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| "AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HUMOR"TM
SHOWCASE
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August /
September 2006 Contest Results |
Death
Surrey 2000
By Gregg Podolski,
NJ
If you should
find yourself down the shore during the hot, sweaty, dog days of summer
with no desire to sizzle on the beach or swelter on the boardwalk,
perhaps you could try surreying, which is an inexpensive, enjoyable way
to have a stroke.
To clarify, a surrey is a type of bike/carriage hybrid invented by early
settlers as one of the first -- and most effective -- forms of birth
control. The way it worked was early teenage boy settlers (called
“lads”) would announce to their parents that they had a date and wanted
to borrow the carriage for the night.
“The carriage is in the shop with a busted carburetor,” the parents
would say. “Take the surrey instead.”
Of course, this was an obvious lie; changing the carburetor on a
horse-drawn carriage was a simple, half-day job, and rarely required the
services of a mechanic. But, being as this was the “early days,”
teenagers were far better behaved than they are now, largely because
every family owned a gun and the penalty for murder was a stern talking
to.
So teenage settler boys would mount their surreys and pedal over to the
houses of teenage settler girls (called “lads”), where they’d squeeze a
rubber ball at the end of a small horn, thus producing a sound
remarkably similar to that of a duck going through puberty.
Invariably what would happen is the teenage girl settler would poke her
head out the door, point at the boy in the surrey, laugh heartily, and
then slip into a three-week coma because corsets were worn so tightly back
then that anything more than a polite chuckle could only be performed
under the direct care of a physician.
With their unconscious dates strewn about the countryside, early teenage
settler boys channeled their hormonal energy and focused it on building
cities. This launched America into The Industrial Age, which led to The
Information Age, and finally to The Age Of Aquarius.
As time progressed, the surrey’s role in society morphed into what it is
today -- a way for locals in beach towns to rip-off tourists.
In my case, the rip-off occurred several years ago in Ocean City with my
wife’s family.
We were all sitting around the porch having a wonderful time, primarily
because none of us were on a surrey at that moment. Then somebody,
probably one of my nephews, suggested that we rent one to ride around
the boardwalk the next morning.
“Hey, what a great idea,” said my wife and her sisters, almost in
unison. (Ocean City may be a dry town but, as the previous statement
shows, alcohol played a significant role in our vacation plans.)
The next morning I awoke bright and early to accompany my wife’s clan on
their merry jaunt. At the rental shop, we paid for a single surrey even
though we had no less than eight people in our party, because when
weaving through throngs of senior citizens with the reflexes of plywood,
it’s more fun when there’s 1,000 lbs of momentum behind you.
On the plus side, with all the extra weight, the surrey propelled itself
at a very leisurely pace, ideal for gazing at passing scenery.
The problem was that half our party consisted of pre-adolescent boys,
and scenery gazing wasn’t what they had in mind. Pretending to be
Maverick zipping among a squadron of Migs was more their idea of fun,
which required me to pedal the eighty-year-old surrey to a speed of
roughly Mach 1.
I managed to keep this up for about fifteen minutes before every bone in
my body from the waist down got off to go buy fudge, at which point we
slowed to the pace of an average commercial jetliner.
As we coasted to a stop in front of the rental shop (and by “coasted” I
mean “down a ramp and into a wall”), everyone screamed in delight and
clapped their hands. Later that night, in bed, my wife tried to thank me
for being such a good uncle, but I wasn’t in the mood.
I guess surreys haven’t changed that much after all.
www.thefunnyside.net
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