BUSSUHHTWAAAIN!

I love dumb jokes, especially the punny variety. So when my friends named their new pet schnauzer "Frieda", I naturally nicknamed the pooch "Frieda Be You and Me".

But, because I sometimes slur my words Midwestern-style, Dan thought I was saying "Freidabeeyewanmee". In other words, my inability to speak English clearly prevented me from getting a laugh. And that's a bit shameful for me.

Now, maybe you think I'm being too harsh on myself, but I'm just as hard on any ass who makes some dumb, inarticulate statement on television. Case in point - a couple years ago Dan and I took a spontaneous road trip to Texas. When we finally arrived at his sister's Austin home in the middle of the night, we were so wired beyond tired that we couldn't go straight to bed. So we found ourselves watching a late-night edition of Family Feud.

Family Feud is consistently the most retarded game show on TV, and this episode was no exception. The final category was "Name a Place Where It Isn't Okay to Floss Your Teeth". One contestant thought really hard, burst into a "Eureka!" grin, and shouted "The bathroom!" which is arguably the most acceptable venue for tooth flossing. Rather than explaining to this man that he had given the worst answer ever, the host (it was either J Peterman from Seinfeld or the "Tool Time" guy) took the coward's way out and said, "Bob says 'the public bathroom'... survey says?" And the contestant scored! That annoyed me.

The survey question was so inane that no one could figure out the last hidden answer, which turned out to be "Bus/Train". Really dumb, right? But everyone in the Family Feud audience read the answer in unison, in that singsong voice that implies "Geez, that's so obvious - how come we couldn't figure that one out?" And when they all said it together, it sounded like

"BUSSUHHTWAAAIN!!!"

So for the last two years, every time someone on the television or the radio uses a word inappropriately, or shoves a whole sentence into one breath, or doesn't bother to understand what they are saying, either Dan or I will yell "BUSSUHHTWAAAIN!!!"

But I totally BUSSUHHTWAAAINed that "Freida" joke, which makes me wonder - have I ever been someone's example of a dumbass?

And that is why I don't want to be on TV ever.