Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus (28 page)

F
or more than a year now, alert readers have been sending me alarming newspaper articles about the “potato gun,” a bazooka-sized device that can shoot a potato several hundred yards at speeds up to 1,000 feet per second. To give you an idea of how fast that is, an ordinary potato, on its own, will rarely travel more than four feet per day, even during the height of mating season.

Potato guns—which have already been banned in some municipalities—can be easily made from plastic pipe available in any plumbing-supply store; the explosive force comes from ordinary hair spray, which is ignited by an electrical spark. Needless to say I will not provide any specific
details concerning how to construct these devices, because a great many young people read this column, and they already know how to construct these devices.

Anyway, I recently got a fax from an individual whom I will identify here only as Buzz Fleischman. Buzz, who makes his living performing humor at corporate meetings and other functions, and who by the way currently has some openings on his calendar, informed me that he had constructed a potato gun, and was willing to demonstrate it for the purpose of helping me, as a responsible adult, better understand just how alarming this menace is.

We decided to fire the potato gun from the roof of my place of employment, the
Miami Herald
(motto: “We Are Still Keeping an Eye on Gary Hart”). Let me stress that the
Miami Herald
is a responsible institution that does NOT ordinarily allow people to shoot potatoes from its premises. We were able to do it only because we met the very strict requirement of not asking for permission. It was a Covert Operation, during which we addressed each other only by code names except when we forgot. (For ease of memorization, we both used the code name “Eagle One.”)

Once we got up on the
Herald
roof, we decided to fire the potato gun toward Biscayne Bay. Our other option was to fire it toward the city of Miami, which would have been a serious mistake because hundreds of local residents would undoubtedly have fired back (and not with potatoes, either).

To load the gun, Buzz stuffed a potato into the barrel and shoved it down with a pole, then sprayed some Aqua Net Super Hold hair spray into the detonation chamber. He then aimed the gun at the bay and pressed the ignition device, and FWOOOM, the potato came blasting out of the gun and
went way way WAAAAY out over the water and landed approximately in Portugal.

As responsible adults, Buzz and I were very alarmed by this demonstration. We shot off a bunch more potatoes to see if we would continue to be alarmed, and we were. We also got excellent results with an onion.

But as any reputable scientist will tell you, the “acid test” of the alarmingness of this type of device is what happens when you shoot a Barbie doll out of it. We used the “Gymnast Barbie” model, which comes with a little gold medal. First we loaded a potato into the gun, then we put Gymnast Barbie into the end of the barrel, with just her head and hairstyle sticking out. Then we pointed the potato gun straight up and FWOOOM up went Barbie, high in the sky, smiling perkily, waving her arms and legs gymnastically around inside a cloud of potato atoms before finally landing in a really unladylike pose.

Needless to say these results were extremely alarming. Because if the potato gun can be used to shoot Barbie dolls, then it is only a matter of time before some fiendish criminal mind thinks of using one to shoot a Kellogg’s Strawberry Pop-Tart. So we tried that, too. It was pretty disappointing. The gun made a noise like “phoo” and spat Pop-Tart fragments a short, non-alarming distance.

Nevertheless as concerned adults we all need to become wrought up about this menace. People should form organizations and write angry letters. Congress should hold hearings. The Clinton administration should announce a definite policy and then change it. Maybe the Warren Commission should get back together. Also the Defense Department should probably go on Red Alert, because any day now Portugal is going to start shooting back.

C
all me a wild and crazy guy if you want, but recently, on a whim, I decided to—why not?—turn forty-eight.

It’s not so bad. Physically, the only serious problem I’ve noticed is that I can no longer read anything printed in letters smaller than Shaquille O’Neal. Also, to read a document, I have to hold it far from my face; more and more, I find myself holding documents—this is awkward on airplanes—with my feet. I can no longer read restaurant menus, so I fake it when the waiter comes around.

It’s gotten so bad that I can’t even read the words I’m typing into my computer right now. If my fingers were in a prankish mood, they could type an embarrassing message right in the middle of this sentence HE’S ALWAYS PUTTING US IN HIS NOSE and there is no way I’d be able to tell.

