My grandmother used to buck me up, after some terrible childhood tragedy like dropping an ice cream cone on the sidewalk, by saying "Well, it's better than being poked in the eye with a sharp stick."
I guess the calico patch she wore over her left eye gave her the right to use that expression; she obviously had some experience in the matter.
But as I grew older I noticed there were more and more people using that expression, and not in a kindly, grandmotherly, or comforting fashion. More in a literal, threatening way.
As a teenager I went to work in a textbook store near the University campus. My job was to use a rubber mallet to bang apart metal snap-together shelves and store them in the back room until they were needed at the beginning of the next semester. It was dull, clanging, work, so sometimes I would step out into the alley to eat a pomegranate. My boss, who had a wart on his neck that he called his head, caught me at it one time and immediately began whittling a wooden dowel into a sharp stick.
"We'll see if eating a pomegranate on MY time is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick" he muttered maniacally as he shaved the dowel. I didn't bother to stick around, or ask for my last paycheck. I got on my bike and pedaled away to a Wheeler & Woolsey film festival being held at the Varsity Theater in Dinky Town. They were no Laurel & Hardy, but at least they never poked each other in the eyes with anything more pointy than a banana.
Every spring the Spinifex came to town, telling fortunes and mending clothes pins. I fell in love with one of their young women, named Wilta, on a soft May night. We held hands and gazed at the gibbering moon -- which I afterwards learned should have been gibbous, not gibbering -- and I promised to join her tribe in its mysterious wanderings. The next day I showed up at their camp with my portmanteau packed with baseball cards and dozens of ketchup packets. But before I could become a member of the tribe I was informed I had to be initiated into the rituals of their Sharp Stick Dance.
I kicked Wilta goodbye and never looked back, until I was in the next county.
For a few years I was free from sharp and pointy sticks. I managed to marry and raise a family, until one dark day an old lady showed up on the front lawn, waving a sharp stick in the air and cackling like something out of Macbeth. I shooed her away, but in a few hours she was back with six more old crones, each waving a sharp stick and chanting in unison "Poke! Poke! Poke!"
I put on my snorkel and went out to confront them.
They chased me down the street so fast and so far that I never had the chance to say goodbye to my wife and kids. Or our pet rabbit. A belated farewell . . . my little bunny Foo-Foo . . .
As I wandered from town to town, doing odd jobs to keep body and soul together, I remembered that Robinson Crusoe had poked sharp sticks into the ground on his desert island, and then watched them grow into fruit trees. I began to obsess about sharp sticks being poked into my eye in order to start a mango plantation. It got to the point where I couldn't keep a regular odd job anymore, and was forced to humiliate myself by managing a hedge fund.
I prefer to forget those desperate times . . .
What I've learned is that there are sharp sticks everywhere in life. In closets; in bowling alleys; in museums; in factories, warehouses, and especially offices; on Wall Street; and even in the United States Botanic Garden. And they are all aimed at one of my eyes.
So I got in the habit of carrying my own sharp stick. It was very effective. Whenever someone came up to me asking if I knew anything better than being poked in the eye with a sharp stick, I simply showed them my sharpened Popsicle stick, and they backed off. After several dozen people asked me how to make one themselves I realized this was an entrepreneurial bonanza. I started my own online pointy Popsicle stick company, called Popstickineye.com, and was recently featured on the cover of The Financial Times. Our first dividend was a quarter million dollars. Now I'm branching out, having funded Stickitwherethesundontshine.com last month with the backing of the Doug Collins Investment Group.
Oh, and I lied -- I did find my wife and kids again; they were living in Tampa, and had traded little bunny Foo-Foo for a pair of gerbils. Feeling betrayed, I gave them each a sharp Popsicle stick and left them to their own devices.
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Email response from an old friend in Hawaii to this story:
stickitwherethesundontshine.
A snorkel will not save one's eyes from being poked with a sharp stick, but a snorkel mask would.
Your stories are often more deep than my shallow mind can comprehend. But they're usually enjoyable reading anyway.
