Slaughterhouse 14

START TIME:11:03 PM
END TIME: 11:34 PM
WORD COUNT (my content only and not Ms. Van Buren’s) 763

“Taking questions from an advice column this week, write a parody of a "Dear Abby" column.”

For this week’s challenge I don’t have much time, so I went straight to the source for questions. I typed in dearabby.com and was linked to her syndicated column. These were actual questions submitted on April 4, 2009. You’re welcome to look on the Web for her answers. You need only look below the questions for mine.

DEAR ABBY: I am an 11-year-old with a serious problem. I don't trust my parents. I doubt I ever will. I just can't tell them things. I end up praying to my dead grandpa -- that's OK, but he doesn't give me any answers.

I trust my sister more than I could ever trust Mom or Dad. It feels wrong sometimes. I don't like to be around people. I have no way of knowing whether I can trust them. There is part of my life that only my sister knows about.

I feel bad about not trusting my parents. Is there any solution to this problem? Should I talk to them about it? -- NO TRUST IN PLANO, TEXAS

Hey No Trust,

You want the good news? You’re astonishingly normal. I’m a well-adjusted adult male who remembers what I was like when I was 11, and believe me, if you think you don’t trust your parents now, the next few years are going to be a revelation.

I intend to make it my personal mission, possibly after retirement, to go around to high schools with a fire extinguisher and pick out the mopiest, most isolated kid I can find, the one who’s rehearsing his lines for when the redhead comes by the bus stop, and squirt him with the fire extinguisher. I’m going to explain that odds are that life is not all that bad and there’s a strong possibility he’s overthinking it all. I hope to save him from a life of overthinking situations right there. Remember what Charles Schulz said – “Don’t worry that the world’s going to end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.” Lighten up. The world gets easier when you’re old enough to discover gin.

(Dear Abby said he should talk to a counselor. Years of reading Dear Abby have proven to me that she recommends counseling the same way the kids in the National Spelling Bee ask the proctors to repeat a word before they spell it – it buys her time and it’s a default part of the routine, like how Price Is Right always ends with a castration pitch.)

DEAR ABBY: I was recently given a gift that I have reason to believe was made from stolen materials, on company premises, using stolen time. The item is of a religious nature, although the business itself is in the field of manufacturing. The person who gave me the gift is aware that I value integrity and honesty above all things. I wonder if he is trying to challenge my principles. At any rate, I'm at a loss as to what to do with the gift. I do not feel comfortable keeping it, but for reasons of family harmony cannot return it. Any suggestions? -- ROLE MODEL IN PENNSYLVANIA

Yo Role Model,

A gift that’s an item of a religious nature that would cause family disharmony if returned? Manufacturing? What is it, a concrete burial vault? Cypress knee woodcarving of Jesus? Koran written in Saddam Hussein’s blood? Wow. I’m at a loss. But Dear Abby’s never at a loss. She got this letter – and I haven’t read the response – and decided that it should make it into her column. Who writes to Dear Abby anymore?

I would assume a gift with a religious motif to be fantastically presumptuous, and if it’s some sort of gold filigree rendering of the Ten Commandments (or maybe those Extra Super Awesome dolls of Jesus engaged in various sporting activities) then this person has a highly developed sense of irony or an underdeveloped reserve of common sense. Sometimes family harmony consists of singing some really fucking horrible song off key the same way that everyone else in the family does. Either tip the valet to get your high horse out of storage, hide it, or get rid of it. Stolen rosaries have some very bad mojo attached.

(Dear Abby suggested asking the donor, “Where’d you get it?” In short, will the owner of the high horse please pick it up at the west casino entrance.)

DEAR ABBY: My older brother moved from the East Coast to Wyoming 20 years ago, which put him in a different time zone -- two hours behind me. He died in June of last year.

I am planning to get a tattoo memorializing the date and time of my brother's passing, but have reached a dilemma. My brother died June 12 at 11 p.m. in Wyoming, but it was 1 a.m. June 13 here in Connecticut.

Which date should I use? I have asked friends who say I should go with what feels right to me, but others have told me to use the date on his death certificate. Which is correct? -- DAY LATE AND TWO HOURS SHORT

Ohh, baby. See, HERE’S the stuff you don’t read in “Emily Post’s Etiquette.” I’m convinced that some guys in a firehouse are high-fiving each other, because one of the squads just won the lunch bet when she printed this silliness. No real human being has this dilemma. Either this lunatic’s wearing a black armband with his wife beater or he doesn’t exist, and for the sake of humanity I hope to God it’s the latter.

My answer? The most tasteful thing to do would be to leave the date blank and just put the year. Or maybe leave the skin blank altogether. I have a feeling that when others look at your back and see the detailed rendition of a giant Calvin urinating on a tombstone, with the words “PISS ON YOU FOR DYING, ASSHOLE” in Gothic script, they’ll be too overcome with emotion to note the chronological dilemma you face. She should have hooked this bonehead up with the kid from Plano and had his dead grandpa ask big brother what he preferred. That should do it.

(Dear Abby pointed out that a tattoo is a very personal thing, and it’s his choice. Because it’s HIS SKIN. I’m presuming she didn’t send the inmate a photo of herself so that Ramon and Juan get the face right for his left torso, as long as the guard doesn’t see it.)

So I wouldn’t be good for an advice column. Far from it. Time’s up.