Yesterday I gave a speech to a large industry group. Afterward, people were gathering around me to ask for autographs, make small talk and whatnot. A big guy with a huge moist hand the size of an unidentified corpse – the sort you find along the Interstate while collecting cans – shook mine and asked, “Can I have one of your foils?”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“Your foils that you used in your talk. Can I have one?”
“Um, no. I use them for my talks.”
The transparencies (or foils) are used on a digital video system as part of the presentation package I use whenever I speak. I’m thinking that if I give him one, I have to replace it. That means finding the original comic file, finding where I keep the transparencies I use for the printer, printing off a new one, keeping my cat from licking the wet ink off it after it prints (big problem), and finding where it fits back in the presentation. And this is if I remember to do it, which is iffy at best.
I’m also worried about the twenty people observing the foil request. If they sense weakness, they’ll demand their own foils, or bits of my clothing, perhaps toiletries from my travel bag, and so forth. I didn’t want to start a precedent.
“Dave Barry gave me one of his,” argued the corpse-handed man.
“Well, you can’t have mine. I need them,” I said, feeling cheap.
The best part of the story is the face he made when it became clear I wasn’t going to change my mind. It looked like someone had taken his dog and shoved it up his grandmother’s ass, put them both on his driveway, borrowed his SUV and used his gas to run over them repeatedly in front of the kids.
He closed with, “It doesn’t hurt to ask,” although it obviously did.
Speaking of inappropriate things, Dilbert reader Paul Simer saw my blog entry about a porpoise impaling a lawyer and helpfully suggested the following:
“He just needed to start living a Porpoise Driven Life.”
I wish I had said it.