NICEST COMPLAINT LETTER EVER

Dear Mr. Barry,

I just finished reading Lessons from Lucy, your 94th (roughly) book, the previous 93 currently on my shelf next to a copy of War and Peace that I’ve never read and a coffee mug that says “Where’s Waldo” from some idiot at a Christmas Party (inside the coffee mug is a dead ant and some Canadian quarters). I should note that, in addition to my shelf, many of my family and friends have their own collection of Dave Barry books on their shelves, next to their own coffee mugs, courtesy of me having bought them for people over the years. Needless to say I’m one of your more loyal readers and so as you walk around your home / drive your cars / eat your food just know I’m probably responsible for funding most of it.

Lessons from Lucy is not on the shelf. Nor is it in the bathroom where I keep a number of back-up Dave Barry books, in case heaven forbid I forget to bring my iPad with me (my wife doesn’t understand the need to read in the bathroom…for some reason she spends very little time in there and she cannot understand why, after a long hard day (or a long night’s sleep, or really at any time), I race to the bathroom, reading materials / electronic devices in hand, ready to settle in and grind away at the world’s problems). No, Lessons from Lucy is on the coffee table, next to two remotes that don’t work and a pair of reading glasses our dog has chewed into a kind of optometrical tootsie roll. It (the book) is on the coffee table because, unlike your other books, this one requires constant reference back to it, especially when every person who comes to our house is shown the book and how they, too, need to have it on their coffee table. Because unlike your other books, which one can read mindlessly knowing they will not learn anything new / have to pay attention / recall anything later, Lessons from Lucy has all of these…lessons that we need to listen to, study, follow, and ultimately tell other people about. In other words, this books requires WORK, whereas your other books require CLEANING after so many trips to the bathroom, but at least they don’t make you think (although sometimes they do make me think ‘books shouldn’t really smell like this I should probably throw it out’, so I put it in the garage on its way to the trash but inevitably one day in the garage I’ll see it and, forgetting the smell, start reading it again, in which case it goes into a Dave Barry Book Pile on my workbench, which at some point has so many Dave Barry books on it that I think ‘I should put these on the shelf in the living room with the other Dave Barry books’, thus completing the circle of life).

Anyway my point is that this book Lessons from Lucy was sold to me under false pretenses and I deserve some sort of legal and financial settlement. This book has caused me to not only think, but to change the way I act, change the way I treat people, change the way I see the world, and just overall become a better person, something I’ve been trying to avoid for the last 49 years. Before this book I was happy being generally unhappy, living life as some sort of mindless drone, content with the knowledge that life is just a series of Groundhog Day-like experiences where nothing really changes except as you get older a very slow, almost imperceptible decline in happiness occurs such that one day you wake up and are furious that the previous night’s newscast said it would be 73 degrees out and IT IS ONLY 70 DEGREES OUT AND WHO DO THOSE PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DRESS WHEN THESE SO CALLED WEATHER EXPERTS CAN GET IT SO WRONG and you realize you start to wake up every day ready to be angry / unhappy. Now, thanks to this stupid book, I think about my day and my interactions, and I consciously try and be better, and while I wouldn’t be so obnoxious / anal as you to grade myself on how I’m doing, the excel spreadsheet I keep to track my progress shows me 47% of the way there toward my goal of consistently living these lessons every day. So, given this profound effort I’ve undertaken, I believe some sort of cash compensation is in order.

Oh, and with regard to your eighth lesson and the chapter that wasn’t supposed to be there, I believe I deserve special compensation for having had to use up all of the tissues in my house. That last chapter changed my outlook on a few things and that is NOT what I signed up for when I bought this book.

Sincerely,

Eric Haskel

Bentonville, Ark.

 

Comments

[Clankie]

Jack Nicholson: " You make me want to be a better dog. "

[Mike]

And all this time I thought it was just me.

[cfjk]

Well, Dave if you never accomplish another thing in life, at least you manged to get that idiot from Arkansas to spend less time in the shitter, and in your defense, much to his wife's delight.

[man tom]

I loved the book too. I wanted to mention one of the nicest compliments ever was when my urologist told me I had a nice smile.

