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“Given your prior trainin’ as a nurse, dear Momolicious, your advice ‘bout eatin’ foods with tons o’ lovely antioxidants is most persuasive,” said Joel Hazard to his housemate.
Mo’reen Robinson watched Joel carefully pick out pieces of multicolored lettuce leaves from the salad she had placed before him. The light green ones went straight into his mouth, while the dark green leaves and the ones in “the red family” we subjected to differing degrees of closer scrutiny.
“Hmm. This bugger’s almost purple!” said Joel. “I never saw that kind o’ lettuce when I was weedin’ other folks’ gardens when I was a kid. Maybe it’s a new variety. Or maybe it’s a species that Connecticutters like that Rhode Islanders don’t—or didn’t—or didn’t in my part o’ southern Rhode Island, back when I was a kid.”
“Didn’t your mama ever tell you, ‘Don’t play with your food, fool’?”
“She didn’t have to. We never had food this interestin’, babes. ‘Sides, she had more important stuff to get twisted about. If my daddy’d seen this sort o’ mess o’ greens on his table, for sure he’d’a’ given it a good, hard look-at before lettin’ it cross his lips an’ gums. But my interest is totally scientifical.”
Mo’reen took a deep breath, mentally bracing herself. Joel’s mood and body language suggested he was about to make a detour into his personal Twilight Zone, with her salad as his blast-off pad. Joel continued to study the purple leaf silently, however.
“And?” she finally said at the end of forty seconds.
“Pardon?” said Joel with a faint smile, as if she had interrupted his train of thought. The little twinkle in his eyes gave away to her the fact that he had been deliberately creating suspense before he made some more or less elaborate joke.
“And what conclusions have you reached about that leaf of red lettuce?”
“Well, they would be tentative, o’ course, based on entirely insufficient data, o’ course, but provisionalistically speaking, I would suspect, subject to further researchification, that this came from some Caribbean island—perhaps the very one on which the person lived who was the basis for Robinson Crusoe—Al—Al—uhhh—Alexander—Alexander Selkirk—or whatever.”
Joel bent forward and pretended to study the other purple lettuce leaves in his bowl for fifteen more seconds, prodding them and turning them over with his knife. He began humming Duke Ellington’s tune “Deep Purple” softly to himself, but in a kind of Dixieland arrangement of his own devising.
“You might be right,” said Mo’reen, deciding to play a different game. She began eating some of the yams he had prepared as his contribution to the dinner.
“Yummy yams, buddy,” she said. “Nice idea to add olive oil to them instead of butter or fake butter.”
Without looking up, Joel said with a frown, “Thank you, yummy Mo. I’m almost certain now that this species of lettuce mutatified from good ol’ ‘normal’ lettuce somewhere in the Caribbean—on one of those islands used by pirates in the sixteen- and seventeen-hundreds to abandon whatever captives and enemies they chose not to murder by faster means.”
He looked over at Mo’reen, who was making an elaborate theatrical production of cutting three long asparagus stalks into bite-sized pieces.
“Yes,” said Joel, “absolutely, and I would even go so far as to assertify there can be little question that the pirates of the Caribbean were directly responsible for this species.”
Mo’reen decided to show mercy. If not now, she thought, then at some future meal, perhaps months or years from now.
“And the reason is?” she said, looking at him with her sweetest smile.
“And the reason is—men who’d maroon a person on a little island would be just the kind of folks to show even less mercy to lettuce. They’d not settle for just marooning it. They’d purple it if they could. And this leaf is undoubtedly—or almost undoubtedly—the result!”
“Omigod—did you hurt yourself, Joel—giving birth to that? Perhaps we should get you to the E.R. down the road for a checkup. At the least, you could have a double hernia from the strain you just put yourself through.”
“Uh—thank you—thank you verra much. Unh-huh-hunh,” he said with a little nod of his head. “Oh, by the way, I’ve been wonderin’ for the past five minutes—what’s the ultimate antioxidant? I mean, these dark ‘greens’ are great an’ all, I’m sure, but what’s the ultimate antioxidant? Any ideas?”
Mo’reen bit her lips and stared down at her plate for a long moment.
“I really don’t know. I suppose we could look it up on the Internet later.”
“Mm—we could do that, but I was just thinkin’ that it might be a kamikaze pilot. That would be, maybe, the ultimate individual anti-occident—though Iwo Jima or Midway or maybe Pearl Harbor would be the ultimate group anti-occident. Or is that too stupid an answer?”
Mo’reen covered her mouth as she laughed against her will.
“I didn’t see that one coming, buddy,” she said. “It was a lot better than your labored crap about marooning and purple-ing lettuce in the Caribbean.”
“Unh-huh-hunh—I’m all shook up. Just stealin’ back from the pale fella that stole from the brothers. Mm—you’re right: it is the better of the two. Care for another little slice o’ my secret recipe meaty-loaf, or would you like a bowl of sorbet now?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling at catching him with his own either-or joke.
4
By 10:30 the next morning, Mo’reen Robinson, office manager to Dean Francis X. Perkins at Witherspoon Academy, had e-mailed three friends her version of Joel’s pun: “Q. What’s the most effective antioxidant? A. As far as GM and Ford are concerned, it’s Toyota.” At 11:15, Doctor Harold French, the Registrar, and Captain Carl Wallace, the newest Assistant Academic Dean, overheard her saying essentially the same thing over the phone to the secretary of the Department of Chemistry, who had called to ask what forms a professor should fill out to report a case of student plagiarism.
