My Point ... And I Do Have One (16 page)

Then I saw why people were staring at me. It wasn’t a dog, it was a coyote (who oddly enough was called Scrappy). I can only imagine what a disaster it would have been if I had gotten the coyote in my car. I was a little bit embarrassed, but I make mistakes like that often. I remember once, I met a guy while I was camping and we got along great. We were married two years before I realized he was a grizzly bear.

I dorrt know why I just thought of this, but, when I was a kid—younger than I am today—I had a gerbil. It was such a fun pet to have because it stayed in its little aquarium with wood shavings and a wheel and seemed to be quite content. I could go to school, go out to play as often as I wanted, and not feel guilty. I could take it out and play with it and it seemed to enjoy its little outside-the-aquarium excursions. It’s a good starter pet for a kid, because it doesn’t require a great deal of responsibility. You don’t have to take it out on walks; that exercise wheel was a great invention. No other pet gets a little built-in gym. I wonder if they make little Stairmasters for them as well. Gerbils are the most fit of all rodents, I’d have to say.

You sometimes hear that pets eventually begin to look like their owners. I don’t think that’s true. We have much more of a say in how we look than a pet does. It’s pretty sad if we get fashion tips from our dogs and cats. “What’s that you’ve done to your hair? I love it. Oh … shedding. I’ll try it.”

I do dote on my dogs. I care about my dogs so much that I give them some rights that I don’t necessarily advocate for all animals. For instance, Bootsie and Muffin have the right to jump up on my furniture. Also, they have the right to wake me up, clutching balls in their mouths, to see if I want to play. These are not rights I would give to a raccoon or a cougar. Though, if a cougar woke me up with a ball in its mouth, I’d probably play with him. You know, just to be safe. But the next night I would make sure all the doors were locked. I’m not crazy.

Also, I don’t believe that animals should have the right to vote, but I do allow Bootsie to help me with my absentee ballot. Muffin doesn’t care about politics.

It is amazing to me how perceptive pets are and how sensitive they are to their environment. Just look at how they behave before an earthquake. Before the Northridge quake, Bootsie and Muffin were very anxious. They knew it was going to happen. They were in the doorway, telling me to hurry up and join them. Bootsie had grabbed a few cans of food and Muffin had some extra batteries and a little bottle of brandy. They knew.

Though I have dogs now, for most of my life I’ve had cats as pets. I, personally (in some ways, but not in others), like cats more than dogs (with no offense meant to either Bootsie or Muffin). But have you ever had a cat in heat? They just change on you. Once she was my kitten, my adorable little pet. Then, she’s a hooker. I went into the bathroom one night, and she was putting on mascara, “
To
-night,
to
-night, won’t be just any … la la. Hm, hm.” She didn’t know the whole song. “Hm, hm.” She just knew some of the words. “Hm, hm.”

She was an indoor cat, but male cats knew she was in there somehow. They were just all around the house and somehow she was sneaking out because one morning I found a stamp on her paw. I wouldn’t have noticed, but I had just bought this new black light, and she passed right under it. “Hey! What is that?” I said.

And the male cats, they were sneaky the way they tried to get in to see her. One of them disguised himself as a UPS man. He had the truck, the packages, everything. I said, “I’m not falling for that.” The suit was just hanging off of him, his little name tag said “Fluffy.” “Oh, right. I will
not
sign here. Scoot!” He went off all mad in that big truck, stripping the gears. They don’t know how to drive! Cats.

He came back the next day as a cable repairman. Same outfit, little butt crack hanging out this time. So he fooled me. I let him in. He got me Nickelodeon for free, hooked that up somehow. So now I get to see all the old shows.

Smart cat—I’d like to see his test scores!

ask ellen

or
it might look like honey,
it might taste like honey,
and bless my corns,
it might even
be
honey

D
uring the early 1980s, before I became one of America’s most beloved comedians (at least that’s what Mom calls me; well, she either calls me that or Señorita Monkeyshines) I earned my keep by writing a column called ASK ELLEN OR DON’T ASK ELLEN, IT’S ENTIRELY UP TO YOU AND ABSOLUTELY NO SKIN OFF MY NOSE EITHER WAY, THOUGH IF YOU EVER EXPECT TO GET AN ANSWER THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS ASK … ELLEN THAT IS.” Most papers shortened this to ASK ELLEN since the entire title took up all my allotted space. This column, where people would ask me whatever was on their minds, ran in twenty newspapers, nineteen of which were in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.

I have received many letters asking me to reprint some of my favorite ASK ELLENs. I have received a whole lot more letters begging me
not
to reprint them. I, however, prefer to dwell on the positive (and get away with not writing something new). So without any further ado (or to be honest with just the cutest little teeny bit of ado) here are some of my favorites. Enjoy!

