Deputy Dan

Years ago I worked in a mall bookstore in Asheville, North Carolina ("the Paris of the South," as some natives called it). It wasn't quite the Deep South, but it was south, all right. One of the young women who worked with me was very funny. I'll call her Angie. One day she came up to me and said (imagine a twangy accent): "Dan, I gotta ask you a stupid question. And you know it's stupid coming from me if I'm telling you it's stupid." Having just spent eight years teaching, I resisted the urge to say, "There are no stupid questions, Angie..." Maybe I had a hunch about what was coming.

"Who won the Civil War?" Maybe there are stupid questions. "I'm reading this romance book and it's all about the Civil War, and I was just wondering."

"The North won, Angie."

"Oh yeah, WE got trounced."

But Angie was a great and very diligent co-worker. It was another co-worker, though, Amanda, who bestowed on me the nickname Deputy Dan. Or as she would pretty much howl when I got to work (imagine a really good southern accent): "DEP-uteee Daaaannnnnn!"

It was a Saturday afternoon during the holiday season. The mall bustled and people were crowding the very narrow store. At the front, across a small aisle and a couple stacks of books from the cash register, stood our magazine rack. In the far right upper corner was our modest smut (nice oxymoron there, students) section, which consisted of Playboy, Penthouse, and Playgirl.

Well, all of a sudden a noise of about six teenagers (14 or 15, three boys and three girls) explodes into the store. My teacher instincts perked right up. The boys were up to no good, I could feel it in my bones. I took a circuitous route from the cash register over toward the magazine rack, where the young thugs were naturally gathered. Keeping my steely eyes on the soon-to-be-perps, I slithered my way between law-abiding customers and stacks of bargain Civil War coffee table books (a perennial bestseller in those parts, albeit books Angie obviously never glanced at). And then, just as the cleanest cut, most innocent lad of the gang blindly reached behind him up to the smut to undoubtedly impress/shock/titillate his friends, I made my move.

"You're not old enough to be reading that!" I bellowed and moved quickly toward the startled young man. And just in case you think I can't bellow, move quickly, and assess the crime scene at the same time, I noticed the boy had grabbed a Playgirl instead of the Playboy or Penthouse he had intended to grab. "And besides," I said, snatching the shrink-wrapped smut from the wide-eyed boy's mitts and flashing it at his cohorts, "you took the wrong one!"

Instant amusement among the throng of innocent shoppers, shrieks of embarrassment and glee from the girls, as they rushed out of the store behind their high-tailing male counterparts. I assume the offender has stopped turning red lo these sixteen years later.

Well, in Amanda's eyes, who witnessed the whole incident with much delight, I was now the walking embodiment of a Rhett Butler-Buford Pusser merging. And so, the legend of DEP-uteee Daaaaannnn was born.

Joe Tex-I Gotcha

Junior Murvin-Police & Thieves