Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down Read Online Free PDF Page B

example, one celebrity was Charles “Gator” Bennett, a former defensive lineperson with the Miami Dolphins. At one point “Gator” playfully put his arm, which is the size of Keanu Reeves, around my neck, thereby playfully shutting down my trachea for what at the time seemed like an eternity, but which in fact, as I look back on it, was probably only about 45 minutes. This is exactly why I hated gym class. I was afraid that “Gator” would decide to snap me with a towel, and I would never walk again.
    Not that I felt much safer on the golf course. For one thing, there were the killer ducks. The Doral Park course has a large colony of ducks that, after years of eating food dropped by golfers, have become large and aggressive. If you stop your golf cart, they surround you, dozens of them, pretty much demanding that you give them something to eat.
    “We can peck you to death,” is their unmistakable message, “and the authorities will do nothing to us, because we are ducks.”
    More than once I found myself stomping on the accelerator and rocketing away at top golf-cart speed (“mosey”), with a herd of irate ducks waddling after me, like a terrifying scene from a Steven Spielberg movie called
Jurassic Duck
.
    But the scariest phenomenon on the golf course, as I noted earlier, is the golfers. Basically, every time they hit the ball, they go through two distinct phases:
    PHASE ONE —They are a foursome of serious, middle-aged accountants, bankers, lawyers, doctors, etc., gathering around a golf ball, studying it intensely, as though it were an unexploded terrorist bomb. Then one of them takes a club, stands over the ball, waggles his butt around, hauls off and hits the ball, which leads to …
    PHASE TWO —All four golfers instantly transform into lunatics, gyrating their bodies and screaming contradictory instructions at the ball (“STAY UP!” “GET DOWN!” “STAY DOWN!” “GET UP!”). They sound like the deranged homeless people you sometimes see shouting on city streets, the difference being that, at least some of the time, somebody might be listening to the deranged homeless people, whereas the ball
never
listens to the golfers. It goes wherever it wants, laughing the laugh of the truly carefree.
    So what with the golfers and “Gator” and the gangsta ducks, it was a scary day out there on the “links.” But I’m pleased to report that we got through The Dave Barry Classic without any unnecessary deaths, although as of this morning there still were several tee shots that had not yet returned to Earth, so if you live within 250 miles of Miami, you are advised to cower under your bed until further notice.
    And if, God forbid, something bad should happen, you may rest assured that the Red Cross will be there for you.

Another Road Hog with Too Much Oink
    I f there’s one thing this nation needs, it’s bigger cars. That’s why I’m excited that Ford is coming out with a new mound o’ metal that will offer consumers even more total road-squatting mass than the current leader in the humongous-car category, the popular Chevrolet Suburban Subdivision—the first passenger automobile designed to be, right off the assembly line, visible from the Moon.
    I don’t know what the new Ford will be called. Probably something like the “Ford Untamed Wilderness Adventure.” In the TV commercials, it will be shown splashing through rivers, charging up rocky mountainsides, swinging on vines, diving off cliffs, racing through the surf, and fighting giant sharks hundreds of feet beneath the ocean surface—all the daredevil things that cars do in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial World, where nobody ever drives on an actual road. In fact, the interstate highways in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial World, having been abandoned by humans, are teeming with deer, squirrels, birds, and other wildlife species that have fled from the forest to avoid being run over by nature-seekers in multi-ton vehicles barreling through