Humorous Essays by Jody L. Campbell

 It’s a catchy title for a story.  It reminds me of one of Aesop’s Fables where there will be some lesson instilled in young minds who endure reading it.  That’s probably not going to happen in this tale.  Although somebody might learn something from my mistake.  That’s only a mere theory with no statistics to back it up whatsoever.

            It started out just like every morning.  I pee, wash my hands, turn on the computer, and then I go make my cup of coffee.  Once the coffee maker is started, I return to the computer to crank-start the ancient phone-line modem and connect to the Internet.

            The coffee maker chugs and churns on the kitchen counter.  It’s a two-cup model and it does just about the perfect job of brewing our favorite gourmet blend coffee.  One of our few lavish luxuries.  I brew one single cup, which is rather large, and when mine is ready, I set the machine up for my wife.

            Once I finally get connected to the Internet, I am assuming that the coffee machine must be pretty close to finishing.  It’s sad that dial-up takes so long, but that’s the undying truth to the matter.  Just in case, I begin the process of checking out all of my favorite web sites, to obtain my sports news and stats, check the weather, and of course, my own personal author based web sites data.  Now, surely the cup of coffee is complete and only awaiting the perfect amount of sugar and cream to be added and consumed with relish. 

            On this particular morning, I abandon one particular web site and leave the home office to retrieve my much anticipated cup of coffee.  To my surprise, I hear another unfamiliar chug emanate from the machine as I approach it.  What on earth could have slowed this process down, I wonder?  Okay, the fact is, it could probably stand to be descaled.  The old white vinegar and water treatment that cleans the sediments out of the insides of the machine.  It’s a fairly new coffee pot and to my own chagrin, I realize neither of us has taken the time to exercise this important maintenance procedure in our quest to obtain the perfect cup of coffee on a daily basis.

            I gather that it’s a little too early in the morning to start such a cumbersome task and promise myself that once my wife’s cup of coffee is done, later when she finally gets up, that I will undertake the procedure personally. 

            As I grab my cup of coffee, I notice despite the amount of water I put in, the machine has not yielded it back.  Although the automatic shut-off switch is no longer illuminated, only a half of the cup is full with coffee.  I ponder putting some more water in the well after I lift the cover to see if there is any left inside, and to my surprise there is none.  Where did it go?  Did it evaporate?  Was that the foreign chugging sounds I heard the machine make just a few moments ago?  Steaming off the water that was supposed to go into my cup of coffee?  I inspect the counter-top to ensure that I hadn’t actually spilled the water when pouring it into the well.  As I notice the dry surface of the counter, I realize that I’m in denial that the coffee machine just needs a simple cleaning and resolve to my newly brewed cup of … espresso, I guess.  No amount of sugar and cream will make this gourmet blend of coffee the perfect cup on this morning.  It’s too strong, obviously because the proper amount of water did not brew and filter through the heaping ¼ cup of grounds placed in the filter trap. 

            I like cappuccino, so I settle for the strong coffee that morning.  As usual, before returning to the computer, I set up my wife’s cup so all she has to do is hit the start button when she decides to finally get up.

            The coffee is strong, but tolerable enough for me.  I resolve in the fact that I will be making another one later on for my commute to work and the machine will be descaled for that cup, therefore, it’s not a complete loss. 

            I return to the computer and browse more sites and gather more data and statistics.  Soon my mind is finally submerged in thought and the coffee machine descaling becomes low on the thought process.  That is until I take another sip of my coffee and grimace down the mouthful.  Hey … it will wake me up proper, right?

            A little while later, my wife gets up.  She stealthily approaches me from behind, trying to adjust her sleepy eyes to the bright monitor of the computer and ensure that I’m behaving myself on the Internet, and then she wraps her arms around my shoulders and neck and places her head next to mine for our first “good morning” kiss.  Satisfied with the fact that I didn’t quickly close one window and was startled by her attack, I offer to get up and go push the button to the coffee machine.  We have a joke … sort of.  She tells me I make a better cup of coffee than she does, so I tell her it’s all in the way I push the button.  I’ve extended this joke to the way I stir the cream and sugar in the final product.  Counter-clock wise for several swirls and then one final clock-wise stir to slow the whirlpool of hot coffee down.  It’s the one clock-wise stir that I insist is the “flavor stir,” I tell her and she smiles, certainly not buying into my theory. 

