REJECTED HUMOR PIECE

My Rascality

By J.C. Duffy

I’ve always been a rascal, and my rascality knows no bounds. I’m cheeky and I’m sassy. I’m frisky and I’m saucy, and I’m not averse to shenanigans and outright deviltry. I’m a scalawag and a knave, a rapscallion and a scamp, and I don’t mind who knows it, because I’m bold and irreverent by nature. I’m an impish scoundrel and a mischievous varlet. I like my humor bawdy and I like my roguery robust.

I grew up watching old Little Rascals shorts on TV and they made a deep impression on me. Do you remember the time Alfalfa impregnated his teacher, Miss Crabtree? Neither do I, because it never happened, but that sure would have been rascally.

I carry a picture of Falstaff in my wallet and I dress like Joe Besser as “Stinky” on the old Abbott and Costello TV show (he looked like a 40-year old Little Lord Fauntleroy). My look is enhanced by freckles, a missing front tooth, and a cowlick.

I climb fences at ball games and I sneak under tents when the circus comes to town. I’m a stage-door Johnny and a good-time Charlie.

I’m brazen and I’m cavalier. I’m naughty and I’m puckish, with a Rabelaisian insouciance. I’m a prankster who’s not afraid of a little braggadocio to get me out of a tight spot, or into one.

When I come to your house, remember to lock the liquor cabinets and chastity belts, and remember to childproof the TV remote, because my viewing habits are ribald, as you might expect.

I’m congenitally rakish with an appetite for nature’s bounty and a penchant for unnatural acts. Caution to the wind, convention be damned, full steam ahead, and damn the torpedoes. I throw customs out the window and I bend norms into pretzels, metaphorically. And I mix my metaphors with abandon.

I spend money like a drunken sailor, which is also the way I drink. I make the other people at Happy Hour seem sad by comparison, and bartenders laugh when I do bar tricks involving Slim Jims and hard-boiled eggs. I invented the Wet T-shirt Contest and I have papers from the U.S. Copyright Office to prove it. When I perform on Karaoke Night women throw panties and hotel room keys at me as if I were Tom Jones.

I get come-hither looks from women and go-yonder looks from men. Maiden aunts wag their fingers at me on a regular basis. Women who invite me home to meet their parents run the risk of their parents getting a divorce.

I make kissing sounds into telephones and I’ve revived winking as a flirtation technique. I wear neckties with hand-painted nudes on them, my tattoos are X-rated, and I have a foul mouth. My eyebrows work independently, while I work only intermittently. I have a prominent gold tooth and a handlebar mustache which I twirl while flaring my nostrils, also independently of each other. I undress women with my eyes and my eyes are so dexterous that I can unhook a bra strap using only one eye.

I’ve been slandered and libeled, I’ve been reviled and disparaged, smeared and defamed. Yet I bounce back with a rascally grin on my cherubic gob. I’ve been arrested and indicted but never convicted, and to those who say that dating a juror is jury tampering, I say you are a stick in the mud.

I’m no choir boy and I’m no angel. I’m not a Boy Scout and I’m not a Cub Scout. I’m not a member of the Rotary Club or the Chamber of Commerce. I eschew respectability, propriety, and honor.

I’m a caution, a hellion, and an overgrown urchin.

In short, my rascality is well-documented in the public record, and I stand by that record. 

I hope you will seriously consider me for all your rascal needs. Thank you in advance.