Cancel Toby Chalmers!: Chapters 1-3
Well, since my novelette Cancel Toby Chalmers! (copyright me, now) has been sitting around, completed, for nearly 16 months, I’ve decided to share it for free, until it’s later released as part of a Toby Chalmers collection.
Here are the first three chapters.
Chapter 1
Upon being introduced to new acquaintances, Joseph McCarthy Jr., more often than not, issued the disclaimer, “Don’t worry, my dad wasn’t that Joseph McCarthy. He was liberal to the bone, just like me. He even shook Nelson Mandela’s hand once.”
Askance glances this earned him; few recognized his references. Reluctantly meeting the unsettlingly fervent eyes within Joe’s poached egg countenance, people said, “Oh, uh, nice to meetcha,” and other utterances of that ilk.
Those unfortunate enough to remain within range of the man’s self-satisfied aura would then hear him ask, “So, what do you do?” Preempting their every reply, Joe’d strike his most heroic, fists-to-hips pose and intone, “Me, I’m Transylvoria’s Editor-in-Chief.”
“The horror literature fan magazine?” his current chinwag partner asked. “Didn’t one of your writers get busted for diddlin’ kids or some shit?”
“Oh, we fired that guy months ago. No one really liked him anyway.”
“Huh. Well, here’s your pizza. That’ll be twenty bucks even.”
Cool, the delivery guy respects me so much that he doesn’t want a tip, Joe assumed, sliding a Jackson portrait from his wallet. He tucked it into the collar of his visitor’s Italian flag-striped shirt, grabbed the pizza box from his hands, and slammed the door.
“Uncle Jojo’s got lunch!” he shouted toward the living room. “Extra sardines, just how we like it!”
He retrieved a pair of plates from the cupboard and topped each with three slices. His mouth watered; his stomach rumbled anticipatorily. To the glass-and-chrome dining table he carried the pizza, then a couple of sodas in Jordan Peele-faced mugs.
“Shadrach, get in here!” he shouted, seating himself. “Don’t be a cold fish! Don’t eat one, either.” He washed a chomp down with a hearty swig of Pepsi, as his eight-year-old nephew entered the kitchen.
“Nobody calls me by my full name, Uncle Jojo,” the boy said, climbing onto a stool.
“Nobody plus one,” Joe countered.
Prepubertal hypertrichosis had gifted the boy with a fringe of dark facial hair, just like Joe’s. In fact, the two looked so much alike, many folks assumed that Joe had impregnated his single mother sister to spawn the little bastard. Joe was pretty sure he’d pulled out that one time, though.
“Hey, what happened to your TRANSYLVORIA PRIDE shirt? That cool one I gave you, with the rainbow with fangs? You were wearin’ it this morning.”
Ignoring the question, Shadrach selected a pizza slice and conspicuously began to consume it.
“I’m waiting, young man.”
Shadrach shrugged and said, “It got dirty, so I changed into this one.”
“Dirty? You haven’t set a foot outdoors all weekend.”
“I spilled somethin’ on it.” Now Shadrach wouldn’t meet Joe’s gaze.
“Listen, little buddy, I can tell when you’re lying. And while your mama’s in rehab, I’m the one lookin’ after you. There’ll be no lies in this house. Not now, not ever. Again, I’m asking what happened to your TRANSYLVORIA PRIDE shirt?”
“I took it off.”
“But why ever would you do such a silly thing?”
“I don’t like it.”
“But I approved the design personally. Aren’t you proud of Transylvoria? Aren’t you proud of the 2SLGBTQI+ community? They’ve come so far over the years.”
“I’m a straight white boy, Uncle Jojo. When I wear that shirt, people think I wanna kiss dudes. Hal pinched my wiener at school. I didn’t like it.”
“Oh, Shadrach, Shadrach, Shadrach. First of all, what have I told you about calling yourself ‘white’? Caucasians should refer to themselves as ‘racially challenged’ until we’ve destroyed, then atoned for, white supremacy. And if showing solidarity with marginalized groups makes you a target for the ignorant, then be a proud target.”
“But Hal is gay. Why are you calling him ignorant?”
“That’s not…you’ve got a long way to go intellectually, I’m afraid.”
Chapter 2
For years, Toby Chalmers had been plagued by a recurrent dream scenario, wherein he wandered the grounds of an institution that incorporated architecture from every school he’d ever attended—pre-, elementary, middle, high, and even the community college he’d dropped out of. Seeking a math class whose location he’d forgotten, aware that an accumulation of absences made a failing grade likely, he encountered classmates from the past, some of whom were now dead in the real world.
