's still boring as hell!"

"Doctor, he'll never be President now!" 

Submitted for your approval, one political candidate from Massachusetts named John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  Now the question may be asked "where is this time and place where somebody like Mitt Romney might be considered a cool guy?" The answer is "it doesn't really matter." 

For charisma truly is in the eye of the be-voter. 

Lesson to be learned in this thankfully non-Presidential election year of 2013 or any other, both on Earth and in  ... 

The Twilight Zone.

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And you didn't think I was capable of a true Twilight Zone ending!

(And thank you to Rod Serling for The Eye of the Beholder, the great Twilight Zone episode on which this humble parody is based.)

For The Math Challenged Only

Finally, math I like!

There's an old joke that goes:

There are three kinds of people in the world.  Those who are good at math and those who are not.   And the third group --- the one into which I fall  --- is those who are so bad at math they don't understand the joke!"

I've been math challenged since the very early age of 3, or 4, or 57, I'm not sure which. It began when I was learning to count.

Count to 10?  Okay, maybe.  

Count to 100?  If God had meant me to count to 100, he would have had me born on a planet where people have a whole hell of a lot more than ten fingers and ten toes!

Through the years in school, I was mauled by math, addled by algebra, and when it came to geometry,  just plain Lost in Space.  Although words were my friends, numbers were my enemies --- even the cute ones like 2 and 16.  I took comfort in one thing:  once I got out of school, I would never have to use math again! Hah! Hah! Haaahhh!   Just like Latin or Chemistry or Gym. 

Never ........  ever ........   EVER .......  AGAIN!!!     

But I was wrong. Math is all around us.  All the time.  Kind of like Ben Stiller.

You have to balance your checkbook.  I can't balance my checkbook without a member of the Wallenda family on either side of it.

You have to make change.  Over the years I've lost enough money through faulty change-making to get the U.S. out of hock to China. Or at least enough to pay off the mortgage on the Grand Coulee Dam.

You have to figure out how much you owe Harry the Slip before he sends a guy with a broken nose named Louie to break all 4 bones in your body! 

Even more upsetting, Einstein, Hawking, and countless others (whom I am wholly unable to count) have taught us that the entire universe is governed according to the principles of mathematics. No wonder my life is screwed up;  I'm living in a reality based on a subject in which I rarely got better than a "C!"

So what are we math malcontents supposed to do?  How do we survive in a universe where they've given us a number and taken away our name? 

1) Rent a Math Guy.  Consider renting your own personal Math Guy; maybe check Craig's List.  A good Math Guy will ensure you always split the dinner check correctly, decipher your Verizon bill, and determine exactly the correct amount for you to wager to become the next Jeopardy Champion should you make it to Final Jeopardy and come up with the correct question. 

2) Reject a Universe Based on Mathematics in Favor of One Based on Folksy Colloquialisms, and Hope It Catches On.

"The distances between objects in our universe are indeed vast.  Assume a spaceship leaves Earth travelling at the speed of 'Whee! This is such fun.' 

Between the time it departs Earth until the time it arrives at the nearest star system, a period equivalent to 'I thought we put the turkey in sufficiently early but it's still not done and Uncle John wants to leave' will have elapsed. 

This equals a staggering distance of 'Durn it, Madge, if you were to walk it, by the time you got there your feet would be the size of two overripe casauba mellons!'"

3) Become Proficient at Math. 

Next. 

4) Reject a Universe Based on Mathematics  in Favor of One Based On Presidential Administrations, and Hope it Catches On.

"So how old are you, Perry?"

"Truman Administration."  

"Wow, you look great for Truman Administration!" 

"Thank you." 

"That your girlfriend?  How old is she?"

"Mid-Reagan Epoch." 

 "Whoa!  How'd you do it?!   Umm, how's the sex?"

 "Clinton times a week!" 

"OMG!  And Clinton times a night?!" 

 "No, dude.  Kennedy times a night!!!" 

5) Fake It. 

Talk in percentages.  Say things like "what's the bottom line?"Learn the conceptual difference between a million and a billion and why you'd rather have either than 25 bucks.  

And for God's sake, go on Wheel, not Jeopardy!

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