Dear Abby Day!

It's DEAR ABBY DAY on My Masonic Apron, where we copy a Dear Abby letter from some poor bastard and give the reply a bit of an affectionate ass-slap with the old masonic apron.

Here's the original letter as it appeared in today's edition of Dear Abby on uexpress.com:

DEAR ABBY:

We have a relative, "Jerry," whom we dearly love. However, he has the disgusting habit of flossing his teeth in every room except the bathroom. After we eat, Jerry gets up and proceeds to floss his teeth in the kitchen, the living room or wherever he likes. He has even stood behind others and done it right over their shoulders. It's disgusting!

Several of us have asked him, politely, to floss in the bathroom or somewhere private, but it made him extremely defensive and angry. I'm sure there are others out there who do it. We just want Jerry and others to know that it is not appropriate and is considered rude. -- SICK TO MY STOMACH IN KENNEWICK, WASH.

Abigail Van Buren, a.k.a. Jeanne Phillips, a.k.a. Severe Looking School Marm was not particularly helpful with her reply. She merely shared the writers abhorrance of Jerry's behavior and admonished people of a similar ilk who behave in equally socially aberrant ways. I'm happy, though, to pick up her slack.

DEAR SICK TO YOUR STOMACH:

You say you "dearly love" Jerry, but I'm not so sure you do. My wife dearly loves me, and she puts up with foot odor, rampant, sour gas and a myriad of social anxieties and never once has she written in to an exploitative, unhelpful, self-serving column like "Dear Abby." You don't "dearly love" Jerry. Come on, admit it. You loathe him. You despise him. And I'd be willing to bet that his flossing behavior is not the only socially reprehensible thing about him.

When I close my eyes, I can see Jerry. Jerry's your great uncle I'm guessing-- someone you have to force yourself to go see or invite over. Jerry owns two pair of pants, but only wears one of them. He wears these pants over his gut so that the beltline is directly under his sagging nipples. Am I right? Jerry also has jowls, like a bassett hound, or an Andy Rooney. No doubt these suckers send sputum flying across the room during his flossing expeditions.

You hate Jerry and his jowls.

Jerry slicks back his hair with brylcream, doesn't he? His skin is jaundiced and leathery, isn't it? His eyes are red and watery, aren't they? Jerry has thick, meaty hands and unkempt fingernails.

Doesn't he?

You see, there is more to Jerry than just his flossing-- that's just the straw that broke the camel's back that made you write to Dear Abby, isn't it? There are lots of problems with Jerry, but now that I've accurately described him for our readers, let's take a crack at you:

You're a proper little Stepford Wife, aren't you? I'm taking a shrewd guess that you're female, approaching menopause, and that you're stick-thin. Thinned lips and crossed arms and one eyebrow raised is pretty much your operational standard, right? You drink mimosas out of crystal stemware and leave bright red lipstick crescents on the glass, don't you? You stare icily at people of whom you disapprove.

In short, my dear, you are bitch.

I say that because of the reason you chose to write to Dear Abby in the first place. I don't particularly have much love for anybody who writes to her about anything, but I can at least understand the desperation that drives people whose lives/marriages/jobs/worlds are falling apart that they need to reach out to someone-- people who have suffered a traumatic loss, a world-shattering tragedy. Victims, the bereaved, the tormented, the lost.

Your big problem, evidently, is that great uncle Jerry flicks his chicken shards across the living room. Here's the advice that Dear Abby forgot to give you:

Come back to me when you have a real fucking problem. And, in the meantime, grow a pair of balls and tell Jerry that, the next time he flosses in your living room, you're going to sneak up behind him and strangle him to death with a piece of dental floss.

There, are you happy now?

Until you grow those balls, you superior little cunt, here's what I think: I think that you spending your weekend nights cleaning little bits of meat and veg from the walls of your picture-perfect condo in the Washington burbs sounds just perfect to me.