            I push the button to the coffee machine again and listen to it come to life and begin the process all over again for her cup.  Returning to the home office, I keep a watchful ear out on the chugs and churns to make myself aware if she is going to endure the same problem I did with mine.  Much to my pleasure, when the cup is done brewing, the perfect amount of water has filtered through the machine and she now has a perfect cup of coffee sitting below the cone.  Lucky her.  I add her cream and sugar and do the whole counter-clock wise/clock-wise procedure, which produces yet another smile from her sleepy face and I hand her over the cup.  She happily walks to the living room to sit on the couch with her coveted coffee mug and wait for the caffeine to kick in. 

            I tell her about my less than perfect cup of coffee and the fact that we need to descale the machine.  She tells me the manual for the coffee maker is conveniently located inside the cupboard right above it where we also keep the mugs, the grinder, and the coffee.  To my horror, there are several procedures to descale the darn thing.  It’s not rocket science.  It’s repeating the same process over and over again and letting the machine cool down in between.  I have to leave for work in just over an hour and now my second cup of coffee of the day has a threatened existence.  I fervently begin the process, but before I do, I decide to unplug the machine and run water through the well and just tip it back out in the sink. 

            Now, considering the title of this story, I’m sure the reader is just waiting to find out why I chose to call it what I did.  You can imagine what I discovered when I tipped the machine full of water over.  There, at the bottom of the sink was a large, black ant.  The big ones that grow almost an inch long.  He had been sitting on the bottom of the coffee machine well and I had mistaken him for some sludge of some sort since he had been boiled for God knows how long and was not moving around.  He was dead, of course. 

            Suddenly, my mind screamed out.  I must tell my wife to stop drinking her coffee and I’ll just make her a new cup!  Then, the rational part of my brain spoke up.  My wife is totally “bugged” out by bugs.  Pun intended.  She has certainly already had a few sips off of her morning coffee.  And this ant is undoubtedly the cause of the machine acting up incorrectly when it brewed my cup earlier.  Maybe the ant was trying to drink as much of the water as it could so it wouldn’t burn as bad.  Who knows?  Only the ant and maybe God and neither one of them are talking to me.  Listen, J. I say to myself.  If you tell your wife that you just discovered this ant inside the coffee machine, not only are you going to ruin her first cup of coffee of the day, she’s also not going to be able to enjoy the next one or the one after that.  All she’s ever going to remember is that the machine was breached by a bug once and it will never leave her.  And it’s not exactly like I was feeling any adverse effects from the ant.  I felt okay.  It’s not like the ant was crushed and ground up in the coffee grounds and then brewed.  It was inside the fresh water well.  So we weren’t exactly drinking ant-flavored Columbian coffee.  We were drinking filtered ant-enhanced Columbian coffee. 

            Not telling my wife is a dilemma.  She not only suggests that I be completely honest with her, she demands it.  By not telling her about this grotesque discovery, I am lying to her.  “Shut up” screams the rational part of my brain.  “You’re not lying!  You’re simply omitting the truth!  And think of the repercussions she’ll suffer with all of her future cups of coffee!  By omitting this one minute detail, you’re actually saving her and she will be able to enjoy drinking coffee for many years to come!”  He was right.  Swallowing down a large lump of guilt, I decided to keep my mouth shut.  I drank the coffee.  And I was feeling fine. 

            I cleaned the large, black ant out of the sink with a paper towel and threw it in the trash.  I then set up the descaling process of the machine and by the time I went to work, I had just about the best cup of coffee ready that the machine ever made.  I did check the well after it brewed.  Nothing.  The perfect cup of ant-free Columbian coffee.  Yumscilly!

            Of course, since there is humor in this tale, I decided to write it and in case you’re wondering, my wife reads everything I write.  Therefore, this is more of a therapeutic confession to her for me then it is a humorous essay on rational behavior.  So my secret won’t be secret for very long.  Once she discovers this piece (and she will discover it because she finds everything!) she will confront me and ask me if this is true.

