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Dalton
Roberts |
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I would never encourage anyone to sin. I agree with Mark Twain that a belief in the devil to explain the origin of evil is unnecessary because man is entirely capable of every possible shenanigan without any external temptation at all. What I encourage people to do is to misbehave with a touch of class and common sense where it will not be as noticeable and offensive. I wish to share some little tricks that will help you be impish without standing out like a red-headed stepchild at a Greek family reunion. These tricks will also enable you to enjoy your flings and foibles more by giving you conscious control over your behavior. You will thank me as you selectively yield to temptation while making very saintly choices the rest of the time. It keeps people confused as to whether you are a saint or a sinner. Keep that question ever dangling in the minds of your observers. Once you get completely pegged as a sinner, people will cross the street to avoid you. If you get rigidly classified as a saint, people will watch you like a hawk and you can’t get by with anything. Nobody lives harder than a saint and when they fall you can feel the reverberations for miles. Dietary sins are the most common. Things like eating white bread. Remember that old sanctimonious adage, “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead”? Only buy white bread when Tennessee tomatoes come in. If the bread kills you, so be it. Any man or woman who wouldn’t give their life for a good Tennessee tomato sandwich doesn’t deserve to live. You can safely buy nothing but white bread all summer long in Tennessee without people calling you a sinner. If you walk out of a supermarket with a loaf of dark bread during tomato season, everyone is going to think you’re from Boston. If you’ve got dark hair and a beard, they may even call Homeland Security to you. During no-tomato periods, I buy a loaf of wheat berry bread, then reward myself with a loaf of raisin bread and a big jar of apple butter, then a loaf of multi-grain, and then another loaf of raisin bread with honey butter. I alternate this pattern until the tomatoes come in. This plan enables you to look righteous every time you buy wheat berry or multi-grain. If some judgmental hypocrite sticks his/her nose in your business and peeks into you cart and comments on the raisin bread, tell them your doctor recommends it for the iron in the raisins. Speaking of those judgmental jerks who peek in your grocery basket and make their little snide remarks about your dietary sins, the one sin you must control in public is self-righteousness. Never moralize when you are misbehaving. We once had a preacher who said man could live above sin. He would have Sunday lunch with us. He had three full chins and the chicken grease would drip off all three chins while he droned on and on about the evils of smoking and drinking. Never preach against anything with chicken grease dripping off your chin. Though it may look classy on the surface, never go to wine and cheese tastings where would-be society belles and beaus stand around flicking their pinkies, acting like research scientists when all they are doing is getting on a socially acceptable buzz. When you are invited tell them you must go to a windmill greasing, watermelon cutting, bull-goat roping or a tractor pull. Even if the wine doesn’t get you at such an event, your pinky will hurt for a week. If I have not covered your special weakness and you are considering yielding soon, please call me and let me guide you through it with class and aplomb.
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