About the Shaft: Some good news and some bad news

 

By Joseph Walther

 

We’ve all heard tails of woe from people who claim to have gotten the “shaft.” This past Friday, I heard one so dim-witted, that it compelled me to probe deeper into the alleged victim’s circumstances. It also got me to thinking about the times in my life when I, or someone I knew, had felt “shafted.” Um, guess what? Getting “shafted” is mostly a consequence of inviting a “shafting.”

 

            He told me his name, but I’ve decided to use the initials, NN, in place of it. NN truly believes—heart and soul—that he, in his words, “got screwed in my butt for trying to help some people out.” Well, OK, his EXACT words were more direct and colorful, if you get my drift. Even though the events took place several months ago, he’s spent a small fortune trying to clear his name and get out of debt. “Life is so unfair,” he said with a sincere groan.

 

            I asked him to give me some more details. He told me that two guys approached him outside of a convenience store and offered to pay him $50 to deliver a small package to an address that was less than 3-miles away. “Did you know these men?” I asked. “No,” he said. “They seemed sincere, though. They told me that their car had broken down on I95 and that they had walked about 2-miles to this parking lot and saw me about to get into my car.” They also convinced him that it was an emergency. They wanted to deliver the package, but they had to get back to their car before the police towed it. He agreed to deliver the package, took their money, and drove off to make the delivery.

 

            So, two men, complete strangers, convinced him to deliver a package, the contents of which he did not question, to someone he didn’t know. The only thing he knew was the location of the address. He apparently could not smell the foul odor wafting about from the I95 breakdown/emergency bit. As he explained to me, “Fifty bucks is fifty bucks. And for only about 5-minutes of my time. I mean, like what’s that, about $300 an hour?” Actually, assuming no coffee breaks, it’s $600 an hour, but I’m sure he felt bad enough without adding math illiteracy to the list.

 

            The two men left; walking toward I95, as NN pulled out of the parking lot. Unbeknownst to NN, a drug trafficking task force had the delivery address under surveillance. When he arrived and attempted to deliver the package, the police arrested him, along with two of the address’s occupants. The two strangers who had initially commissioned him are still on the loose. Additional details only make him look dumber.

 

            “NN” is short for Numb Nuts. Two men didn’t “shaft” him. He invited a “shafting.” They simply took him up on his offer. He might just as well have turned his back towards them, bent over, and told them to stick it up here. That’s what they did and they didn’t even bother kissing him first! NN didn’t feel the agonizing initial penetration pain because either it wasn’t his first time or because he was “really in the mood.” I’m sure that the lubricant—the fifty bucks—helped with the penetration, too.

 

            “Fairness”, as it applies to life, is an illusion. The word does not appear in either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. People like NN raise gullibility to a completely new level. When it comes to getting the “shaft”, there is good news and bad news for the NNs of the world. The bad news is that the “shafting” will never cease in either frequency or intensity. The good news is that the more times they get it, the less it will hurt. After a while, it will begin to feel good. They’ll start longing for it!

 

            The scary thing about this incident is the fact that there are many NN types walking the streets of the United States. They are the most dangerous of the dumb because they have no idea that they are dumber than rocks. Scarier still, is the fact that these people are capable of breeding. Their existence lends great credibility to the notion that heredity is nature’s version of telling the same joke repeatedly.

 

            There is another kind of stupid. This one is non-criminal. It happened Saturday, mid-morning in the food court of the Christiana Mall, in Newark, Delaware. Stan and Irma—husband and wife of several years, I’m assuming—were discussing the dress she had purchased at J. C. Penny about an hour earlier. “You really like it, Stan? It doesn’t add undue emphasis to my hips?” For me, time came to a screeching halt!

 

            Sometimes a man becomes distracted by important stuff, particularly a long time married man. The list of distractions can be legion: how to end the Iraqi war, or the growing number of people without adequate health insurance, or global warming, or whether there’s adequate financial support for the opera and ballet. Or, it could be a distraction of monumental importance, such as a 30-something brunette with legs to die for and a perky set of breasts practically popping out of the cleavage of her hot pink blouse, screaming, “LOOK AT THESE!” I seem to recall a similar type of distraction seated in front of him but to his right.

 

            Whatever the case, Irma didn’t seem to occupy his thought processes at the time she asked the questions about her new dress. I’m sure he heard her words, but he just couldn’t process them because of the distractions. Yes, he heard them, but he couldn’t connect them with Irma and her tone of concern. So, in a valiant attempt to act cool and appear as though he was NOT ignoring her, he said something that sounded colossally stupid to everyone else, but highly intelligent to him.

 

            Like radar tracking a speeding car, he had locked his gaze on to something at the table to his front, right—not sure what it was, but it was NOT IRMA. Without so much as a glance in Irma’s direction, Stan said, “Not any more than usual.” There was about a 5-second delay at which point the man suddenly realized what his wife had asked him. All color drained from his face as the severity of the situation set in. He tried desperately to smooth it over with something cool, calm and collected, “Irma! Sweetheart! At your age, I mean our ages, what difference does it make?” People started to back away, slowly.

 

            The last I saw of him, Stan was trying to dislodge Irma’s purse from his chest, hoping that the paramedics would soon arrive and reinflate his lungs. That’s how hard she threw it at him. She called him a name in a loud, hissing sort of way, and it wasn’t “Stan”, either. From the word she used, everyone in the food court logically assumed that Stan’s parents had never married. Oh, and that he was a rotten one, at that. I don’t think that Stan heard her, though, because grim thoughts as to whether his heart was going to start beating again had diverted all of his attention.

 

            We humans seem to be the only species that need compensation for what we’re not. I’m sure that’s why Nature provided us with imaginations. Unfortunately, we are what we are; Nature compensated us for that, too. It’s called a sense of humor. Just be sure that you cover your butt whenever you bend over in public.

 

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Copyright laws apply to all material on this site. Send your comments. Just click here.