Read an interesting article in the latest copy of “Interesting Articles and Ammo” magazine. A woman in Davenport, Iowa was vacuuming the living room carpet when she came up against her husband, seated in his chair, reading “Interesting Articles and Ammo” magazine. The woman nudged her husband’s shoes and he threw her one of those “Woman, did you just nudge my shoes?” looks.

“Hello!” she shouted, her sarcasm sucked away by the roar of her Shark Rotator NV800. “I’m vacuuming.”

He responded “What? I can’t hear you over the vacuum.”

She shut off the vacuum and said “Would it kill you to lift your feet?”

His response was lost in the sound of the vacuum being switched on again. He still hadn’t lifted his feet until she screamed “Lift your dang feet you ink spot between the hams of hell.”

He did so and she vacuumed beneath his feet. When she was done she noticed that her husband’s face bore a frozen, bluish, shocked look of horror, a little like a possum caught in the headlights of a speeding beer truck, post impact.

When the police arrived she told them she was pretty sure the mister was playing possum. One of them said “When they look stiff and cold and dead like that, their playing days are over. If you’d remember that.”

The headline in the next day’s Davenport Slipcover said it all:

Man dies after wife, armed with rotating shark,
Ignores plea that lifting his feet would kill him

The Supreme Court eventually nullified her conviction of Manslaughter By Really Mean Words.  It said manslaughter – literally man’s laughter – had not occurred, since the woman’s words triggered no laughter at all. Her only crime, the court said, was trying to be funny without being funny, an all too common occurrence among the country’s estimated 136 million out-of-work comedians (not including all members of Congress and Wolf Blitzer.)

In the court’s minority opinion, Justice Oliver Garagedooropener Homes argued that since nature abhors a vacuum, it also abhors the use of a vacuum cleaner to suck up dirt which — along with bottled water and air pollution — is one of nature’s exclusive franchises (see the windy Wikipedia entry under Tornado). “And by the way,” adds Justice Homes, “Fool with Mother Nature at your own risk.”

The case has highlighted similar would-it-kill-you incidents nationwide. For example, while seated in his Orca-lounger in Daytona Beach, Florida, Dick “The Dick” Dudley rattled the ice cubes in his empty glass and shouted to his shout-worn wife (busily waxing his bowling ball)  “Would it kill you to get me another Rob Roy?”

Wearily, she poured scotch and vermouth over ice, but instead of adding the called-for-bitters, she laid a very hairy eyeball on the glass while muttering “Bastardo!” According to the police report, when she reached for the jar of maraschino cherries her gizzard gave out and she fell over dead.

Hearing the thump on the floor, Dudley released a heavier than usual sigh, strolled into the kitchen, saw his drink and took a sip. It was missing something, is what he told the police. Stooping in disgust to pick up one of a hundred spilled maraschino cherries, he  noticed his wife, apparently taking a nap on the floor. He shook his head and felt sad, he told police while rattling his ice cubes.

After his conviction of felonious dopery, the headline read:

Depraved Dick is Sentenced to
Life of Bitters, Hold The Cherry

Interestingly, the debate has been good for the sucking community. A vacuum cleaner company invented a machine that sucks the shoes, socks and pants off a reluctant feet lifter. Very few fatalities or maimed genitalia have been recorded.

Recently, though, a controversial “Sarcasm defense” has watered down Depraved Dick laws. Avoid a depravity charge by simply uttering “Oops, Just Kidding.”

As a result, it’s now legal to say things like “Would it kill you…

• • if I threw a rattlesnake in your lap?
  • if I squirted you with plutonium 209? (Now available in spray cans. Do not confuse with plutonium 210.)
  • to stop talking about LeBron James?
  • to shut up every now and then?
  • that’s right, every, now and then
  • to get off your butt and go get a new one?
  • to drop dead?
  • to rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham or, if Abraham is unavailable, how about yours?

Oops, Just kidding!*

*So, would it kill you to laugh?

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2018, all rights reserved.