so i submitted a sample of my writing to a new comedy/satire magazine. since they weren't offering anything by way of monetary compensation, i figured neither of us had anything to lose. they asked me to answer the question "why are manholes round?" and i gave them a couple of reasons.
1.Because the guy whose stupid nephew designed the things (everyone has a stupid nephew) told him to get around to it. Now the nephew wants to know what a tuit is and how to get one.
2.Because they tried using square ones, but none of the guys going in fit right. There was a chunky gal named Peg who tried once, but as you know, you can’t fit a round Peg into a square hole.
3.There was a meeting to determine the very first design for a manhole cover many long years ago. Perhaps it was in paris, famous for its complicated sewer system, maybe ancient rome with its underground hot springs and aqueducts. Wherever it took place, city planners from all over the known world came together to discuss how best to access the areas below the streets. Should we use a dodecahedron shape for this cover? No, too complicated to manufacture. What about a triangle? Good design possibilities, but could the average worker fit through a triangular opening? Probably not. Square would be easy to manufacture, nice simple lines. Why didn’t the square ones work? No one really knows. After all the discussing, many present at that fateful meeting almost came to blows. Who was going to settle this important design issue once and for all? One very small, slightly built man held up his hand for silence. At first no one even noticed him. The little man pointed a finger in the air and within the press of bodies now arguing heatedly all around him, a very large, bull-necked man, nearly twice the little man’s size in every direction, was arguing with the man in front of him. The little man’s finger trembled as it arced downward and finally it landed on the bull-necked man’s shoulder and poked him several times. The larger man whipped around to see who could possibly be bothering him, didn’t see anyone at first, then looked down to see the little man fuming up at him. “What seems to be the problem, little man?” said the larger man angrily. The smaller man said “That’s MY sandwich you’re eating! You give that right back to me, do you hear?”
When the little man woke up several days later in a hospital with bandages everywhere and a cast on both his legs, he was very confused. “What happened? The last thing I remember is some jerk swiping my sandwich!” The nurse helped him piece together what happened from the police report: it seems that the larger man stomped down hard on one of his feet and used his other foot as the point on a rather crude protractor and used the blood issuing from the poor little man’s foot to draw a circle on the floor before beating him up some more and finishing the sandwich.
No one knows why exactly, but the circle was a big hit and the rest, as they say, is history. Not to mention a little pastrami on rye.
since then, i haven't heard a peep out of them.
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