RESTROOM SANITATION
By; Gerald A. Polley
The lady that works with me had a little trouble
with a customer while cleaning the restroom the other day, and it
reminded me of an incident that happened many, many years ago
when I worked with Yan and Hilga. Yeah, they were Swedish, but
the most wonderful people you ever met! Yan stood 6 ft. 3 and out
weighed me by 100 pounds. Hilga was 6 ft. and could pick me up
off the floor!
One afternoon I was coming out in the diningroom with some
glasses when a man came running out of the hallway to the
restrooms crying "Get me an ambulance! Get me an ambulance!
I've been poisoned! I've been poisoned! Oh my God! Oh my
God!" Then he ran out the door and down the street leaving
everyone in the diningroom totally bewildered. Hilga came walking
out of the men's room holding up a toilet brush in her right
hand.
"He said something to me a man doesn't say to a lady,"
she announced, "and I cleaned out his filthy mouth!"
"Not with that!" I asked. "Yes," Hilga
answered, "with THAT!"
Everyone in the diningroom burst into hilarious laughter. A
little while later we got a call from the police station. It
seems there was a rather irate man there making a complaint and
they wanted to find out if he was telling the truth.
"Yes," Yan told him, "and tell him never to come
back to my restaurant again! If he does next time he'll really
need an ambuance!"
"We'll lock him up a couple of days," the sergeant
promised, "to cool off, then recommend to him that he move
along, find some other town to visit." "
That would be good!" Yan answered, "That would be
good!"
The joke around town for a long time was that Yan and Hilga's
restrooms were clean in more ways than one, especially if Hilga
was in the vicinity! Hilga would never tell anyone what the guy
had said, so it left quite a bit to the imagination.
THE END
False Autobiography
The controversy over James Frey's book "A
Million Little Pieces" raises Gerald's anger. There is no
excuse for fabrication. Lies are lies. We keep a lot of things
out of our life stories because it is simply too hard to prove
them. Even some of the things that we do talk about there are no
records of them. Of course the general fact that Gerald was in
prison is public knowledge. But he doubts if there's any records
of the altercations he had with the gay deputy and gay inmates.
Even things that we do tell about, like the people going around
our neighborhood and telling our neighbors that we were
sacrificing and eating babies would be very hard to find any
proof of. Sometimes you have to let things be known that happened
even if it is difficult to prove them. But simply making things
up about your life to make an interesting story for publication
is not acceptable, and the public should not accept it.
Any publisher that finds someone presented a book to them as fact
when it is, in reality, fiction, should brand that work fiction.
For a publisher to say "Oh, this is all right. Everybody
lies in their autobiographies," is completely unacceptable.
Any publisher with the attitude that someone has a right to
commit fraud on the public should not be in the publishing
business. Sometimes it's appropriate not to tell about something
when you have no evidence of it. But it's never appropriate to
make things up. A lie is a lie.
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Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. ( John F. Kennedy )