Subsequent awakenings had seen his stomach dread-weighted. How will I explain an F to my parents? he’d wondered, until he reclaimed his place in the linear timestream and realized, Oh, that’s right, I live alone now and my school days are long behind me.
His latest slumber, however (described in slang that’ll likely be outdated by the time this book sees print), hit different. Finally, he found himself seated in the long-sought math class, surrounded by middle schoolers he’d once known, along with a few strangers. Four kids shared each table. Across from Toby was a goth chick he’d once had a crush on: a blonde who’d dressed in the same Victorian mourning dress every day and always smelled of mothballs. In the real world, he’d never spoken so much as a syllable to her. As a matter of fact, before alcoholism seized him in the ninth grade, he’d possessed scant social skills, had spent his free moments alone, reading or watching horror.
The blonde had never spoken to him either, but she did now, in his dream. “Don’t you have your homework?” she asked, tapping her finger upon a sheet of solved equations. Their two other tablemates, a snickering pair of future date rapists, had sheets of their own, ready for grading.
“Uh…I think so. Let me check.” Toby’s old, green JanSport backpack—with its logo torn off, just like he remembered—rested on the floor, beside his left foot. Within it, he discovered not the expected books and binders, but a churning mass of grey rodents. Aware of his scrutiny, they stared and hissed.
Unable to stifle his gasp, Toby inflamed the blonde’s curiosity. “What’s the matter?” she asked, peeking under the table. “Oh, wow, you’d better hide those before you get expelled.”
Their other two tablemates had themselves a look and began giggling. “What’re those for, Toby?” they uttered in unison. “Gonna stick ’em up your ass?”
Ignoring their jibes, Toby eye-swept the room, sliding his gaze athwart whiteboard and posters, students and negative space. His focus soon settled upon the leftward storage drawers, wherein slept calculators, pencils, protractors and worksheets.
The teacher had yet to arrive. Indeed, Toby had time to lug his backpack thereabouts and dump its contents into a drawer. Closing it, glad that no one but his tablemates had paid any attention to him, he then returned to his chair.
Next came a time jump. Many months must’ve passed, because the rats had multiplied exponentially, and now poured from all corners of the campus. Students stumbled about, shrieking, with rodents nibbling at their clothes and pawing at their hair, as Toby wandered the premises, untouched. Seeing terror-warped faces, he wondered if he should feel pity, or guilt, or anything at all, really. Instead, he tried to recall the location of his math classroom.
Another time jump restored normalcy to the institution. Unhurriedly, students and teachers made their way toward their day’s lessons. No longer did Toby recognize a single presence around him. Wondering if he’d ever graduate, if he’d ever make his parents proud, he approached a popular, dark-haired girl whose vulpine voluptuousness diminished those surrounding her.
“Excuse me,” Toby said, “but I seem to be lost here.”
“Well, that’s one way of putting it,” the girl answered, “considering you died all those years ago.”
“Died?”
“Sure did. You’re a legend around these parts now. The Rat King, they call you. All those rodents you set loose here…they had to shut this place down for months.”
Only then did Toby glance down at his body, to see that it was composed not of flesh, but of dozens of grey, squeaking rats, all connected at their tails. “Oh,” he just managed to utter, as his dream dissolved around him.
Within far less interesting flesh, he awakened. His lower back ached, as per usual. Rather than lurch right to the bathroom, as his biology demanded, he chose to remain yet recumbent, reflecting on his phantasmagoria while its edges remained solid in his mind.
Finally, my recurrent dream reached a terminus, he thought. Such a bizarre sense of closure. I’ll probably never again return to those surroundings, never again visit all of those lost-to-time faces. The dead and the dead-to-me, friends and enemies, now nonentities. Should I be melancholic or grateful?
After all of these years, a resolution to my math classroom dilemma. Is my subconscious trying to tell me something? Does it sense dark times impending? It’s been quite some time since my fiction landed me in any trouble. What madness now awaits me?
Chapter 3
When ejaculating his biography to all those within earshot, Joseph McCarthy Jr. would generally say something along the lines of, “After earning my journalism degree from Cameron University, I spent six years reviewing folk music for The Jingle-Jangle Gazette before they elevated me to editor. That lasted for a few years before I decided to fully embrace my love of horror literature. I’ve now been Editor-in-Chief at not one, but two magazines devoted to it.”
