I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability (4 page)

BOOK: I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability
5.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
I
t was real bad when we first got married. The first meal she cooked in our new house, I couldn't eat it. I gave it to my dog, Sluggo. And he started licking his butt.
She comes in the kitchen and goes, "What's he doing?"
"Looks like he's trying to get the taste out of his mouth."
E
verything's an emergency to her, because she never had to deal with her own problems. Spoiled, catered to her whole life. There's no cure for that.
I was performing in Atlanta, she called me one night, misses me in the hotel room. They catch me in the lobby and tell me I have an emergency phone call from home.
I knock over ten people in the lobby of a very nice hotel, thinking maybe my in-laws . . .
I call her, she tells me Sluggo just took a dump on the new carpet.
"Shoot him."
She goes, "That's just like you, Ron. I have a genuine problem, and you're being sarcastic."
"All right, honey, I'm sorry. Put the dog on the phone, I'll talk to him."
What do you want me to do? I'm in Georgia. I can't pick up the turd.
"Put a paper towel over it. I'll be home in a week, honey."
I get home, it looks like a little campground in the living room. Somebody's having a Poopapalooza concert.
"Let him outside. He'll shit out there. I've seen him do it."
W
e have a beautiful son. His name is Marshall. I named him after an amplifier.
I almost named him Peavey. "Come here, Blaupunkt, ya little woofer, get over here."
When my son was five years old, he thought five years old was a very cool age to be. Because that was the coolest age he'd gotten to.
His favorite thing about being five years old was he was old enough to wear a seat belt. That was his biggest physical step toward manhood so far in his eyes, you know. He was strapped in the truck just like his daddy, and he thought that was great.
I thought it was great too, 'cause I drove a four-wheel-drive truck. And I learned this about four-wheel-drive trucks.
It doesn't really matter how big the motor is or how big the tires are, your macho days are over when you strap a baby's car seat in the front of that bad boy. You just can't show it off to your buddies, you know what I mean?
You can't make yourself go, "What's that? That's got the Vortec V8 running two-eighty-five horsepower.
"That? That's a Manitowoc power winch. That'll pull twenty-eight tons right out of the ditch.
"That? That's a Playskool car seat--with the Big Bird steering wheel attachment right there on it. That's Bert on the blinker and Ernie on the windshield wiper. That's Big Bird in the middle, you can honk that fat bastard if you want to. Hell, in two weeks I'll have the Cookie Monster flip mirror, they back-ordered it on me."
I
stopped driving the truck to gigs, 'cause I bought this big two-story custom van to tour in. And it was kind of neat. It had the James Bond couch in the back, where you push a button and the couch automatically turns into a bed.
I'm like, "Well, that's cool, I finally got something over those Mercedes-Benz-driving in-laws of mine," you know what I mean? When I first bought the van I was real proud of it, and I took it straight over to my brother-in-law's house to show it off, 'cause he's such a prick.
He takes one look at my new van, and he goes, "I can't believe you didn't buy a Mercedes-Benz."
"They don't make a van."
"Ron, I don't think you fully understand the intricacies of Mercedes-Benz engineering. Why, I've got the three-inch windshield wipers that keep my headlights clean in a rainstorm."
"I got a place to fuck your sister."
I don't know why they didn't like me.
I
promised Sears I would tell this story every night onstage until the lawsuit's settled.
I had the van down in Savannah, Georgia, and I didn't like the way the tires were wearing on it. I took the van to Sears Automotive, "a trusted name in automotive service."
Takes them three and a half hours to change four tires. Apparently they had to whittle one of them out of a piece of wheat.
I pay them $980 of my hard-earned money. I take a right-hand turn out of the mall. The left rear wheel falls off. It falls off! IT FALLS THE FUCK OFF!
Turning my van into a tripod. Spinning me into a dimension of pissed-off I have never been in before in my life!
This guy was a tire guy. That's all he did. He didn't some days work on transmissions. He was a tire guy.
Sears, I found out later, had sent him to tire college for three days. Well apparently, he was sick on LUG NUT DAY! But they still let him work on my van.
So I'm suing 'em, and I hope that next year they have to change the name of Sears Tower in Chicago to Ron White's Big Ole Goddamned Building.
You can all come over and party too. I'm gonna have a lot of room.
"Think we oughta clean up, Ron?"
"Hell no, move to another floor. We'll conga up there. Somebody grab my butt. Bring your coupins."
T
he thing with Sears wasn't as painful as buying the car in the first place, 'cause I had to talk to a car salesman to get it. Nobody else sells cars.
I believe if somebody asked me, "Uh, Ron, Ron, Ron"--sometimes it's hard to get my attention--"Ron, would you rather spend two hours of your life talking to a car salesman?
Orrrr
would you rather be drug naked over a cactus with your mouth over the tailpipe of a Greyhound bus?
Orrrr
would you rather sandpaper the asshole of an alligator in a phone booth?"
"What was that second one again?"
If you're reading this, and you're a car salesman, I'll show you where you are on the food chain. If the whole universe was a mike stand, about two inches off the ground there would be a flabby hunk of whale shit.
You're below that.
Oh, look right next to you there's a lawyer. Hey, there's my lawyer. There's my first wife. There's her mother.
And there's that asshole that didn't put the lug nuts back on my goddamn van.
BOOK: I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability
5.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Corpsman and the Nerd by Grady, D.R.
Highland Desire by Hildie McQueen
WorkIt by Marilyn Campbell
Every Good Girl by Judy Astley
Lady Caro by Marlene Suson
Torn by Avery Hastings
Before the Dawn by Beverly Jenkins
A Gentlewoman's Ravishment by Portia Da Costa
Space Rescue One by Atk. Butterfly