Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus (14 page)

That Series went seven games, and I vividly remember how it ended. School was out for the day, and I was heading home, pushing my bike up a steep hill, listening to my cheapo little radio, my eyes staring vacantly ahead, my mind locked on the game. A delivery truck came by, and the driver stopped and asked if he could listen. Actually, he more or less
told
me he was going to listen; I said okay.

The truck driver turned out to be a rabid Yankee fan. The game was very close, and we stood on opposite sides of my bike for the final two innings, rooting for opposite teams, him chain-smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes, both of us hanging on every word coming out of my tinny little speaker.

And of course if you were around back then and did not live in Russia, you know what happened: God, in a sincere effort to make up for all those fly balls he directed toward me in Little League, had Bill Mazeroski—Bill Mazeroski!—hit a home run to win it for the Pirates.

I was insane with joy. The truck driver was devastated. But I will never forget what he said to me. He looked me square in the eye, one baseball fan to another, after a tough but fair fight—and he said a seriously bad word. Several, in fact. Then he got in his truck and drove away.

That was the best game I ever saw.

W
e’re coming into wedding season, a magical time when the radiant bride, on her Most Special Day, finally makes that long-awaited walk down the Aisle of Joyfulness to stand next to the Man of Her Dreams, only to sprint back up the Aisle of Joyfulness when she suddenly realizes that she forgot to pluck out her Middle Eyebrow Hairs of Grossness. Because the bride knows that a wedding video is forever. She knows that, twenty years later, she could be showing her video to friends, and as soon as she left the room they’d turn to each other and say, “What was that on her forehead? A tarantula?”

Oh yes, there is a LOT of pressure on today’s bride to make her Big Day fabulous and perfect. Overseeing a modern wedding is comparable, in terms of complexity, to flying the Space Shuttle; in fact it’s
worse
, because shuttle crew members don’t have to select their silver pattern. This is done for them by ground-based engineers:

Of course the bride does get some help. The multibillion-dollar U.S. wedding industry—currently the second-largest industry in the United States, behind the
latte
industry—helps the bride by publishing monthly bridal magazines the size of the U.S. tax code full of products that the bride absolutely HAS to have and checklists relentlessly reminding the bride of all the decisions she has to make RIGHT NOW concerning critical issues such as the florist and the caterer and the cake and the centerpieces and the guest favors for the formal cocktail reception. (Of COURSE there have to be guest favors at the formal cocktail reception! Don’t you know ANYTHING?)

Of course the groom has responsibilities, too. According to ancient tradition, on the morning of the wedding the groom must check the TV listings to make sure that there is no playoff game scheduled during the ceremony, because if there is, he would have to miss it (the ceremony).

But the other 19 million wedding details are pretty much left up to the bride; this is why, when she finally gets to her Most Special Day, she is clinically insane. Exhibit A is Princess Diana. People ask: “What went wrong? Princess Diana had the Fairy Tale Wedding of the Century!” Yes! Exactly! YOU try planning the Fairy Tale Wedding of the Century! This poor woman didn’t just have to think about party favors; she had HORSES in her wedding. A LOT of them. Just try to imagine the etiquette issues: What color should the horses be? Should they be invited to the reception? Should they have centerpieces? What if they
eat
the centerpieces? These are just a few of the issues Princess Diana was
grappling with while Prince Charles was out riding around whacking grouse with a polo mallet. No wonder there was tension!

But it’s not just Princess Diana: Wedding planning makes
all
brides crazy. Anybody who doubts this statement should investigate what actually goes on at a “bridal shower.” I don’t know about you, but I used to think that a shower was just a sedate little party wherein the bride’s women friends gave thoughtful little gifts to the bride and ate salads with low-fat dressing on the side. Wrong! You would not
believe
the bizarre things women do at these affairs. For example, I have it on excellent authority that women at showers play this game wherein teams compete to see who can make the best wedding dress
out of toilet paper
. I’m not making this up! Ask a shower attendee! If a
man
were to wrap himself in a personal hygiene product, he’d immediately be confined in a room with no sharp objects, but this is considered normal behavior for a woman planning a wedding.

I have been informed by an informed source that women at bridal showers also sometimes play a variation of “Pin the Tail on the Donkey,” except that instead of a picture of a donkey, they use a picture of a man, and instead of a tail, they use something that is not a tail, if you get my drift. I am not suggesting that Princess Diana played this game at her shower, and I am certainly not suggesting that the Queen did, so just get that mental picture out of your mind right now.

All I’m saying is that, with spring upon us, you may find yourself near a woman in the throes of planning a wedding; if so, you need to recognize that she is under severe pressure, and above all you need to do
exactly as she says
. If she wants you to wrap yourself in toilet paper, or purchase and
wear a bridesmaid’s dress that makes you look like a walking Barcalounger, JUST DO IT. You should do it even if you are the groom. Because this is the bride’s Most Special Day, and you want to help her make sure everything is exactly the way you want it when the two of you finally stand together in front of all your friends and loved ones, and you gaze upon her face, and you say the words she has been waiting a lifetime to hear: “Hey! What’s that between your eyebrows?”

