RED LETTER DAYS

Well I reckon there are folks for whom a red letter day is a real cool thing. The only time I encountered them is when my boss, Dr. Hemoglobin, says we had one at STINK.

Personally I can’t tell how they are much different than any other day even though he makes it sound like it was a big deal. All I know is that when he tells us it is a red letter day you know that it doesn’t mean good in my idea of good. By that I mean I don’t end up with extra jelly beans, time off or a raise. Any of those would be a good thing and make any day extra special.

What it all seems to come down to is a red letter day at STINK is when one of us grimefighters fought grime and didn’t screw up. And in some cases we even managed to do something right.

Well it might have been something that to us was no big deal, but by the time Dr. Hemoglobin gets through explaining it in those speeches he loves to give then it ends up sounding like we prevented the end of the world. Which is okay I suppose as long as nobody asks us what really happened.

As far as I can figure though about the only thing that really ends up red through all of this is the bloodshot eyes we get from trying to stay awake listening to our leader’s speech. Of course eyes aren’t a letter or a day, so I imagine that means he probably has some memo stuffed away somewhere that will have plenty of letters on it, most likely in red and it will have a day too. That is as far as I can figure it would apply in some way that might make sense.

For me the worst kind of red letter day is when Dr. Hemoglobin decides to let his son, rat boy, Junior, get up and give he speech. That darn kid has about as much ability to give a decent speech as I do at being a doctor. And let me tell you that is one thing you sure wouldn’t want from me because I’m not even sure of which end of a needle to use on stabbing someone. As for a tongue depressor, well I have given those thoughts too and I figure if you poked a person in the eye with it you would depress them enough to keep their from using their tongues.

Anyway enough on the medicine part, back to old rat boy Junior. Now let me tell you with him if he gives a speech it don’t matter what it is suppose to be about, it will somewhere in it include junk about cheese. That dude couldn’t get through an hour without thinking or eating cheese. So it would be stupid to think he would be able to give a speech without talking about it either.

Normally with this red letter business what that comes down to is him babbling on and on about things that don’t go together like the weather and rotting garbage or some other craziness. Then when he gets close to the end he’ll take a big deep breath and when he exhales you can be darn sure he’ll mention how we need to celebrate this “momentous” occasion. He always tosses in the momentous part just before asking somebody to go out and buy a bunch of cheese to make the thing momentous. Oh well, at least it means he stops talking and that is celebration enough for the rest of us.