Little Betty Lou and Humphrey Two-Ton sing a duet together. Little Betty Lou wishes she was Humphrey Two-Ton’s guitar, as he touches it more than he does her. “Oh I Wish, Oh I wish, that he stroked me, not his guitar”
I once knew a small person who wasn’t quite a dwarf but not a midget either. Her proportions were that of a regular sized person, although she was not regular sized. She was perhaps just a person that happened to be small.
She wore dark chinos, work boots and a canvas jacket. In addition, she always had a little cap on her head and I believe she must have been bald. I think she was lacking eyebrows as well, although this was years ago and I could be thinking of someone who in fact did not have eyebrows.
I knew this woman because she came into my place of employment every day, strutted up to the counter and spat out “blueberry muffin!” She had a bit of a lisp or maybe it was just her loose jowls interfering with her speech pattern. Either way, her talk was garbled. I developed a sort of disdain for the woman because I found her rude. In addition to spitting at me, she tossed the money on the counter and the coins would slide and spin about, pissing me off.
With further observation, however, and as our interactions became more frequent, I realized that there was a reason why she was always fumbling with her money, tossing it at me with strain on her face and a look of bitter regret as she watched my nimble fingers pick up the coins with great ease. On this woman’s left hand, where fingers once were, was a row of nubs.
And now…we will refer to her as “Nubs.”
So seeing as I worked at this job on and off for years, I saw a lot of Nubs. It turns out that not only did Nubs like her blueberry muffin, she also liked guitar. Around the Holidays in particular Nubs would come into my place of employment, guitar around her torso and play a little ditty for the other patrons. She then proceeded to get her blueberry muffin.
So time went by as it often does and I began to have frequent Nubs sightings outside of work. She started popping up all over the damn place…on street corners, in alley ways, at the mall, under a bridge, on rooftops! And she was always playing that guitar…slide guitar. Her little tailored chinos would vibrate as she tapped her foot, jostled her head and scrunched her nubby nose. So one fateful Friday night I was laying on the couch being lazy or picking a pimple or something, as this was before I discovered the drink, my father walked in and started a dialogue of sorts. I wasn’t terribly engaged until I heard him mutter three words of great importance:
“nubs for fingers,” he said.
“Huh?” I said
“nubs for fingers,” he said again.
My father, too, had a Nubs sighting. Upon seeing her play guitar at the mall, my father struck up a conversation. He has one of those friendly faces and I suppose Nubs felt compelled to tell him a story of times gone by. This is how the story goes, according to Nubs:
In her youth, Nubs was a very talented guitarist, who was perhaps on the verge of doing something great. She played in clubs, got paid and was building quite the reputation for herself. Amidst doing said things, she met a fellow guitarist and they soon fell in love. They played together, canoodled together and did the sort of nasty things young lovers do. That is until one pretty shitty night. Nubs’ lover had slowly become grotesquely jealous of her ability to play a superb guitar. After some time, he could no longer bear the fact that her skills were surpassing his own. In order to combat this frustration and in a rage, he chopped off his lover’s fingers.
That, according to Nubs, is why on her left had, where fingers once were, is now just a row of nubs.
I don’t know if Nubs is alive or playing guitar or still eating muffins on the regular, but I can still see those nubs sliding across that guitar neck where once, before there were nubs, there was a pick.
Bananas are naturally slightly radioactive…
(In fact, they are radioactive enough to regularly cause false alarms on radiation sensors used to detect possible illegal smuggling of nuclear material at US ports.)
Other common materials that have proven to be radioactive:
*often referred to as “beanie”
Behold, this is a clip from “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” an opera about a young beggar boy and his mother who receive a visit from the three wisemen. The boy’s voice is that of an angel, sang by Chet Allen (1951). This was the last year Chet’s banana was whole, as he was later castrated to preserve that beautiful Soprano voice. Enjoy and Happy Holidays!
