Call Me Cuzzin Jeb
When my friend and I began working in the college theatre scene shop together, we were a little out of our element. Not complete idiots, merely incomplete idiots.
One day our job was to build and paint a series of flats. To build the flats, we had to screw together a wood frame with center braces, screw a thin sheet of wood to the frame and braces, and then we needed to paint both the sheet and the frame.
After we finished all that work, our supervisor informed us that we had put the frame together wrong and would need to take the whole thing apart, redo it, and touch up the paint.
So we took the screws out and tried to lift off the sheet, but the thing wouldn't come off. So we checked around all the edges: no screws. We tried taking it off again. We could still get it about halfway off but not all the way. We couldn't figure out what the problem was. Then we remembered the paint. The paint must have slipped in between the sheet and the frame and bonded the two together. Damn strong paint, but if you've ever tried to open a window that's been painted shut, you know it really can be that bad.
We each took a prybar to opposite sides of the flat. We wedged it in as far as we could, and then at the same time we forced up the prybar fast and hard...and tore the holy shit out that sheet of plywood because we forgot to take out the screws that had connected it to the center brace.
My friend and I looked at each other and that ruined flat for a long time until my friend said, "I think we just made, as Dennis Miller says, a Cousin Jethro sized mistake - rope-belt and all."
Since then, we've taken to calling each other "cuzzin" -- even more so after performing in a children's tour at a rural school where, as my Crazy Cuzzin Leroy led a child to his seat, the child said, " I smell like pigs! That's 'cause I been playin' with them all mornin'."
Cuzzin Jeb is sort of a stereotypical hick, but at heart his problem, as Wendell Berry puts it, is an old one: too much power, too little information. I love writing in his persona because I never quite know what he is going to wind up doing and i git too spel thangz funnee:
mah naym iz jeb an I liyk to kik thangz
it dont matur wut it iz. sumtiymz I kik rox or uthur tiymz i kik sum gras. Wun tiym I thot i wuz kikkin a smal rok but it wuz a big rok thet wuz bareed way down deep in thu grownd. thet hirt. reel bad. mah fut got all swoled up an i coodnt git it owt uv mah boot butt lahk me an mah cuzzin leroy alwayz say ef it caint bee fixt with a klawhammur it caint bee fixt so i tuk a big ol long nayl an hammurd it intoo mah boot to mak it stay an thin i cood pull it owt reel fast. thet didnt wirk neethur cuz i put thet nayl intoo mah big to. ef i thot thet kickin thet rok hirt i didnt no nuthin abowt hirt cuz the nayl reelee hirt bad. an I wint to the hosspitul an so now i got no big to but I tuk a tortch too the ind uv mah klawhammur an i stuk it insiyd mah boot ware mah big to yoost too bee an now i kin kik thangz even bettur. lahk I sed ef it caint bee fixt with a klawhammur it caint bee fixt
One day our job was to build and paint a series of flats. To build the flats, we had to screw together a wood frame with center braces, screw a thin sheet of wood to the frame and braces, and then we needed to paint both the sheet and the frame.
After we finished all that work, our supervisor informed us that we had put the frame together wrong and would need to take the whole thing apart, redo it, and touch up the paint.
So we took the screws out and tried to lift off the sheet, but the thing wouldn't come off. So we checked around all the edges: no screws. We tried taking it off again. We could still get it about halfway off but not all the way. We couldn't figure out what the problem was. Then we remembered the paint. The paint must have slipped in between the sheet and the frame and bonded the two together. Damn strong paint, but if you've ever tried to open a window that's been painted shut, you know it really can be that bad.
We each took a prybar to opposite sides of the flat. We wedged it in as far as we could, and then at the same time we forced up the prybar fast and hard...and tore the holy shit out that sheet of plywood because we forgot to take out the screws that had connected it to the center brace.
My friend and I looked at each other and that ruined flat for a long time until my friend said, "I think we just made, as Dennis Miller says, a Cousin Jethro sized mistake - rope-belt and all."
Since then, we've taken to calling each other "cuzzin" -- even more so after performing in a children's tour at a rural school where, as my Crazy Cuzzin Leroy led a child to his seat, the child said, " I smell like pigs! That's 'cause I been playin' with them all mornin'."
Cuzzin Jeb is sort of a stereotypical hick, but at heart his problem, as Wendell Berry puts it, is an old one: too much power, too little information. I love writing in his persona because I never quite know what he is going to wind up doing and i git too spel thangz funnee:
mah naym iz jeb an I liyk to kik thangz
it dont matur wut it iz. sumtiymz I kik rox or uthur tiymz i kik sum gras. Wun tiym I thot i wuz kikkin a smal rok but it wuz a big rok thet wuz bareed way down deep in thu grownd. thet hirt. reel bad. mah fut got all swoled up an i coodnt git it owt uv mah boot butt lahk me an mah cuzzin leroy alwayz say ef it caint bee fixt with a klawhammur it caint bee fixt so i tuk a big ol long nayl an hammurd it intoo mah boot to mak it stay an thin i cood pull it owt reel fast. thet didnt wirk neethur cuz i put thet nayl intoo mah big to. ef i thot thet kickin thet rok hirt i didnt no nuthin abowt hirt cuz the nayl reelee hirt bad. an I wint to the hosspitul an so now i got no big to but I tuk a tortch too the ind uv mah klawhammur an i stuk it insiyd mah boot ware mah big to yoost too bee an now i kin kik thangz even bettur. lahk I sed ef it caint bee fixt with a klawhammur it caint bee fixt
posted by X at 7:37 PM
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