Not QUITE The Classics by Mochrie Colin

Author:Mochrie, Colin [Mochrie, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HUMOR/General
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2013-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

Waterhouse Five

INSPIRED BY KURT VONNEGUT’S

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE

All this happened, more or less. Don’t focus on the less. The less is unimportant. A few bits of dialogue here and there may be slightly changed or exaggerated. Never a big deal, unless you’re arguing with your spouse. The more of the “more or less” is the main thing. These events did actually happen. There is documented evidence proving it. Trust me, I’m the narrator. And narrators never lie.

Billy Jonah was the unluckiest man in history. Unluckier than Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who was having breakfast in Hiroshima at 8:15 A.M. on August 6, 1945, when the A-bomb detonated and destroyed his apartment building. Tsutomu survived, but three days later he travelled to Nagasaki to convalesce. Unluckier than Terry Rydell, who was hit by lightning seven times. On the seventh and final time, he was struck while flying a kite beside the train tracks of his Kingston-area home. His body was completely magnetized, which, unfortunately, resulted in a three-hour ride courtesy of a Via train en route to Montreal. The worst part wasn’t the mode of travel—it was the destination. Terry hated bagels and jazz. And the Habs.

Now to be sure, Billy didn’t have the dramatic, traumatic, life-threatening bad luck that Tsutomu and Terry did. That one big misadventure that would put him in the “Odd but True” section of the newspaper seemed to elude him. Sometimes he wished it would happen in one big chunk. But his bad luck was more like a constant stream of unfortunateness; an irritating and incessant dribble of misfortune.

Minor things went wrong in Billy’s personal life and professional life every day. One Monday morning, as Billy walked to work, a disoriented bat flew into his head with such force that it almost knocked him over. As he grabbed on to a lamppost for support, a German shepherd escaped his leash, bounded over to him, and humped his leg like a sailor on VE day. Then there was the time, only three seconds before giving a speech at his younger brother’s wedding, that an inebriated waiter spilled a gallon of jalapeño blue cheese dressing straight onto Billy’s crotch. Billy hated public speaking. The tenants of the apartment building that Billy lived in three years ago are still talking about the day when a mysterious gust of wind slammed his door closed as he was picking up the morning newspaper, pushing him into the middle of the hallway naked as a newborn babe.

And yet, a lovelier, more positive man you could never hope to meet. Billy Jonah lived life with a constant smile on his lips; he happily held doors for women and children, he never failed to nod or say hello to anyone who passed him in the street, and he paused to smell every flower, no matter if the bee drinking its nectar got lodged in his nostril, requiring an emergency room visit and a shot of epinephrine to the heart. It seemed cruel that someone so pure of spirit and intent should be repeatedly kicked in the balls by life.

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