The Case of the Troublesome Trailer

My Monday began with a boo-ya. I finally finished the 40-pack of toothpaste I bought from Costco in 2003, which filled me with such joy I yelled “Boo-ya!” as if I just summited Mount Everest. My friend Annie, visiting later that day, was not feeling as euphoric.

“Hey, Ace,” she said, her hound-dogged face in need of temporary Botox. “I have a bad case of the Mondays.”

“A whole case?” I asked. “Did you buy them at Costco? Well, we should do something silly tonight, like waste a ton of money on fancy cheeses.”

“I don’t know, Ace,” she said. “Cheese isn’t very healthy, and I always become heartbroken every time my aorta ruptures.”

“You’ll love it,” I said. And so we went to The Big Cheese, a gourmet cheese boutique where cool jazz played on the speakers, Californian wines lined the walls and the noxious scent of solidified cow juice filled the air.

While I dallied over the brie, questioning its place on my plate, a theatrical-looking gent leaned over and said, “To brie or not to brie… that is the question.”

“Wow, cheese humor,” I said, as politely as I could.

“Oh, there’s more. What type of cheese is made backwards?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, scanning the room for Annie to come and save me. Unfortunately she was schmoozing the sommelier who was giving out free wine samples.

“Edam!” the man said, grinning widely. “Get it? M-a-d-e spelled backwards is edam, a Dutch cheese traditionally sold in spheres.”

“Sorry, I’m in insurance. We don’t get humor.”

“Insurance? Question for you then. As you’re surely aware of, August is National Goat Cheese Month. During my town’s annual Goat Cheese Festival, I set up a wine garden with live music on the main drag. Being a good boy who dots his i’s, crosses his t’s and tildes his ñ’s, I purchased a CGL policy and liquor liability for the day. Then one of the band members jumped off the trailer we were using as a stage, even though it had steps, and injured her knee.”

“Why didn’t she use the stairs?”

“Apparently musicians are too cool for stairs, Crocs and deodorant. Anyhoo, the insurance company denied the claim, because they said the trailer was an auto. Funny, to me that trailer was nothing like an auto; it was just a stage. The pulling vehicle was disconnected and they had put steps up to the trailer. So who’s right?”

“A rose by any other name is still a rose,” I said.

Why was Ace quoting the bard?

Check your solution against Ace’s.

Jonathan Hermann (hermannism@gmail.com) is an IA contributing editor.