A story in honor of Bob Barker's 90th birthday……….
“Come on down,”
they yell, “Come on down!” “Come on down.” I can’t walk five steps before someone
shouts, “come on down!” some total stranger who thinks he’s my best buddy (or I
am his) because he watches me on TV every morning while eating Cocoa Puffs
straight from the box. “Come on down!” “Come on down!” On sidewalks and
beaches. In malls and restaurants and movie theaters. Even my doctor while
checking my prostate and my dentist while scraping plaque off my teeth. I can’t
leave my house without a cataract of “come on downs!” thundering onto me like
water off Niagara Falls.
And they look at
me with these stupid smiles and winks like they’re oh so clever, as if nobody
has ever come up to me before and shouted “come on down!” As if I’m going to
hire them on the spot to design challenging new pricing games for my show
because they are so brilliantly creative. But because I have a favorable public
image to protect, I can only smile politely and say “good one,” as if this is
the first time in my long career as a TV game show host anyone has shouted
“come on down!” at me.
But 30 years of
“come on downs!” can take their toll. So when that lummox came up to me in the
men’s room and shouted in a voice that rang off the white tiled walls, “come on
down!” I couldn’t help myself anymore. I just hauled off and slugged the guy,
right square in the face.
I
have to admit it felt good to see his head snap to the will of my fist, to feel
the soft cartilage of his nose squish under my hard knuckles into a gooey mass.
I took note of the irony of a man who opposes pain and suffering on principle,
who refuses to give away fur coats, who uses his daily national forum to
advocate the spaying and neutering of pets, now taking pleasure inflicting pain
and suffering on another human being. It was a definite moral contradiction,
that was true. A conundrum. But I paid it no mind because it felt good to let
three decades of frustration drive my fist into the man’s face. And as I
watched him crumple to the floor and whimper pathetically while holding his
hands to his mangled, blood-drenched nose, I knew I had endured my final “come
on down!”