Dear Ellen,
Hi I am eight years old. The other day I went to my neighbor’s house and asked him if I could borrow his toupee for Show and Tell. He told me, “Go to Heck!” I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded bad. So I told him to Fuck Himself. What is Heck?

Signed, Curious.

Dear Curious,
Many people think that Heck is just a polite way of saying Hell. Those people are as wrong as wrong can be (and believe me, wrong can be pretty damn wrong). Heck is just to the left of Hell; it’s a suburb of Hell. Heck is a little bit nicer than Hell. For instance, Heck has Dairy Queens and you don’t have to pay as much for car insurance. People in Hell wish that they were in Heck.

But as nice as Heck might be (and in all honesty, it’s not that nice), it is nowhere as good as being in Heaven. Oddly enough, when somebody does something nice, nobody ever says, “Go to Heaven!” I guess that’s because a person would have to die before they went to Heaven. Saying “Go to Heaven” is like saying “Drop dead” but with a positive spin.

Dear Ellen,
How would I explain chewing gum to an alien? I’m just curious. There is no alien holding me hostage and making me answer stupid questions. I do not need HELP! Because, if there was an alien and he thought I was asking for HELP!, he might take me to his spacecraft, fly me to his planet, and put me in a zoo.

Signed, PLEASE HELP ME!!

Dear Please Help Me,
Good question. Chewing gum is an anomaly. I’m not exactly sure what anomaly means, but I’m sure that it could apply to chewing gum. A good rule of thumb is, whenever you don’t know the answer to a question, say that it’s an anomaly and then run away before anyone can ask you any more questions.

That being said, if I were to explain chewing gum to your hypothetical alien, I would say, “Well, Mr. or Ms. Alien, chewing gum is something you put in your mouth, but it’s not really food. I mean, it has a flavor and everything—at least for a few minutes, then even that goes away—but there are no nutrients in it. It’s not even candy. You can swallow candy, but it’s probably best that you don’t swallow gum. I guess humans buy it because they just love chewing; hence the saying, ‘To chew is human, to forgive divine.’ ”

I’m not actually sure if I got that saying 100 percent right. One thing I can tell you about gum, though, is that there is no way of getting it out of your mouth that isn’t disgusting. You either have to reach into your mouth with your fingers (and who knows where they’ve been; I suppose you probably do, unless you’ve fallen asleep and there’s no telling where fingers go when you’re sleeping) and yank out the tasteless, saliva-drenched morsel, or you have to spit it out. No matter how much you practice, you can never make spitting out gum look demure.

At some time in your life, you will step on gum that has been spit out on the street. The way to get it off your shoe is to put an ice cube on it. The gum will harden and you can scrape it off with a spatula (see last week’s column: 25
REASONS TO CARRY A SPATULA WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES)
.

Dear Ellen,
If you ran the Academy Awards, how would you change things?

Signed, Just felt like sending a letter

Dear Just …
If I ran the Academy Awards (and I’m not saying that I don’t, though I’m pretty sure that I don’t), I would make them a lot livelier. I would assume that everybody who was nominated equally deserved to win. So, when the nominations are announced, I’d have the Oscar go to the first person from each category to arrive at the location where the announcement came from (it would be a secret and change each year). You could win either by being fast or by preventing the other nominees from getting to the destination (by means of kidnapping, putting under anesthesia, etc). I think it would make for exciting television while still maintaining the dignity of the award.

Dear Ellen,
I read this saying the other day: “To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge,” Henry David Thoreau.

At first I found this very inspirational, then I realized I had no idea what it meant. What gives?

Signed, Am I an idiot or what?

Dear Am I an idiot or what?

You are not an idiot. Ipso facto you’re a what. What’s a what you might ask. But, you didn’t ask. So I won’t tell. Ha, ha.

If you’re worried that you don’t understand the saying, here is a simpler way of stating it. Knowing that you know that you know what you know is knowledge of that which you know. You know?

Hope that’s helpful.

Dear Ellen,
I have these friends … well, they’re not really friends, they’re people I work with. I call them friends because it makes my life seem less lonely than if I call them co-workers. Anyway, these very close
friends
of mine are always gossiping. Whenever somebody leaves the room, they begin talking about that person behind his or her back (his if it’s a male, hers if it’s a female).

I found this very amusing until I figured out some thing: Hey, when I leave the room, they must be gossiping about me! How can I prevent this from happening?

Signed, Person with lots of friends

Dear Person …
The only way you can prevent people from talking about you when you leave the room is to never leave the room. I would recommend this course of action highly. Don’t go to lunch. Don’t go to the bathroom—wear a catheter if necessary. And always make sure your back is to a wall. Never let anyone sneak up on you. If a phone rings, don’t answer it. Follow these simple rules and your workplace will be fun to work in again.