Hear No, See No, Speak No

Once upon a time there really were three friends with the unlikely names of Tom, Dick, and Harry. Actually they were Thomas, Richard, and Henry, but an author's entitled some literary license, isn't he?

Tom was a disc jockey, highly attuned to sound and its subtle-most nuances. He was the rare bird who really could hear a pin drop in a full blasting boiler room.

Dick was an optometrist, used to using the most delicate and exacting instruments to produce prescription-perfect spectacles. He could detect the slightest, the most minuscule visual flaw.

Harry was a linguist, a master of language, an elocutionist whose very life, in his mind anyway, depended on perfect pronunciation. So exacting was Harry that he made Professor Higgins sound like a stutterer from Babel.

When the three friends went anywhere, which they often did because each had a shrew for a wife, naturally each reacted to what came to them in his own way. Tom spoke in audio terms, Dick in visual, and Harry in verbal. They made quite a trio, and it wasn't long before the perpetual inhabitants of Estelle's handsome lounge quit calling them by their obvious

aggregate name and spoke of them as the Three Monkeys. Not wise monkeys, just monkeys. The handle was apt, of course, since it was impossible for Thomas to react sans sound, Richard sans sight, and Henry sans exquisite speech.

One day an Englishman entered Estelle's handsome lounge, and to make a short story shorter, challenged everyone to darts. Osgood Norwich did this wherever he traveled America, which he called The Grumbling English Colonies. It was his attempt to endear himself with the Yankees, even though the year was 2002. He also challenged the Americans because he was convinced that the British had an exclusive monopoly on dart-throwing to the point that the worst Englishman was innately superior to the best Yankee. Osgood, you see, was a hallucinating historian.

When the local trio heard the challenge, their individual expertise's dashed to the fore. They insisted that they be known by the low-brow names Tom, Dick, and Harry. They figured that this way if they beat Osgood it would add more salt to his wounds than if they were known as Thomas, Richard, and Henry, mostly former English monarchs.

Between mugs, the trio decided that their golden-tongued co-revolutionist should do all the shooting. The man with the ears would tell exactly what number he'd hit with his eyes closed while the man with the eyes would reveal, from the far end of the lounge, with one eye closed as if he were reading a chart, exactly how far each dart landed from the bull's eye.

Osgood Norwich flinched only slightly at the brazen Yanks. And what obvious Yanks with those laughable names. They simply must be put in their places, and what a sound drubbing he was prepared to give them, too. In keeping with the tradition of his ancestors, the Englishman bet

Harry that he could beat him, Dick that he could not tell the exact distance, and Tom that in more than half the darts thrown he couldn't even tell what quadrant the missiles had struck. All boosted by Estelle and her covey of interested waitresses and the bartender who outdid himself that afternoon with the most atrocious concoctions.

It wouldn't matter if Tom had drunk a gallon of double Martini's, he could still hear perfectly. Also, it wouldn't matter if Dick closed both eyes with a blindfold, he'd be able to see enough to calculate to the micrometer. And once Harry started talking, his golden voice could mesmerize even the ears of an English historian with illusions of grandeur. Poor Osgood, dazzled by the three and utterly aghast at such an atypically-dreadful showing, paid for all the drinks.

"Good ole Ozzy," said the three teasingly, "if you ever want to reenact the Revolution, next time send yourveteranforces."

This, of course, would have infuriated the Englishman had he been stable and in his right senses, but the truth was that he was not only deranged, he was fresh out of a mental hospital and was barely aware that he wasn't' in England. So instead of being infuriated, Osgood Norwich quipped from his stiff upper lip, "I dare say, that was a jolly good show, what?"

At this point Tom, Dick, and Harry felt they might double the stakes and impress as deeply as possible that Yanks are stout hearted lads indeed, but they came to their professional senses when Estelle twirled her finger at her head while pointing to Osgood, telling them that they shouldn't take advantage of a loony even if he was English.

The hear-no, see-no, speak-no evil gentlemen acquiesced by changing the attention from darts to dogs. Now, while the mind of Mr. Norwich, certainly an esquire, was noticeably scattered, there was one thing it stuck

to. He was under the very vivid notion that he was at home in London or Sussex or Canterbury, and that these three kept changing from Yankee rebels to Norman invaders and sometimes even to Viking raiders. It was incumbent upon him, therefore, to protect the British Isles, the Monarchy, and all that was English. So he challenged them to a game of pool.

We don't have to make this a shaggy dog story, do we? By now the point has been made that the Brit was unhinged, and Tom, Dick, and Harry had had their fun, so Estelle wouldn't allow them to take advantage of the Englishman even had they been inclined. No, the trio didn't make fools of themselves by avenging the foreigner's superior attitude. After all, even though he was bananas and an Englishman, still he was human. So no matter how much license I might want to allow myself, I'll let Thomas, Richard, and Harry aka Tom, Dick, and Harry, sip at Estelle's smiling with their highly developed senses of hearing, seeing, speaking, while Osgood Norwich suaves his bent historical conscience with a glass of Harvey's Bristol Creme.