These two guys share certain proplinquities. Can you blame me?

 

There is one who I know. Not by name. Only by height, hair color, demeanor and pastry preferences. The other one, Oscar Biswald, has had it up to 'here' with my implosive blaspheming. Between the two of them, there's just no contest. Each has a (faulty) idea about where my favor lies. I am forever looking at their eyes between innings and hoping for a sign. Once in a while, there's a slight rustling off to the side. I know where my bread is buttered, though. They  just haven't figured out yet whether, how or why I've set about caring what happens when the news drops. Someone once said that I had a lot of nerve. Each of them tried to push that guy into a doorway here in town. I told them to 'knock it off'. They acted like it was no big deal. So I made it my business to hold one, and then the other, inside a lead-lined chamber that we had set up a few years ago. I prayed to God that no one would get hurt. In the end I had to eat my very own words. Anyone who says they like that kind of treatment should try living for a few moments in the shoes that I call 'my life'. They won't like what they see, is all I'm saying, okay?

Now that they've both found work in the 4th quarter down south, I'm starting to get the hang of interstitial living. And even though I make it a practice to keep the bottom-feeders at arm's length from a pair of winsome broads who moved in downstairs, I still like to field calls from the disconsolate brats whose smell can shake up a room real good. On a good day, if I read somewhere that I'm supposed to arrange with our people to have something carried by a person whose perspective can't be questioned, that's when, all of a sudden, I get an announcement in the mail to the effect that a question of basic morality is now front-of-mind and our own checkmarks could come under effusive assault. Unless, that is, an extremely sought after signature could be affixed in a superlative nail-biter, come what may. This is when it is sometimes asked whether a home-bound beneficiary would think it wise to stand with their back to a third floor window and 'flood the zone' with a compact set of opinions which get people talking in real time. At which point I make it my business to be seen in the company of a Native American painting contractor of dubious resolve. He'll know where to put my trust when sanity makes an instant comeback. As for those who never pretended for a minute to have none, there's only one word which applies. It's just not one which comes balefully to the lips of the easily flustered. And for that any of us would give not even a rheumy glance in the other direction, paltry at best. So far, so good. Now beat it.

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