Читать книгу Chili Dawgs Always Bark at Night - Lewis Grizzard - Страница 10

Call It a Conundrum

Somebody broke into the birth-control clinic at Grady Hospital in Atlanta recently and stole sixteen thousand condoms. I swore I wouldn’t write about the incident.

At the time, it seemed too easy. All I would have to do is sit down in front of my typewriter and come up with a few cute lines about condoms, and I’d have a quick “no-brainer” and I could take the rest of the day off.

Anybody could write about the theft of sixteen thousand condoms, couldn’t they? Sure they could. But let them try to make up something funny about Yassir Arafat not being allowed to speak at the United Nations or animal rights.

But then I began to act and think sensibly. Somebody steals sixteen thousand condoms only once in a columnist’s career. I decided I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

In fact, I’m not sure this wasn’t the first condom heist in history, and even if it wasn’t the first, it certainly had to be the biggest.

Several questions concerning the theft began to creep into my mind.

Like, how much do sixteen thousand condoms weigh? Would they weigh so much or be so unwieldy to handle that the job involved more than one person?

What went through the robber’s (or robbers’) mind when he or she came upon the sixteen thousand condoms?

Did the thief think, “Hey, there’s sixteen thousand condoms here. Let’s see, if I could sell them for fifty cents each, I’d make eight thousand dollars.”

Or did the thief think, “Just for kicks, I’ll take these sixteen thousand condoms with me and see if anybody writes about it?”

Or was the thought, “I think I’ll stage a huge group sex party. I’ll need these condoms, of course, and then I’ll invite Audrey and Henry and Rebecca and Grover and Peggy and Ralph, etc.”?

If it was the thief’s idea to throw such a party, I’d like to be invited—if not to engage in the activities to at least study and take notes and later chronicle the event for history. Maybe the Romans held orgies that required sixteen thousand condoms, but I don’t think it’s been done recently.

Some more questions came up.

If somebody steals sixteen thousand condoms, where do they hide them? Could you get sixteen thousand condoms in a closet? In the garage?

A locker at the bus station certainly wouldn’t hold all of them. What if you buried them?

If the thief did bury the sixteen thousand condoms, would he or she take a friend out to the burial site and say, “Guess what I’ve got buried under here?”

The friend might respond, “A Brink’s truck filled with money.”

“No,” the thief would explain, “anybody could steal a Brink’s truck filled with money. I’ve got sixteen thousand condoms buried under here.”

There’s one other thought I had. Perhaps the condom thief was acting as a humanitarian. Perhaps he or she took the sixteen thousand condoms and plans to distribute them around the United States as a means of helping put a stop to unwanted pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

We always think the worst of people when we should think the best of them.

Imagine this person handing out condoms across the width and breath of our great nation as a favor to his or her fellow citizens.

Johnny Condomseed. It might be. It just might be.