"It's quite a pleasure to see your entire life's work summed up in a three-minute film." - Prof. Farnesworth, Futurama

 

What, me?

It’s hot in Houston, but it’s really supposed to be hot here. I think that’s fortunate, because otherwise nobody could afford a house here, and we would all have a much closer proximity to Paris Hilton, and, frankly nobody wants that.

A friend of mine made the observation that “The only reason people live in Houston is to work.” Since we were both actually working at the time (or more properly, were being paid to have lunch together, which makes it sound so wrong), I find it fairly rough to refute his statement.

Houston is a city with lots of working people, lots of nice cars, and lots of shiny metal objects that distract The Boy, Pugsley, and I.

Pugsley is the new entrant to the scene of being distracted by shiny metal objects. His Grandmama had given him a transistor radio, and he became enthralled. For whatever reason, this radio will only pick up National Public Radio, so for quite a while all he could listen to was opera and classical music at night, and in the morning be serenaded by smarmily over-enunciating talk show hosts that think Obama is the right-wing candidate for president.

Pugsley eventually got tired of NPR after he found The Boy’s radio actually gets stations that play music conceived in the last 200 years. So, Pugsley does what any three-year-old would do: he steals his brother’s radio.

Normally this occurs around bedtime. Pugsley will be in his room, blankie ready, and then sneak out to The Boy’s room and then walk, as quietly as a three-year-old can (US Army tank divisions are quieter than Pugsley) back to his room.

Unfortunately, one of these episodes of brazen theft was accompanied by him dropping The Boy’s radio onto the tile floor, rupturing some sort of tiny unicorn or rainbow that makes the radio emit music. I tried to fix it using the physics theory that the sum of work on a closed path is equal to zero (I dropped it again) but found that my freshman physics theories were incapable of fixing it.

Pugsley still insists on having it in his room, even though now it is less functional than a typical government agency.

I’m wracking my brain attempting to figure out how to get enough work out of Pugsley to pay for a replacement radio. Unfortunately, all he’s capable of is:

Bringing you random small objects you don’t need at the moment,

Taking small objects to the trash (if he doesn’t forget where he was going),

Throwing out pieces of our silverware (I’m pretty sure that’s what’s started the Great Spoon Shortage of 2008, now we have to share one spoon)

Screeching at his brother,

Removing batteries from remote controls,

Rummaging through the pantry for brightly packaged snack food, and

Pulling the dog’s tail.

It might be a while until he pulls his weight around here. At least we get nice smiles until then.