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Blondes Get No Respect
by Walt Giersbach

Lightning crashed down as scudding clouds blanketed the sky. Picnickers scattered like blowing leaves, but Didi and the Professor remained still under the splintered oak tree. Instead of running — and it was too late by then — they sat dazed.

“What in Heaven’s name happened?” the university president cried, rushing over to help them sit up. Concern beetled his forehead. The university would have hell to pay if the bombshell from Hollywood got hurt during their commencement exercises. Professors, however, were a dime a dozen — even Nobel Prize physicists.

Professor Slotkin, who worked to defend his prodigy status against advancing middle age, shook his famously long black hair and looked up at the president. “I just had the stuffing kicked out of me. That was some lightning bolt — and what happened to the Versace I was wearing? I borrowed that thousand-dollar frock for this lame affair!”

Gibberish, the president thought. The lightning had fried his brain.

The blonde woman in the sundress scooped almost to her equator returned to full consciousness. Didi Darling, to whom the president had just awarded an honorary doctorate in arts, rolled her eyes and began patting her face. She froze as her hands dropped down her neck to her chest.

“I...I can still ratiocinate and deduce,” the woman said to the amazement of the returning guests and dignitaries. “My brain can still answer any question put to man.” She looked in amazement at the scientist next to her. “I think the lightning has transposed our minds into each other’s bodies!” The celebrity suddenly shouted, “Eureka!  I’ve retained my genius, and it’s now packaged in a voluptuous body!”

The toast of Hollywood squinted out of nearsighted eyes at her former body. A frown washed over her face — now the Professor’s face. Anger welled up. “You’re so smart,” the professor’s lips gave voice to her thoughts, “I’ll ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me $5000. You ask me one and if I can't answer I will pay you $50.

The physicist, encased in the starlet’s body, thought, I have it all — beauty and brains. “Okay, how far is the moon from earth?”

“I don’t know,” the starlet says and hands over $50. Now, you tell me what goes up a hill with three legs and down with four?”

The university president and distinguished guests crowded around the blonde, barely registering what cosmic joke had happened but anticipating an answer that would rock their world. One or two of the guests offered possible solutions, another used his iPhone to consult Wikipedia, the women patted their damp foreheads with hankies.

Minutes passed before the woman responded with all the gravity of a decade spent in classrooms. “I don’t know the answer,” the pink mouth voiced regret. “I’m deeply chagrined, and I’ll give you the $5000 — but tell me the answer!”

The Hollywood celebrity was getting comfortable in the professor’s physique. Unrestrained after years of insults about her blondness and presumed stupidity, she smiled and let the tension mount. A world of respect awaited her now and she was ready to bask in the adulation of people who had sneered.

Turning slowly to the person she once was, she intoned in perfectly enunciated words, “I don’t know the answer either — so here’s your $50 back.”