Hung With a New Rope

(Author's Note: While this may, at first read, seem like a “Pultenham County” tale, it is not, strictly, part of the Pultenham County Canon. Thank you. Keep reading, please.)

“Piddler, I know you didn't like that corn on the cob, and no one can't tell me you did. Just can't. You ain't liked it since that time you ate too much of it at that one fair we went to and the corn started coming out your nose when you laughed at that midget carrying the Rhode Island Red in a little basket on his head. Momma smacked you on your damned face and told you that was what you get for laughing at midgets. I coulda' told you that, you dang idiot.

So I wish I coulda' told you that I knew you didn't care none too much for corn on the cob, and when that fool-for-the pickin' Janice H_. batted her flappy little eyelids at you and asked you to come on over to her place for a mess of it with butter and salt served with a pail of ice-cold beer I just know'd it was gonna' turn out stupid.

I guess the burning sting from corn goin' out your nose is a lot like the burn that a little bit of puke makes in the back of your throat when you throw it up just a little bit but then you don't think its time to throw it up so you just swallow it back down. Reminds me of Skemmy R_. when he first tried tobacco and didn't know to spit so he swallows the whole plug. Well, he had that little bit come up a few times, until finally he brought the whole mess up on the floor of the diner in H_. while we sat there waitin' for our biscuits. What a mess. They kicked Skemmy out but we was hungry so we sat and waited for our biscuits. After that we found him still waitin' for us outside and he had lost a whole lot more than just that bit on the floor of the diner, I guarantee you. Whole lot.

So Piddler, the bottom line is that you remember a burn like that.

And when that flappy-eyelidded Janice served you corn and you shouted “midget! Midget!” at her and whacked her on the melon with a corn cob, well hell, it was almost like it was in a script, I'd say. Like someone wrote for that to happen.

It turned out stupid, all right. Nothing can help but turn out stupid when someone like you gets a hold of it, Piddler, and you know that. Flappy eyelids and all, that Janice was a good girl. She still is. You just are still such a dang idiot, and I coulda' told you that.