Ninety minutes later, Captain Wallace told it to Dean Perkins during lunch, changing Toyota to Subaru, and two hours later, during a staff meeting, Doctor French told it to his staff, changing the product to transistors.
“Oh,” said Doctor French, “I hope nobody here takes that as any kind of racial slur about Asians—I hope you aren’t going to claim that a joke told to me upstairs in the Dean’s office is any kind of racism, Miss Hen. We certainly don’t need any further talks with the E.E.O. Counselors about humor being discriminatory.”
“My name is pronounced Han, Doctor French—and I am not Japanese or Korean or Chinese. I am as American as anyone at this table. In some ways, maybe I am more so. Please refer me—refer to me as Linda or as Miss Han.”
Harold smiled to himself, wondering if it would be too dangerous to begin calling her “Rinda” at this meeting. Noticing that glances were being exchanged by three other members of his team, he decided against it.
3
At 2:15, when Doctor Brian Weinstein, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, came into the main office for his mail, Mrs. Doris Wilson called out loudly to him.
“Here’s that form you need to fill out to report that cheater, Brian! Mo Robinson, that black gal in the Dean’s office, put me straight about it!”
Wincing at the volume, Doctor Weinstein shouted back, “Thanks, Doris! I’ll get it in to you for Doctor Martin’s endorsement by four o’clock today! Then I’ll hand-carry it over to the Dean’s office first thing tomorrow! We don’t want to trust the campus mail with something sensitive like this!”
“Oh—Brian! Here’s a new joke! What’s the best antioxidant in the world?!”
“Sounds more like a riddle! The real answer isn’t important, Doris, so I give up! I’m not good at guessing! So tell me—what is the best antioxidant in the world?!”
“It’s Toyota!” shouted Mrs. Wilson.
Jesus H. Christ! thought Doctor Weinstein, trying to smile politely. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Probably means she didn’t even hear half the setup of the joke or half the punchline—again.
“Good one, Doris! I’ll have to remember that! Thanks for getting me the form!”
2
At 3:17, Dean Perkins shared the same joke with the nine department heads, the Director of the Academy Library, and two of his three assistants, including Captain Wallace. In his version, the best anti-occident was “that Oscar-winning film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon—whatever—the one that stole Oscars from American films, you know.”
The people seated around his oval conference table competed for the award of Most Amused Administrator, and, in Dean Perkins’ mind, it was a seven-way tie for first.
Lieutenant Bradley Olsen, one of Dean Perkins’ assistants, came in last in this contest, because of his serious facial expression. Lieutenant Olsen was recalling several of the sexually explicit Hentai pictures he had collected from the Internet during his lunch hour and was considering how he might adapt the pun to that topic when next he e-mailed his former college roommate.
1
At 4:32 p.m., Joel Hazard put the final touches on his paint job—the huge heating-and-cooling unit in the office of Doctor Lindsey Ames, Professor of English. He taped five “Wet Paint” signs nearby. Then, gathering up his drop cloth, his brush, and his small can of ivory semi-gloss paint, he opened the door to the corridor.
He pulled small earphones from his ears and patted the CD player in his left overall pocket to be sure it was deep down and secure. For the past fifty minutes, he had enjoyed highlights from Madama Butterfly.
Ninety-four khaki-clad students were ambling down the hallway toward the stairwell to his right. Joel paused to let them “play through.” The circular brass insigniae on their collars were totally blank, informing him that they all were freshmen. Every white student walked past as if Joel were invisible, but he sensed that the three black students, with whom he made brief eye contact, were instantly breaking that contact because of some embarrassment, even hostility, they felt at his presence there.
You don’t know me, thought Joel, momentarily experiencing an inner twinge, yet keeping an expression of calm, polite interest on his face as they passed by.
I’ve got to get a CD copy of The Mikado at the ‘Cademy Library before I go home with Mo, he thought. I’m sure both Butterfly and it have occidental versions of the Japanese national anthem in ‘em—‘t would be nice to listen to ‘em both, back to back.
The crowd was thinning out quickly. It would have been easy for Joel to step out of Doctor Ames’s office and head for the stairs before the last five stragglers arrived.
“Son of a bitch!” said one of the approaching students. “Wanna know what’s the worst ****in’ antioxidant in this ****in’ school? It’s Doc Horner’s ****in’ Jap quiz! That’s what my senior tutor tol’ me during my review hour with her today, and god-****in’-damn it if ol’ Doc ****in’ Horner didn’t just ****in’ prove it this ****in’ class! I don’t think I’ll ever pass ****in’ Calc 1! How the **** are you doin’ in it?”
“****, man, I’m scrapin’ by. What the ****’s a Jap quiz any-****in’-how? I mean, man, what the ****’s it mean to say ‘Jap’ quiz?”
“It’s just one more ****in’ expression at this ****in’ school, man. ‘S just one o’ them Witherspoon ‘traditions.’ Who the **** knows?!”
After they all passed by, Joel Hazard whispered to himself, “I do—man. ‘S a surprise quiz—by analogy with Pearl-Day-of-Infamy-Harbor—man—y’ ignorant honkey. An’ where’d you get the other stuff—‘bout antioxidants—man—which y’ don’t understand either—man?”
