The way you got all these rights is the Founding Fathers fought and died for them, then wrote them down on the Constitution, a very old piece of paper that looks like sick puppies have lived on it, which is stored in Washington, D.C., where you have the right to view it during normal viewing hours. The most important part of the Constitution, rightswise, appears in Article IX, Section II, Row 27, which states:
If any citizen of the United States shall ever at any time for any reason have any kind of bad thing happen to him or her, then this is probably the result of Negligence on the part of a large corporation with a lot of insurance. If you get our drift.
What the Constitution is trying to get across to you here is that the way you protect your rights, in America, is by suing the tar out of everybody. This is an especially good time to sue, because today’s juries hand out giant cash awards as if they were complimentary breath mints.
So you definitely want to get in on this. Let’s say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as Mental Anguish. You would sue:
–The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions section that says you should never never never never ever stick your hand in the toaster, the statement: “Not even if your wedding ring falls in there.” —The store where you bought the toaster, for selling it to an obvious cretin like yourself. —The Union Carbide Corporation, which is not directly responsible in this case, but which is feeling so guilty that it would probably send you a large cash settlement anyway.
Of course you need the help of a professional lawyer. Experts agree the best way to select a lawyer is to watch VHF television, where more and more of your top legal talents are advertising:
“Hi. I’m Preston A. Mantis, President of Consumers Retail Law Outlet. As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney. Do you have a car or a truck? Do you ever walk around? If so, you probably have the makings Of an excellent legal case. Although of course every case is different, I would definitely say that, based on my experience and training, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t come out of this thing with at least a cabin cruiser. Remember, at the Preston A. Mantis Consumers Retail Law Outlet, our motto is: “It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds Of Pain.”
Another right you have, as an American, is the right to Speedy justice. For an example of how Speedy justice works, we turn now to an anecdote told to me by a friend who once worked as a clerk for a judge in a medium-sized city. my friend swears this is true. It happened to an elderly recent immigrant who was hauled before the judge one day. The thing to bear in mind is, this man was not actually guilty of anything. He had simply gotten lost and confused, and he spoke very little English, and he was wandering around, so the police had picked him up just so he’d have a warm place to sleep while they straightened everything out.
Unfortunately, this judge, who got his job less on the basis of being knowledgeable in matters of law than on the basis of attending the most picnics, somehow got the wrong folder in front of him, the folder of a person who had done something semiserious, so he gave the accused man a stern speech, then sentenced him to six months in jail. When this was explained to the man, he burst into tears. He was thinking, no doubt, that if he had only known they had such severe penalties for being elderly and lost in America, he would never have immigrated here in the first place.
Finally, about an hour later, the police figured out what happened, and after they stopped rolling around the floor and wetting their pants, they told the judge, and he sent them to fetch the prisoner back from jail. By now, of course, the prisoner had no idea what they’re going to do to him. Shoot him, maybe. He was terrified. So put yourself in the judge’s position. Here you have a completely innocent man in front of you, whom you have scared half to death and had carted off to jail because you made a stupid mistake. What is the only conceivable thing you can do? Apologize, right?
This just shows you have no legal training. What this judge did was give a speech. “America,” it began. just the one word, very dramatically spoken. My friend, who saw all this happen, still cannot recount this speech without falling most of the way out of his chair. The gist of it was that this is a Great Country, and since this was a First Offense, he, the judge, had had a Change of Heart, and had decided to give the accused a Second Chance. Well. Once they explained this to the prisoner, that he was not going to jail after all, that he was to be shown all this mercy, he burst into tears again, and rushed up and tried to kiss the judge’s hand. Who could blame him? This was probably the greatest thing that had ever happened to him. What a great country! What speedy justice! I bet he still tells his grandchildren about it. I bet they tell him he should have sued.
The Deadly Wind
What prospective buyers said, when they looked at our house, was: “Huh! This is ... interesting.” They always said this. They never said: “What a nice house!” Or: “We’ll take this house! Here’s a suitcase filled with money!!” No, they said our house is interesting. What they meant was: “Who installed this paneling? Vandals?”
Sometimes, to cheer us up, they also said: “Well it certainly has a lot of possibilities!” Meaning: “These people have lived here for 10 years and they never put up any curtains.”
We were trying to sell our house. We had elected to move voluntarily to Miami. We wanted our child to benefit from the experience of growing up in a community that is constantly being enriched by a diverse and ever-changing infusion of tropical diseases. Also they have roaches down there you could play polo with.
The first thing we did, when we decided to move, was we rented a dumpster and threw away the majority of our furniture. You think I am kidding, but this is only because you never saw our furniture. It was much too pathetic to give to The Poor. The Poor would have taken one look at it and returned, laughing, to their street grates.
What we did give to The Poor was all my college textbooks, which I had gone through, in college, using a yellow felt marker to highlight the good parts. You college graduates out there know what I’m talking about. You go back, years later, when college is just a vague semicomical memory, and read something you chose to highlight, and it’s always a statement like: “Structuralized functionalism represents both a continuance of, and a departure from, functionalistic structuralism.” And you realize that at one time you actually had large sectors of your brain devoted to this type of knowledge. Lord only knows what The Poor will use it for. Fuel, probably.
One book we did keep is called Survive the Deadly Wind. I don’t know where we got it, but it’s about hurricanes, and so we thought it might contain useful information about life in Miami. “Any large pieces of aluminum left in a yard are a definite hazard,” it states. “Each piece has a potential for decapitation. Hurled on the tide of a 150-mile-an-hour wind, it can slice its way to, and through, bone.” Ha ha! Our New Home!