The most judgmental person in literature
February 8, 2024 by Thomas Wictor
Recently a reviewer called me one of the most judgmental people she’d ever come across in literature. That really pissed me off.
I want to be known as the most judgmental person in literature.
So here’s part of a letter I wrote a lifetime ago. If this doesn’t cement my reputation for viciously expressing opinions, nothing will.
Two really fun days
It wasn’t all sweetness and light, though. Two other branches of the same family were also visiting, and they dropped off their kids at my friends’ house while they went to see the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus perform. Two of the children—six-year-old “Bagpipe” and three-year-old “Concept,” are animals in human form. But not cute animals. They’re undisciplined, savage, sly, dangerous chimps, like the ones Jane Goodall documented ripping each other to shreds. For an entire day, I helped babysit five small children, three of whom I would gladly have mummified in masking tape.
When W.C. Fields was asked if he liked children, he said, “Yes, if they’re properly cooked.” I finally understood where he was coming from. We went to a restaurant, and Bagpipe and Concept were so out of control that we disrupted the entire establishment. At one point, three-year-old Concept was allowed to climb onto the table, where he jumped up and down, his fists clenched and knees going all the way to his ears.
“ La la la la la la la! ” he screamed at the top of his lungs, the dishes and cutlery bouncing and crashing along in time with his leaps. The table was a giant, complicated percussion instrument: Plah-FLING-glash! Plah-FLING-glash! Plah-FLING-glash!
His parents just watched. It was like a scene from a David Lynch movie, this redheaded midget with utterly blank eyes, using the table like a trampoline, howling as if possessed while every single person in the restaurant pretended that nothing out of the ordinary was going on. The jumping, screaming, and metallic-glassy-ceramic clattering were the only sounds in the whole place. Beyond the edges of our booth was the silence of a vacuum.
“I think you should get down, Concept,” his mother finally crooned.
He sprayed us with raindrop-sized globs of saliva as he stuck out his tongue and made farting noises. Then he started high-kicking, swinging his fists in terrifying haymakers, and calling everyone at the table “poo-poo heads.”
When his parents placidly gazed at each other, I discreetly yanked the tablecloth. Concept fell backwards into Bagpipe. Their heads clonked together, and they both began crying, a stereo banshee wail that echoed off the walls as huge tears spilled down their evil little cheeks. That lasted for about half an hour. As we left, five-year-old “Skootie” spied an octogenarian who’d paid one too many visits to the plastic surgeon.
“Tom,” she shouted, pointing. “Look at that lady’s face. It’s just like a mask !“
On Sunday, we went to the park—my friends, their two daughters, the two ape-boys, and a little girl named…Paris. Yup. Paris. She has a twenty-five-year-old model’s head mounted on a six-year-old’s pudgy body, quite a grotesque sight, like some horrendously perverted transplantation experiment. A haughty, perfectly chiseled adult’s face with brilliant blue eyes, framed by sun-streaked blonde hair, and then she opens her mouth, and you see peglike baby teeth.
She was a complete brat, shrieking and spraying everyone with saliva as she made her own farting noises, racing around like a maniac, hitting, kicking, and throwing things. I kept getting adrenaline rushes because she looked so deformed, like the human-headed dog in the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
As the children slammed into each other and the parents did nothing, a man sat down on a bench behind us and proceeded to have a heart attack. I noticed him clutching his chest, grimacing, and panting.
“I’m fine,” he said, his face the color of cement. “I just had a quadruple bypass a couple months ago.”
One of the parents came out of her trance and ran off to call the paramedics anyway, whose hooting ambulance came accompanied by a screaming hook-and-ladder truck from the fire department. The kids were all terrified. Nobody explained anything to them, so I tried to calm them down by telling them the man was sick but would be okay.
Right before the paramedics arrived, the man got up and threw away a pack of cigarettes hidden in his sock. As they hauled him off on a stretcher, he thanked us. If we hadn’t called 911, he would’ve croaked right there in front of the kids.
I drove home tonight, and on the dining room table was a note from my brother telling me that a detective in the Santa Monica P.D. had called to tell me that I’d probably have to testify in the upcoming trial of a sex offender I helped catch several months ago. I’d noticed him sticking this backpack below women’s butts on the Third Street Promenade and realized he had a camera in there to film their underwear, so I flagged down a bicycle cop (a very gung-ho woman) who immediately called thirty of her colleagues.
They nailed this pasty, chunky, jowly, ugly, balding, pathetic loser, and I gave a statement to the B.O.-afflicted sergeant, who made me act out what the creep did. In other words I had to put my hand under the sergeant’s ass! It was pretty awful. But I never heard back from them after giving my name and address. Now it appears that I have to give testimony. Jesus. He was filming little girls too, like ten or eleven.
I’d only noticed him because he’d shoved me out of the way to film one particular hottie in a miniskirt who’d been standing in front of me at a crosswalk. I felt like grabbing him and twisting off his head but did my civic duty instead.
Well, that’s been my week. Listen, I really don’t want small children because of the responsibility, so can I adopt you? I mean, no offense to your dad. I’m sure he does the best he can. It’s just that I’d love to experience the adult stage of my theoretical kid right away. The childhood part is just too frightening and exhausting. I mean, if you promised to not make farting noises and to never jump up and down on tables in restaurants and to not kick or hit or throw things, I’d be up for it.
Let me know.
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