A Cracking Sense of Humor

ONLY ONLINE: Budget Travel Magazine features a local's hilarious story.

Budget Travel featured a hilarious Missouri story in its June issue, contributed by reader Marilyn Brenner, who lives on Mooney Hollow Drive near Licking, a town of 1,471 people just across 417-land’s northeastern border. Reached on the phone one recent Tuesday morning, Marilyn retold her tale for us, her voice trembling with pent-up laughter.

Several years ago, she and her husband, David, took a tour of Scotland. After a wonderful day touring St. Andrew’s Links, the world home of golf, followed by an evening at a neighborhood pub in the industrial town of Dundee, the couple stayed the night with a friend, Ina Livingstone. Ina lived in an apartment building for retired people that came equipped with “a simple alarm system in case of emergency”: a cord near the front door, one the kitchen, and another next to the bathtub. The day’s exertions behind him, David jumped in the shower. When he finished, he bent over to dry his feet, and, without knowing it, caught the emergency cord in the crack of his bum (the Queen’s English for “derriere”). When David straightened up, he pulled the cord down, alerting the apartment complex’s security detail. They called Ina, who was in her kitchen, oblivious to the whole affair. “Mrs. Livingstone, are you all right?” they asked. “Yes, yes, nothing happened.” she said. When David told the group what really had happened, everyone had a good laugh. “Mrs. Livingstone just about wet her pants, if you’ll excuse the expression,” recalls Marilyn today. And for the record, she says, he hasn’t got anything else caught in there since.