            It’s a dilemma, people.  By writing this essay, I have forsaken my own choice to conceal the very thing I made a rational decision to hide from her.  The quality of her future cups of coffee are now at stake and it’s all because of me and that stupid, lousy, suicidal ant.  Of course, I can be satisfied with the fact that this took place a couple of weeks ago, so at least she was able to enjoy all those cups of coffee in between without wondering what other foreign objects may be filtering through our home brewed coffee.

            Now, I am stuck on what to write about in my next essay.  The mosquito and the spaghetti sauce, or the spider and the underwear drawer.  Another confession and another dilemma are just waiting to unfold.

Jody L. Campbell

            It started out like any ordinary Daddy/Daughter Day.  Honestly, I don’t know why we bother to call it that anymore since Mommy comes to lunch with us now.  She used to work days and now she works from mid afternoon into early evening.  But the name stuck and every day off from work I have that my daughter doesn’t attend her preschool, we call Daddy/Daughter Day and celebrate by having lunch out somewhere together.  On that particular Daddy/Daughter Day, things were already taking a strange turn of events.  We usually pick between two restaurants, one a sit-down, full-menu, pizza joint and the other, a fast food burger joint… that flame broils.  When asked where she wanted to go that day, she opted for the other fast food burger joint that doesn’t flame broil.  I immediately grimaced. 

            “No, Honey,” I said.  “Daddy doesn’t want to go there.”           

            Her four-year-old eyes looked up at me and made the saddest most pleading expression a father could ever stand to see on the face of his children.  “Please, please, oh please, Daddy!” she begged.

            Who could argue?  I’m putty in her hands and the terrible truth is she already knows how to control this.

            Now between the two more popular fast food burger joints, I’m not really a fan of either one.  I generally opt for the sit down pizza joint with no playzone/playground that distracts my impressionable daughter’s attention away from eating her lunch.  This way, I can even have a beer with lunch and coerce her into eating using petty bribery.  For example, “I’ll get you a balloon if you’re a good girl and eat all your lunch,” or “We’ll stop and buy a new movie on the way home if you’re a good…” you get the idea.  However, because of our geographical situation, we have to travel two towns south to any restaurants, and in that town, one of these burger joints just runs better than the other.  Not to mention the quality of the food is a little better… not much, but a little. 

            The second odd thing that occurred that day was my wife claiming she didn’t think she was going to join us.  Sure, I thought to myself.  Who could blame her?  I gave her an indignant look for her obvious treachery and cowardice.  She smiled in return.  Uhuh.  It’s not hard to distinguish where my daughter gets her intelligence and savvy from.  However, by the time I had starting the truck up on that cold winter day, my wife decided… either she felt guilty enough about her abandonment or she was genuinely hungry.  I thought she must have been really hungry, on the verge of starvation, considering the option of our destination.  Or… really guilty for that matter.  So, she went out and started her vehicle.  We drive in separate vehicles and she’s already close to her work and can head straight there after lunch, then my daughter and I continue on with the remainder of our ritualistic day together. 

            Upon arrival, I’m still not coveting the fact we’re where we are, but I browsed my numbered options across the menu board while watching the sole male cashier taking the one person’s order ahead of us.  It’s extremely obvious this kid was very uncomfortable doing what he was doing and the fact that he hadn’t been doing it very long is equally apparent.  A rotund man standing in what I would consider management garb was standing behind the cashier and making himself look busy in an attempt to ignore the growing line of hard-up lunch incumbents beginning to form behind us.  I guess we had actually arrived someplace “on time” for once, but the cashier was still over his head getting the order of the one person in front of us.  And for the record, I don’t think that person was ordering for more then himself.  Anxiety drained the already pallid color from the poor kid’s face.  Now instead of finding the location of the numbered lunch the guy in front of us ordered on the computer keyboard, all he could focus on is how long clearing the line is going to take because everyone behind him is ignoring him.  Sad.  Finally, the rotund manager turned around without looking at any of us customers about to spend our hard earned dollars in the establishment that he controls, and instead of showing the kid where the button is, just pressed it himself and resumed putting a precarious bag of fries in a take-out bag and handing it to the drive-thru window clerk who appeared just as lost as the cashier.  This was not a good choice, I thought to myself, but my daughter is ecstatic looking at the options of cheap and ineffective toys to have placed in her kid’s meal.  Some of the simplest forms of entertainment seem to thrill the young and innocent more than any technical toy… that is, until they reach a certain age.  So, I should be thankful that she’s not asking me for the more expensive ones at this point and relish the time I have left. 

