by HAL MOUNTSAUERKRAUTEN, Alternate Reality News Service Justice Writer
In the sleepy (police are still investigating how so much Valium found its way into the water supply) southern town of Macon, Georginia (whose motto, “Y’all got some Georginia in ya,” has been chosen as third least effective state motto by the editorial staff of Car and Fisheries magazine for 17 consecutive years), the issue of racial prejudice has long been settled. Citizens are for it.
Unfortunately, owing to the malign influence of nothren glibruhls, Georginian people of pallor did not feel comfortable expressing their racial animus (short for “ain’t one o’ us”) as forcefully as their forebears, who made this great country what it was until all those people of pigment came and ruined everything. Fortunately, compassion is an emotion that waxes and wanes, and, in the McDruhitmumpf era, for anti-racism it’s definitely wane’s world.
Gossamer Electrolytic is a used nail polisher who lives in the practically comatose Macon county of Bibbitibobbit. She had taken her two children, Gamliel and Gomorrah, to the General Bob E. Leeleesobiesk Public Pool and Involuntary Bathroom Facility (named after the man who had led the losing side of the War Betwixt and Between the States because…umm…well…because the south will never forget its proud history, dammit!).
Seeing what she believed was a crime in progress, Electrolytic commanded her daughter Gomorrah (the only member of the family with a cellphone) to call the police. What happened next might be hard to believe, so the Alternate Reality News Service is providing a partial transcript of video of the incident (which lifeguard Patrick Patronimicist took and posted to YahooTube under the headline, “Moooooom, stop embarrassing me!”).
GOSSAMER ELECTROLYTIC: Officers! Arrest them! Arrest them now!
OFFICER 1: On what charge, Ma’am?
ELECTROLYTIC: Look at them!
Pause as the officers look at them.
OFFICER 2: I see an adult swimming laps while two young boys appear to be whacking each other with pool noodles. There’s no crime in that…
ELECTROLYTIC: (cold) Look closer! Notice anything different about them?
OFFICER 2: One of the lads is…left-handed?
OFFICER 1: The man is wearing his watch in the pool?
OFFICER 2: Must be one of those waterproof watches. Boy, would I love to have one of those.
OFFICER 1: (chuckling) Not likely on our salaries.
ELECTROLYTIC: Oh, for Gord’s sa – they’re black! Okay? Black people are swimming in my public pool!
OFFICER 1: Ma’am, being black is not a crime…
ELECTROLYTIC: Oh, don’t give me that! Don’t you dare give me that! How many unarmed black men have been shot by police? Do you really expect me to believe that all of those officers really feared for their lives from men running away from them? Puh-leaze! Being black isn’t not a crime just because there’s no law on the books that says it is!
Officer 1 looks at Officer 2, who shrugs.
OFFICER 1: Ma’am –
ELECTROLYTIC: Don’t take that tone of ma’am with me! I’ll have you know that this is a segregated pool!
OFFICER 2: Meaning no disrespect, ma’am, but pools in this state haven’t been segregated since 2002.
ELECTROLYTIC: Of course we had to take down the signs – damn political correctness! But, real Vesampuccerians know that other than a few cosmetic changes, everything is the same.
OFFICER 2: (dubious) Real Vesampuccerians?
ELECTROLYTIC: You know. Real – real Vesampuccerians. Real – oh, for Gord’s sake! Not them!
Electrolytic makes subtle nodding motions at the pool, becoming increasingly unsubtle with each nod. Officer 2 looks at Officer 1, who is putting his notepad away. Officer 2 puts his notepad away.
OFFICER 2: Have a nice day, ma’am.
OFFICER 1: And, be sure to call us if you ever see a real crime.
The officers start to walk away.
ELECTROLYTIC: Hey! Where are you going? A crime is being committed here! What about my civil liberties? Oh, right – the civil liberties of hard-working Vesampuccerians don’t count in this – Gamliel, what are you doing?
One of Electrolytic’s children is dangling his legs off the side of the pool and talking to one of the children with the pool noodles. Electrolytic pulls him out of the pool by his arm.
ELECTROLYTIC: Come on, children! Let’s go somewhere we’re wanted – like church!
Electrolytic leads her two reluctant children away from the pool. The boy goes back to playing with his brother as the man continues to swim laps, oblivious to what just happened.
“Wow,” Pulippitzaner Prize winning columnist Eugene Robinsoncrusoe said of the incident. “What can you say other than, ‘Wow?’ And, I just said, ‘Wow,” so there’s nothing else I can – unless you can say, ‘In this day and age…’ Yeah. I think, ‘In this day and age’ works well in this context, too. So, ‘In this day and age,’ and, ‘Wow.’ I think that pretty much covers it.”
You know a subject is serious when it leaves a Pulippitzaner Prize winning columnist at a loss for words!