Quirks & Super-Quirks: A Humor Collection

ADVICE & PSAs

Don’t marry someone interesting thinking your life will get more interesting. It won’t. The only way to get an interesting life is to become more interesting yourself. Or punch a bear in the face. That also works. —Uncle Gilbert on marriage

I Demand an Immediate Tea

Do sit down, dear, and let me feed you up on all the family gossip. But before you do, bring me some baked goods and tea, instantly. And by tea, instantly, I do not mean instant tea or (heaven forbid) instant coffee. Your father used to make instant coffee in his student days. He claims that it has the rich flavor of Peruvian earth. It may well have, but it also has the distinct aroma of a traveling wild beast show.

I want some blue tea, as they take it in Thailand. If you add lemon to blue tea, it turns purple, much as your Great-Uncle Eustace did when I gave him my opinion of his latest coiffure. I told him he could win Best in Show at Westminster, and he wouldn’t need to bring a dog. It is possible to be too well groomed, and in my opinion, he was several elaborate curls over the line. He told me not to throw stones at a man until I’d walked a mile in his glass slippers.

I suppose being unconventional is the fashion these days. Did you hear about the vicar’s daughter, Violet? She had a very nontraditional wedding. When she got married, instead of changing her last name to her husband’s, she changed her mother’s first name to Stratocaster. Absolutely immoral, of course, as the vicar can’t even play the guitar. Whenever she delivers a sermon now, she has to be plugged in. Used to have a lovely speaking voice. Now, she speaks with a distinct nasal twang, and it echoes alarmingly in the apse. How am I supposed to achieve a mindset of pious contemplation when the church is filled with an heretical ang-ang-ang-ow-ow-ow-owow-diddly-diddly-diddly and so forth? I said to your father, That alone is an argument for converting to agnosticism.

I wasn’t serious, of course. Never trust an agnostic. They’re always perched on the tops of Volvos, eating raisins and shredding pamphlets. Your cousin Simon spoke to an agnostic once. Next thing we knew, he’d emigrated to Sweden and founded a lemming sanctuary. They take agnosticism to extremes in Sweden. But even Cousin Simon was too much for them. By October, the Swedes had had enough of him. By November, so had the lemmings. The rumor was, they’d left the country to escape. He was last seen in Norway, running along the bottoms of cliffs waving a butterfly net and shouting, Don’t jump!

Speaking of ecumenism, I went to your cousin Clarabelle’s christening on Sunday, and the one thing everyone could agree on is that bestiality is never the answer.

My manicurist was explaining the problem of incompatible romantic partners. She’d watched a TED Talk by that blonde woman. You know the one—she went to an ashram in India, crawled up her own bottom, and found herself. She’s been married three times, so she must be an expert on incompatibility.

Speaking of things that don’t belong together, I went to your second cousin Meredith’s house for tea yesterday. Her daughter was inflicting her latest obsession on us.

Aisby’s taken up the trumpet, Meredith said. What do you think?

I think she should put it down again, I replied.

She’s channeling Louis Armstrong, said Meredith.

She’s channeling something, I said, and gave her the card of a really effective exorcist in Wapping.

I left shortly after that, as Meredith began to lecture me on culture, which is a bit rich coming from a woman who uses her dog as a hot water bottle.

Mothers are seldom wrong, and Meredith is the exception that proves the rule.

My mother’s wisdom was rooted in gardening.

If I attempted to touch anything in her garden—be it toad, or snake, or bee—she’d immediately snap at me, Leave it alone. It’s good for the garden.

One night when I was a child, I was wakened by a commotion in the shrubbery, and what should I see through the window but a 100-foot-tall creature with a spectacular tentacular visage and a maw of death for a mouth?

When I woke my mother to tell her, she mumbled, Leave it alone. It’s good for the garden.

I daresay she was right. That spring, the crocuses were immense. They heaved themselves out of the ground and went leaping about the garden, sucking slugs off the rose bushes and uprooting the croquet hoops. The garden never looked so interesting. My father spent all day running around the lawn, clubbing them with a croquet mallet. Temperance was my father’s virtue.

You don’t want to be too temperate, mind. Your Uncle Brian had no vices at all. He went into a casino one day and died of boredom. Now that he’s gone, I wish I’d spent less time with him.

