DENVER – Broncos QB Peyton Manning, during a brief stop yesterday at Stain-B-Gone Dry Cleaners to pick up some freshly laundered dress shirts and slacks, flew into what witnesses described as a, “violently unhinged temper tantrum,” upon learning that the bill for the cleaning service amounted to precisely $43.08, a figure reminiscent of the 43-8 loss his Denver squad suffered at the hands of the Seattle Seahawks in February’s Super Bowl.
“It was crazy,” remarked Stain-B-Gone employee Evelyn Patterson. “I handed him his clothes, told him the bill came out to $43.08, and waited for him to hand me a credit card. Instead, his eye started to twitch, his lip began to curl, and his forehead turned, like, six different shades of red. Next thing I know, he starts howling at the top of his lungs and pounding his fists on the desk. Then he leapt over the counter and began yanking dozens of garments away from the conveyor belt and tearing them in half with his teeth.”
Added Patterson: “All the while, he’s screaming, ‘You goddamn little blue and green shitbirds! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all!’ It really freaked out the owner of the pet shop next door.”
“Mr Manning’s behaviour indicates he’s suffering from a classic case of PTSD, or ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,’” said local clinical psychologist Dr. Suzanne Rosten. “When an individual suffers an awful, traumatizing experience, often the pent=up emotion associated with that experience can come flooding back due to a ‘trigger,’ as was the case with this dry cleaning bill. Normally, we see PTSD in police officers or war veterans, not in people who simply play sports for a living. But then again there was nothing simple about that humiliating beatdown the ‘Hawks hammered down on the Broncos. We should consider ourselves lucky Mr. Manning didn’t go on a cross-country murder spree after an ass-kicking like that.”
