BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Rank, odoriferous honky tonks make people look more attractive. In musty bingo halls, people go nuts about the game. Smelly gentlemen's clubs turn guys into super studs.

Funny how a building doesn't seem "sick" when you're drunk. .

You'd think a bowling alley would be labeled a sick building, with its stench of rotting shoes and cigarette smoke so thick you can't read the team names on the bowling shirts. People ought to keel over from the toxic environment. They should get dizzy, queasy, short of breath. Instead the stink seems to enhance performance.

"That's the first time I've turned a cartwheel in twenty-five years," Roland Jones said, after his celebratory collision with Bert Rall at Longhorn Lanes.

A strike, a spare, not to mention a TURKEY!--all warrant the kind of unbridled exuberance that defies the laws of gravity, even if it means winding up in traction.

So why did workers get the vapors down at the pristine county tax office? The windows sparkle, the coffee's fresh, and the toilet bowls are the envy of every housewife in town.

Employees started dropping like flies a few weeks ago. It was opening day of the McVeigh trial and the Cobb county emergency response team was ready, having been warned by Sheriff Smiley to expect the worst.

It all began when Modine Johnson confessed to feeling funny. It could have been the new Hollywood Prune Diet she was on--we may never know. Anyway, before you could say "overnight relief," Opal Metcalf and Jaylynn Cox began to experience "a queer sensation." Soon workers down the hall in the city manager's office had to lie down.

The rescue squad was called. It took fifteen minutes to evacuate everybody because City Manager Joe Neill was in the file closet taking a nap. The sight of him prone and slack-jawed gave paramedics quite a scare.

Victims were subjected to a battery of tests down at the county hospital. That's when Opal Metcalf found out about her cholesterol. Buster Skinner got a chance to ask about his in-grown toenail. Jaylynn Cox regretted ignoring her mother's admonitions regarding underwear.

Experts from the EPA were called to the site to look for the source of the trouble. They found a mildewed sweat sock behind the water cooler, a leaking bottle of Jack Daniels in Joe Neill's desk drawer, and Deirdre Pointe's moth-eaten mink stole on the coat rack, any one of which could be the culprit.

The following day a couple of brave souls tried to return to the tainted building, but once again emergency crews had to be summoned. This time Nadine Pennyback's nose got stopped up and Herbert Fowler got a rash.

Last week officials boarded up the twelve year old building. A bond election is scheduled for later this year to raise revenue for new offices.

In the meantime, county employees are working out of the back room at Rusty's Barbecue. There's dollar beer at happy hour and free cole slaw with any sandwich. Modine Johnson has already gained five pounds.

Everybody's feeling a lot better.