[Editor's Note: Terence S. Hawkins is a Connecticut trial lawyer and frequent submitter to Poor Mojo's Almanac(k). His pieces include Protocols of the Elders of Sweden, My Summer Vacation, My Summer Vacation Redux, "Pussy Bomb" Latest Threat Says Ashcroft, FBI, Another Church Shocker: "Fuck It!" Says Resigning Cardinal, Ruth Handler: Death Of A Tit Man , The Minnow Files, Why I Don't Explain How I Lost My Sweater, A Fragment from Raymond Chandler's First Scenario for the Sopranos and Hey Baby.]

So listen, I'm going to tell you this story and I swear it's true.

And I know you're like, duh, right Terry, like that story you told us about the bottle rocket blowing up your chest at the Oyster Festival. Like when Julianne Margolies dumped her weightlifter boyfriend to give you a blowjob with your wife watching, saying that's right, Julianne, teach him a lesson he'll never forget, the little bastard has it coming.

 

Uh, Terry? Ring ring ring! Cluephone! Hello, hello, it's Terry! What? What? You don't believe me? But whyever not?

So I guess I shouldn't complain if you don't believe me, but anyway, here's what happened.

So it's Saturday about noon and the wife and me, we're tired of bowling, we've pruned the rosebushes, we've manured the begonias, we've said, hey, let's go down to Chapel Street, the main drag here in New Haven Connecticut, let's go get us some lunch at Book Trader, one of the few used book store cafe combos on the East Coast, that's for sure. The same goddamn place we have lunch every weekend day where despite our continued custom and unfailing politeness the multiply pierced poseurs at the counter compete with one another to see who can fuck up our order slowest.

But hey, eventually something like what we ordered gets slapped in front of us by a sneering lesbian and in my gratitude I tip more than I did at Birdland the night before. So cowering over our table I happen to glance up and I see MG Lord's Forever Barbie. And I start leafing through it and my wife starts saying, Jesus, how do you ever get hard for a woman, oh God, I'm your beard.

So I'm explaining no, no, I knew MG at Yale, and what a coincidence, this is all about my latest Poor Mojo piece, and she's saying, does the FBI want to look at your computer, you're Catholic after all.

So we turn into this place called News Haven which is a pretty big magazine store here in New Haven Connecticut, home of a famous university after all, a store big enough to stock the Italian Maxim, which is just like the American Maxim except it costs fifteen dollars and shows nipples.

So I'm looking at this Italian Maxim and all of a sudden I hear a thump. I look up, thinking Patel or Mowgli or whoever's at the counter just dropped a pallet of Snapple. But no, there are a couple of people in the next aisle looking at the floor with their mouths open so I think uh-oh, emergency, time for Tony Stark Iron Man, and I do a quick 180 around a display stand of the very latest in media fanzines.

There I see the following tableau: Three women standing over a two hundred pound man in a football helmet lying on the floor beside a pile of shrink wrapped stroke books having a seizure. I know he's having a seizure only inferentially; it's not like his teeth are snapping or his eyes are rolling or anything. No, it's the fact that he's a) on the floor; and b) wearing a helmet that help me jump to that conclusion. Oh, and I left out c), the t-shirt he's wearing with the name of a group home for mentally retarded people.

So I start screaming Sharon, Sharon, just like Ozzie Osbourne who I vaguely resemble, which is fortunate given the fact that my wife's name is Sharon, and these three women standing around the seizing retard look at me and say, um, is Sharon a doctor?

This puts me in a little bit of a bind because I want to say Yes, back off you fucking idiots don't try to help this guy up, but my wife isn't a doctor, she runs group homes for the mentally retarded, and I want to say, Don't worry, she's a retard specialist, but somehow that doesn't sound right, so I don't say anything.

So my wife swings into action and gently prohibits helpful bystanders from putting the guy into a coma and someone calls an ambulance and someone gets the guy a bottle of water and there are about five of us standing there staring at this obviously retarded guy with a walrus moustache lying on the floor beside his shrink wrapped do not open three for five dollars stroke books, the uppermost of which was titled, Family Fantasy, and featured a young lady in a baby tee with her finger up her hoo ha and a pre seizure type expression on her face.

And my wife is talking to this young lady who called the ambulance, a young lady who is herself wearing a baby tee, and they are having one of these concerned caring women type conversations about how embarrassed this poor guy must be, should they stick the magazines in a bag, and I decide to place blame where it should be.

I scoop up the stroke books and I wave them in the face of the al Quaeda sympathizer at the counter and I scream See what the hell happens when you peddle this godless filth, it causes seizures among the weak, and if I were you I'd make goddamn sure my green card was current!

Then I turn to the ambulance girl, who like my wife is staring at me in stupefied horror. And you're no better you young slut, I say. There you go, walking down Chapel Street with your labia pierced, no underwear to bless yourself with, your ta-tas doing the meringue for any susceptible Mongoloid on a day pass. Why when that poor boy saw what the air conditioning did we're lucky his eyeballs didn't bust.

She started to cry, and I can't blame her, with what she had on her conscience.

I don't know why my wife thought she had to apologize to everybody but she did and that's why we were just leaving when the EMT's showed up.

When we got to the car I said, I'm so proud of you.

She said, Promise you won't tell your friends at Mojo.

How could you think?