Dave Barry - Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up

So I’m worried. I’m worried in my car; I’m worried in my house; and above all I’m worried when I cross my yard. I’m afraid that one day I’ll disappear, and the police will search my property, and all they’ll find will be a snake who obviously just ate a large meal and is pretending to be a really fat garden hose; and maybe some glowing ants munching on, say, the microwave oven; and of course Zippy, Mr. Vigilant, barking at the chlorine dispenser.

Sometimes, even though we love America, with its amber waves of purple mounted majesties fruiting all over the plains, we get a little ticked off at our government. Sometimes we find ourselves muttering: “All the government ever seems to do is suck up our hard-earned money and spew it out on projects such as the V-22 Osprey military aircraft, which the Pentagon doesn’t even want, and which tends to crash, but which Congress has fought to spend millions on, anyway, because this will help the reelection efforts of certain congresspersons, who would cheerfully vote to spend millions on a program to develop a working artificial hemorrhoid, as long as the money would be spent in their districts.”

I mutter this frequently myself But we must not allow ourselves to become cynical. We must remember that for every instance of the government’s demonstrating the intelligence of a yam, there is also an instance of the government’s rising to the level of a far more complex vegetable, such as the turnip.

Today I’m pleased to tell you the heartwarming story of a group of 10 men whose lives have been changed, thanks to prompt, coordinated government action. I got this story from one of the men, Al Oliver, a retired Navy chaplain. In fact, all 10 are retirees (or, in Al Oliver’s words, “chronologically disadvantaged”).

The men live in the Azalea Trace retirement center in Pensacola, Florida. For years they’ve gathered every morning to drink coffee and talk. In 1988, they formed a pact: Each would buy a Florida lottery ticket every week, and if anybody won, they’d all split the money. They called themselves the Lavender Hill Mob, and stamped that name on their lottery tickets.

For three years they won nothing. Then, in 199 1, one of their tickets had five out of six winning numbers, for a prize of $4,156. Oliver took the ticket to the state lottery office in Pensacola, where he had to fill out Form 5754, indicating who was to get the money. He wrote down “Lavender Hill Mob.”

A while later, he got the form back from the state, along with a letter informing him that the Lavender Hill Mob was a partnership and could not be paid until it obtained an Employer Identification Number, or EIN, from (ominous music starts here) ... the Internal Revenue Service.

At this point you readers are like an audience watching the scene in a horror movie wherein the woman trapped alone in the house at night is about to go down into the basement.

“NO! NO!” you’re shouting to Al Oliver. “Don’t get involved with the IRS! Better to just throw the ticket away!”

But Oliver went to an IRS office and applied for the EIN by filling out Form SS-4. “I had to list everything on all 10 of us except I believe our cholesterol count,” he recalls. The IRS then gave him the EIN, which he sent along with Form 5754 to the state lottery, which sent him the check, which he took to the bank, which, after balking a little, finally gave him 10 cashier’s checks for the Lavender Hill Mob members.

Now you’re thinking: “OK, so it was an annoying bureaucratic hassle, but everything turned out fine.”

Please try not to be such a wienerhead. Of COURSE everything did not turn out fine. In February, Oliver began receiving notices from the IRS demanding to know where exactly the hell were the Lavender Hill Mob’s 1065

forms showing partnership income for 1989, 1990, and 1991. So Oliver went to his CPA, who filled out the forms with zeros and sent them in.

Of course this only angered the IRS, because here the Lavender Hill Mob was just now getting around to filing forms for as far back as 1989, which means these forms were LATE. You can’t allow that kind of flagrant disregard for the law. You let the Mob members slide on that, and the next thing you know they’re selling crack on the shuffleboard court.

So in June the IRS notified the Mob members that, for failing to file their 1989 Form 1065 on time, they owed a penalty of $2,500. Oliver’s CPA, who is not working for free, wrote a letter to the IRS attempting to explain everything. Then in July the Mobsters got another notice, informing them that they owed $2,500 PLUS $19.20 in interest charges, which will of course continue to mount. The notice states that the government may file a tax lien against the Mobsters and adds: “wE MUST ALSO CONSIDER TAKING YOUR WAGES, PROPERTY OR OTHER ASSETS.”

That’s where it stood when I last heard from Oliver. Since this whole thing is obviously a simple misunderstanding, we can safely assume that it will never be resolved. The wisest course for the Mobsters would be to turn all their worldly goods over to the government right now. Because if they keep attempting to file the correct form, they’re going to wind up in serious trouble, fleeing through the swamps around Pensacola, pursued by airborne IRS agents in the new V-22 Osprey, suspended via steel cables from some aircraft that can actually fly.

This next section is more or less about traveling. It includes an account of my visit to Communist China, where I spent almost an entire day, thereby qualifying as an authority.

There’s also a column I wrote about people who are obnoxious on airplanes. This column was very popular with flight attendants; for quite a while after it was published, whenever I’d take a plane, the attendants would give me free beers. That’s why I got into journalism in the first place: to help people.

I’m in an airplane, strapped into my seat, no way to escape. For an hour we’ve been taxiing around Miami International Airport while lightning tries to hit us. Earlier I was hoping that the plane might at some point actually take off and fly to our intended destination but now I’m starting to root for the lightning, because a direct strike might silence the two women sitting in front of me. There’s only one empty seat between them, but they’re speaking at a decibel level that would be appropriate if one of them were in Cleveland. Also, they both have Blitherers Disease, which occurs when there is no filter attached to the brain, so that every thought the victim has, no matter how minor, comes blurting right out. This means that the rest of us passengers are being treated to repartee such as this:

FIRST WOMAN: I PREFER A WINDOW SEAT. SECOND WOMAN: OH, NOT ME. I ALWAYS PREFER AN AISLE SEAT. FIRST WOMAN: THAT’S JUST LIKE MY SON. HE LIVES IN NEW JERSEY, AND HE ALWAYS

PREFERS AN AISLE SEAT ALSO. SECOND WOMAN: MY SISTER-IN-LAW WORKS FOR A DENTIST IN New Jersey. HE’S AN

EXCELLENT DENTIST BUT HE CAN’T PRONOUNCE HIS R’S. HE SAYS, “I’M AFWAID

YOU NEED A WOOT CANAL.” FIRST WOMAN: MY BROTHER-IN-LAW JUST HAD THAT ROOT CANAL. HE WAS BLEEDING ALL

OVER HIS NEW CAR, ONE OF THOSE JAPANESE ONES, A WHADDYACALLEM, LEXIT. SECOND WOMAN: I PREFER A BUICK, BUT LET ME TELL YOU, THIS INSURANCE, WHO CAN

AFFORD IT? FIRST WOMAN: I HAVE A BROTHER IN THE INSURANCE BUSINESS, WITH ANGINA. HE

PREFERS A WINDOW SEAT. SECOND WOMAN: OH, NOT ME. I ALWAYS PREFER AN AISLE. NOW MY DAUGHTER ...

And so it has gone, for one solid hour, a live broadcast of random neural firings. The harder I try to ignore it, the more my brain focuses on it. But it could be worse. I could be the flight attendant. Every time she walks past the two women, they both shout “MISS?” It’s an uncontrollable reflex.