I'm Not High by Jim Breuer Read Free Book Online Page B

dodging my own punches, flailing again all over the place.
    One prank phone call I made at Sears could have easily landed me in prison. It was a federal offense, apparently. A new guy had started in hardware. He was in his late thirties, so to me, a teenager, he was already suspect. He wasn’t even in commissions hardware, where the guys salivate all over the power saws and riding lawn mowers, pulling down a percentage on each one they sell. This poor guy was just peddling wrenches for a measly hourly wage.
    I was standing around the paint department (by the way, to this day, I know nothing about paint), and one of my coworkers, a kid a couple years older than me, came by complaining.
    “Hey, this new guy in hardware is really serious,” he said. “I was looking for a lightbulb for my dad’s garage, and he booted me out of his section.”
    “Why?”
    “I dunno,” he said with a shrug. “He said I ought to stay in my department.”
    “Oh, really ?” I said.
    I picked up the house phone and called hardware.
    “Sears Valley Stream hardware,” the guy said. “This is Jack, how may I help you?” I could see him right down one of the main aisles, probably fifty feet away from where I was standing.
    “Jack,” I said in a horrendous Middle Eastern accent. “This is Muammar Gaddafi.” This was at a time when some really heavy stuff was going on between the U.S. and Libya. Gaddafi’s name was as reviled and feared here as Osama bin Laden’s is today.
    “Okay?” he said. He had no clue.
    “I am Muammar Gaddafi!” I repeated loudly.
    “How can I help you, uh, Mua . . . Muammar?” he said patiently, trying to get the pronunciation right. He had no clue.
    By now, I had a few coworkers around me, listening to my end of the conversation, looking down the aisle, waiting to see what would happen.
    “I have just sent six missiles to hit your Sears hardware department in Valley Stream.” My accent was so purposely hacky that I didn’t expect anyone to believe it.
    “Excuse me?” he said.
    “You heard me!” I yelled frantically. “You now have five minutes to get out!” I ended the call by shouting, “Long live the paint department!”
    We watched as Jack hung up the phone calmly, without flinching, and simply walked away. He didn’t seem to have a care in the world. In fact, it looked like he was going back to organizing the screwdrivers. None of us could believe it. There was not much else going on, so a couple of us went and sat down in the break room, scheming about how else we could get him.
    After a few minutes, we lost interest and started talking about the Mets and girls. We forgot all about Jack and Muammar. When we left the break room, we saw that the girl from the candy department was gone. The toy department people were nowhere to be found. There were no customers left on the floor. As we were looking around, wondering what was going on, an older security guard came racing out of the stockroom.
    “Breuer!” he yelled. “What the heck are you guys doing here?”
    “It’s called working,” I said cockily. “You should give it a try sometime.”
    He ignored me and kept yelling. “You’ve got to get out of the store right now! The new guy from hardware just took a bomb threat.”
    “What?!” I asked. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach.
    “They’re about to evacuate the whole damn mall,” he said. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Then for dramatic effect, he added, “We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
    Not thinking of the consequences, I said, “Wait, wait, wait. There’s no bomb threat.” I just wanted him to calm down.
    “There sure is, Jim,” he said insistently.
    “No,” I said. “I called this guy and said I was Muammar Gaddafi, the leader of Libya. I said I sent missiles. But I never said there was a bomb.”
    “Oh my God,” the security guard said, turning pale. “You made that call?”
    “Yeah, but any moron would have known it wasn’t a bomb threat.”
    He