One of my favorite radio talk-show hosts is Michael Lebron, better known as Lionel. Simply put, the guy makes me laugh beyond belief while at the same time educating as few others can or do. When I first moved to Lansing, MI a few years ago, I listened to Lionel on WJIM-am from 11pm to 1am. When WJIM's format changed completely to wacko right-wing moonbats (Shiels, Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin), I listened to Lionel online. When I learned that I would need to head to Washington D.C. for a few days of continuing education classes and that would mean traveling from Lansing to Detroit to Washington D.C., I thought the travel and layover time would be a perfect time to read Lionel's new book, Everyone's Crazy Except You And Me...And I'm Not So Sure About You.
I read the 254-pages almost non-stop, and I highly recommend reading it. Broken into dozens of short chapters, Lionel doesn't fail to entertain, educate, and provoke thought. One of my favorite chapters, I Must Have Penis, is especially entertaining. Here it is in its entirety...
The Spanish accent in unique. Certain words and word forms prove difficult. Words that begin with the letter s followed by a consonant are pronounced with an e before the word. Stop becomes estop. (No estoppel jokes, please.) Sleep is pronounced esleep. Words that end in ts are pronounced minus the t. Nuts becomes nuss.
Got it?
Now here's what happened.
A friend of mine was getting married. I flew to the wedding with his mother, a lovely lady whose native language is Spanish with a Cuban accent and dialect. A lovely woman.
We flew to Minneapolis and then took a puddle jumper to the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin. The plane, as you can imagine, was quite small. Since this was pre-9/11, the pilots had the cockpit door open. It was very tight, very small--and sound carried. Boy, did it carry.
My friend's mother was seated a few rows behind me. She was famished. She wondered aloud if there would be any snacks on this short flight.
To her relief a young man came down the aisle carrying what looked like a large garbage bag filled with apples, crackers, and the like. Hardly first-class treatment.
My friend's mother is far from loud but she could be easily heard by everyone in this tiny plane, what with the rumble and roar of the engine that necessitated volume.
When this young man, a pimply, Nordic-looking, carrot-topped Minnesotan-type kid whose name could easily be Rusty or Skippy, came by our seats, my friend's mother asked a simple question in a very pronounced and easily heard Cuban accent.
Did I tell you that she's a lovely woman?
OK, here goes:
The dutiful Rusty stood there with his garbage bag filled with whatever and with a smile on his face asked if there was anything he could get the lovely woman. Now, mind you, it's loud but you can hear everything anyone was saying. What would the lady like? Her wish was Rusty's command.
Making sure the young lad could hear her request, she inquired, "Do you have penis?"
Silence.
"I haven't had penis since Minneapolis."
More silence.
Rusty was red-faced.
Even the pilots could hear this and looked back at the woman demanding a phallus in seat 5A.
A penis?
Quite a tall order for a commuter carrier. Rusty was dumb-founded. Though he had exactly inventoried all of the snack bag's contents, he was pretty darn sure he was out of that item. It must have crossed his mind that this might have been an advance of sorts. This was hardly the scene for the mile high club.
I had to do something.
I stood and announced, "Peanuts. She wants peanuts."
Exhalation was almost unanimous. A look of relief was seen on Rusty's face.
She had her peanuts and I have this story.
It's true. Swear to God.
