Sometimes, Farmer H Treats Me Like A Mushroom

He feeds me bull and keeps me in the dark!

 

You know I have an affinity for country music. Mostly the older stuff, like 60s/70s/80s. Of course I had a lyric handy for my title for this topic. Travis Tritt's "Lord Have Mercy On the Working Man." Yeah, I changed a couple words. But it means the same thing.

Anyhoo... when I have to do certain chores for myself, I take shortcuts. Like if I need a box of Puffs With Lotion down in my dark basement lair, or another roll of toilet paper in the NASCAR bathroom, I drop it over the stair railing. The goal is to land it on Genius's old desk, which sits at the side of the stairs. 

 

It doesn't help that my old computer and keyboard are on top of that desk. Sometimes I get lucky, and the Puffs box will hit the keyboard, which absorbs much of the momentum as the keys compress and spring back. Ain't physics wonderful? Then the Puffs sit there and wait for me to come down and move them to my lair. If they miss the keyboard, they'll still wait for me. But with a caved-in corner, and perhaps on the floor.

The toilet paper is a bit trickier. If it doesn't land on its side, flattening out a bit as it absorbs its own momentum (again, ain't physics wonderful?), it will bounce off and ROLL across the dusty press-down tile, and wait for me to find it.

Last week, I dropped a roll of toilet paper. It did not land on its side. It also did not land on the keyboard or desk surface, but hit something else laying on the end of the desk. I was not sure what it was. I have The Pony carry things down for me. I knew I had a ream of paper sitting there, but I could still see it, and that's not where the TP landed. Something had been there, and now was gone. As best as I could remember, there had been a box of Roasted Garlic Triscuits sitting there in a Devil's Playground bag. I kept meaning to take them into my office, but since I still had an open box there, I hadn't.

The Pony trotted down the steps with my lunch tray.

"Oh, look out. Somewhere you'll find a roll of toilet paper that I dropped down there earlier. I didn't see where it went. And I think it knocked off that box of Triscuits."

The Pony returned.

"Um. I found the toilet paper and put it in the bathroom. That was NOT a box of Triscuits that it knocked off. It was a box of LIGHT BULBS!"

"Did they break?"

"I didn't check. I just set them back up there. I'm guessing maybe their packaging is made so they don't break?"

I remembered several months ago, when there was a light out, and I told Farmer H. He muttered something about fixing it. Then didn't. Then I asked again, and he admitted that he didn't have any light bulbs.

"There are BOXES of them on the shelf in your workshop by the furnace!"

"Them's just boxes. Empty."

Huh. Imagine that. But within a week, Farmer H had replaced my burned out light. So I guess he'd laid the box of light bulbs there on the desk, where he'd gotten one out to put in the light fixture. So I informed him of the toilet paper incident.

"Oh, I knocked your box of light bulbs off the desk when I dropped my toilet paper down the steps. I hope it didn't break them."

"I didn't put no light bulbs on the desk."

"Yes you did, when you finally put in a new one. You said you didn't have any, but then you somehow DID, because you put one it. I figured you must have bought some at Lowe's or Family Center."

"I didn't put no light bulbs on the desk. Maybe The Pony did."

"Um. No, Dad. You know I don't buy light bulbs."

EXACTLY! It's not as if The Pony would be putting in a light, which would first require figuring out what kind, driving to town, finding it in a store, buying it, and bringing it back home to where it was needed. Not without a legal decree, some cajoling, a bribe, and an ultimatum.

Farmer H has progressed from gaslighting to mushroom-farming. I refuse to be his mushroom!