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Fiction, © Copyright 2000, Jim Loy
Margot and Judy were students at the Albert Einstein Middle School, in Frontage Road, Michigan. For their Speech/Communication assignment, they decided to take a poll of the neighborhood. They had heard that President Bill Clinton was the most hated person in America. They decided to test that, right here in Frontage Road. As they walked home from school, Judy said, "We can't just ask people if they hate Clinton. If we do that, we won't find out if they hate someone else worse."
"Yeah, I suppose. How about if we ask people to name the ten men ..."
"People."
"... People who they hate most. How about that?"
"Sounds fair. Let's do it." A leaping high-five followed.
Later, Margot asked her mother, "Mom, who are the ten people that you hate most?"
"I don't hate anybody, Sweetie."
Margot didn't like being called Sweetie. "Maybe 'hate' is too strong. How about 'dislike'?"
"I don't dislike anybody either, except maybe Mrs. Williams who always brags about her daughter. And I don't like her daughter either, although I've never met her. And then there is Sadam Hussein, and that Yugoslavian guy, I don't know his name. And then there's Julia Roberts because she's so darned pretty, and talented. And the Devil." She went on. Margot quit taking notes when she got to ten. Should she rank Julia Roberts above the Devil?
Meanwhile, Judy was interviewing her father, "Rodman, the ugly son of a -----, and Dick Vitale, and Larry Bird, he's as ugly as Rodman. And that guy on golf who shouts, 'You're the man.' And Sosa 'cause he got more home runs than McGwire. And Barney."
"Barney who?"
"Barney, that stupid purple dinosaur on the kids' program." And he went on.
In the next few days, Margot and Judy knocked on doors and stopped people on the sidewalk and in the supermarkets.
"Bill Allens."
"Who's he?"
"He lives next door. He's a real jerk. He drives his car on my grass. So I drive my car on his grass."
"Who else do you hate?"
"Bill Allens."
"You already named him."
"He's all ten. He's first, second, third, and so on."
Judy thought that if she wrote down Bill Allens ten times, he might win the poll when only one person hated him. So she only wrote his name down once. "How about Sadam Hussein?"
"Never met the man, might be a nice guy for all I know."
They got other responses from people: "Billy in the Family Circus cartoons" who they had to disqualify because he was a cartoon character. "Hitler" who they had to disqualify because he was dead. "Tweety Pie, have you ever noticed how evil he is, always getting Sylvester in trouble?" another cartoon character. A few actors were hated because they played jerks on television. In the end, these were the top five: