Family Fun/Family Fun.iso/joke2/fungus/chapter.02

Text File | 1991-03-05 | 18KB | 345 lines

       ASK UNCLE FUNGUS: BRILLIANT ADVICE FOR THE HOPELESS

                            CHAPTER 2
                       THE COMPLEAT FUNGUS



     So many of you have written letters with questions about my
private life that I've decided to write a short autobiography.  I
must warn you, however; if you think that by reading this you can
become like me, you're mistaken.  Uncle Fungus is one of a kind.
After all, there's only room for one at the top.
     So, how did the Fungus odyssey start?
     As with all truly great men, my beginnings were humble.
Specifically Whitewater, Wisconsin, which is about as humble as
one can get without being dead.  It's a small town in the
southeastern corner of the state, and if it weren't for the
university located there, even Rand/McNally wouldn't waste the
ink necessary to put it on the map.
     I lived a perfectly ordinary life there, never showing my
fantastic potential until just before I left.  I went to school,
fished, played a little baseball, and occasionally went to the
local dump to shoot rats.  Every semester the teachers would
dutifully mark the "does not work and play well with others" box
on my report card, and promptly forget about me.  In all
respects, I was an ordinary Whitewater citizen, from my sugar-
bowl haircut to my leather boots.
     On my sixteenth birthday I celebrated my passage into
manhood by getting a job at Swanson's liquid paper factory,
Whitewater's main industry at the time.  Located on North Park
Street, it was the center of community life.
     I started in the testing department typing long documents on
an old Remington Standard typewriter.  At the end of the day, I
collected together all my typographical errors and piled them at
the other end of the room where they were used to test new
formulations of correction fluid.
     But even in this stifling atmosphere, my innate superiority
burst forth.  From the first day of employment, I consistently
surpassed my daily quota of mistakes, and went on to break the
factory record.  With this success came a promotion to Bottling.
     It didn't take me long to excel in the bottling department.
A mere six months after I was transferred I developed the little
ASK UNCLE FUNGUS/Reitci                                Page 11


brush you see inside the cap of a bottle of correction fluid.
Not only did my innovation improve the quality of the product,
but it saved the company a great deal of money, as the brushes
were a lot cheaper to produce than the little trays and rollers
they replaced.
     This brought me to the attention of the management.
Promotion followed promotion, and by the time I graduated from
high school, I was supervisor of one section of the plant.
     I think if it hadn't been for the accident, I would've
stayed in that plant until retirement.  Which in Whitewater
consists of manuvering for a better seat in front of the feed
store and picking dried correction fluid out from under your
fingernails.
     But the accident did happen, breaking the suffocating chains
of small-town mediocrity.
     One morning, I was involved with some employee negotiations
behind a bottler when I heard a shout.  I stuck my head out to
see a dozen men running for their lives.  It had to be serious.
Not that these men were particularly brave or anything; they were
just generally too dim to recognize danger when it was in front
of them.  Whatever the hazard was, it was serious enough to
penetrate their coal-burning minds.
     I quickly ended my meeting and headed for the other end of
the plant.  The moment I stepped around the bottler there was a
tremendous explosion.
     An investigation into the accident later revealed that a
worker had turned the wrong valve and over-filled a 10,000 gallon
storage tank.  It burst and a deadly tidal wave of correction
fluid swept through the plant, wiping out everything in its path.
It was the liquid paper industry's worst nightmare come to life.
     Picture it in your mind: a swirling, flowing tide of liquid
paper turned deadly.  Twenty-seven different colors blending
together in a terrifying panorama of death.  All over, men were
being dragged down in swirling eddies never to be seen again.  It
was suicide to try to reach them.
     But fate called to me.  Besides, I figured there was an
outside chance that death would be better than spending the next
forty years working at Swanson's.  I waded into the maelstrom.
     There's no point in my going on about how brave I was -- you
can take it for granted.  That day I saved the lives of six men
while sustaining massive liquid paper cuts over my entire body.
     Despite the pain and trauma I suffered, I know that if I had
it to do all over again, I'd still go after those six men.  If it
weren't for me they would have died with the rest.
     In fact, I still get letters from two of the men I saved.
One became a truck driver after his wife divorced him, and the
other spends a lot of time in the bars because he can't get a
job.
     The other four all died one day last year when the 3:30
Atcheson, Topeka & Santa Fe had the audacity to interrupt their

