Athena, Holding Your Hair, Whispering In Your Ear

For me a few are enough, one is enough, none is enough. This is not for the many, but for you. We are audience enough for each other.

My grandfather once handed me a Mcdonalds bag, and I was excited because I like hamburgers and I saw a yellow quarter pounder wrapper in the bag. However, inside the wrapper was a block of wood, with a quarter glued into a recess cut into it. Poised above the quarter was a wooden hammer glued to a clothespin, which was also glued to the block. When you pressed down on the back of the clothespin, the hammer rose, and when you let go, the spring on the clothespin slammed the hammer onto the quarter.

I stared at it in confusion until I got the joke, and then I stared at it in disbelief. My grandfather was a carpenter, but given the quality of the fit and finish (he had to cut the hole for the quarter, square and seal the block, finish the wood, make the hammer, glue felt to the bottom, etc.) it still probably took him a couple of hours to make something so spectacularly ridiculous.

I still have it, and I think of him everytime I see it. I can only aspire to have that level of commitment to really terrible jokes, and I can only hope one day in the distant future my daughter is fondly neuro-blerging about that time she said she needed more RAM and I filled her room with goats, or something.