“Fight Against Stupidity And
Bureaucracy”
When this
blog post came into my head I was reminded of an old Stealers Wheel hit of the
1970s called “Stuck In The Middle With
You”, which incidentally also featured as the soundtrack for the movie “Reservoir Dogs”. It seemed
appropriate. For those of you who don’t know it, or would like to hear it
again, I have attached a video at the end of the post.
As you are
no doubt well aware if you have read even a little of this blog, I am fond of
humor. I like to try to see the funny side of things, no matter how serious or
frustrating, and it usually comes quite easily to me, sometimes too easily. All
in all, this gift has served me well over the years, but now and again it has
caused a little bit of bother.
This story
starts off rather sadly. A friend of the family had been killed in a car
accident. Not his fault, the moron in the car who hit him was going too far too
fast, but that didn’t do my friend any good. He left behind a widow and two
children.
A Church
Service was held before the interment at the local graveyard and we all filed
into the Church and tried to fine a space in one of the pews. The Church was small
and the number of people attending the funeral was large. As a consequence we
were packed into the seats like the proverbial sardines. But there was nothing
else we could do.
I found
myself between two guys whom I did not know, so there wasn’t much in the way of
conversation before the service started. I didn’t even know their names.
The
Minister took his place in the pulpit and began the Service.
Everything
went smoothly.
For a
while.
Then the
guy to my left decided he would take the hiccoughs. Well I think the hiccoughs
made the decision to take him and there was little he could do about it. That
became mildly amusing. It reminded me of my days at school where one of my
classmates was often similarly afflicted.
Trying to
suppress hiccoughs only makes things worse and I remember at school there would
be a series of rather quiet ones and then one would strike simultaneously with
an intake of breath making an elongated and rather loud and unusual noise. It
always made us laugh and frequently got us into trouble when we were in school.
That’s the
one I was waiting for in the Church, the big noisy one. The anticipation was
almost unbearable. Would it happen during a Hymn? Or when the Minister was
speaking? Or worst of all, at a moment of silence in the proceedings drawing
everyone’s attention in our direction?
When it
came, thankfully, we were in the middle of the first Hymn. A few people
noticed, but not many. I just held my Hymn Book in front of my face and
giggled, more with relief that it had happened rather than at the act itself.
I was just
preparing to steel myself for the next big one when all of a sudden the man to
my right started to sway backwards and forwards and wriggle from side to side,
his hands moving quickly up and down his legs and up to his sides. His left
elbow hitting my right arm on a number of occasions. His face was twitching
too.
“Oh FFS, what now?” I said to myself, very
inappropriately for a Church Service I admit.
“This other idiot is taking some
sort of a fit,” I
thought. “And I’m stuck here in the
middle, between him and the hiccough king, and there’s no way out.”
What was I
to do?
Then things
got better.
Then things
got worse.
To my
momentary relief, it turned out the bloke on my right wasn’t taking some kind
of a fit after all. Apparently he felt he was about to sneeze and was
frantically trying to get into one of his trouser pockets for a handkerchief.
His
problems were two-fold. One, the sneeze was imminent, and, two, we were all so
tightly packed into the Church pews that he couldn’t get enough room to get his
hand into his trouser pocket, hence the frantic movements of his arms. The man
wasn’t having a fit, he was just in a mild state of panic.
If there
isn’t a saying, “a sneeze waits for no
man”, there should be because they don’t. And sneeze he did. A big one.
That was bad enough, but unfortunately he must have had a cold or something
because when he sneezed at least six inches of rather unpleasant stuff made its
way out of his nose and just hung there like an icicle in winter. He quickly
did the only thing he could and put his hand up to his nose capturing the
offending article.
My next
worry was where was he going to put it? If I was keeping an eye on him before
when I thought he was about to have a fit, I was keeping an even tighter eye on
him now.
And then to
my surprise he stood up, reached into his pocket and retrieved his
handkerchief. I thought him standing up was a bit odd, yet I admired him for
having the courage to do it in front of all these people.
Satisfied
that he was now under control I turned back to my left to the guy with the
hiccoughs. To my equal surprise he was on his feet as well. I’d heard that
standing on your head and trying to drink a glass of water would cure the hiccoughs,
but never just standing up on your feet in Church. This guy had got it all
wrong.
But
actually he hadn’t. When I looked round the Church everybody was on their feet.
And when I looked up at the pulpit and made eye contact with the Minister he stared
down at me expectantly.
I had been
so caught up on the events at either side of me and at the same time trying to
hold in my laughter that I had completely tuned out of the Church Service. Now
we were going to sing another Hymn - if I would just get on to my feet that is. I
was holding up the whole Service!!
I did.
Immediately. The organist started to play and everybody began to sing the Hymn.
I took out my handkerchief this time, not because I was in the same predicament
as the other bloke, but just to mask more laughter.
When it was
all over we walked out to the graveyard, much to my relief. After the interment
I met a friend. Apparently he had been watching the happenings in the Church.
“Man, I didn’t know you were so fond
of the deceased,”
he said. “You looked terribly upset in
Church.”
“Oh yes, we go back a long way,” I said. ‘You know how it is.”
I got away
with that one, I think.
