What’s that old song, “June is Bustin’ Out All Over?” That’s what we got to worry about now. Busting.
It’s hurricane season again. Our gas tanks need to be full and our family pictures in waterproof plastic bins for the next six months.
And now we got tornadoes too – swirling around with or without hurricanes. We don’t know whether to hide our valuables up in the attic or down in the bathtub.
My mother-in-law Ms. Larda bought a wall safe. She looks around for valuables to put in it, and she decides the most valuable things she got are those gorgeous little semi-high strappy sandals that are actually comfortable.
She ain’t never had a pair of comfortable heels since she was a bosomy little teenager, and then nobody hardly looked at her feet.
But she has expanded since then, as we all do, and she can’t lurch around on skinny little stilettos no more.
Then last month, she found these miracle shoes at Goodwill, of all places, all broken in and glitzy. Hardly worn, she says to me. Like somebody bought them and got to prancing around and keeled over with a fatal heart attack. What a lucky break!
So she stuffs them in her new wall safe, along with her Muses decorated shoe.
Then she goes to the Gulf Coast overnight to hit the casinos. She leaves Chopsley, her chihuahua, with me and gives my brothers-in-law, Lurch and Leech, who live in the other side of her double, orders to feed her cat, Charmer.
Well, would you believe, two actual burglars slither in through the back window. (They are buddies of Lurch and Leech and happen to know them two are having a late night at the Sloth Lounge.)
I can just picture them two bad guys in black hoodies – slinking around looking for valuables, which they don’t find. The only thing valuable – at least to herself – is Charmer, frowning down at them from on top a cabinet.
Then Bad Guy #1 notices a picture hung a little crooked, so they look behind it and there is the wall safe.
But they got no idea what to do next, because neither of them knows how to crack a safe.
Then Bad Guy #2 tugs at the safe’s door, and would you believe, it swings open (Ms. Larda don’t know how to lock a safe.)
So they reach in and yank out her valuables. SHOES?
They shout, “What the Bad Word?!” at each other – they were brought up right, so they don’t say the actual Bad Word. This is their first crime.
And then Lurch and Leech come home.
The Bad Guys freeze and listen to them open the door on their side of the double. Then Lurch staggers to the laundry room in back, which links the two sides of the house. He goes through to Ms. Larda’s side and sees the two bad guys. “Larry? Leonard? You guysh know where the Alka Seltzer’s at?” he asks, blinking.
Larry (Bad Guy # 1) goes into the bathroom, rattles around in the medicine cabinet, and comes up with the Alka Seltzer.
Meanwhile, Leonard, (you guessed it, Bad Guy #2) is stomping around amongst Ms. Larda’s valuables, and happens to stomp the squeaker of Charmer’s toy cat, Sylvester, which is laying there.
Sylvester squeaks, Charmer leaps, and Leonard shrieks. He throws off his black hoodie, which now has Charmer attached, and runs out the front door. Larry follows him, down the dark street to their car, with its license plate they had smudged with mud on purpose.
On the way home, a cop stops them and they are about to confess everything – but he just tells them to clean off the license plate. Thank God. No more life of crime for them. They go straight to the Sloth and buy a lot of drinks and tell everybody. Nobody listens.
Next day, Ms. Larda comes home, cleans up the mess, and since the strange black hoodie smells like cat pee, decides Charmer must’ve saved her valuables.
So Charmer gets promoted to a very expensive brand of cat food.
Lurch and Leech never know anything happened