Speaking of bores, I ran into Lady Hatfield the other day. She believes in eugenics and not in a good way. She started rabbiting on about her daughter’s recent engagement expecting me to be impressed.

I said to her, Nerbil is not the sort of man you marry. He’s the sort of man you fantasize about garroting.

Then I asked her if they’d thought to put some cheese wire on the wedding registry. I didn’t get an invitation to the wedding. I hope I get one to the funeral.

When it comes time to choose your young man, remember: Never pair off with someone significantly less good-looking than you. Your Great-Uncle Eustace learned that the hard way when he went to Russia and formed a double-drag act with a dancing bear. One day it eviscerated him. And not in a friendly way. I know there was still bad blood even afterward, as I heard the bear turned up to the funeral wearing the same color dress as the corpse. Talk about stealing the limelight.

But there is a time and place for deep reflection on the capacity of bears to harbor resentments. And that time is later. Have some more of this blue tea, dear. It warms the cages and rattles the cockles.

Contingency Plans

I

So, you find yourself at an altitude of 2,500 feet, and your parachute has failed to open.

Not your day, is it?

Here are some things you might want to do:

II

Deploy your reserve parachute.

Seems obvious, doesn’t it?

You’d be surprised.

If your reserve parachute fails to open, deploy your preserve parachute.

This will not slow your descent in any way, but it will release a jam jar, which may strike you on the head, knocking you unconscious, and thus allowing you to plummet to your death in a more relaxed frame of mind.

III

If consciousness persists, pinch yourself.

If you open your eyes and see black-and-white footage of two men sitting in a boat doing nothing in particular, you just fell asleep watching The Red Fisher Show.

Do not feel embarrassed.

At some point, everyone who watches The Red Fisher Show falls asleep, and many subsequently dream they are plunging to their deaths.

IV

If, instead of Red Fisher, you see the ground approaching you at speed, you may be a fictional character in a metafictional novel.

Check to see if you have an improbable name such as Hanford.

This is a dead giveaway that you are a fictional person.

If, on the other hand, your name is John, relax.

You are probably in a memoir, so obviously you will survive this fall or else how would your memoir get written?

Unless you are ghostwriting it through the medium of a Ouija board.

If you are communicating through a Ouija board, or if your name is not Hanford or John, proceed to stanza V.

V

Look up.

Look down.

If you see stanza IV above you and stanza VI below, you are inside a poem.

This is also a metafictional situation, but it is less serious than being in a novel, as poems tend not to last as long.

Stay calm and wait for VI.

VI

If you are in a Choose Your Own Adventure book, then you clearly should have picked the other option—the one where you don’t jump out of the plane.

Did you remember to dog-ear that last decision page?

VII

If you forgot to dog-ear the page, you will have to remain here until the End.

That would be the white space immediately below the last stanza.

Some distance below that, you may see another poem, or even an advice column.

Do not take any notice.

It was written for someone else, someone who doesn’t know you from Hanford and his (or her) story is in an entirely different sphere (or, more literally, 5″ × 8″ rectangle) of reality from this one.

You wouldn’t fit in there anyway, so there’s no point in trying to reach it.

It really is none of your business.

You’d just be a big non sequitur there.

VIII

It would be a good idea at this point to think positive thoughts.

Do NOT under any circumstances entertain such thoughts as, I could have gone bowling.

If you ever reach a point in your life where this statement is both desirable and true, your life is over anyway.

Instead, think about this: You could be eating bacon right now.

Bacon.

There may be bacon in heaven.

You are a regular churchgoer, aren’t you?

The Church of Bacon awaits you.

IX

If you aren’t a regular churchgoer, you may have to entertain the notion that there is bacon in hell.

Who knows?

Maybe there is.

X

Really, just think about the bacon.

Even if you do splat and make a mess at the bottom of this poem, that won’t be your problem.

It will be the copyeditor’s problem.

She will not understand why there are intestines piled at the bottom of the page.

She will probably think they are a scene break.

She will lie awake at night thinking about how no one in their right mind uses ampersands for scene breaks nowadays.

XI

Actually, if you think about it, the copyeditor might not even get a look-in.

Not if the contest judge has a go first.

This is one of those poems that’s quite good right up until the end.

The judge thinks this last