October 3, 2008
Sixpack
I had a call from John Doe the other day wondering who is this Joe Sixpack he keeps hearing about. That’s some coincidence, I said, for I was just about to call and ask you the same question. No need to ask me, he said. It ought to be obvious that he’s trying to stake a claim on a franchise I’ve had for years ever since Everyman became too archaic to stand in for modern times.
Doe, I thought, is about as American as one can get when you come to think about it which I had recently come to do. It was no wonder to me that John — and maybe Jane, too — were feeling a bit uneasy about their longtime reign as average citizens, chad-punchers, and poll-takers. I imagine it is something of an insult not only to be replaced, but to have one’s title usurped, as well, by someone with so quaint a name.
I asked John if possibly a more sober image for the average American had anything to do with his being piqued. That’s just it, John said, six pack of what? Nobody ever says what, and everybody knows six pack always means beer and tailgate and redneck and football and blue collar and obesity. (I could tell he was really getting steamed.) Well, yes, I said, hoping to calm him some, but in these days with so many purified water drinkers, it could mean just that and no more. Not for me, John said, not with fat being so much on the scene. One doesn’t get so overweight drinking plain water, he added.
I have never known whether Jane Doe is John Doe’s sister or wife or only a feminine counterpart, but just that she somehow seems necessary for to accomplish a kind of latter day gender balance and bipartisanship. Nobody ever seems to mention a Jane Sixpack, implying just that she’d probably do whatever Joe tells her including voting, sexism being what it is.
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