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PETYY QUESTIONS IS TEN COLUMNS OLD! HAPPY HALLMARKDAY! GREAT JOB OWEN GREAT JOB OWEN GREAT JOB OWEN GREAT JOB OWEN GREAT JOB OWEN GREAT JOB OWEN GREAT JOB OWEN GREAT JOB OWEN GREAT JOB OWEN GREAT JOB OWEN GREAT JOB OWEN GREAT JOB OWEN GREAT JOB OWEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's what people have been saying about Petty Questions:

Hey Owen, I read your column.

---Friend

Saw your column up on the Volcano.

---Esteemed Colleague

Is your column online yet? Wait, Saturdays? OK.

---Mentor

Do you know who that mentor is? I shouldn't give away names, but if you said Dan Savage then you would probably be wrong even though as an advice columnist I look up to him, kind of like a friend I don't know yet.

So, are you guys ready for a question or what?

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Hey, I've got a petty question for ya. [This guy is great! ---OB] I'm in my place of work, trying to work. Normally I like taking breaks and stretching my legs for circulation purposes, but now I'm afraid to go into the break room. My co-worker, let's call her Sheila Kunitz [name changed: Kunitz actually has two Ns in real life. ---OB], she keeps pushing her Nanaimo bars on me at the break table. "Hey, brought in my Nanaimo bars, you gotta try my Nanaimies." But if I start eating all those N-bars I'm going to get a pretty bad sugar crash right when I get back to my desk for my position in sales. See, in sales you got to be at your peak 24/7---work hard, play hard. What's a guy like me to do, a sales guy?

---Sales Man No Sugar 101

Here's the deal, SMNS101. Stand up to her, tell her "no" is non in French. Sophisticate her, transform her into a Cosmopolitan type of gal. She'll be like your jet-setting doll, and the office where you teach her equestrian secrets will be like your doll's house. Do not allow her to take out debts to save your life or become her own individual, make her flee your suffocating, well-to-do bird cage. When you find yourself alone in the end, maybe, oh, I don't know...write it into a play? Make about a million bucks? You don't ever have to go to work again and worry about Nanaimos. That was easy.

Great, I'm done with the real work. Now I get to throw in a story because that is how I usually do this column. Before you were reading about who calls the shots and now you will read about who calls the shots. Thanks for letting me get away with this.

I heard them before I saw them.

"HEY FELLA, get off the Catholic side of the sidewalk---unless you're Catholic!"

"Yeah, we mean it!"

"Are you Catholic?"

Look at these dweebs. They didn't know who they were messing with. They didn't know I run this town. They didn't know I was the ASB president and the ASB mayor and the real mayor. They didn't know I ran both papers and the shadow government. They didn't know my family founded this city last year when I decided to found this city. Shit, they didn't know that Maryland ended segregation of Catholics and Protestants over a month ago.

And they didn't even know I was B-Squad Captain. These assholes were cruisin' for a bruisin'.

"So what are you buddy, Catholic? Presbyterian? Methodist? Catholic? You know, Episcopalian is kind of Catholic in a lot of ways."

Heh. Bet they would go wild and crazy if I affronted their God, I thought. Out of my pocket I produced a picture of the Pope and tore it up in front of them, in a mean way. Did I just desecrate their God of Portraiture Photography? Yes I did just do that.

I struck a match and threw it at their bowl of gasoline. "Hello, I am the man in charge of this town. Any questions, dorks?"

The leader stared me straight in the eye. "So, Episcopalian?"

My editor once informed me that I have to meet a 700-word minimum, so this batch of text right here is telling you to keep a keen eye out for the next Petty Questions: Column à la Murder.

Please direct all questions to: askpettyquestions@gmail.com

LINK  HUB - PREVIOUS "PETTY QUESTIONS"

LINK: PETTY QUESTIONS: John Lennon remembered

LINK: PETTY QUESTIONS: Creeping doubt

LINK: PETTY QUESTIONS: Out of time

LINK: PETTY QUESTIONS: Who wants yesterday's paper?

LINK: PETTY QUESTIONS: Around the world

LINK: PETTY QUESTIONS: Wonderful Christmastime (Paul McCartney version)

LINK: PETTY QUESTIONS: Out at the pictures