Jan Trousílek

“When someone pissed me off, I told them: ‘Get stuffed…’ you know where. And nobody ever locked me up for it. I was telling my girlfriend Štěpánka about my mother. When she came to my farm, she loved driving around with me in that old convertible. We had the dogs in the back and every Sunday morning we’d drive to get newspapers and donuts. Every Sunday people gathered at a small newsstand there — police officers, firefighters, farmers, all sorts of folks. It was around the time of new elections, and that trickster Jimmy Carter had won. So I head over there, buy my Dunhill cigarettes, and my local cop is there and asks, ‘Hey, didn’t a buffalo or a horse escape from you? I’m on duty today and I don’t feel like chasing it around.’ I said, ‘No, they’re locked up, it’s all good.’ And he says, ‘So what do you think about the elections?’ I said, ‘Well, we’re in trouble.’ He said, ‘Yeah, that idiot is going to give everything away and everyone’s going to be worse off, I can already see it.’ My mom is looking at me — she understands English — and she says, ‘Who are you talking about?’ And I say, ‘My friend Freddy just told me that the new president is really an asshole.’ ‘Shhh, don’t say that!’ ‘Why?’ I said. ‘You’re not allowed to say that!’ And I said, ‘Mom, you’re in a free country here, so say it: Yes, I think Carter is an asshole.’ But I couldn’t get her to say it. She was so scared… So I looked at her and said, ‘Mom, I want you to know that our new president really is an asshole. It’s like when you’re at school and on every restroom wall it says that Servít is an asshole. They used to write that at universities — Servít was a professor — so people wrote “Servít is an asshole.” I even found it in Japan at a train station.’ And I told her, ‘He’s an asshole, well, he’s an asshole.’ My mom ran out, jumped into the car, slammed the door, and wanted nothing to do with it.”