Dave Barry - Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits

This system worked well until the late 1970s, when the price of oil started to fall. This was caused by a decline in demand, which was caused by the fact that people couldn’t get their cars repaired, which was caused by the fact that the oil companies had bought all the independent garages and turned them into “self-service” stations selling a mutant assortment of retail goods and staffed by surly teenagers, so that God forbid you should have actual car trouble at one of these service stations because they would tow you away for blocking the access of customers wishing to purchase nasal spray and Slim Jims.

So now the banks are stuck with a lot of oil, which they are trying to get rid of by converting it into VISA cards, which they offer to my wife. She gets six or seven VISA offers from desperate banks per business day. She got one recently from—I am not making this up—a bank in South Dakota. I didn’t even know they had banks in South Dakota, did you? What would people keep in them? Pelts?

Well I don’t know about you, but I am uncomfortable with the idea of having a world economy dependent upon the VISA needs of my wife. She is only one person. That is the law. So I think we need to revamp the whole world economic structure, and the obvious first step is to require banks to repair cars. The supermarkets, which already cash checks, could take over the remaining functions currently performed by banks, such as lending money to the Third World and being closed. You would get your food at service stations, which would be required to get some new sandwiches. You would continue to buy gas at “convenience” stores. Illinois would be sold to wealthy Japanese investors. All these regulations would be enforced by laser beams from space.

There’s this sensitive issue that we in the news media are very reluctant to bring up.

No. It isn’t condoms—We are totally comfortable, these days, doing lengthy stories about condoms: (“PASTELS OUT, EARTH TONES IN, FOR FALL CONDOM”). You will soon see condom commercials on television. Fortunately we can assume, based on television’s track record with this kind of thing, that these commercials will be tasteful and informative:

FIRST MAN: What’s the matter, Ted?

SECOND MAN: I think I have a horrible sexually transmitted disease!

FIRST MAN: Here. Try some of my condoms.

SECOND MAN: Thanks.

(The Next Day:)

FIRST MAN: Feeling better, Ted?

SECOND MAN: You bet! Thanks to condoms! And I got that big promotion!

No, the issue we are reluctant to talk about is even more sensitive (ha ha!) than condoms. The issue—and I will try to be tasteful here—is that sometimes it seems like maybe the president of the United States is kind of db. If you get what I mean. What I mean is, I am not totally confident that the president would get what I mean, unless several aides explained it to him. And even then, he might forget.

This is unsettling, although I don’t know why it should be. For the past 25 years, the presidency had been a remarkable parade of hanky-panky, comical incompetence, and outright weirdness, and the country has done OK. In fact, once you got into the spirit of it, it was kind of fun. I don’t know about you, but I loved it when jimmy Carter reported that he’d been attacked by a giant swimming rabbit. I loved it when Richard Nixon made speeches wherein he looked as though a large and disorganized committee of alien beings had taken over his body and were just learning how to operate it: (“OK. Let’s try to wave. Who’s operating the arms?” “Me!” “No, me!” “NO ...” etc.).

So I don’t mind the president being bizarre, but that’s not the same as accepting that he might be kind of db. Yet it’s getting harder and harder to think of any other explanation, not with this Iran-Contra scandal. I realize you out there in Readerland are sick to death of this scandal, but it’s still causing multiple orgasms here in the news media, because of all these shocking revelations, the most amazing one being that the president apparently viewed foreign policy as a sort of family station wagon, which he, in the role of Ozzie Nelson, would cheerfully lend to his teen-age son, Ricky, played by Oliver North.

RICKY: Hey Dad, can I take the foreign policy down to the Malt Shoppe and deal with Iranians?

OZZIE: The Iranians?

RICKY: Don’t worry, Dad. They’re moderates.

OZZIE: Well in that case, OK. just don’t trade arms for hostages!

The president, apparently, was so totally unaware of where his foreign policy was that he had to appoint a distinguished commission to help him locate it, and when the commissioners called him in to testify, he told them, essentially, that he couldn’t remember what it looked like. Now, if Richard Nixon had claimed something like that you would at least have had the comfort of knowing he was lying. You could trust Nixon that way. But with this president, you have this nagging feeling that he’s telling the truth.

This bothers us media people, which is why we have developed this euphemistic way of describing the president’s behavior, namely, we say he has a “hands-off management style.” As in: “How many people with a hands-off management style does it take to change a light bulb?”

Of course the president’s aides, in an effort to show that he is a Take-Charge Guy, have arranged to have him star in a number of Photo Opportunities: The President Shakes Hands with People Wearing Suits; the President Sits Down with People Wearing Suits; the President, Wearing a Suit, Signs His Own Name; etc. I think this is good, as far as it goes. My concern is that it should not go any further. My concern is that we could have a sudden eruption of “hands-on” management, for example in the nuclear-arms talks, and we’ll end up with Soviet Troops in Des Moines.

Call me a regular American guy if you want, but baseball season is kind of special to me. For one thing, it means ice hockey season will be over in just a few short months. But it also brings back a lot of memories, because I, like so many other regular American guys, was once a Little Leaguer. I was on a team called the “Indians,” although I was puny of chest, so if you saw me in my uniform you’d have thought my team was called the “NDIAN,” because the end letters got wrinkled up in my armpits. I had a “Herb Score” model glove, named for a player who went on to get hit in the eye by a baseball.

I remember particularly this one game: I was in deep right field, of course, and there were two out in the bottom of the last inning with the tying run on base, and Gerry Sinnott, who had a much larger chest, who already had to shave, was at bat. As I stood there waiting for the pitch, I dreamed a dream that millions of other kids had dreamed: that someday I would grow up, and I wouldn’t have to be in Little League anymore. In the interim, my feelings could best be summarized by the statement: “Oh please please PLEASE God don’t let Gerry Sinnott hit the ball to me.”

And so of course God, who as you know has a terrific sense of humor, had Gerry Sinnott hit the ball to me. Here is what happened in the next few seconds: Outside of my body, hundreds of spectators, thousands of spectators, arrived at the ball field at that very instant via chartered buses from distant cities to see if I would catch the ball. Inside my body, my brain cells hastily met and came up with a Plan of Action, which they announced to the rest of the body parts. “Listen up, everybody!” they shouted. “We’re going to MISS THE BALL! Let’s get cracking!!”

Instantly my entire body sprang into action, like a complex, sophisticated machine being operated by earthworms. The command flashed down from Motor Control to my legs: “GET READY TO RUN!” And soon the excited reply flashed back: “WHICH LEG FIRST?!” Before Motor Control could issue a ruling, an urgent message came in from Vision Central, reporting that the ball had already gone by, in fact was now a good 30 to 40 yards behind my body, rolling into the infield of the adjacent game. Motor Control, reacting quickly to this surprising new input, handled the pressure coolly and decisively, snapping out the command: “OK! We’re going to FALL DOWN!!” And my body lunged violently sideways, in the direction opposite the side where the ball had passed a full two seconds earlier, flopping onto the ground like some pathetic spawning salmon whose central nervous system had been destroyed by toxic waste, as Gerry Sinnott cruised toward home.