By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Greatest Show on Earth
Can we choose not to choose limits? Our bodies die; start with that. I loved sports; they did not love me but pushed me to interesting levels before I hurt myself. The arts, music, science … all stretch capacities far and wide as we can pursue them.
Limit minds and spirits? I prefer “edit.” As days grow fewer, time and space more precious, I have less for crap..No Flannery, I’m not joining you at the “Yo Gabba Gabba” film fest.
Facts have substance that, framed by opinions, turn into sideshows. Bobo the Rubber Boy, the Four-Legged Girl from Texas and Tattooed Lady lined the path to the Big Top. There, lions, tigers, aerial artists and clowns appeared in rings ringed by kids like me gaping over popcorn boxes with cheeks smeared by cotton candy. That was the Main Event.
So it made sense a Warren man was arrested April 2 for assault with a deadly fish. Jobul Hussein came to the Desi Fruit Market fish counter at 7:13 p.m. and grew irate when the clerk said it had closed at 7 because of Ramadan.
Muslims mark the month Mohammed received revelations of the Quran by fasting and praying dawn to dusk while refraining from impure thoughts and actions. Well, some do.
This as opposed to Christians celebrating Christ’s rebirth at Easter by painting and hiding eggs for kids to collect in cheap baskets stuffed with plastic grass while we steal and eat ears off their chocolate bunnies.
Whacking a clerk with a fish seems an odd way for a Muslim to comport himself during Ramadan, but I also don’t understand how flying hijacked jets into skyscrapers killing thousands of people pleases Allah either. At least the Christian Crusades fulfilled what the Prince of Peace preached.
I was mulling this when in walked Bobo the Rubber Boy. “I’m here,” he said, “to remove the scales from your eyes, the veils from your heart and teach you what devoutness means.”
“That’s a stretch,” I said.
“That’s why I brought friends,” Bobo said. I expected the Four-Legged Girl and Tattooed Lady, but instead he summoned in Ottawa Impact, whose interest-group members have packed the county board, arm in arm with Jamestown Township book banners.
“We support free speech that agrees with ours,” they explained, “and ban others for our children’s sake.”
My children? I wondered, but the burning crosses they brandished suggested I forego free speech for now.
“It’s what fit parents do,” said Joe Moss, O.I. Chair and Lead Crusader.
So they stay kids like you? I thought. The mentally porous are always with us. Let’s see, preface any attack with praise.
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” I said. “Kids these days need guidance. Fit them in boxes that contain growth like bonsai trees. Fishers of men have furnished me hilsa I plan to slap Muslims with.”
“Great idea!” said Moss.
“No moss on you,” I went on. “You fired the county administrator, diversity and equity staff, health director and replaced the attorney with your business partner’s uncle’s law firm.”
“To the victors go the spoils. That’s what Jesus would do,” Moss said.
Scales indeed were falling. The hilsa had thawed and its sides flew in flakes like blizzards.
“God Father,” I told Moss. “Lead us to the Promised Land. Oops, that’s Moses. Here’s a dead fish.”
In walked the Son, Holy Ghost, Tattooed Lady and Four-Legged Girl from Texas. They knew each other and started playing Bartok string quartets. Crack! While the Animal Trainer snapped his whip, the Ottawa brain banners leapt through rings.
“I thought the BB’s were the clowns,” I told Bobo.
“Get bent,” he said.
“Don’t forget you’re rubber,” I said. “No need for reproducing.” Were I flexible like him, I might not have been hurt playing sports. Had I not constricted my mind, I might have been watching “You Gabba Gabba.” Not that it was different than this. Deep down, we are all the same.
“The same insane?” Hussen asked.
“I thought you were in the slammer,” I said.
“Courts wasted no time. This was not Guantanamo. Judge Judy locked me in the fish freezer.”
“Wrap heats your head?” I asked. From its folds pulled out a hilsa and whacked me. My fellow Crusaders came to the rescue. There was quite a hubbub.
“Can you keep it down?” asked the four-legged girl, who was on double cello.
“We are trying to play,” God, the lead violinist, said.