Duh, okay Knuckles
Gord Reid, Toban Staff
There are some things that are just not supposed to happen: meteors crashing into the earth, virgin births, Anne Murray comebacks.
"What does this have to do with my column?" you ask?
Absolutely nothing.
Dear Knuckles,
If 7-11 is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, then why are there locks
on the doors?
-- Joel Ong, Science I
Joel, the critical problem with this is that you assume that locks are always meant to keep people out of a building. In the case of 7-11s (and other convenience stores), the locks are meant to keep people IN the store.
Although it doesn't happen too often, 7-11 employees are forced to lock some customers inside of the store to drum up business. Ever since 7-11s have ceased stocking nudie magazines, they have seen a noted drop on their "late-night, frothing-at-the-mouth, perverted freak" demographic. Thus, whenever one of these valued customers enters the store, an employee (usually a manager, you can't trust rookies with these important duties) hurries over and locks the doors. The freak isn't allowed to leave until he buys a substantial amount of Libby's Baked Beans.
Dear Knuckles,
If there isn't a lot of ice in Iceland, and not much greenery in Greenland,
what can I possibly expect to find in a ladies' room?
-- Kelly Lewis, Arts III
This question intrigued me very much. To properly answer it, I found myself forced to do a bit of investigative reporting. What I found was completely surprising.
Ladies' rooms do not resemble those of their cross-gender counterparts. Actually, there aren't any facilities in women's bathrooms at all -- let alone women. What you encounter upon entering a "powder room" is an interdimensional nexus linking several parallel universes.
Some women carefully plan and co-ordinate their trips to the biffy. You wonder why your girlfriend needs the company of 20-odd friends when she makes a trip to the bathroom? She and her companions have to rendezvous with their extradimensional counterparts and exchange secrets. At times, when their lives are mutually unsatisfactory, the two Donnas, Ginas or Margarets will switch places. This may explain the mood swings some women seemingly endure while in the bathroom...among other things.
Joel Ong: come on down to the Toban office to to pickup your prize.
This article first ran in The Manitoban, Vol. 83, No. 16 (November 29, 1995). By now, I was starting to hit my stride with the column. My writing was "finding its voice," and I was starting to attract a small readership.
Ah, the irony of my articles. I learned what I knew (at the time this column was written) by spending many late nights reading magazines at my local 7-Eleven (not 7-11s, as in the article) while keeping my fraternity brother Scott company while he worked. Some 18 months after this column was printed, I found myself wearing a green smock, cleaning Slurpee machines.
Kelly Lewis is one of my dearest friends, and stood up for me at my wedding in June 2002. After reading the article a second (and third) time, I realized that the premise of my answer could be turned into a screenplay. A man, after noticing radical mood swings in his female friends after they visit the restroom in his local coffee shop, decides to investigate. He follows his girlfriend through the nexus, landing in an alternate reality. There, he meets a much nicer version of his girlfriend (who happens to be dating a much crappier version of himself), and the two fall in love. They conspire to trap their respective S.O.'s in a parallel universe, return to our protagonist's reality, and destroy the nexus to ensure their permanent happiness. I could sell that. As for Gina, Donna and Margaret, I took the names from two fat chicks I had slept with the previous year and my grandmother's name. How's that for an ugly image.