Coupeville Sports

“Save us, Mrs. Butterworth! You’re our only hope!!”

Someone needs to save my fingers.

Someone needs to go back in time, to that moment in 2009 when I got an unexpected $10,000 from my grandmother’s estate, to the moment BEFORE I blew most of it on (an admittedly awesome) DVD collection which now sits in a dark storage shed owned by the spawn of Satan, and slap me.

Hard. And often.

Go back to that moment, in the final days of David’s DVD Den, when I was entwined with the lawyer who would one day own my copies of “Hell Up in Harlem,” “Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death,” “Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem” (yes, that’s how it’s spelled) and 2,500+ other shiny lil’ discs.

I remember the giddy stupidity of those days, as box after box arrived from Amazon. Popping the protective plastic inserts. Watching the florescent lights shining off of Jodie Foster’s face.

The complete Abbott and Costello.

The complete Woody Allen. The complete Coen brothers. The complete Scorsese. And on and on.

The Frankie and Annette beach party movies. The Ray Harryhausen stop-motion monster flicks.

The complete Shirley Temple (hey now! she’s the greatest movie star of all time, so back off!!).

A nearly complete collection of ’70s black exploitation flicks. Pam Grier. Need I say more?

Every bizarre one-off film I wanted (“El Topo,” “The Candy Snatchers,” “Shortbus,” “God Told Me To”) — who cares if they ever rent? I didn’t!!

Opera. An entire set of two-disc (with booklet!) opera DVDs, shot live in Italy. Cause why the hell not?!?!

If someone had knocked me out of my daze in those unfortunate days, maybe I wouldn’t be paying the bills now as a dish dog.

Slowly crushing my fingers — the digits that type these stories — abusing them in a semi-nightly dance with half-eaten rice, razor-sharp mussel shells, butter-coated lemon wedges and some other things it’s best to just not think about as you try and jam them down a drain that is not fond of actually … draining.

I have worked in far worse places than the restaurant I work at now, which is a classy joint run by nice people.

But the reality is, nothing about being a dish dog, wherever it is, is fun.

It is, at its core, a stinky, depressing slog through the bottom end of the sewer, and it is beating the crud out of my fingers.

So I daydream about a time loop and that $10,000 coming back around and me being smarter and sitting outside full-time this spring, doing nothing but covering sports while others deal with au gratin potatoes night.

I don’t even need $10,000 for that. $3,000 and I coast for four months. And then…

Maybe we should go back further.

To that time when a 23-year old decided after two-plus years as a sports editor at a twice-weekly paper to “try something new” and ended up out on a run-down mussel boat in Penn Cove — still the worst job in the world next to being the eyeball-licker at a slaughterhouse.

Let’s punch that guy. Right in the stupid face.