            After a couple of minutes, my daughter was getting antsy and the line was still growing and I considered hopping over the counter and finding the button for a medium soft drink for the cashier.  My wife whispered into my ear what her choice for lunch was and what to order our daughter and I realized that I was being abandoned once again to face the challenges of ordering fast food all by myself.  I looked at her with a degree of my own anxiety and she raised her eyebrows apologetically and said, “She has to go to the bathroom.”  Uhuh.  Being a woman, she knows full well that the lesser of two evils for a guy is to remain alone in the lunch line and become the next victim of the cashier’s ignorance than it is to take my daughter to the… I can barely even say it… men’s room.  I watched them pull away as if I just fell off a cliff and even though they’re the ones that are moving, I felt like I was the one heading for imminent danger. 

            “Next.”  I heard announced.  I looked at the kid and he was looking at me, wide-eyed, like I was Ghengis Kahn.  I guess I can come off looking a bit intimidating sometimes.  I just can’t help it.  I ordered my two numbered choices and I’m not so sure it wasn’t the fear of God this kid had over me that seemed to motivate him a little more, but he found them on the keyboard relatively quick.  I ordered the kid’s meal with the chocolate milk and while I’m waiting for him to find those buttons, I realized he was already looking at me with confidence building waiting for the next selection.  Was he thinking I was easy?  Oh yeah, Punk, I thought to myself… how about a fish sandwich on the side?  Can you find that?  He did. 
            “Is that all?” he asked with more confidence.

            How about I hit you so hard the manager gets a bloody nose?  That thought, those words had already formed in my head and were right on the tip of my tongue, but I successfully suppressed them back.  The kid had done well.  “Yes,” I simply said instead. 

            “That’ll be blah, blah, blah.”  I didn’t listen to the total.  I was holding the handy ATM card and waiting for the calculator sized pad to tell me when to swipe my card.  When it did, I swiped.

            CARD READ ERROR, PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

            Now why can’t they make these card swipe machines universal, I was thinking to myself as I flipped the card the other way, every place you go so us poor customers don’t have to figure out which way to place the cards.  Are those illustrations really supposed to help?  I swiped again with the card flipped over.

            CARD READ ERROR, PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

            I could hear the lunch line behind me groan.  I looked desperately at the kid.  Now, my anxiety was building and I looked at him to save me.  How the winds of change seem unforgiving sometimes. 

            “Can I just punch these numbers in manually somehow…?” I ask, “Maybe my strip is a little worn.” 

            Okay, the fact of the matter is that I had already known my strip was a little worn.  It works most places and EVERY gas pump.  So why not right then?  I use it a lot, what can I say?  I keep it on my wallet, unprotected.  It’s most likely the wallet pocket that I keep it in that has worn the strip, but it could be the use, too.  It’s not like they make some protective prophylactic to keep credit cards in when placing them in wallets.  Maybe I should invent one.  But right then, at that moment, it was already too late in development. 

            My question went completely ignored.  Now the kid could feel my temper rising and had seemed to master the art of ignoring me and looking at his computer keyboard as if it might just verbally tell him to go ahead and let me punch my numbers in.  I was suddenly imagining the manager facilitating a meeting in the morning with all his employees before they opened and reminding everyone of their restaurant credo… “Ignore the customer and their questions long enough and they will just go away eventually.” 

            “Try it again,” he said with his voice wavering after hitting some button on the keyboard.  The Easy Button, I wondered?  I swiped.

            CARD READ ERROR, PLEASE TRY AGAIN. 

            I flipped and tried again.

            CARD READ ERROR, PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

            Audible groans where expressed behind me and I felt that I might be lynched by the crowd at any moment.  I didn’t have cash, but I had another credit card… completely maxed out and I didn’t really want to pay interest for lunch.  Not at that place!  I looked desperately around the restaurant for my wife.  Certainly she had to be done with our daughter and be wondering why I was taking so long.  She wasn’t in sight.