ASK UNCLE FUNGUS/Reitci                                Page 12


fishing trip by crossing the railroad trestle they were fishing
off of.
     Well, I'm pretty sure I'd do it again.
     Anyway, as a result of my injuries, the company retired me
with a hefty pension.  All in all about a dozen men were killed
in the disaster -- they were never too sure of that figure
because the liquid-paper-covered bodies were a little hard to
pick out from the liquid-paper-covered walls.
     So there I was, financially secure and lying in a hospital
in nearby Ft. Atkinson.  What was I to do?  The stay at the
hospital gave me plenty of time to think about it.
     Whitewater offered few choices for a pensioned-off liquid
paper supervisor.  I could either spend the next forty years of
my pension in the local bars, or I could try to escape by going
to college and getting a degree.  While the first alternative had
its merits, I chose the second.  I enrolled at the University of
Wisconsin-Whitewater and started earning a degree in Business
Administration.
     But at UWW I discovered just what it meant to get a degree
in Business.  In between bouts of networking and penciling-in we
discussed power ties, power lunches and power walking.  For most
of the students the actual classes were a bothersome little
detail to be avoided if at all possible.  It wasn't what I was
looking for, so I moved on to the bright lights and excitement of
the big city.  I went to Sheboygan.
     Upon realizing my mistake, I bought a ticket to Milwaukee
and continued my education at the University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee.  UWM was everything a real university is -- useless
bureaucracy, ineffective advisors, incompetent instructors and
lackadaisical scheduling.
     I put up with it for a couple of years before throwing in
the towel.  Once again I packed my bags, abandoned my car, fenced
my belongings, and moved on.  This time I headed for New York.
     My pension took care of the rent and I did odd jobs for
spending money.  I spent my time exploring all parts of the city,
seeking out those centers of cultural interaction available to
me. Specifically, all 12,751 bars in the Tri-State area.
     I learned a great deal during the five years I stayed there.
But once I thoroughly knew the city, I became restless.  I had to
move on.  Besides, I had been banned from 12,537 of the bars and
the remaining 214 were full of guys who kept asking me to dance.
     On my last night in New York a friend of mine invited me to
his place for drinks.  It seems that he had four bottles of Ouzo
he didn't know what to do with.  I came up with the perfect
solution to his dilemma and ten minutes later I was making my way
across town to his place.  On the way I picked up a few six-
packs and a bag of pretzels.
     Four days later I woke up on an English cargo ship far out
at sea.  They told me that I had come aboard in New York,
demanding a job because I wanted to look for mermaids.  Since

ASK UNCLE FUNGUS/Reitci                                Page 13


they were one crew member short they signed me up.  Then I passed
out.
     I went to see the captain.
     The captain was a tad upset that I had missed the first four
days of work.  Or to be more precise, furious.  He said that if I
didn't get to work right away he'd have me keel-hauled and then
he'd personally rip out my intestines with a spoon.  That was his
big mistake.  He shouldn't have mentioned intestines.
     Take my advice.  Avoid experiencing a hangover and sea
sickness at the same time.  Even if the alternative is death.
That was my first time at sea, and I was suffering the worst
hangover since Socrates.
     After the captain cleaned himself off, I was assigned to
scrub decks.  And then I scrubbed decks.  After that, I scrubbed
decks.  Then to break the monotony, I scrubbed decks for a while.
In fact, I have never seen any decks as clean as the decks on
that ship.  It's just too bad the ship burned and sank around the
time I left.
     I had a tough couple of weeks in England before I managed to
have my pension checks sent over.  Even then, the exchange rates
being what they were at the time, I had to get a job to support
myself in the manner to which I had become accustomed.
     I traveled to London and acted as a tour guide for American
tourists.  I didn't know anything about London, but neither did
the tourists.  So I just made it up as I went along.  I'd
describe a war or two, sprinkle it with a little royalty, and the
open-mouthed tourists would start snapping polaroids.
     It was during one of these tours that I met the woman who
was to become my wife.  Fern was also a tour guide, working for a
travel agency that specialized in sending groups of runny-nosed
high school kids to foreign countries in the hopes that they'd
accidentally learn something.
     I was in Trafalgar Square telling some tourists about King
Arthur's battle against hordes of invading Lithuanians, when I
walked around the Nelson Column and ran straight into a beautiful
young lady.
     She started to fall.  Naturally enough, I caught her.
     As we brushed ourselves off I noticed that my wallet and
checkbook were missing.  Right then and there I knew she was the
woman for me.
     Over the next few weeks we spent all the time we could
together.  I was able to cancel my tours, but she was bound by
contract to run a certain number of them per week.  Since she
couldn't get rid of the high school kids, we brought them along.
     It worked out pretty well.  If they started getting in the
way we'd drop them off at a bar full of drunken English dock
workers and tell them we'd be back in a couple of hours.
     Two years later I had to leave England in a bit of a hurry.
I'd rather not get into the reasons right now, as I'm not sure
whether or not the statute of limitations has run out.

