Thursday, December 30, 1999

Jimmy Takes a Vocation.

Jimmy was a fairly alright, upstanding boy; posture was okay, went to the Cirkus each year when his summer job allowed. Jimmy would work as Deputy Ditchscrubber for enough jingle to buy gas and airplane glue, but he didn't always have the right tools for a Licensed ditchscrubber, so it's that much more impressive that his posture was as good as all that.

Jimmy's task would have been worlds easier had he simply re-invested some of the jingle he earned into the ditchscrubber-on-a-stick industy rather than the inhalant industry, and his back would have thanked him for it. But despite this, the old back continued, at least for now, to provide wonderful support for Jimmy, the kind of support his daddy and even his personal supreme being could never provide.

This summer finds Jimmy, once again, on his hands and knees in a ditch, scrubbing it side-to-side (never longwise) and chanting to himself, "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy, side-to-side, Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy, side-to-side..." Always chanting to himself in this fashion when jazzed up on inhalants, he's had to start chanting louder and louder in recent years to outvolume the evergrowing ringing in his ears. "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy, scrub scrub scrub..." He's only had one tube of airplane glue today. Any more than that and he'd find himself scrubbing the same part of the ditch for hours, till it was gleaming, shiny white. Jimmy knew better than anyone that most ditchowners don't like their ditches clean enough to eat off of, clean enough to see their reflections in. In fact, many ditchowners were ugly enough to not even own a mirror, let alone a stainless steel sink or a sparkly shiny ditch.

Anyhow, J.P. Bahrnamus, famous owner of the Bahrnamus Bros & Stockhausen & Sons Combined Cirkus and Underworld Menagerie, was nearly screaming at Jimmy when Jimmy finally took notice.

"Whu...wuh..?"

"I said 'good day' my boy, and stop scrubbing that ditch for a moment."

"Buh..I get fired..."

"S'alright, son. I'm here to offer you a job promotion. You like that? Son, have you ever scrubbed a whaleopotamus?"

"Uh, uh... maybe. What that?"

"Wonderful! You have a job!"

Jimmy hadn't heard or understood half of what the worldfamous promoter and showman had said, nor had he grasped just who the man was, but he dropped his ditchbrush on the spot and never scrubbed another ditch again.

Jimmy died in 1937.


Bonefish Sam has won countless awards for literature.

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