The veracity of that last sentence was a bit iffy, however. True, Joe had held that position at both Draculiterary and Transylvoria, but he left out the fact that Transylvoria was just Draculiterary retitled, with the numbering continued.
Over his head honcho tenure, Joe had fired the magazine’s every straight, cisgender white man and replaced them with minorities who didn’t mind being marketed as such in their bylines. “We’re changing our name to Transylvoria to reflect our new policy of inclusivity,” he’d trumpeted. “For far too long, racially challenged, cisgender, penis-having breeders have limited this magazine’s purview. Our new day starts right now, with this issue!” An adulatory echo chamber of social media randos then washed over him. He’d masturbated for hours, ogling himself in the mirror.
“Aside from Stephen King, no more cisgender, male, racially challenged, straight authors will be reviewed here,” he told each new hire. “They’re a link to a racist time in history that our bright, shiny future will pave over.”
Sure, the old guard had raised a fuss, claiming that they’d developed their writing skills over decades and deserved the same regard as the new jacks. All had been shamed on social media by Joe and his acolytes, until the old guard’s publishers had seen no choice but to take those authors’ books out of print and issue press releases announcing their commitment to inclusivity. Suicides had been celebrated in Transylvoria. “So long, massa!” was the slogan used for each incident.
When some of the now-shunned writers revealed that they truly were bigots, calling black authors “illiterate charity cases” and trans authors “even uglier than their purple prose,” those men were labeled the typical, non-Stephen King, cisgender, straight, racially challenged, male author by much of the media. “They want to enslave us all and force us to write Donald Trump fan fiction!” certain diverse, much reposted authors claimed.
Riding this revolutionary wave, denouncing his own race at every opportunity, Joseph McCarthy Jr. gained more and more influence on horror literature. An early proponent of content warnings, he demanded that every published author spoil their entire plot at the start of each story, so that nobody ever be triggered when reading it. “Entitled monsters,” he’d labeled those who’d failed to comply, just as long as they were cisgender, straight, racially challenged, and male. So, too, had his magazine and he assisted in the efforts to change H.P. Lovecraft’s surname to Hatecraft in his fiction’s every reprint. “Bigots don’t get to decide their legacies, we do!” he’d decreed.
Every cisgender, straight, racially challenged male who spoke out against Joe was labeled a Nazi by the man, then his followers. Even their most innocuous social media posts were twisted into hate speech. Top names in the industry denounced them, receiving glowing Transylvoria reviews in exchange.
I’ve gained so much power over horror lit, Joe often thought, when he had time to himself, so why doesn’t my own nephew bow to my wisdom?
* * *
Contemplating the nominees for Transylvoria’s upcoming Vampclusivity Awards—an online ceremony he’d host, as per usual—Joe strode into his living room. Framed signature sheets from books he would never read lined the walls. Otherwise, there wasn’t much to draw the eye, save for a large 4K television perched on a tobacco-shaded stand, facing an autumn-colored velour sofa that seemed half-alive.
Shadrach had never liked that sofa. “It smells funny,” he’d said, “and the cushions are covered with crusty stains. I think mice might be livin’ in it, too.” Rather than sit upon it as he watched TV, he chose to lay on his belly, on the carpet, propped up on his elbows, resting his chin on his palms, bending his neck in a way that looked excruciatingly painful to Joe. Such was the pose that Joe found him in on this day.
A young African American rhymed and cavorted across the TV screen, instructing a group of enthusiastic peers in the art of The Urkel Dance. Red suspenders kept his pants hefted nearly to his chest. Straps kept his glasses from sliding off of his head.
Infuriated, Joe snatched the remote control from his nephew and powered off the TV. “Family Matters!” he shouted. “You know how I feel about Steve Urkel!”
Pouting, Shadrach climbed to his feet and said, “Steve Urkel’s funny as heck, Uncle Jojo. My mom let me watch him all the time.”
Clenching his fists, Joe responded, “Your mama was a bad influence. That’s why she’s in rehab. I’ve told you time and time again that it’s never okay for a racially challenged person to laugh at a black one.”
“But he’s supposed to be laughed at. That’s why they made him funny.”
“We can only laugh with African Americans when they’re making fun of the racially challenged. We can never, never, never laugh at them. Minstrel shows were supposed to be funny, too, once. How would you feel if I put on blackface make-up right now and started performing ‘Jump Jim Crow’ for you?”
“Uh…what?”
