Police Tickled the Expanse of Exposed Flesh before Freeing Him
John “Tiny” Albertson of Dry Creek, Nebraska won this year’s storytelling competition staged by the National Association of Tiny Building Inspectors.
Albertson’s colleagues from around the country screeched with laughter and pounded their plump thighs with glee as he recounted how his ample rear end became stuck in the opening of a crawl space and an unknown assailant tickled the expanse of exposed flesh with a feather.
“The more he tickled me and the more I screamed, the tighter my ass got wedged in that damned little hole,” Albertson said, describing how his head and torso were inside the dank space under the floor of a house and his rear end protruded into the back yard of the home where he was inspecting an electrical installation.
The unknown assailant stood outside the house and plied his feather on the vast rear end with impunity.
Albertson’s colleagues could fully savor his tale because membership in the National Association of Tiny Building Inspectors is restricted to building inspectors who work in towns of less than 10,000 people, who weigh more than 250 pounds, and who have the nickname “Tiny” as a result of their girth.
Albertson was so tightly wedged in the opening that he couldn’t move forward or retreat into the backyard. Luckily, he had his cell phone in a buttoned shirt pocket.
“Whoever it was doing the tickling just wouldn’t stop,” Albertson said. “I used all the will power I could find to stop laughing and dialed my office. I prayed that my phone had a signal strong enough to get out of that crawl space.”
Albertson got through, but had to endure the laughter of Etta Jonesboro, Dry Creek’s City Hall receptionist, when he explained his predicament. Eventually, she dispatched Heck Gunderson, chief of Dry Creek’s three-man police force.
“Heck walked up and yelled at me, asking me what he was supposed to do,” Albertson said. “I told him to get me the Hell out of there. Ol’ Heck said, ‘Sure thing. Just a minute.’ The next thing I know he was tickling me in the same place on my ass with a blade of grass. I couldn’t believe it. He said he needed to replicate the crime for his report.”
When the police chief discovered that he wasn’t strong enough to dislodge Albertson’s rear, he called Willie Satter, the dog catcher, and the two of them tugged on Albertson’s legs and freed him.
The storytelling judges gave Albertson a score of nine out of a possible ten for the nature of his predicament; an eight for his use of metaphor, simile, and irony; a nine for resourcefulness in finding a solution; and a seven for use of onomatopoeia for rhetorical effect.
Second place went to Willie “Tiny” Henderson of Three Lakes, Minnesota for his account of being wedged between the water heater and the furnace in the basement of a house where the family’s boa constrictor had escaped from its terrarium and decided to wrap itself around Henderson’s legs.