How to ask me for a comic book back issue:
Correct: “Do you have Kilt-Man And His Mighty Caber of Justice #1?”
Incorrect: “Well, back when I was a boy out in Kellerman County, we didn’t have a whole lot to do, really. Sure, there were always chores on the farm…we didn’t get an allowance as such, but occasionally we’d get a dime or two here and there from Ma if Pa wasn’t looking, and we’d go over to the local general store and buy us a bag of candy, and maybe a soda pop if it was a hot day, and it usually was…Kellerman County could get pretty hot, I’ll tell you that for free. Anyway, we’d buy our candy, and maybe a soda pop, and we’d go sit behind the widow Reifsnyder’s barn and eat our candy and look at the ducks out on the pond. Sometimes I’d sit with my buddy Lorenz and he and I would just shoot the breeze for hours and hours. Lorenz’ father was a good man…ran a garage over on Schmidt Street, and I don’t think there was a day I saw him that he wasn’t covered with grease from being hip-deep in some automobile or another. The one car he was always working on was Mrs. Bauer’s old Ford…he kept telling her that she should just break down and buy a new car, as all the money she was pouring into her Ford could easily cover the cost of a replacement. She was stubborn, though, just like her husband. Mr. Bauer didn’t take any lip service from anyone…you try to tell him anything contrary to what he already thinks, and he’ll just put his foot down and refuse to budge. This one time, at the general store I was telling you about earlier, he brought a big pile of groceries up to the counter, and when the clerk was done totalling him up, Mr. Bauer insisted that the clerk overcharged him on the eggs. The clerk told him (rightly, too) that the brand of eggs Mr. Bauer was buying were no longer 25% off, like they were last week. Well, Mr. Bauer would have none of it. The clerk kept trying to explain, Mr. Bauer kept shaking his head and getting redder and redder, and finally he just pushed the groceries on the counter toward the clerk and stomped right out through the door. Most of the groceries fell to the floor — eggs, milk, apples, even a couple comic books for the Bauer boys. To this day, I remember that one of those comic books was Kilt-Man And His Mighty Caber of Justice #1…do you have that?”