“That’s it, young man, I’ve had enough of your ignorance! If your school isn’t gonna teach you about racial tolerance, then I will!”
Here are the first three chapters.
Chapter 1
Upon being introduced to new acquaintances, Joseph McCarthy Jr., more often than not, issued the disclaimer, “Don’t worry, my dad wasn’t that Joseph McCarthy. He was liberal to the bone, just like me. He even shook Nelson Mandela’s hand once.”
Askance glances this earned him; few recognized his references. Reluctantly meeting the unsettlingly fervent eyes within Joe’s poached egg countenance, people said, “Oh, uh, nice to meetcha,” and other utterances of that ilk.
Those unfortunate enough to remain within range of the man’s self-satisfied aura would then hear him ask, “So, what do you do?” Preempting their every reply, Joe’d strike his most heroic, fists-to-hips pose and intone, “Me, I’m Transylvoria’s Editor-in-Chief.”
“The horror literature fan magazine?” his current chinwag partner asked. “Didn’t one of your writers get busted for diddlin’ kids or some shit?”
“Oh, we fired that guy months ago. No one really liked him anyway.”
“Huh. Well, here’s your pizza. That’ll be twenty bucks even.”
Cool, the delivery guy respects me so much that he doesn’t want a tip, Joe assumed, sliding a Jackson portrait from his wallet. He tucked it into the collar of his visitor’s Italian flag-striped shirt, grabbed the pizza box from his hands, and slammed the door.
“Uncle Jojo’s got lunch!” he shouted toward the living room. “Extra sardines, just how we like it!”
He retrieved a pair of plates from the cupboard and topped each with three slices. His mouth watered; his stomach rumbled anticipatorily. To the glass-and-chrome dining table he carried the pizza, then a couple of sodas in Jordan Peele-faced mugs.
“Shadrach, get in here!” he shouted, seating himself. “Don’t be a cold fish! Don’t eat one, either.” He washed a chomp down with a hearty swig of Pepsi, as his eight-year-old nephew entered the kitchen.
“Nobody calls me by my full name, Uncle Jojo,” the boy said, climbing onto a stool.
“Nobody plus one,” Joe countered.
Prepubertal hypertrichosis had gifted the boy with a fringe of dark facial hair, just like Joe’s. In fact, the two looked so much alike, many folks assumed that Joe had impregnated his single mother sister to spawn the little bastard. Joe was pretty sure he’d pulled out that one time, though.
“Hey, what happened to your TRANSYLVORIA PRIDE shirt? That cool one I gave you, with the rainbow with fangs? You were wearin’ it this morning.”
Ignoring the question, Shadrach selected a pizza slice and conspicuously began to consume it.
“I’m waiting, young man.”
Shadrach shrugged and said, “It got dirty, so I changed into this one.”
“Dirty? You haven’t set a foot outdoors all weekend.”
“I spilled somethin’ on it.” Now Shadrach wouldn’t meet Joe’s gaze.
“Listen, little buddy, I can tell when you’re lying. And while your mama’s in rehab, I’m the one lookin’ after you. There’ll be no lies in this house. Not now, not ever. Again, I’m asking what happened to your TRANSYLVORIA PRIDE shirt?”
“I took it off.”
“But why ever would you do such a silly thing?”
“I don’t like it.”
“But I approved the design personally. Aren’t you proud of Transylvoria? Aren’t you proud of the 2SLGBTQI+ community? They’ve come so far over the years.”
“I’m a straight white boy, Uncle Jojo. When I wear that shirt, people think I wanna kiss dudes. Hal pinched my wiener at school. I didn’t like it.”
“Oh, Shadrach, Shadrach, Shadrach. First of all, what have I told you about calling yourself ‘white’? Caucasians should refer to themselves as ‘racially challenged’ until we’ve destroyed, then atoned for, white supremacy. And if showing solidarity with marginalized groups makes you a target for the ignorant, then be a proud target.”
“But Hal is gay. Why are you calling him ignorant?”
“That’s not…you’ve got a long way to go intellectually, I’m afraid.”
Chapter 2
For years, Toby Chalmers had been plagued by a recurrent dream scenario, wherein he wandered the grounds of an institution that incorporated architecture from every school he’d ever attended—pre-, elementary, middle, high, and even the community college he’d dropped out of. Seeking a math class whose location he’d forgotten, aware that an accumulation of absences made a failing grade likely, he encountered classmates from the past, some of whom were now dead in the real world.
