copyright © 1999 Dan Brooks

Dan Brooks

9/3/99

A Story About Girls

Lights down. Lights up.

Lemme tell you a story, Todd, and this time I promise it’ll be about girls. It seems I was in the war at the time – I don’t know exactly which war, and on a related note I don’t know exactly what time; but I imagine when I get one figured out I’ll know the other. Anyway, I was in France with the war, France being the fashionable place to hold wars both at that time and at every other time since and before then. Hey, I’ve got a French joke for you. Why did the chicken cross the road. [Prompt response from the audience until they say, "Why?" more or less in unison. Throw hands into air.]

I surrender!

Limehouse Chappie told me that joke. That was his nickname, you see. We called him Chappie on account of his real name was Charlie, and we added "Limehouse" to it because none of us really liked Charlie and we figured if he had a longer nickname we’d be less tempted to yell "Look out, Limehouse Chappie!" if he were about to be hit by a mortar or something. That’s one of those things about the service they don’t tell you: the shorter your nickname is, the more the boys in your unit like you. If they call you Ox, they love you. If they call you Pretty Boy Ted or Lieutenant or something, look out.

Did you know they gave us all free lighters in the war? It’s true. If you ever want a whole bunch of free merchandise, get yourself involved in a war of some sort. We got free lighters, free boots, free guns, free food, free money when we got out, free intravenous injections in our private parts after we went to France – you name it, it was free. That’s how we used to pass the time when we were waiting for the Germans to start another war– trying to name things that the army would give us for free. We used to shout ideas out to our quartermaster. "Will they give us free rooster saddles?" And he’d yell back something like "Shut up, you jokesters!" or "Aggggh! I’ve been shot in the neck!" He was a real square. That was what we used to called people who got shot in the neck.

So we were in France at this bar called La Barre. We had engaged the owner in a wager wherein we bet him that we could liberate his country and in exchange he wouldn’t kick us out of the bar when we hit on his daughter or lit things on fire with our free Zippos and whatnot. And it was about this time that I met Charlie Chaplin. Yes, Charlie Chaplin. He was in France making his famous anti-Hitler parody film, "The Great Dictator." He was the first person to really see the humor in Adolf Hitler. The army used to show that film to the people they liberated from the camps, so they could be reassured that people weren’t taking Hitler too seriously. Those camp guys loved it, too, let me tell you. They’d see it and they’d say, "Ha ha ha ha ha. When was this made?" Then they’d try to eat our soap. They were gypsies, you know.

So one day when we were all in France lighting each other on fire and trying to think up longer nicknames for Limehouse Chappie, because by that time he had stolen Ox’s girlfriend back in Normandy and also he ate all of our supplies in Calais, and we were already calling him Lefty Longshakes Swift Dodger Limehouse Chappie Is a Fucker. And Charlie Chaplin came in, but none of us recognized him because we were all lost in thought regarding nicknames and such. So Charlie Chaplin had a drink, paid the bartender and left. But after he left I said to one of the boys in the platoon, "Hey, wasn’t that Charlie Chaplin?" And he said, "That wasn’t Charlie Chaplin. That was that Teutonic scoundrel, Adolf Hitler." So we all chased Charlie Chaplin out into the street and beat him to within an inch of his life, at which point we all took turns lighting him on fire with our free Zippos. Basically, one of us would hold a lighter to him until we had a good flame going, and then the rest of us would urinate all over him until the fire was out – and then the next guy would have a turn. Except for Lefty Longshanks Dodger Limehouse Chappie Is a Fucker, who wasn’t allowed. This continued for about an hour until our commanding officer showed up, at which point he reprimanded us sharply for setting fire to a popular American film star and not Adolf Hitler as we had originally intended. So that’s how I got kicked out of the army.

Remember how I told you this story was about girls? I lied. [Laugh hysterically.] I got you there, Todd.

Blackout.

"A Story About Girls" IS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AND MAY NOT BE DOWNLOADED, TRANSMITTED, PRINTED OR PERFORMED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR

"A Story About Girls" debuted September 3, 1999.

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