A man in Virginia recently got arrested for assaulting his roommate on the morning after a night of heavy drinking. Apparently, the guy looked into the mirror and was not happy to see a penis drawn on his face with magic marker.
Ah, the good old days. I still remember that Friday morning when I walked across campus to my dorm room and wondered why people were chuckling as I passed by. My face, I would learn later, was covered with happy little dongers. It looked just like the cover on a package of Goldfish Crackers.
But having a dickhead doesn’t mean you have to become one. Firstly, dick-face graffiti is a cherished American pastime. It’s an all-American thing that guys just do, like eating apple pie and playing baseball. Walking around with a penis drawn on your face is also a badge of liberty that proclaims “The banks can take all my money, but in America I can still have a dick on my face, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
But more importantly, anger always backfires. Always. If the guy in Virginia had kept his cool, only his roommates would have seen the graffiti. But now, thanks to a mug shot and the internet, everyone can. This, incidentally, is the real reason we have the internet — it’s a global anger-management tool.
I thought of this recently when I got a $47 ticket for failing to park by backing into a spot. Forty seven bucks? That’s what you used to pay for a hit-and-run.
So I was very irked. My mind flashed to scenarios where I tracked down one of those stupid little police golf carts and set it on fire. In another fantasy I tracked down a person ticketing a car and shouted “Bet people at cocktail parties just love to hear what you do for a living!”
But in the end I just sent in a check for $47. On the memo line I wrote “Thanks so much, have a great day!” Yes, that was immature, passive-aggressive, and snarky, but it was harmless. Maybe someone will get a chuckle from it.
Because in the end, getting a parking ticket is just like getting a penis drawn on your face. All you can do is laugh it off.
Down south a female sheriff would have pulled you over, stared and without cracking a smile say, “Son, you gotta penis on your face, bless your heart.”
It’s harder to draw a vagina than a penis, which is one reason we women don’t draw them on each other. That, and we’d probably get killed. Women don’t like having anything on their faces that they didn’t put there themselves.
You should indulge in those fantasies Tom. Setting the police cart on fire is a liberating experience!
Thanks Bill. I trust and value your advice.
Nothing cements male bonding like drawing penises on each other’s faces. Very funny!