The Ballad of Shudo

30 Minus 2 Days of Writing (2013)
Day 20: “The Other Shoe”

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I do and say a lot of things that end up pissing off my fiancée, Diana. Most of the time, it’s deliberate. Over the years since Diana and I have been together, I’ve grown to favor a sizable collection of one-sided running gags. For instance, there’s Mouthy, the hexagonal paper hand puppet who always makes an appearance whenever we eat out at Asian restaurants where they provide you those disposable chopstick sleeves.

Diana hates it when I talk to her through Mouthy.

Incidentally, Diana also hates speaking to Sharkington Landsworth III, the trigger-pull toy shark featured in the picture on my “About” page. Sharkington is a crusty old fish who speaks in a cockney English accent so terrible, the very sound of it would even offend Dick Van Dyke. Bless his plastic little heart though, because Sharkington certainly does try. His cockney accent is about as good as mine.

There’s also the world-famous “Sea Lion Shuffle” dance, which involves a lot of swaying from left to right, and a lot of chest bumping against Diana’s shoulder. Diana hates this too. She never was any good at dancing.

But there is one annoying gag of mine that never stood the test of time. You see, in the far reaches of KZ’s mind, there lived a hobbit. This hobbit’s name was Shudo [rhymes with Judo, or Shoe-Doe]. I conjured up the story of Shudo while Diana and I were roaming a mall one day while shopping for shoes.

We’ve all heard the tales about Bilbo Baggins and his storied nephew, Frodo. But there is a lesser-known hobbit named Shudo who once dared to defy the oppressive will of the Dark Lord, Sauron. Shudo, despite the connotations of his name, walked around without footwear just as any self-respecting hobbit would do. He was prone to mischief, and he longed for adventure. One day, he heard whisperings in the Shire about a great war brewing in the lands of Men over something known as the One Sole. Shudo, seizing the opportunity to go out looking for trouble, left his home in the Shire and set out on the road to Rivendell.

Soon, Shudo found himself swept up in a grand adventure which saw him through countless skirmishes with orcs and Uruk-Hightops. Shudo never learned the truth about the One Sole. He never even knew what it was. All he knew was how to fight, and did so bravely and honorably for thirty years until one day when he was felled by a Nazgûl blade to the foot. He might have lived, they say, had he only been wearing shoes.

. . .

I vaguely remember that day in the shopping mall so many years ago when I told Diana the ridiculous tale of Shudo. The only thing I really recall is that she seemed utterly indifferent to the whole thing. She just looked forward and pretended not to listen. Eventually I got bored of Shudo, and I abandoned him as a flopped joke. That could have very well been the end of the story, but Diana’s conscience weighed heavily on her burdened soul. A full three years or so after this incident, Diana decided it was finally time to make an important confession.

“Do you remember Shudo? I never wanted to tell you this, because I thought it would have given you too much of an upper hand, but I’ve always hated Shudo the most. That was easily the stupidest bullshit you’ve ever come up with. It was pathetic even by your low standards. I hated Shudo so much right from the start, that I decided not to acknowledge it until you got bored and moved onto something else.”

It took guts to tell me this. Given my habit of drawing out bad jokes until they have long since overstayed their welcome, Diana was putting herself at great risk of having to put up with a lifetime’s worth of Shudo jokes. I appreciated her honesty, and so I promised to close the chapter on Shudo. We hardly ever mention that ill-fated hobbit anymore. In our household, Shudo is a profane name which we dare not say, much the same way wizards in the Harry Potter universe avoid any utterances of the name of “Voldemort”.

Shudo is a joke that never stood the test of time — not because it wasn’t funny or awesome, but because it was far too awesome for Diana to bear. It was the One Joke that had the power to irrevocably undermine Diana’s infinite patience for my insufferable bullshit. As the ancient lore says of Shudo:

[Shudo is the] One Joke to rule them all, One Joke to find them,
One Joke to piss off Diana, and in the lameness bind them.

Mind your thoughts and your actions, dear friends, and speak not Shudo’s name except under the gravest conditions of necessity. The agents of Sauron have many spies, and Diana’s patience with me wanes ever thinner.

30 Minus 2 Days of Writing (2013)
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