Six feet! How many of us really know what is six feet? I for years thought I was six feet tall, despite what those telling pencil marks on the closet door eternally establishing me as never more five-foot-seven-inches. Throughout high school I wore high heels, not because I was ahead of my time, but because I wanted to be, well, “higher” of course…duh.
So, I am one of those “height and size challenged” individuals…well, perhaps not size-challenged…I recognize “large” when I see it…if you understand my implication. I have been known to rip the “MEDIUM” tag off clothes, and attach them to “XL”, much to the puzzlement of the checkout clerks at Kohl’s. My wife, however, will not permit me to wear those MEDIUM tags on my XL sweatshirt in public. I tried that once; strangers would pass by, see the tag, look at me, and say, “Yeah, right” in a disparaging tone.
The challenge now in this age of justifiable pandemic panic, it has become imperative that to practice “social distancing” one must be acutely aware of what constitutes six feet, particularly since we as biped humans have only two, spiders and octopuses have eight, and centipedes and millipedes have…uh, lots of feet. Which raises the question, who can afford their shoes? And should all hundred pairs match? And do they need a hundred pairs of socks? And shoe trees and shoe polish…that is a big expense for millipedes, especially underprivileged millipedes . But, I digress.
Six feet. I watch people trying to practice this current craze of six-foot distancing. It looks like some sort of dance at that Star Wars bar scene, or some sort of human magnetism experiment where both people possess the same negative pole charge. One moves closer, the other is repulsed away.
So, I have invented what I have named the “Sick Stick.” I thought of calling it the “Pandemic Pole”, but this seemed too marketing-restrictive. This “stick” is precisely six feet in length, 72 inches, 182.88 centimeters, 18,288 millimeters…exactly, micrometer accurate, six feet. I am selling the one-piece “Sick Stick” for a mere $5 per foot. I have a collapsible, aluminum, bungie-corded “Sick Stick” for $9.95 a foot, the preference of the Ninja crowd, and a telescoping “Sick Stick” that collapses to a mere one foot and can be carried in a purse or pocket.
I price these items by the foot because there are some who prefer the legendary 10-foot stick with which they can demonstrate what they declare they would not touch, ie. various persons, snakes and inanimate items such as road kill and explosives. When someone says, “I wouldn’t touch that with a 10-foot stick” they can declare “Ah, ha” and demonstrate to those doubters they do, actually, have a 10-foot stick.
Accessories include a genuine leather Sick Stick belt holster for $15.95 (and a “quick-draw” model for $29.95), a rubber Sick Stick Sharp Tip Protector for $4.95, Sick Stick Slippery Sludge to allow the collapsible telescopic model to slide quickly and smoothly.
The injection model, the "Sick Stick Shooter” with trigger action allows the owner to charge it with various liquid substances, such as Cobra venom, Haldol, or cyanide to guarantee rapid repulsion, maintaining that critical six-foot social distance.
The “Sick Stick” comes in a variety of designer colors including basic “Pallor White”, “Biliary Green”, “Purulent Purple”, “Ebola Orange” and “Bubonic Black”. Accessories include a pet-friendly blunt tip, or a discouraging, pin-point tip to prevent invasion of your six-foot personal space.
My next product, still in prototype design is the “Shake Stick”. Also six feet in length, there is a fake hand at the end. This is the much more friendly version of the Sick Stick. The advanced Shake Stick, the “Hand Job”, has a mechanically operated hand that can grip when manually triggered, which makes the six-foot “Hand Job” much more personally appealing.
SALES NOTE: I will offer free Sick Sticks to the first six orders (sorry, all gone). However, there will be no future free Hand Jobs.
If you choose NOT to purchase my innovative, novel Sick Stick, another option: the favorite for Scuba divers and aborigines worldwide…a speargun.