Blondes Get No
Respect
by Walt
Giersbach
Lightning
crashed down as scudding clouds blanketed the sky.
Picnickers scattered like blowing leaves, but
Didi and the Professor remained still under the
splintered oak tree. Instead of running —
and it was too late by then — they sat dazed.
“What in
Heaven’s name happened?” the university
president cried, rushing over to help them sit up.
Concern beetled his forehead. The university
would have hell to pay if the bombshell from
Hollywood got hurt during their commencement
exercises. Professors, however, were a dime
a dozen — even Nobel Prize physicists.
Professor
Slotkin, who worked to defend his prodigy status
against advancing middle age, shook his famously
long black hair and looked up at the president. “I
just had the stuffing kicked out of me. That
was some lightning bolt — and what happened
to the Versace I was wearing? I borrowed that
thousand-dollar frock for this lame affair!”
Gibberish, the
president thought. The lightning had fried
his brain.
The blonde
woman in the sundress scooped almost to her
equator returned to full consciousness. Didi
Darling, to whom the president had just awarded
an honorary doctorate in arts, rolled her eyes
and began patting her face. She froze as her
hands dropped down her neck to her chest.
“I...I
can still ratiocinate and deduce,” the woman
said to the amazement of the returning guests and
dignitaries. “My brain can still answer
any question put to man.” She looked in
amazement at the scientist next to her. “I
think the lightning has transposed our minds into
each other’s bodies!” The celebrity
suddenly shouted, “Eureka! I’ve
retained my genius, and it’s now packaged in
a voluptuous body!”
The toast of
Hollywood squinted out of nearsighted eyes at her
former body. A frown washed over her face
— now the Professor’s face. Anger
welled up. “You’re so smart,” the
professor’s lips gave voice to her thoughts,
“I’ll ask you a question, and if you
don't know the answer, you pay me $5000. You
ask me one and if I can't answer I will pay you $50.
The physicist,
encased in the starlet’s body, thought, I
have it all — beauty and brains. “Okay,
how far is the moon from earth?”
“I
don’t know,” the starlet says and hands
over $50. Now, you tell me what goes up a
hill with three legs and down with four?”
The university
president and distinguished guests crowded around
the blonde, barely registering what cosmic joke
had happened but anticipating an answer that
would rock their world. One or two of the guests
offered possible solutions, another used his
iPhone to consult Wikipedia, the women patted
their damp foreheads with hankies.
Minutes passed
before the woman responded with all the gravity
of a decade spent in classrooms. “I
don’t know the answer,” the pink mouth
voiced regret. “I’m deeply
chagrined, and I’ll give you the $5000
— but tell me the answer!”
The Hollywood
celebrity was getting comfortable in the
professor’s physique. Unrestrained after
years of insults about her blondness and presumed
stupidity, she smiled and let the tension mount.
A world of respect awaited her now and she was
ready to bask in the adulation of people who had
sneered.
Turning slowly
to the person she once was, she intoned in
perfectly enunciated words, “I don’t
know the answer either — so here’s your
$50 back.”
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