National Filter Free Day

One of my favorite comic moments is when Ben Stiller, playing the seemingly friendly old age home orderly turns into a geriatric's worst nightmare after Adam Sandler leaves his grandmother’s room in Happy Gilmore. The poor old granny asks for a cup of milk, to which Stiller replies: “You can trouble me for a warm glass of shut-the-hell-up!”

Man, sometimes I wish I could throw my inner filter to the wind and say what I really want. Like when I was hired in a family-owned company in Spain as an editor but was treated like a secretary by my superiors. The boss’s son, with his permascowl that we coworkers dubbed his ‘constipation face,’ constantly called me into the office so that I could “put him through” to some bigwig on the phone and make him look important. Instead of a pathetic “Si, claro!” and nervous giggle when he leaned forward with that irritating frown and asked, “Can you do that for me?” I could have said: “Actually, I can’t do that for you Jose. What I can do is ask you to bend over so I can manually insert this phone into your rectum…loosen things up a bit.” I spent many an office daydream imagining this scenario and laughing out loud at the thought of his shocked face and mouth agape.

Or yesterday, it happened twice in the elevator, which I pray each day will get me to or from the 19th floor in anything fewer than ten minutes. When one girl got in and hit floor two, I wanted to say: “Are you FN kidding me? You can’t walk up one flight of stairs ya lazy piece o'...?” And again when we hit floor 15 and two wide loads insisted on squeezing themselves into the already crammed space…how I longed to say: “get the hell outta hea!” Instead, both times I said a meek hello.

And oh, how I would love to cut the Office Tidbitter off at the chase when, after telling him I can’t talk due to my workload, he insists on giving me vital information such as “I drank a beer last night.” If I had no filter, I could interrupt and say “upupupupup…I said I’m busy. Zip. It.”

I won’t even bother opening the can of worms of what I’d say to my fellow commuters…

Anyway this train of thought came about because one of my BFFs in Barcelona is moving flats, partly because of her inconsiderate noisy upstairs neighbors, who, although having been asked diplomatically to keep it down, continue to drag furniture around and stomp with shoes on well past midnight. We recently came up with lame revenge techniques for when she moves…putting a bag of steaming crap on their doorstep, breaking a toothpick off in their lock, ripping their name off their mailbox and replacing it with something nasty. But wouldn’t it be great if instead she could just run upstairs, knock and yell “I’m moving. Lata muthhhhaaa F**CKAASSS" in the style of Ken Jeong in The Hangover?

I’m proposing that we make these fantasies a reality and declare a National Filter Free Day. Why not? It’s not any sillier than April Fool’s Day or Valentine’s Day. So in the words of “Seven Minute Abs” guy from Something About Mary...You in?