I suppose I should go see an eye doctor, but if you’re forty-eight, whenever you go to see any kind of doctor, he or she invariably decides to insert a lengthy medical item into your body until the far end of it reaches a different area code. Also, I am frankly fearful that the eye doctor will want me to wear reading glasses. I have a psychological hang-up about this, caused by the fact that, growing up, I wore eyeglasses for 70,000 years. And these were not just any eyeglasses: These were the El Dork-O model, the ones that come from the factory pre-broken with the white tape already wrapped around the nose part. As an adolescent, I was convinced that my glasses were one of the key reasons why the opposite sex did not find me attractive, the other key reason being that I did not reach puberty until approximately age thirty-five.

Anyway, other than being functionally blind at close range, I remain in superb physical condition for a man of my age who can no longer fit into any of his pants. I have definitely been gaining some weight in the midriff region, despite a rigorous diet regimen of drinking absolutely no beer whatsoever after I pass out. The only lower-body garments I own that still fit me comfortably are towels, which I find myself wearing in more and more social settings. I’m thinking of getting a black one for funerals.

Because of my midriff situation I was very pleased to read recently about the new Miracle Breakthrough Weight Loss Plan for Mice. In case you missed this, what happened was, scientists extracted a certain chemical ingredient found in thin mice, then injected it into fat mice; the fat mice lost 90 percent more weight than a control group of fat mice who were exposed only to Richard Simmons. The good news is that this same ingredient could produce dramatic weight
loss in human beings; the bad news is that before it becomes available, it must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (motto: “We Haven’t Even Approved Our Motto Yet”). So it’s going to take a while. If you’re overweight and desperate to try this miracle ingredient right away, my advice to you, as a medical professional, is to get hold of a thin mouse and eat it. It can’t be any worse than tofu.

But getting back to aging: Aside from the vision thing, and the weight thing, and the need to take an afternoon nap almost immediately after I wake up, and the fact that random hairs—I’m talking about
long
hairs, the kind normally associated with Cher—occasionally erupt from deep inside my ears—aside from these minor problems, I am a superb physical specimen easily mistaken for Brad Pitt.

Not only that, but I have the mind of a steel trap. Of course very few things in the world—and I include the Home Shopping Network in this statement—are as stupid as a steel trap. What I’m saying is, I have definitely detected a decline in some of my mental facilities. For example, the other day I was in my office, trying to perform a fundamental journalistic function, namely, fill out an expense report, and I needed to divide 3 into a number that, if I recall correctly (which I don’t; that’s the problem), was $125.85, and
I couldn’t remember how to do long division
. I knew I was supposed to put the 3 into the 12, then bring something down, but what? And how far down? And would I need the “cosine”?

I was starting to panic, when all of a sudden—this is why you youngsters should pay attention in math class—my old training came back to me, and I knew exactly what to do: Ask Doris. Doris works in my office, and she has a calculator. I guess I should start carrying one around, along with some kind of device that remembers (a) people’s names,
(b) where I put the remote control, and (c) what I had planned to do once I got into the kitchen other than stand around wearing a vacant expression normally associated with fish.

But so what if my memory isn’t what it used to be? My other mental skills are as sharp as ever, and I’m confident that I can continue to do the kind of astute analysis and in-depth research that have characterized this column over the years, which is why today I want to assure you, the readers, that my advancing age will in no way change the fact that MAINLY HE SCRATCHES HIMSELF.

E
ven so-called perfect couples experience conflict. Take Canada geese. They mate for life, so people just assume they get along well; when people see a goose couple flying overhead, honking, they say, “Oh, that’s SO romantic.” What these people don’t realize is that honking is how geese argue. (“Are you SURE we’re heading north?” “YES, dammit.” “Well I think we should ask somebody”) The only reason they mate for life is that they can’t afford lawyers.

It’s the same with humans. Even if you love somebody very much, you eventually discover that this person has irritating habits, such as leaving toenail clippings around the house as though they were little art displays; or not disposing of the potato-chip bag after eating everything in it except three salt molecules at the bottom; or secretly being
also married to somebody else; or humming the song “A Horse with No Name;” or responding to every single statement you make—including obviously factual ones, such as that Montpelier is the capital of Vermont—by saying “Well, that’s
your
opinion.”

No matter how much you love your spouse, eventually the smooth unblemished surface of your relationship will be marred by a small pimple of anger, which, if ignored, can grow into a major festering zit of rage that will explode and spew forth a really disgusting metaphor that I do not wish to pursue any further here. This is why you married couples need to learn to cope with your anger, unless you are Roseanne and Tom Arnold, in which case you need to move to separate continents and shut up.