Witz Pickz: "Back-Cuts"

(Lamest. Book. Ever. Who knew Patty Mayonnaise would grow up to be such a narc?)

I was thinking recently about the insane shit we got away with when we were kids that wouldn't fly at all in the real world. Back in elementary school, "cuts" were where it was at. If you knew one person in line, you could roll into the cafeteria, walk up to them in the hot lunch line and say, "Cuts?" and they were all, "Sure." You'd snag the last grilled cheese (along with the three grilled cheeses before that if you were me--kid's gotta eat) and cruise outta there guilt-free, because you weren't the one who let you cut.

Occasionally, you'd run into someone who would give you the, "No cuts!" attitude. Then, the conversation went like this:

KID 1: Cuts? (We're friends right?)
KID 2: No cuts! (No freakin' way! We're not THAT good of friends.)
KID 1: ...
KID 2: ...
KID 1: Back-cuts? (Look, we're 9 1/2 years old, let's be reasonable about this.)
KID 2: Yeah, sure. (I don't give a shit about these eraser-eating marker-sniffers behind me, do what you want.)
KID 1: Cool.

And then you'd just slide behind your buddy, while the rest of the line had to suck it up. If they called you out, all you had to say was, "I got back-cuts!" (I could never have predicted that twenty years later, I would be saying this to explain the physical repercussions of shaving my own back) and they'd shut up. The only recourse was telling a teacher and then you were a tattle-tale and social outcast. Even I knew better than to try that and I was the kid wearing turtlenecks and corduroys to school. So yeah, I was cuttin' like a motherf**ker.



Can you imagine trying to use "back-cuts" as a grown-up, though?? That would be totally unacceptable! People kiiiind of do it when they save a place in line for their buddies who are running late, but that's just generally accepted as how lines work for entertainment or bars. You can't just walk up to someone in line and be all, "Back cuts?" and get away with it--especially in New York. You'd have everyone behind you screaming, "Get to the back of the fucking line, asshole!" because you're a goddamn adult.


(The exception to the rule)

And I'm glad that's how it is--I'd be one of the people silently fuming at whoever cut or I'd be chiming in with the group if people decided to put them in their place. Every time I'm waiting in traffic to take an exit and watch cars zip up and cut in ahead of me, I wonder about the legality of paintball gun attacks from a moving vehicle and make a mental note to get a baseball bat for my trunk. People who drive like that are worse than Hitler, because at the end of the day, nobody they care about knows they're that douchebag, but when Hitler met people for dinner, everybody still knew he was HITLER.*

But I'd be lying if I said that every time there's a long line for a concert, movie, or comedy show, I'm not scanning the hell out of it for any person I've ever hungout with, met, or seen at the gym. And while it might just be in my head, at that moment, I can swear I smell grilled cheese.

I'm Not Cutting, I'm Networking!,
Witz


*Ok, this is an exaggeration. Selfish drivers are not worse than Hitler, but they do believe that they are more important than every single person they pass on the way to getting where they need to go. Can we settle on "Worse than, I dunno, Slobodan Milosevic?"