Logic Be Damned
by Fisher Thompson
I saw the young girl sitting in the lobby. She couldn’t have been more than 10 years old. I went back to Bonnie.
“Listen, Bonnie. When I said we were interested in new ideas, fresh approaches, and youthful exuberance, you understood what I meant, correct?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good. Just one problem though.”
“Problem? What kind of problem?”
“I asked you to hire them right out of trade school, not grade school, you BOOB!!”
I could already hear the motet of female voices swelling to a violent crescendo of renunciation at my having used the word “boob” to denigrate a woman.
Fair enough. I recant my statement and instead hurl the epithet, “SCHMUCK!!”
Bonnie sneered. “I suppose you expect me to thank you for declaring your weapons up front as a noble warrior would be inclined to do?”
I shrugged.
“Well,” she continued, “seeing that your weapon of choice is the broad sword of cutting pejorative, let me now declare mine.”
She reached behind her back and pulled out a mace, a medieval iron ball with protruding spikes, and bashed me over the head.
“There,” she said, while I hopped around like an insanely retarded kangaroo. “Now we’re even!”
I moaned in acknowledgement.
“And by the way,” she added. “That is not a new hire you saw. That is my daughter. We’re going to lunch you BOOB!!”
The reverberations of the slamming door rattled my already swollen and throbbing skull, bouncing my brain against the parietal walls. But in that moment an absolute clarity overcame me: I should have thrown a doorway lance!!