Too Much Media/Too Much Information

You know, as sorry as I am for Billy Connolly, and you can read about his anguish in this story here, I have to say that maybe we need to curtail the media just a bit. I mean, if all we have to cover this day is a comedian getting his franks and beans caught in his zipper while flying....isn't there a hole in the ozone or something important we could be fixing?

And I'll kindly ask you not to point out that I'm the one that saw the story, chose to read it, and am now passing the savings on to you.

We all already know that I'm part of the problem....

However, all of this reminds me of a few years ago. I was riding along with one of our truck drivers, helping him out because we were backlogged in the warehouses. This particular truck driver had just one arm. One complete arm, I should say. He was missing his right arm below the elbow. He was heavily featured in an ad campaign for our little not-for-profit organization who helps those with disadvantages.

Anyway, we stop for lunch at Taco Bell. And it was tasty.

He finishes his lunch, and goes to the rest room.

I get up and go out to the truck to wait on him.

I realize after a while that he's been in there a long time, and I've just gotten down out of the truck to see if he's alright, when he storms out of the Taco Bell.

Now, this guy could cuss. It's like Darren McGavin in A Christmas Story: This guy was an artist. And to borrow a phrase from that fine movie, David wove a tapestry of profanity that is still hanging over Middle Tennessee to this day.

And he's cussing everybody, including me.

"Where were you?" he demanded.

"Right here," I said.

And he cussed some more, and we drove for a while, and he didn't say anything for a long time. We were all the way to Nashville and he said: "I needed your help in there."

"Why?" I asked, not being used to having to help grown men in the bathroom.

"I caught myself in my zipper," he said.

The problem, he explained, was that he had just the one arm. And he couldn't get any purchase when he was trying to unzip himself from from his zipper. He would try to pull the zipper down, and it would just pull everything....zipper, fabric and his junk...down with it. And since he was using his one hand to pull on the zipper, he didn't have another to hold the fabric of his coveralls in place, so that he could pull the teeth away from the injury.

He had just about resolved himself to sticking his head out of the door, when he gave one last valiant tug, and everything came free.

And do you want the honest truth? I didn't think it was at all funny. I didn't even have an inkling of an idea to laugh.

Until he said:

"I was almost crying in there," he said. This from a man who hadn't cried since he'd returned from Vietnam.

But I managed to stifle it.

But then he said: "I had to go get a band aid from the counter person. And the manager asked if I'd had an accident...and I didn't think to just say no. I just told her that I'd caught myself in my zipper...and she quickly handed the bandaid over."

And I lost it. There have only been five or six times in my life I've laughed so hard, and that was one of them. I literally laughed for 5 minutes...and after a couple, he started laughing too.

Maybe you had to be there.

However, I marvel at the dexterity it took to apply that bandaid.

We used to keep in touch, and a few months ago he told me he's read my site. I hope he reads this and gets back in touch. David was a cool dude.