Huntziger Property Management

Often I wonder what it feels like to be the people singing jingles for advertising. How gut wrenching must it be to bend over into a microphone, imagining sultry people dancing all around on an MTV video, imagining picking up fat royalty checks, while you croon "coo oOL WHIP!" or "Dum Dums, ba doobie!" or especially "Huntziger, Property Management!" (If I hear that one again, I'm going to hunt down the singers and ask them who the fuck kidnapped their mothers to get them to sing that damned tune.)

Here's a story some of you have heard. It involves A.S., the same A.S. who later in life would use a plunger to remove part of my parents' upstairs ceiling, throw a rock through the bedroom window, roll over and brake the antenna off my first car, goad me into beginning a cow feces-flinging fight, etc.

4th grade: I'm staying at A.S.'s house. His mother is making hot dogs. So we're all around an NES, playing Dragon Warrior, and these foul smelling plates appear in front of us. Hot dogs with relish. Fucking relish (although I probably thought 'darn relish' instead). And onions. Dear sweet lord. And then mustard. His mother may as well have scooped up a dead cat outside and spooned the maggots into a hot dog bun.

I didn't want to be an ass, so I forced the godawful mess down. Man, I about lost it right onto the Power Pad. Later that night A.S. asked why I was looking ill, and I told him I didn't really like mustard or onions or relish.

Monday at school: he comes over during a break and says, "My mom says when someone stays at your house for dinner, you don't pleeeease them." And gives me this learn-your-lesson-young-man head shake. Man, that was irritating.