Drunken Monkeys With a Sledge Hammer -or- How My Family Coped with Minor Adversity and Avenged John Wayne at The Same Time

Our Family Crest

One of my all-time favorite statistics is that one out of four people has physically assaulted their computer. When I first read that, it made me laugh out loud.

When another member of my family (who shall remain nameless but who once set up shop in my uterus) attacked our printer I, very self-righteously, told him to stop acting like a savage.

Now that I have done it, I realize fully that assaulting an inanimate object is a reasonable response in certain situations and offer heartfelt apologies to savages everywhere. 

I was trying to assemble a photo book on Snapfish and while, I'm pretty certain, the problem lay with the web site, that didn't matter after the photos I'd painstakingly downloaded, one by one, kept disappearing.

Suddenly, my hand shot out-- totally on it's own--and slammed the keyboard, sending it off it's cord onto the floor.

My husband, whose only comment was, "If you broke it, you're going to have to move out," managed to put everything together again except now we have to prop it up on one side with a wadded up wrapper from a Klondike Bar.

I did not expect this harsh response from a man who once master-minded the sadistic murder of a troublesome VCR.

The victim had been chewing up tapes and behaving badly for years. Finally, after "The Quiet Man" with John Wayne was eaten--on St. Patrick's Day, no less--Seth snapped.

Pulling it from the wall, he dragged it out to the driveway where each member of the family was given a pep talk and a turn with a sledge hammer.

We didn't need the pep talk--my family is always ready to use a sledge hammer (for years, I actually kept one in the back of my car for no other reason than it made me feel happy) and besides, this damn thing deserved to be punished for eating John Wayne. 

We were just wailing away at it, laughing our heads off, when the family who'd previously owned the house we live in, drove by on a visit from their new home in the midwest (where there must be a higher percentage of sane people, judging by the look on their faces).They slowed down, literally gaping at what was happening in their former driveway: four maniacs bashing something small into splinters with a sledge hammer and howling like drunken monkeys. It may have been a first for them.

Looking up and seeing shocked faces hanging out of the window of a minivan, I asked who they were as I walked toward them, sledgehammer still in hand. As they were rolling up the windows and stepping on the gas, they yelled that they used to live in our house and had been hoping to come in to take a look. "Sure!" I shouted at the back of their car as it sped down the street, "Come on in!"

They had come by once years before, right after we'd moved in and I'd let them in. They were very put out that we'd painted over the dark green walls in the living room and were not shy to say so. Since the sledgehammer incident, we haven't heard from them again which is a shame because I would love to hear what they think of the wallpaper in the kitchen

The moral of this story is very simple: If you want to keep people from bothering you, approach them with a sledge hammer.

Disclaimer: The menacing use of sledge hammers has not been endorsed by either John Wayne's heirs or his estate.