"I had a job myself once.  Of course I almost quit the first day but, after sleeping on it, I decided it wasn't so bad.  In fact, if the guy in the next office hadn't been such a loud snorer, I might still be there."

- Groucho Marx in "Animal Crackers II: The Wrath Of Harpo"

    Sometimes it seems as if every day is Christmas, and all Santa is giving me is questioning glances.
     At least he has learned how pointless it is to expect anything in return. 
     If only others who keep presenting me with actual questions would accept my gracious "Thank you" and get back to a reindeer-drawn sleigh as quickly....

     It's not that I don't appreciate the thought - it's just that I already have several closets full of questions of my own.  Some I've inherited from ancestors who seem never to have touched them (judging from their still being in the original quotation marks).  Some have been passed down to me by my sister after she outgrew them.  (Indeed, "Where can I get the best deal on a training bra?" remains one of my most cherished inquiries.)  Most, however, I've had to make for myself out of the spare bits of wonderment and curiosity I've discovered while poking around aimlessly in my head.  Although they're not very good questions (they tend to monotonously start off with the same old "What the fuck's the deal with..."), they're mine and I love 'em as only a solipsistic moron lost in his own world can.
     The questions others keep tossing my way simply clash with these something awful....

     The second most frequent question I keep getting tossed my way (right after the far-and-away no-need-to-even-mention-it-anymore all-time leader "Who in the hell do you think you are?") is "Don't you have a real job?"  This is closely followed in popularity by "Haven't you ever had a real job?" and "Why don't you get a real job?"  I can only conclude that there must have been quite a sale on these in the mail-order catalogs a few years ago and that many people jumped at the opportunity to buy in bulk.
     In what will probably be a vain attempt to increase my supply of tossed inedible fruitcakes and ill-fitting underwear, I'd like to kill these questions now once and for all with a few quick, well-phrased answers to the interrogatory. 

     Yes, as a matter of fact, I do have a real job - the job of being me.  It's quite the full-time position.  Indeed, I've been at it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for over 40 years now without a single vacation and I still feel as if I've only scratched the surface.  This is silly, I know, since I've actually drawn blood countless times as I've scratched, but that's the way I feel.  Maybe if I had received better training before my nine-month probationary period had ended, I'd feel different now.  Maybe if I had an assistant to do my nail filing for me.  Maybe if I could get a good night's sleep without having constantly to be on call for those dreams which need me to fall, suffer dog attack, or get stuck in molasses as the monster approaches.... 
     I've thought about taking night classes or sleeping with Hollywood casting directors to try to work my way up to being someone else, but who am I kidding?  It's a wonder I was ever hired by the mangy collection of cells constantly on my back now as it is.  Truth is, I can't even get a single Third World orphan to go in on a timeshare deal with me. 
     The best I can hope for is that the various aspects of my personality will one day stop quarreling long enough to unionize and demand a fifteen minute break for every decade I spend lugging this sorry carcass of mine back and forth between a pillow and a refrigerator....

     As for "Haven't you ever had a real job?"  Well, yes again.  Besides being me, I've also moonlighted as a migrant napper in my early years, and as a copier repairman after high school. 
     I was a better napper than a repairman, even though it was as a repairman that I had the black attaché case.  It was stuffed with oily rags and screwdrivers.  I carried it up and down the corridors of Toledo skyscrapers as I attempted to forget my fear of heights by sniffing toner.  I'd never been trained as a copier repairman, mind you, just as I've never been trained to be myself, but (as you may have suspected) lack of training is not a handicap for repairmen.  At least it wasn't in my case, as my real job seems not to have been to repair copiers but to comfort various high-strung secretaries when the paper jammed and small fires erupted.  The hardest part of the job was calming myself first.
     Well, except for the day I was called to the Lucas County Courthouse. 

     The Lucas County Courthouse back then had a single copier located in the middle of a huge old office where dozens of aged bureaucrats worked tirelessly at screwing up the lives of area residents.  The copier sat right in the middle of these drones.  I think it was made of stone and bronze bracelets looted from the Pyramids.  I know it was the only one I ever saw that still used papyrus. 
     Anyway, I was having a bit of trouble finding a strong enough spot on its side to hit with a hammer when the Head Drone came over to supervise.  I suspect he had been the editor of the Chicago Tribune when Ben Hecht wrote "The Front Page" back in the '20s. 
     "I think the problem is there," he told me, pointing smugly in the general direction of the copier.
     "Thanks," I said, suppressing the desire to search his sides for a spot strong enough to hit with a hammer. 
     To help that suppression along, I busied myself trying to fit the blade of a screwdriver into the head of an ancient Egyptian screw.  When that didn't work, I tried a pair of pliers. 
     They pliers slipped repeatedly with a loud "tink."
     "ROOKIE!" the Head Drone bellowed, vibrating his bifocals so that they cascaded over his bow tie and down his suspenders.  "Looks like we got ourselves a ROOKIE here!"
     Every drone in the place turned and looked, thereby qualifying my ego for permanent disability payments.
     Not that I ever saw a penny of that.  My ego, being no fool, took the payments in the form of a lump sum settlement and fled to Mexico.
     Bastard.  He's never even sent me a postcard to add to the collection I started after my  self-confidence fled to Puerto Rico.

     As for "Why don't you get a real job?"....
     The short answer is, "Because."
     The longer answer (which only unemployed people have time to read - haha!) is, "Because it's a fact:  Virtually all occupational deaths and injuries happen to people with jobs."
     According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, those deaths amounted to over 4800 deceased individuals in 1996 - most of whom would still be alive today if they'd only had the sense to remain safely unemployed.
     In that same year (the latest for which statistics are available - apparently the compilers read these facts and immediately quit their jobs), those injuries totaled some 3.9 million - not counting crippling papercuts or Christmas party wedgies.
     So, like - Who needs that?

     Not that staying at home being me all day and night is without its risks.
     The Statistical Abstract of the United States also clearly shows that 185,725 injuries were caused by household containers and packaging in 1995.
     Some 20,473 were caused by bags alone!
     Another 28,437 were inflicted by waste containers and trash baskets laying in wait.
     That innocent looking toilet?  It sent 43,687 people to the hospital in that same 12 month period!
     Even coins - coins! - resulted in 24,787 cases of measurable ouch.  Virtually nothing compared to the 50,937 injuries inflicted by jewelry, but still - if you can't trust me not to hurt myself with one thin dime, what can you trust me with?

     All of which is making me pretty nervous.  I'm not sure to what extent I'm taking my life into my hands just by typing this, but some 36,959 emergency room visits a year result from passive cathode ray tube viewing - and that's not counting hidden brain injuries!
     The chair I'm leaning back in happens to be part of a murderous crime family responsible for a staggering  276,745 emergency runs.
     It'd all be enough to send me to bed if that dastardly item hadn't added  395,623 assaults to its rap sheet in a single year!!
     "Quick!  Just lay down flat and hug the floor!"  you say?!  Is that really what you want me to do with a - a thing known to have hurt over a million people four years ago?!?!
     Who knows what it's capable of now given 48 months of added experience!!

     Ok....  Alright.... Time to steady my breathing... attach the safety line... put on my safety goggles... and go take a pill.

     If you never hear from me again, tell the cops to put out an all points bulletin for the evil medicine cabinet door that's had it in for me ever since I accidentally slammed its cousin too hard as a kid!