Subsequent awakenings had seen his stomach dread-weighted. How will I explain an F to my parents? he’d wondered, until he reclaimed his place in the linear timestream and realized, Oh, that’s right, I live alone now and my school days are long behind me.
His latest slumber, however (described in slang that’ll likely be outdated by the time this book sees print), hit different. Finally, he found himself seated in the long-sought math class, surrounded by middle schoolers he’d once known, along with a few strangers. Four kids shared each table. Across from Toby was a goth chick he’d once had a crush on: a blonde who’d dressed in the same Victorian mourning dress every day and always smelled of mothballs. In the real world, he’d never spoken so much as a syllable to her. As a matter of fact, before alcoholism seized him in the ninth grade, he’d possessed scant social skills, had spent his free moments alone, reading or watching horror.
The blonde had never spoken to him either, but she did now, in his dream. “Don’t you have your homework?” she asked, tapping her finger upon a sheet of solved equations. Their two other tablemates, a snickering pair of future date rapists, had sheets of their own, ready for grading.
“Uh…I think so. Let me check.” Toby’s old, green JanSport backpack—with its logo torn off, just like he remembered—rested on the floor, beside his left foot. Within it, he discovered not the expected books and binders, but a churning mass of grey rodents. Aware of his scrutiny, they stared and hissed.
Unable to stifle his gasp, Toby inflamed the blonde’s curiosity. “What’s the matter?” she asked, peeking under the table. “Oh, wow, you’d better hide those before you get expelled.”
Their other two tablemates had themselves a look and began giggling. “What’re those for, Toby?” they uttered in unison. “Gonna stick ’em up your ass?”
Ignoring their jibes, Toby eye-swept the room, sliding his gaze athwart whiteboard and posters, students and negative space. His focus soon settled upon the leftward storage drawers, wherein slept calculators, pencils, protractors and worksheets.
The teacher had yet to arrive. Indeed, Toby had time to lug his backpack thereabouts and dump its contents into a drawer. Closing it, glad that no one but his tablemates had paid any attention to him, he then returned to his chair.
Next came a time jump. Many months must’ve passed, because the rats had multiplied exponentially, and now poured from all corners of the campus. Students stumbled about, shrieking, with rodents nibbling at their clothes and pawing at their hair, as Toby wandered the premises, untouched. Seeing terror-warped faces, he wondered if he should feel pity, or guilt, or anything at all, really. Instead, he tried to recall the location of his math classroom.
Another time jump restored normalcy to the institution. Unhurriedly, students and teachers made their way toward their day’s lessons. No longer did Toby recognize a single presence around him. Wondering if he’d ever graduate, if he’d ever make his parents proud, he approached a popular, dark-haired girl whose vulpine voluptuousness diminished those surrounding her.
“Excuse me,” Toby said, “but I seem to be lost here.”
“Well, that’s one way of putting it,” the girl answered, “considering you died all those years ago.”
“Died?”
“Sure did. You’re a legend around these parts now. The Rat King, they call you. All those rodents you set loose here…they had to shut this place down for months.”
Only then did Toby glance down at his body, to see that it was composed not of flesh, but of dozens of grey, squeaking rats, all connected at their tails. “Oh,” he just managed to utter, as his dream dissolved around him.
Within far less interesting flesh, he awakened. His lower back ached, as per usual. Rather than lurch right to the bathroom, as his biology demanded, he chose to remain yet recumbent, reflecting on his phantasmagoria while its edges remained solid in his mind.
Finally, my recurrent dream reached a terminus, he thought. Such a bizarre sense of closure. I’ll probably never again return to those surroundings, never again visit all of those lost-to-time faces. The dead and the dead-to-me, friends and enemies, now nonentities. Should I be melancholic or grateful?
After all of these years, a resolution to my math classroom dilemma. Is my subconscious trying to tell me something? Does it sense dark times impending? It’s been quite some time since my fiction landed me in any trouble. What madness now awaits me?
Chapter 3
When ejaculating his biography to all those within earshot, Joseph McCarthy Jr. would generally say something along the lines of, “After earning my journalism degree from Cameron University, I spent six years reviewing folk music for The Jingle-Jangle Gazette before they elevated me to editor. That lasted for a few years before I decided to fully embrace my love of horror literature. I’ve now been Editor-in-Chief at not one, but two magazines devoted to it.”
