Cyrano de Balderac

I have, of late, like Shakespeare’s Benedick, had “some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me” or, to be more precise, broken over my head. Because they were bald jokes. Now, it isn’t (I don’t think) that I am thin-skinned or can’t bear to be teased. (Although I do wonder: we’re not allowed - and rightly so - to tease fat people; and they can diet. Why is it acceptable to abuse people for a genetic condition that no amount of exercise or eating yogurt and oatmeal and Elmer’s glue can cure?) No, I think what bothers me is the complete lack of wit, thought, or cleverness in these jibes. It seems that the mere mention of a receding hairline is, by definition, funny. It’s not the heat; it’s the stupidity.

It reminds me of a scene from Rostand’s classic play, “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Cyrano, the reader may recall, has a honker of truly Jimmy Durante proportions, a brobdingnagian proboscis suitable for battering down city gates. And he’s a trifle sensitive about it but he is also a poet and playwright, “a fellow of infinite jest.” When a would-be comedian offers the observation that, “Your nose . . . is very big,” Cyrano trouble deciding what’s worse - the insult to his pride or to his craft. In the end, he goes with the latter:

Ah no! young blade! That was a trifle short!
You might have said at least a hundred things
By varying the tone

To remedy the omission, he offers a few insults of his own. It occurred to me, that if I have to hear jokes about my hairline, at least I they shouldn’t be hair-brained. So, ala Cyrano, with due apologies to Rostand, I offer the following menu to those who have the compulsion to make bald jokes, but not the wit.

Aggressive: ‘Sir, if I had such a head
I’d amputate it!’ Friendly: ‘Well, it’s true -
That you must save a fortune on shampoo;
Unfortunately, you can’t change your hairdo!’
Descriptive: ”Tis a rock!. . .a globe!. . .a dome!
—A mound, forsooth! It is a cupola!’
Curious: ‘How serves that oval cranium?
A pot to hold your prize geranium?’
Gracious: ‘You love the little birds, I think?
I see you’ve managed with this shiny map
To find the little things a place to crap!’
Truculent: ‘When you smoke your pipe. . .I dread
That the tobacco-smoke beclouds your head—
Would not the neighbors, as the fumes rise higher,
Cry terror-struck: “The moon is all afire”?’
Considerate: ‘When driving do take care
You do not cause a wreck with such a glare!’
Tender: ‘Pray get a small umbrella made,
Lest its bright shining blots out all the shade!’
Pedantic: ‘That beast Aristophanes
Names Hippocamelelephantoles
Must have possessed just such a solid lump
Of flesh and bone, above his forehead’s bump!’
Trendy: ‘The latest fashion, friend, that dome?
Like rappers’ bling-bling? ‘Tis a flashy chrome!’
Emphatic: ‘No wind, O majestic brow,
Can give THEE cold!—save when hurricanes howl!’
Dramatic: ‘When you blush, what a sunset!’
Admiring: ‘An add for Rogaine certainly!’
Lyric: ‘Is this an orb, a monarch you?’
Simple: ‘When is the monument on view?’
Rustic: ‘A forehead? Dang! Don’t that beat all!
‘Tis a dwarf pumpkin, or a basketball!’
Military: ‘A powerful redoubt!’
Practical: ‘Put it in a lottery!
Assuredly ‘twould be the biggest prize!’
Or. . .parodying Pyramus’ sighs. . .
‘Behold the head that mars the harmony
Of its master’s phiz! blushing its treachery!’

And so I leave you with Cyrano’s own peroration:

—Such, my dear sir, is what you might have said,
Had you of wit or letters the least jot:
But, O most lamentable man!—of wit
You never had an atom, and of letters
You have three letters only!—they spell Ass!

This entry was posted on October 9, 2009 at 10:02 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.