One of my favorite characters in fiction is Ramona Quimby. And one of my favorite things that Ramona did was to announce “I”m going to throw up!” when she wanted to get out of a crowd and go home. “Instantly everyone standing near her managed to move a few inches away.”* I’ve often thought of that when I’m stuck in a crowded situation: perhaps if I just announced that I was about to throw up, others would move away and give me the space my misanthropic, claustrophobic self needed. But I think conservatives have given me even more effective and up-to-date tools: I just have to wear a turban or invoke Sharia and I’ll have the place — any place — to myself.
I came up with this plan initially in response to an article I read about a passenger asking to be moved out of an airplane seat next to a guy in a turban. Put aside the fact that, if the turban-wearing dude is going to blow up the plane, being in a different row won’t really save your narrow-minded ass. This is true but secondary. Most important: I now have an excellent device for getting an airplane row to myself.
More recently, we have the excellent spectacle of conservatives calling for a boycott of Campbells products because they are manufacturing a line of halal soups. Now this is the type of political hypocrisy I just love: free-enterprise-loving conservatives boycotting a company for making a rational cost-benefit decision to manufacture a product that people will buy. But more than that, it suggests an excellent way to clear out the riff-raff. And, as GOP senate candidate Sharron Angle has demonstrated, if it’s useful, you can assert that Sharia law governs almost anywhere without actually being — as a technical matter — correct.
In that spirit, conservatives, please note the following:
- The Safeway will be selling only Halal foods this morning, and all other weekend mornings, as well as any time within two hours before and after Bronco games.
- The DMV will be implementing Sharia during the month of November when I have to renew my driver’s license.
- Our flights to and from San Francisco this week will be known as “turban days” on Frontier.
- I-25 will be governed by Sharia, but only between the hours of 7 and 9 a.m. (northbound) and 4 and 6 p.m. (southbound).
Let this system work for you! Don’t like the annoying fans in the opposing team’s stadium? Make it know that the stadium is halal! Find yourself in a slow-moving line? Put on your turban and get served immediately! And if the country ever drifts back toward rationality, you can always just announce that you’re going to throw up.
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* Note that I was able to recite these lines from memory but cannot remember the plot of the grown-up novel I read last week.
Thought Snax 
I put Ramona on my Kindle, and I am not only using the excuse that my youngest daughter could then listen to Ramona.
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About 15 or so years ago, I taught a socks knitting class at our local fiber arts school. Among the students was a person of the male persuasion, who was, in fact, an excellent knitter (but said he had never knitted socks when I suggested that he was really too advanced for this beginner class). As the day wore on and the students began chatting with one another, he told us that knitting on the subway was a great way to get two seats to yourself: no one wanted to sit next to the Black dude working with sharp knitting needles. He was, in fact, a physician and worked for the US Bureau of Prisons.
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Once, I was walking through Times Square at a time of shoulder-to-shoulder pedlock. All of a sudden, I came into a large gap in populace. Air filled my lungs, the tension left my shoulders, and I raised my chin and my eyes … to see a guy with a giant yellow snake wrapped around his neck and much of his body in the middle of the empty space. New Yorkers are used to the turban-wearing (see Drivers, Cab, if I may steal a rhetorical flourish from your brother) and to halal foods (and any other kind), but we still beat a hasty retreat when we see a giant snake (I imagine any color will do). Better yet, it won’t make the airport metal detector go off.
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Amy–you did it again. You made me actually smile rather than cringe at the idiocy of my species. I especially loved telling detail that Sharia will apply “northbound”–that is comedy gold right there.
I’d say you are wasting your time as a lawyer, except it seems that based on the litigation animation, you now have an annuity. Use it to fund your comedy career!
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This is hilarious. Pushing your way through crowds with “I’m gonna be sick” instead of “excuse me” really does work like a charm, by the way.
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