The veracity of that last sentence was a bit iffy, however. True, Joe had held that position at both Draculiterary and Transylvoria, but he left out the fact that Transylvoria was just Draculiterary retitled, with the numbering continued.
Over his head honcho tenure, Joe had fired the magazine’s every straight, cisgender white man and replaced them with minorities who didn’t mind being marketed as such in their bylines. “We’re changing our name to Transylvoria to reflect our new policy of inclusivity,” he’d trumpeted. “For far too long, racially challenged, cisgender, penis-having breeders have limited this magazine’s purview. Our new day starts right now, with this issue!” An adulatory echo chamber of social media randos then washed over him. He’d masturbated for hours, ogling himself in the mirror.
“Aside from Stephen King, no more cisgender, male, racially challenged, straight authors will be reviewed here,” he told each new hire. “They’re a link to a racist time in history that our bright, shiny future will pave over.”
Sure, the old guard had raised a fuss, claiming that they’d developed their writing skills over decades and deserved the same regard as the new jacks. All had been shamed on social media by Joe and his acolytes, until the old guard’s publishers had seen no choice but to take those authors’ books out of print and issue press releases announcing their commitment to inclusivity. Suicides had been celebrated in Transylvoria. “So long, massa!” was the slogan used for each incident.
When some of the now-shunned writers revealed that they truly were bigots, calling black authors “illiterate charity cases” and trans authors “even uglier than their purple prose,” those men were labeled the typical, non-Stephen King, cisgender, straight, racially challenged, male author by much of the media. “They want to enslave us all and force us to write Donald Trump fan fiction!” certain diverse, much reposted authors claimed.
Riding this revolutionary wave, denouncing his own race at every opportunity, Joseph McCarthy Jr. gained more and more influence on horror literature. An early proponent of content warnings, he demanded that every published author spoil their entire plot at the start of each story, so that nobody ever be triggered when reading it. “Entitled monsters,” he’d labeled those who’d failed to comply, just as long as they were cisgender, straight, racially challenged, and male. So, too, had his magazine and he assisted in the efforts to change H.P. Lovecraft’s surname to Hatecraft in his fiction’s every reprint. “Bigots don’t get to decide their legacies, we do!” he’d decreed.
Every cisgender, straight, racially challenged male who spoke out against Joe was labeled a Nazi by the man, then his followers. Even their most innocuous social media posts were twisted into hate speech. Top names in the industry denounced them, receiving glowing Transylvoria reviews in exchange.
I’ve gained so much power over horror lit, Joe often thought, when he had time to himself, so why doesn’t my own nephew bow to my wisdom?
* * *
Contemplating the nominees for Transylvoria’s upcoming Vampclusivity Awards—an online ceremony he’d host, as per usual—Joe strode into his living room. Framed signature sheets from books he would never read lined the walls. Otherwise, there wasn’t much to draw the eye, save for a large 4K television perched on a tobacco-shaded stand, facing an autumn-colored velour sofa that seemed half-alive.
Shadrach had never liked that sofa. “It smells funny,” he’d said, “and the cushions are covered with crusty stains. I think mice might be livin’ in it, too.” Rather than sit upon it as he watched TV, he chose to lay on his belly, on the carpet, propped up on his elbows, resting his chin on his palms, bending his neck in a way that looked excruciatingly painful to Joe. Such was the pose that Joe found him in on this day.
A young African American rhymed and cavorted across the TV screen, instructing a group of enthusiastic peers in the art of The Urkel Dance. Red suspenders kept his pants hefted nearly to his chest. Straps kept his glasses from sliding off of his head.
Infuriated, Joe snatched the remote control from his nephew and powered off the TV. “Family Matters!” he shouted. “You know how I feel about Steve Urkel!”
Pouting, Shadrach climbed to his feet and said, “Steve Urkel’s funny as heck, Uncle Jojo. My mom let me watch him all the time.”
Clenching his fists, Joe responded, “Your mama was a bad influence. That’s why she’s in rehab. I’ve told you time and time again that it’s never okay for a racially challenged person to laugh at a black one.”
“But he’s supposed to be laughed at. That’s why they made him funny.”
“We can only laugh with African Americans when they’re making fun of the racially challenged. We can never, never, never laugh at them. Minstrel shows were supposed to be funny, too, once. How would you feel if I put on blackface make-up right now and started performing ‘Jump Jim Crow’ for you?”
“Uh…what?”
“That’s it, young man, I’ve had enough of your ignorance! If your school isn’t gonna teach you about racial tolerance, then I will!”
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