J
ust when you’re starting to lose hope that the younger generation will ever amount to anything; just when you’re asking yourself, “Where are the leaders of tomorrow? Where is the next John Kennedy, the next John Wayne, the next John Denver, the next John LeMasters, who attended Pleasantville High School with me and was very good at math?;” just when you’re starting to think that the most significant contributions that today’s young people will make to society will be in the field of body-piercing; just when you’re about to give up in total despair, some young person, when you least expect it, sends you a world-class water gun.

At least that’s what happened to me. The young person in this case is actually named John Young. He’s a graduate student who wrote me a letter informing me that several years earlier, while sitting in a philosophy class—and let this be a lesson to you students who think that studying philosophy is a waste of time—he figured out how to make “the most butt-kickingest water gun the world has ever seen.”

He calls it the Ultimate Water Gun, and when he offered to let me try it, I of course accepted immediately. I had a hunch that this could be my big journalism break, comparable to the time during the Watergate scandal when, in a secret meeting in a parking garage, the man known only as “Deep Throat” changed the course of history by giving Bob Woodward a really good water gun.

But not as good as the one that John Young sent me. This is not some flimsy plastic toy; this is a major contraption that weighs, when fully loaded, as much as a major kitchen appliance. It consists of a pressurized, water-filled fire-extinguisher tank that you wear in a harness on your back; this is connected via a short tube to a garden-hose nozzle riveted to the top of a gold motorcycle helmet, which you wear on your head, so that, when you squeeze a hand-held trigger, the water squirts out in whatever direction your head is pointing. You also wear a firefighter-style jacket that has been spray-painted silver; the jacket does not make the gun work any better, but it does perform the important function, in conjunction with the nozzle-topped helmet, of making you look like: Captain Bill, Space Dork!

I tested this water gun with my son, Rob, at a Miami gas station (we needed the station’s air compressor to pressurize the tank). It is not easy, using mere words, to describe the feeling of power you get when, merely by squeezing your hand, you send a powerful jet of water whooshing from the top of your head, shooting 75 feet or more in whatever direction you look, but I will try: It is cool.

It also commands respect. At one point, two young men pulled up in a classic Bad Dude car—low to the ground, windows tinted with what appeared to be roofing tar, sound system thumping out bass notes loud enough to affect the
Earth’s rotation. They stopped and got out, apparently intending to use the air compressor; but just then, Rob came around the front of my car, silver-coated, gold-helmeted, shooting a blast of water
over the gas-station roof
. The Bad Dudes were clearly startled, although they recovered and tried to look extremely unimpressed, as if to say, “Ho-hum, another Human Fire Hydrant.” Then they got coolly, but quickly, back into their boombox car and thumped on out of there.

So we’re talking about a powerful new technology here, and I’ve been pondering how it can best be utilized to benefit humanity in general, and I think I’ve figured out the ultimate use for the Ultimate Water Gun: Cigar Control.

As you know, cigars are now the “in” thing, with hip, fashionable, “with-it” sophisticates lighting up in restaurants and bars, apparently not realizing that, to the many, many people who don’t care for cigars, it smells as though somebody has set an armpit on fire. (I am referring here to your cheaper cigar. Your more expensive cigar smells as though somebody has set a more expensive armpit on fire.)

Of course polite cigar smokers (and there are many) refrain from lighting up where others will unwillingly smell their smoke. But there seems to be a growing group of people—let’s reach deep into our bag of euphemisms and call them “jerkt”—who seem to
enjoy
lighting up in public places, who talk loudly and proudly about their cigars, as if they truly believe that the rest of us are
impressed
with a person capable of emitting this level of stench.

So picture this: You’re in a restaurant, and a jerk lights up, and suddenly all the food tastes like cigar. You’re wishing that somebody (not you; you don’t want any trouble) would tell this guy exactly what he can do with his cigar; just then
WHAM the door bursts open, and there he is, his silver coat reflecting the candlelight—the Cigar Avenger! His gold helmet turns slowly, scanning the room, and suddenly he squeezes his hand trigger and
WHOOOSSH
the jerk is drenched from head to foot, with what looks like a wad of dead seaweed hanging limply from his clenched mouth.

As the surrounding diners break into applause, the jerk (he might be a lawyer) sputters: “THIS RESTAURANT HAS NO POLICY AGAINST CIGAR SMOKING!” And the Cigar Avenger calmly replies: “This restaurant also has no policy against extinguishing cigars with a powerful stream of water from a helmet-mounted spray nozzle.”

And then, in a twinkle of silver, he is gone. Probably he is gone to get a hernia operation, because that thing is
heavy
.