True Story©… The Legend of Moe

 

     The past was a wild time…  There were people called town criers who would go to the city square and scream the news to everyone who would listen because without child labor laws, it was perfectly normal for people to not know how to read or write.
Things being full circle as they are, nowadays people glue themselves to social media and while perhaps they CAN read or write, they choose instead some asshole yelling at a screen on TikTok or Youtube.  The person who won’t read is no better off in this aspect than the person who can’t read.

     Anyway, the town crier…
Wait!  Y’know, as I have discussed before, I get a LOT of off time at work.  Due to some to-be-sorted health issues I have mostly been playing my off time close to the vest, limiting my Mental Health™ days and instead using that time for date-to-be-determined doctor’s visits and such.  There comes a time, however, that I will have to use the time or lose it so I have to play this delicate game of saving as much time as possible just in case while still taking SOME time off.  My wife’s usual “take several days off and let’s run away” is gonna have to wait.

     So in the course of taking my time piecemeal, I will work a half day and leave.  I bring along my soapbox from the beach that time and don a red/gold coat with white breeches and tricom hat then I head to downtown, town squares, of these little towns about 45ish minutes around where I live…

…  and I ring the handbell and yell “hear ye, hear ye” until I have enough eyes on me…

…  and I allow them to revel in the legend of Moe Phillips.

Por ejemplo:

“Hear ye, hear ye!
Gather round and hear of the time that Moe Phillips, armed with nothing but a large box of cicadas, broke a VERY bad man down to the point of absolute madness.”

Then, of course, I paraphrase the whole story to the aghast faces of onlookers.  “Aghast” was just the reaction I’d hoped for when I came out to tell these tales aloud to the populace.  Not just because I needed them to know about Moe – and I DID need them to know about Moe – but more because I wanted them to go home to their BookFace and TokTik machines and tell OTHERS about Moe.

     Leaving work at noon, driving an hour, setting up for two and driving home means I am always back in the house by 4pm, just in time for the none-the-wiser Wife Person™ to become hip to my new shenanigous dipshittery.
One problem, though…  While I LIVE in a decent sized city, 3^nd largest in NC and 69^st in the United States, the internet has made the world a LITTLE-little place.  The downtown people on their lunch breaks had gathered around and heard the Legend of Moe (<-- HEY, THERE’S THE THING!!!) and had gone home to tell about it.  Just as I intended.  What I forgot to consider is that we live in the seat of our census-designated area, meaning that Social Media gathering places – think local FB Groups – would come to discuss the goings on in the SURROUNDING communities as if Greensboro proper, and eventually Moe Phillips would come up.

     Of course because I am ignorant and uniquely NOT self-aware, this didn’t stop me from leaving my house every Wednesday afternoon and spinning Moe Tales, new and olde.
Sometimes I would begin them with a question to elicit some call-and-response from the crowd…

Me: “Did y’know…  Moe Phillips is SOOOOO brave…”

Crowd: “How brave is he!?”

Me: “One time he went backpacking in Europe where he met three American white dudes drinking at 8am in a hostel and went camping with them.”

Man in Crowd: “Yeah, so?”

Me: “So, he LIVED TO TELL ABOUT IT!!!”

Everyone was SHOCKED!

     My dumb ass was playing Icarus though.  The plan to do this shit in little Podunk towns were no one I actively knew still lived would only be so sustainable before having to either repeat locales or go further.  What I also failed to account for is the fact that damn near everyone over the fucking age of twelve is carrying a camera capable of shooting sparkling 4k video in their pocket.

     So about last Wednesday…
Wife Person™ had a normal doctor’s appointment of her own and was home earlier than her regular 4pm, so when I pulled up to the house at 3:48pm and she was standing on the front porch waiting on me . I should have known there was trouble.

Wife Person™: “I been calling you, where the hell have you been?”

Me: “I-I…  Uh…”

Wife Person™: “Choose your words wisely.”

This is the part where I inform you that I live in a piedmont region, so these “little Podunk towns” are sometimes geographically situated in wooded or mountain/foothills areas with notoriously shitty cell signal.  I had no missed calls and only now were the text messages lighting my phone up like a Christmas tree.

Me: “I went to, uh…  Cut a yard?”

Wife Person™: “Sir!  The lawn mower is in the garage, I looked.”

Me: “I uh…”

Wife Person™: “Stop it!  I was on TikTok and I saw this.”

Me: “Oh shit”

     She shows me a "funny" video someone posted from my escapades of the day.  Me, in the very  same costume currently hastily bunched into a soapbox on the back seat of the Nitro.
In the video, it was call-and-response with a gathered crowd who had apparently heard of me.

Me: “Hear ye, hear ye!  Have you heard of Moe Phillips?  They say Moe is SOOOO manly!”

Crowd: “How manly is he?”

Me: “You sir…  They say that Moe Phillips is so manly and his dick is so big that his dick has a dick of its own…  And THAT dick is bigger than yours!”

     She stopped the video and looked at me, still trying with all I had not to laugh at the previously-presented proof that the back of public school buses creates LEGENDS when it comes to insulting people.

Wife Person™: “What do you have to say?”

Me: “Uhh…  That shit was FUNNY!”

Wife Person™: “Be that as it may, why aren’t you at work?”

Me: “Because PTO.”

Wife Person™: “How long have you been up to this?”

Me: “Month or two?” 

Wife Person™: “You are ridiculous.”

Me: “Heard that before.”

Wife Person™: “SAID that before!”

Me: “Heh.”

Wife Person™: “I’m not laughing with you.”

Me: “So what’re you sayin’?”

Wife Person™: “I’m saying I don’t believe in divorce, but--…”

Me: “Oh thank God--…”

Wife Person™: “…  but I believe that I watch enough True Crime Murder Porn to properly dispose of your body and make it look like you escaped to The Bahamas.”

Me: “Message received.”

     So, lady and gentleman…  If The Travelling Moe Phillips Roadshow never made it to your locale, blame my wife because I WANNA LIVE!