I wish I were television people. I’d be cool and have great hair. When I had to shoot somebody with a pistol, I would get him with the first shot, instead of missing him with all six, the way I do now.
Television people are always driving around in cars. I am always driving around in cars, too, but this is because I can never find a parking space. If I were television people, I would always drive right into a waiting parking space and get out of the car and go into a building and get beaten up.
I would look terrific going into the building, all suntanned and beautifully tailored, instead of looking flea-bitten, stoop-shouldered and impressed, the way I look now going into buildings. If I were television people, I would look cool getting beaten up because I would know that whatever they did to me, my great hair would look terrific just as soon as the beating was over.
If I were television people, my panty hose would never be saggy because little girls would not hesitate to hurt my feelings by telling me if they were, and I would change to improved, unbaggy panty hose. Thanks to a family obsessively solicitous of my hygiene, I would never want for mouthwash or a shampoo to free me from the tyranny of dandruff.
As I drove to my waiting parking space, cool with my great hair, looking terrific in my suntan and perfect panty hose, I would have no fear of coming embarrassingly close to the people waiting to beat me up. Not with my mint-fresh breath and my great surfer’s dandruff-free shoulders.
If I were television people I would solve all murders in fifty minutes, which is only one-tenth the time it now takes me to solve the crossword puzzle.
All the women in my life would look like high school prom queens in training for a centerfold portrait in Playboy, but they would be nice, clean, wisecracking girls with magna cum laude diplomas from the police academy, and whenever somebody tried to beat them up I would shoot him with my pistol and not miss with the first bullet.
Afterward we would go to our favorite hangout and I would tell them, with a cool little laugh line, how I got there in time to do the shooting. We would not hang around long over our ice cream sodas, of course. No, siree, because I’d have to rush right back in time to tell everybody that I was going to tell them some news right after these messages.
Not being television people, I always blurt out my news without prefatory messages, and it goes over like a lead cloud. Not long ago, for example, I was being beaten up by two bionic people who had been irritated because I had missed hitting them with all six bullets in my pistol. I rushed right home, burst into the kitchen and said, “Guess who I just got beat up by!”
“Don’t tell us before the important messages!” screamed the children.
“Two bionic people!” I cried, ignoring their pleas. They were disgusted and looked it. If I were television people, I would have winsome, darling, irresistibly charming children who had never been disgusted with their good old dad in their sweet little lives, and never needed $1,500 worth of orthodontic braces or suffered from neuroses created by sinister schoolteachers either.
Television people have all the luck. They are always playing games and winning prizes. If I were television people, I would probably win an armchair that looked like a lot of beer kegs nailed together. And I would not tell the host that any sponsor who tried to palm off that chair as a prize would try to sell mediciney breath, either, the way I would now. Not on your life. If I were television people I would jump up and down in ecstasy, clapping my hands and squealing with joy, and then kiss the host right on top of his great hair.
Most of us, alas, cannot be television people. As F. Scott Fitzgerald remarked to Ernest Hemingway in their famous conversation, “Television people are different from you and me.”
“Yes,” said Hemingway, “their panty hose never sag.”
This enraged Fitzgerald. He challenged Hemingway to put on the gloves and they went three rounds without either one beating up the other. It was duller than Shakespeare on public television, and ever since then “Charlie’s Angels” has easily beaten both of them in the ratings.