Too Much Pot Pie?
“It this a house call or are you here on business?” asked the man who came to the door.
“It’s a house, isn’t it?” I pointed out.
“It is,” the man acknowledged, “but since I run my business out of my house, it’s also a business, and there’s only this one door, with the exception of the back door.”
“What kind of business are you running?” I wondered.
At this point, I should mention that it would be useless to describe the man. He was probably in his mid-fifties or early sixties, wearing saggy khaki pants, balding beneath a little nest of scraggly hair the color of steel wool, and giving off the impression that he had very itchy skin that he spent a lot of time scratching — and I guess I’ve just described him, haven’t I?
Also, I should mention that my further interrogatories revealed that he ran a lock installation and repair business. “Area Lock Installation and Repair,” he specified. “I came up with the name based on the fact that I serve people in the area, although for a reasonable fee, I’m also willing to travel out of the area.”
“Sounds like a pretty good racket,” I observed. “You charge people to install their locks, and then you charge them again when they break.”
“You don’t know the half of it. With a little smooth talking, it’s easy as can be to upsell most of my customers on these fancy digital doodad electronic locks that cost five times as much as the old deadbolts and knob locks, and then when those things break, they cost five times as much to repair. I’m making a killing.”
“On the other hand,” I pointed out, “I’d imagine you need a lot of specialized knowledge to repair a fancy digital electronic lock, so you must have made a large investment in training on the front end.”
“To the contrary,” said the man. “All I do is connect the fancy digital doodad electronic lock to this box that runs a diagnostic to figure out what the problem is and then runs a program to fix it. I pretty much just stand there and then when it’s done, I disconnect the box and collect my fee. Actually, I collect my fee in advance, but sometimes I manage to get a gratuity out of the deal, especially from the rich old broads — pardon the expression.”
“A box like that must cost a lot of money,” I speculated.
The man snorted. “You can get one for fifty bucks off the internet.”
“Fifty bucks! Why don’t your customers just buy their own?”
“Ah, but there’s the rub. You have to be a certified locksmith to be able to place the order in the first place.”
“Wow,” I said. “That really is quite a racket.”
“You still don’t know the half of it,” said the man. “With that little box, I can also break into my customers’ houses and rob them blind. I merely plug it in, press a couple of buttons, and presto, the fancy digital doodad electronic lock opens right up. Of course, I don’t take anything of significance, or they’d realize they’d been robbed and start to think the fancy digital doodad electronic lock I upsold them on didn’t work so well, after all. But suffice it to say, it’s been a long time, a loooooong time, a looooooooooooooong time, since I’ve paid for my own toilet paper.”
I filled my cheeks with air and then exhaled in an effort to demonstrate how impressed I was.
“So, what do you say?” said the man. “Can I interest you in a fancy digital doodad electronic lock? It’s the very latest in home security technology.”
“Actually,” I said, “I’m here about your lawn sign.”
“Which one might that be?”
In fact, there was only one sign on the man’s lawn — a sign the size and shape of the political signs partisans like to display during election season, but instead of ballyhooing some politician, it simply said: Enough is ENOUGH. Every day I drove past it on my way to the gas station to buy enough gas to be able to drive to the gas station again the next day, and every day, I wondered what the person who’d put the sign there had had enough of.
“Today,” I explained, “I decided to finally find out.”
“I see.” The man scratched the back of his neck, confirming my suspicion that he was indeed itchy, and then he said: “Pot pie.”
“Pot pie?” I was taken aback.
“My wife serves it every day,” the man said. “Breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, and fourthmeal should I happen to stay up late enough to require the extra repast. It’s been like this for years and believe me when I tell you, I’ve had enough.”
“Hold on right there,” I said. “I’ve been around the block, my friend, probably about as many times as you have, and believe me when I tell you, there is simply no such thing as too much pot pie.”
“From personal experience,” said the man, “you can believe me when I tell you that there most definitely is such a thing as too much pot pie.”
“In response to which,” I responded, “I would point out that pot pie is itself a complete meal, including meat, vegetables, carbohydrates, and a mysterious gooey substance, all packaged up for convenience inside a delectably flaky crust.”
“Variety is the spice of life,” the man shot back.
“A pot pie,” I retorted, “is variety incarnate, with no lack of spice if it’s made properly.”
“Think of my health,” came the man’s rejoinder. “My arteries are as stuffed as teddy bears.”
“You can easily rectify that situation with thirty minutes of vigorous daily exercise,” I countered.
“Not with my lumbago!” the man said, raising his voice.
“Eat smaller portions!” I said, raised my voice right back at him.
“I’m hungry from all my lock work and burgling,” the man shouted.
“Ask your doctor for a cholesterol lowering statin!” I hollered.
“I’ve tried all of them!” the man whooped. “They give me intense pain in my limbs!”
“I’m all out of arguments,” I howled, “but I continue to insist that there is no such thing as too much pot pie!”
“And I that there is!” the man screamed.
“Is not!” I screamed.
“Is!” screamed he.
That was when his wife, wearing a robe and an apron and covered from head to toe in a fine layer of flour, came hobbling into the foyer with the aid of a polished stick.
“What’s going on here?” she demanded.
“None of your business, you old crone!” the man snapped at her.
“You’ll live to regret saying that, you rusted out war-horse,” the woman growled, and without a moment’s hesitation began beating him with her walking stick. She beat him and beat him and beat him until he fell to the floor whimpering. When she had retreated again into the dark part of the house, I bent down low to examine the poor fellow, and noticed that instead of blood, pot pie was leaking from his wounds.
On these grounds, I concluded that perhaps there is such a thing as too much pot pie.
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In my view, this could only be the work of a former bodybuilder.