[pharmaross]

Don't bring me down with complaints.

[vaporsmith]

Dave wrote a book?

[man tom]

Google Dummy search. Turn off your ad blocker Dummy.

Type in your Search Request below:

Type request here dummy: 'Complimentary metallic bedroom spiked heel slipper with fluffy toe, picture or video if available'.

Result:

Here dummy.

[man tom]

Joe Biden watched the video and spoke a few words about of all things, we don't know what the *HELL* what.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is the first leader who is nicknamed B.J. by the press since Bill Clinton.

You see, Clinton had oral sex with a woman named Monica and no offence was intended.

[man tom]

I received an email this morning:

Amazon recommends Philips 0730062 12961B2.

When I opened the message, it read:

Biden declared today it's time for Israelis and Palestinians to stop fighting. Next He's gonna settle this Roadrunner-Coyote thing

[Al B. Leavenaugh]

Would the person who recently defended man tom’s posts kindly come and get him before he gets hurt?

P.S. -If my post is considered “bullying”, forgive me; I fail to see any speck of relevance to the blog’s post.

[Guin]

First the book made me cry, now this guy "Eric" makes me teary. You need to tell your publisher to slap a great big warning label on the dustjackeT: HAVE KLEENEX HANDY.

[Guin]

Man Tom lends his own special kind of Surrealism to the blog.

[pharmaross]

I enjoy the stream of consciousness, surrealistic posts by man tom. Especially the music and comedy links.

As Salvador Dali said, "Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision."

As to political barbs, even Tonight Show great Johnny Carson skewered politicians from both sides of the aisle nightly and without partisan proselytizing. All in good fun!

[man tom]

I heard Dave say in a recent interview He was working on a novel about Florida. I would like know more, like when can we look for it to hit the shelves and perhaps an insider's look at what's up here on the blog.

I'm a Political Man.

Bizarre? I'm Thunderstruck.

I wear a boonie hat much like the banjo player's hat. I have four different colors. Yesterday the girl working the Fed Ex desk where I was dropping off a package commented, "I like your hat." I told her some of my friends on the blog think I'm bizarre maybe it's the hat. No I didn't say that, but I had you going. This afternoon I went the bank and a teller behind several inches of bullet proof glass waited one me. I think she thought I might rob the place, I had on very dark glasses designer type. Like pharmaross, I'm a big guy. 6'3" 250lbs. No one has ever taken me. Well, a bouncer once tossed me out the front door of a ta-ta bar and I landed flat on my back on the gravel parking lot. You could consider that took. Or bizarre. Opinions vary. Once she realized I wasn't going to rob the place she started talking to me about the weather. When asked how it was out there, I very confidently replied, "it's getting hotter by the hour and it was so hot Saturday when I was moving some stuff (I fanned myself like I was moving heat from my face.) She winked, I took it as a wink, and said, "I was hiking Saturday and I -was- Sooooooo- hot." I thinking, Yeah. Man she must have Sooooooooo many boyfriends. She got my deposit all wrong. When I got home I noticed she put a hold on my money. Bizarre. The whole thing. Bizarre.

[Maryann]

Dave, never forget how many lives you have changed with your amazing humor…because you are so genuinely, side-splitting funny and insightful, and you have gotten me through so many hard or sad days…and made me laugh always on the regular days:) This book is so special and I’m so glad he wrote to you. You need to be reminded of how much we appreciate you sharing your love and lessons from Lucy with us. I loved the book too! Thank you for everything!

[cfjk]

MT reminds me of Kramer from the Sienfeld show, so look upon it as comic relief, or an opportunity to go and grab a beer before we return to normal programming.

[padraig]

Dave wrote a book? 94 times?

[Tim]

I have read and enjoyed many of Dave's books. More than once I have reached for the Book of Bad Songs when I felt the need for a chuckle. I have not read Lessons From Lucy, but this has inspired me to go out and get it. As for the serial commenters, it would be nice if they could restrict themselves to one comment per topic. The political comments do not usually concern both sides of the aisle, and I could definitely do without all of them.