Call Yourself a Fan?

Pour yourself a drink and sit back on the couch. Or on the porch. Or the car, hell. Crank up your favorite band. A top two as you're probably being indecisive. Here's the lowdown. You are told by some mystical force that it's time to choose. Some sort of musical faery with a wicked grin says that never for the rest of your natural life can you listen to either of those bands again.

The TV starts pumping out an all-time favorite arena rock anthem during a commercial hawking Cadillacs? Change the channel or it will change for you. Old school rock ballad that gives you chills remembering late nights in the park as a teen? Switch off the car radio. Overhear that #1 hit that seemed to camp out near the top of the charts a whole summer? Please put on these soundproof headphones. Stones or Beatles? Debate might about to become moot for you.

OR offers this obviously warped being, you can have a finger lopped off and listen to your heart's content. Just because it's feeling generous that day, you'll be allowed to choose which digit. He knows we all choose pinky anyhow. You have to imagine the proposer of this deal possesses omnipresent enforcement skills, so no cheating. Why doesn't matter, maybe you ate the wrong apple, or crossed the wrong rickety bridge, or committed some other imagined trespass to find yourself indebted to him.

I posed this question to a friend and was surprised at the immediacy of his reply, indicating he'd soon be in the market for some new favorites. Either he had no heart and soul, or possibly I had too much.

Now the method of finger removal might have an effect on your math. I'm hard pressed to say I'd likely vote finger if it was more a surgical procedure than a “Very well mortal, place your pinky into this rusty meat grinder..” I'd still be leaning finger, but I'd be damn sure to tell this sombitch where to stick it once it was his. You don't need to be polite to vindictive magical folk. As the tales all say, they know they've already put you through the wringer.

As a reward to yourself (if reward it could be called, as you were already able to listen all you liked before this damned faery came along), you immediately dig (with your good hand) into your collection, playing all your favorites ad infinitum. Probably until you were sick of them, knowing you. Or one night you push your way backstage at their final reunion tour, babbling some teary-eyed story of why you deserve to have dinner with the band. “I dunno Mick, something about he chopped off his finger because of you. Sounds like a drug-addled freak if you ask me, I'll get him an 8x10 glossy and boot him back to General Admission.”

You get by just fine without the finger, though it makes handshakes squeamish for new acquaintances. Plus you got to use the partial disability check from the insurance to buy a thunderous new stereo for the living room. But you're reminded of your loss every time you tie your laces, or notice the pathetic floppy finger on your winter gloves. Before you know it time passes and you find you can't stand the sound of either of those damned bands any more. Somewhere your poor pinky resides as a leathery, shrunken prize on some cruel deity's mantelpiece. He dusts it every Sunday with a chuckle.