Grumfeld redux
Simmered on September 2, 2007.
While freebirding merrily around town this week, I once again ran smack-dab into my old friend, Grumfeld van der Spooijwanker. He saw me coming from about twenty feet away, and tried to run off like a frightened little child at first—but he changed his mind after I tackled him and walloped him with my steel-toed fez a few times. Resigning himself to his fate, he agreed readily when I suggested once again we go have blunch at Pam & Meg’s. I promised him there’d be no funny business with the shit-on-a-single this time… secretly admitting to myself that it would instead be hilarious business.
Realizing how awkward that last paragraph was, I decided to recite it to ol’ Grummie a few times before I committed it to this journal of mine, in order to see what he thought of it. After explaining to him in explicit detail what “freebirding” was, and demanding that he stop insisting that he’d never seen me before the incident outside the asshattery, I think he got the gist of it. I know he sure got the gist of my steel-toed fez—right across the temple! It was the sixth or seventh time I threatened him with another wallopin’—with a titanium-plated homburg this time!—that Meg, shod in the most exquisite bright pink flip-flops I had ever seen, arrived at our table with our blunch.
“What the hell is ‘blunch’?” Grummie asked me in mild irritation after I insisted that the cornpone stew in front of him and I was, around these parts, properly called a “blunch.”
“It’s breakfast—and lunch!” I growled, making it clear I would brook no protest from the knave. He shut up at that point, again appearing to resign himself to his hopeless fate as my new best friend. My keeping a fez within reach no doubt helped him arrive at that decision.
As Spoogie sat across from me, biting his lip, glancing around, and sweating profusely, I took the first gobble of my cornpone stew… and slowly realized something was very, very wrong. Not just wrong—corn gone wrong. My eyes crossed, my face turned a deep shade of greenish purple, and my hands—under no control of mine!—suddenly hurled the bowl of cornpone stew clear across the room. It missed slamming into Pam’s head by about three centimeters before exploding against the wall of the eigencafé in a shower of gooey, golden-yellow goodness.
“Blargh! I asked for cornpone stew, not porncone stew! Blargh and flargh!” I shouted, slamming my fists into the table like an enraged alcoholic. “Corn gone wrong! Corn gone wrong!! God damn you bunglers! Flam-damn you tronglers, you unga-frunglers! Corn! gone! wrong!!” The only other customer in the place bolted from his table in panic. Grummie looked like he was too terrified to move. Both Pam and Meg ran to my side and tried to console me, but I would have none of it. I shouted, I screamed, I writhed and contorted my face like a Tourette’s sufferer. Finally, I overturned the table, and—frothing at the mouth—started beating poor, stupid Grumfeld van der Spooijwanker to death with my isosceles valise. (I bet you didn’t know I had it with me, but I did. I always have it with me, for just these occasions!)
The police were soon summoned to control the situation, and they quickly set upon ol’ Spoogie with their nightsticks, tasers, and pepper spray. Grummie didn’t have a chance. Even Pam and Meg started battering him, first with their flip-flops, then each with a pair of soup bowls, and finally with the table legs, after I had broken two off and intoned that they made wonderful weapons.
After about half an hour of unremitting assault, there wasn’t much left of Grummie but a pile of bloodied clothing, a belt buckle, and a pair of eyeballs.
Pam was so sorry about the whole mess that she happily agreed to pay for everyone’s troubles, including serving me a lifetime supply of genuine cornpone stew. All I had to do was ask. And I did. I even demanded she use real gold in the golden cornpones—not that cleverly painted lead and mercury that she’d been feeding me. Pam was elated and went right to work serving me bowl after bowl of it, until I exploded and made a worse mess of the eigencafé than Grummie had.
The cops hauled Grumfeld’s eyes off to the jail on Hegelian Avenue, and that was the last I saw of him.