ASK UNCLE FUNGUS/Reitci                                Page 14


     Anyway, Fern threw some clothes in a bag and came with me.
We were a bit surprised when our plane landed in Moscow, but
that's what you get when you're in too much of a hurry to ask
where your plane is going.
     We didn't have passports or luggage, but the officials were
willing to let us stay anyway.  In fact, they made it pretty
clear that we were going to be staying for quite a while.
     Fern was given a job in a shoe factory, and I got one
handing out bread to impatient fat women with mustaches.  But
Fern and I were together, and that's all we needed to be happy.
Sure -- breakfast in Russia was cold beet soup and the national
pastime was alcoholism, but that was more than made up for by the
lavish two room basement apartment we were given.
     Alright, already.  It was worse than chewing aluminum foil.
     In an effort to improve our lifestyle, I introduced a new
service at the breadline.  By paying just a little bit extra, the
Russian women could buy bread and yet avoid standing in line all
day long.  It proved to be so successful that I soon expanded my
wares to include shoes, vodka, and an occasional visa permit.
     Now I ask you, what could possibly be wrong with that?
After all, it was only a little money on the side.  That's what
capitalism is all about.
     Business was so good that within months Fern and I were able
to move into a nice little ten room penthouse overlooking Gorky
Park.  Fern had a wonderful time fixing it up to be just the way
we wanted.
     But instead of inspiring respect our success caused the
downtrodden masses around us to strike back in jealousy.  We were
reported to the authorities and two men showed up at the door
requesting that I accompany them to the nearest police station.
With lighting-like reflexes Fern dropped a tear-gas grenade and
pulled me out the back way.
     It's those little things women do that let you know they
love you.
     Fern and I figured it was a good idea for us to move on.
Some friends were able to scrounge up a few hundred yards of
cloth, and an old kerosene stove provided the heat.  Two weeks of
late-night work later we were able to bid a fond farewell to the
land of borscht.
     Our homemade balloon landed just across the border in
Finland.  Happy to be back in a relatively western country, Fern
and I finally got married.  It was a simple ceremony, officiated
by the local equivalent of mayor.  The Best Man and Maid of Honor
were the owners of the house whose roof we crashed through.
     Then with fresh passports from the American Embassy in our
hot little hands, we returned to America for a proper honeymoon.
Since neither of us had been in America for several years, we
turned the honeymoon into an extended trip across the country.
     It was an existence dreamed of by many and lived by few.
Never in any one place for more than a few weeks, we wandered all
over the United States.  Money was no problem -- I was still
ASK UNCLE FUNGUS/Reitci                                Page 15


getting my pension.  If we needed a little extra cash I could
always pick up some scrap metal and sell it as pieces of Skylab.
     But there comes a time when we must all settle down.  Fern
and I talked it over.  She liked bratwurst, I liked bars, so
Milwaukee seemed to be the logical choice.
     We picked out a small house in one of the suburbs and
quickly adopted all the trappings of suburban life.  I was able
to get a job at a local newspaper as a crime reporter.  My salary
from the newspaper and my pension from Swanson's provided a
comfortable living for the both of us.  Fern busied herself
taking care of the house and our new dog, Max, while I spent
Saturdays puttering around in the garage and mowing the lawn.
     Our neighbors were friendly, and the two of us spent a lot
of time with them.  Wednesdays we'd go over to the Donnor's for
bridge, and Fridays we'd usually invite the Kaufman's over for
dinner.  Afterward, Jim Kaufman and I would sit on lawn chairs in
the backyard and have a couple of beers while the women did the
dishes and talked about the latest sales in the mall.
     One Saturday I put down my beer with the realization that if
I had to put up with it one more day I'd kill myself.
     I had to do something.  I decided to give the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee another shot.
     When I told Fern, she thought it was a good idea.  In fact,
she had the same attitude towards our idyllic suburban life, and
she also wanted to go back to college.  A four-figure check and
innumerable useless forms later, we were enrolled in the Mass
Communications program at UWM.
     Things hadn't changed much since the last time I was a
student there.  True, there was a thicker layer of dust on the
librarian, but that was about it.  In fact, my car was still
parked in front of the student union.  Except for it being
covered with something like two thousand parking tickets it was
exactly the way I had left it.  I guess it's a good thing I'd
never bothered to register it in my name.
     It was at UWM that Fern became involved with starting a new
student newspaper called THE UWM TIMES.  She wrote an advice
column called, naturally enough, "Ask Aunt Fern."
     It was fairly popular, but as we know now, it paled in
comparison to the popularity of my own column to come later.  I
hung around the TIMES office but didn't get involved until after
Fern had her accident.
     One of the lesser-known perils of urban life is the packs of
rabid cats roaming through downtown alleyways.  Fern took a
shortcut through an alley on her way to the bank when one of
those packs jumped her.  Unfortunately, she didn't have Max with
her.  He would have made short work of them and gotten a little
exercise at the same time.
     Still, Fern managed to shoot eleven of the rotten little
beasts before her 9 millimeter Luger jammed.  I always told her
she should buy American.

ASK UNCLE FUNGUS/Reitci                                Page 16


     The doctors said she would have to spend several weeks in
the hospital.  Writing her column was out of the question.
Merely reading the problems people sent in was too much for her.
Every time she laughed she was in danger of ripping out stitches.
     So she asked me to take over the column.  I did, and have
done it ever since.  It took me a while to get used to solving
other people's problems, but once the Fungus brilliance kicked in
it was duck soup.
     Fern has since recovered from her injuries.  She stays at
home now, working as a free-lance writer.  You might have read
some of her stories in "Letters To Playboy."  She also wrote the
best selling interior decorating manual "Fifty Ways to Lose Your
Louvers."
     All in all, I've had a fairly interesting life so far.  It's
had its boring parts, but at least there's nothing I regret ever
having done.
     But then again, I've only just started now, haven't I?