Cowboys Are Not Linguists They Are Cowboys

Here are two cowboys. One is named Garth and the other is named Steven. Garth is telling Steven that he wants to sit in the corner seat because that’s how you know you won’t get shot in the back by someone who walks into the saloon and wants to shoot you in the back. Steven is telling Garth there’s no fricking chance that he’s letting Garth take the corner seat, reason being because Steven needs a bullet in the back like he needs a hole in the head. All this is to say that the saloon’s proprietor, a guy named Charlie, is getting annoyed with these two characters bickering over the corner seat.

“Why don’t y’all just rocks paper scissors for it?” says Charlie.

Steven and Garth exchange a glance. “Look, feller,” says Steven. “You might own this here salon—”

At which point Garth starts laughing and points out that Steven just said salon instead of saloon, and Steven is like, “What?” because he doesn’t realize that it’s called a saloon, he’s always been under the impression it was salon, kind of like the time I thought “albeit” was pronounced “all-bait” instead of “all be it” because I’d only ever seen it written.

“To heck with you,” says Steven. “Saloon, salon, tomatoes tomatoes.” Except he pronounces tomatoes the exact same way each time, doesn’t say “toe-MAH-toes” the second time, which sets Garth off laughing again. Can’t catch his breath, hardly.

“Tomatoes tomatoes?” says Garth, in between enormous gales of laughter. “Are you retarded?”

And Steven points out it’s in very bad taste to use the R-word, and says if you need to insult someone’s intelligence you should do it with a word like “witless or brainless or slow.” But Garth is too worked up at this point to give a hoot about his un-PCness, just keeps clutching his belly with laughter.

So Steven, breathing deeply, struggles to regain his emotional equilibrium. This is just like Garth to make a mountain out of a mowlel. “I refuse to engage with your negativity,” Steven says to Garth, remembering the lessons his therapist taught him about dealing with anger in a healthy way. He adjusts his chaps. “In fact, Garth, your amusement at my mistake might actually be a blessing in the skies—”

And you can just imagine what this does to Garth. He’s as red as a red crayon at this point, laughing so hard. So Steven, giving Charlie a baleful glance, unholsters his six gun and empties the rounds into Garth’s chest, knowing that he’s going to face some serious hell from Dr. Forster at next week’s session for this outburst, but what are you going to do?

He takes his seat in the corner and Charlie delivers him a drink, kind of trying to ignore the fresh corpse over there. Steven looks at the proprietor and sighs. “What kind of person treats someone like that? He was supposably my friend.”