Diphthongs

    There's a group of us likes to stop by Sal's Place on the way home from work or on the way home from home. She keeps a clean, orderly bar and doesn't let anyone get out of line. Here's what you could call a typical night.

    Pete and Earl came in together, talking, which means it was really Earl talkin' at Pete and Pete noddin' his head, his head that's way out-sized by his body, like a pea on a pumpkin, noddin' in time to his nearly constant "Yep. Oh, yeah. Well of course it is."

They headed for their spot, three seats in from the end of the bar nearest the restroom. Before they sat down, Earl turns around, waving his arms to the side, and said, like he was repeatin' something he saw on TV, "Behold my minons, Peter. Behold how they adore me."

    Most of us, we don't give Earl a this or a that; we don't take him for serious. He just says stuff he picks up whereabouts. Ever since he had a kid go to college, he thinks some of the smarts are wearin' off on him, too. But Ol' sal, like I said, she don't take it from no one.

    "Oh, come off it, Earl. We're all minions here. Ain't one of us isn't serving someone or something, one way or t'other."

    It seems Earl got his hands on some kind of word book and he read up on it real good and then thought he'd come in an' play perfessor to the rest of us. Earl's way of being humble was to talk to Sal in a voice loud enough for everybody to hear, which isn't that loud, really, because Sal's Place wasn't no bigger'n a good-sized bedroom.

    "Hey, Sal – you know what a dip-thong is?"

    She didn't look up at him, just kept wiping down the sink behind the bar. The place fell quiet, with everyone anticipatin what Sal would fire back.

    "Isn't that one'r them things your bimbo girlfriends wear?"

    Sal's the last person you want to try a new joke on—she can see right through 'em and get to the punch line before you can. I guess that's one of the things you pick up standin' behind a bar for twenty years or so, servin' up drinks and whatnot to the like of our kind. That remark got a good laugh—especially since it's rare to hear Sal go in for dirty or flirty talk. She knows about any guy in the place would like to buy her a beer, and we all know that'll never happen. She'd never compromise her business that way, for one.

    Anyway, Pete's pea head was pink from his laughin', but Earl ignored him and Sal. He had a big grin on his dumb ol' face from some other joke he hadn't told yet.

   "A dip-thong is a sound. A sound that starts one way and goes another. Like in 'boy': the 'o' starts like an 'o' then it goes to 'eee.'"

    Someone behind me, sitting by the door, hollered, "Oh, I get it: like 'dummm-eeee!'"

    Well, that really go the whoopin' started again, but still Earl kept on like a dog chasin' a skunk. And Pete kept up a laughin' along.

    "No, more like 'scai-erd' – as in, you're scared of knowledge."

    "All right, boys, what I know is this night started out in a way I liked—calm and mellow—and it's turnin' in a direction I don't much care to follow: dull and mean. Shape up, now."

    It was quiet for a little bit but then someone kicked up the jukebox and Earl and Pete hovered in their corner and the rest of us kept to ours, and that's pretty much a night at Sal's.