            I gave the kid my best Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry Callahan look.  “Go ahead, Punk, ignore my question again.”  Once again, the words were stifled at my lips, but already in the forming stage.  He must have felt them.

            “This guy’s card won’t work,” he said to the manager practicing his very own credo to the utmost expertise.  The manager looked at him as if my card had just been declined and then he finally made eye contact with me, but then realized the error of his way.  Turning his attention back to the kid, he hit his own Easy Button on the keyboard.  His expression did little to instill any more confidence to me about what he was doing than the cashier he was replacing. 

            “Try it now,” said the manager.

            I swiped.

            CARD READ ERROR, PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

            I flipped and swiped.

            CARD READ ERROR, PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

            I audibly proclaimed the fact that I was aware of the Lord’s name and also knew what his middle initial was… in vain.  I will certainly pay penance for that. 

            “Can I just punch in my numbers manually?” I asked getting my face as close to his as I could possibly get in a threatening stance.  He practiced his credo.  If you ignore them, they will go away.  I suddenly envisioned Michael Douglas in the movie “Falling Down” while he attempted to order breakfast one minute late at one of these fast food joints that they fictionalized for the movie.  “Whammy Burger” was the name they used and I suddenly felt like going “Whammy Burger” on this manager.  I was pretty sure I didn’t have a duffel bag full of automatic weapons however.  I always forget something when we leave the house. 

            Then, three things happened within seconds.  The assistant manager who was not only married to the manager, but also made it aware that she wore the pants in the family, came out from behind the cooking area to see why the entire foyer was filled with people standing there like some bad zombie movie by George Romero.  Her first instinct was the same as her husband’s and then it became immediately aware to me why she had decided to say “I do” to this man at the altar.  Obviously, I had made an order and my credit card had been declined.  If you ignore them, they will go away. 

            “No!” I protested.  “Can’t I just punch my (expletive) numbers in manually?  I see numbers on this pad.  I bet they’re there for some purpose.  Can’t you hit something to activate manual entry, for the love of Saint Peter and all of these groaning zombies behind me?”  Okay, maybe I didn’t use those exact words. 

            She simply looked at her husband and he immediately returned to bagging fries and burgers and handing them to the drive-thru clerk.  She then, looked at the kid and told him to return to the register. 

            “You’ll have to eliminate some of his order and make it less than twelve dollars in order to process it,” she said to him.

            What?  This all took place in seconds, mind you.  The second thing that happened was I submissively pulled out my maxed credit card obviously quite unhappy with her decision and swiped the card waiting for that to be declined and physically grabbed by the crowd of people behind me and hung from the flag pole in the front of the restaurant parking lot. 

            TRANSACTION COMPLETE.

            The kid was punching buttons when I did that.  Stop doing that, I thought.  I want all the (expletive) food. 

            The third thing that occurred was my wife and daughter finally returned to the counter.  She looked at me as if I was inept at ordering food in a timely fashion not fully understanding the debacle I was in. 

            “Do you have your ATM card?” I asked her somehow unaware I was just approved.  Why was I unaware?  I don’t know.  Perhaps I was secretly enjoying the humiliation and was in denial about it finally coming near an end.  The fact was, I was frazzled and visions of zombies and restaurant personnel being blown away with weapons of mass destruction that I had carried into the place in my own duffel bag were running through my head.

            “We’re about to go to (The Other Fast Food Burger Joint)!” I proclaimed so everyone in the place could hear me.  How do you like them apples everyone?

            She handed me her card.  It’s the same account as my ATM card.  We’re married.  Why did I swipe it?  I don’t know.  I swiped it.  My brain screamed for me to stop, but I ignored it.  Was the restaurant’s credo contagious?

            TRANSACTION COMPLETE.  TWICE NOW, STUPID! 

            “Honey,” I said completely broken, “I think that credit card machine just called me stupid.”

            “Go sit down with her,” said my wife referring to our daughter while placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder.  “I’ll wait for the food and the voided transaction.” 

            So I grabbed my daughter’s hand and started to walk towards the back of the restaurant so I could get… away from peering eyes of hatred from the lunch line zombies.  Away from it all.  And as we turned the corner, out of sight, I thought for one brief moment that I could hear applause as I heard the cashier say…

            “Next.”