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Even pseudo-intellectual snobs, such as I, can't resist reading tabloid articles while waiting in line at supermarkets. Especially stories with bold and bewitching headlines like "Face of Christ on Tortilla Draws Crowd." Or even lugubrious, catastrophic headlines like "Man's Testicles Sucked Down Hot Tub Drain." Don't we just gotta know the rest of the story?

How I miss the late broadcaster Paul Harvey. Having published a book titled The Rest of the Story, Harvey produced a similar radio segment. With great glee, Harvey provided additional information about certain happenings most newscasters never made time for.

Harvey's charm included a signature sign-off with sly pauses and a question mark as he said: "And that is the rest of the story. Paul ... Harvey ... Good day?" How I wish someone with Harvey's style were around today.

One news story in particular has piqued the deepest recesses of my expiring mind for years. As I read about a pizza delivery driver getting his foot run over as he crossed a busy street en route to deliver six pizzas to a tavern, I sprang up in my chair spellbound. But the stupid article omitted the very stuff I yearned to know.

The story revealed that the pizza driver was whisked away in an ambulance with a broken foot and was in stable condition. Witnesses said that a "wild-eyed motorcyclist" ruthlessly ran over the pizza man's foot and sped off. Police soon ascertained that the pizza driver had been having a not-so-clandestine affair with the cyclist's wife.

I snorted as I read that. I knew all about those lecherous pizza drivers. They moonlight as porn stars. But I digress.

My gripe is that the account in the paper goes on and on about all of the irrelevant facts cited above, completely ignoring the most important aspect of the story. Come on already, I simply cannot be the only person who's dying to know the story's biggest mystery: What happened to the pizzas?

Did the paramedics eat them? Did some glutton from the tavern come over and scoop them up off the street? Did dogs devour them? Did some callous truck driver run over them? Did sneaky cops gobble them down? What? What? What happened to them?

Furthermore, exactly what the hell kind of pizzas were they? Hamburger? Sausage? Pepperoni? Combination? Deluxe? And what about the toppings? No pineapple, I hope to God. But I'll never know. I'll never know.

Here's another thing: isn't it madness when we awaken in the middle of a dream and can't finish the confounded thing no matter how hard we try? After such a horrible moment once, my insignificant other cruelly kicked me out of my own house and told to "get a grip" before returning. And to bring home a quart of milk and a loaf of bread.

Strolling the streets in despair, fate plopped me at a greasy spoon and smack dab in the middle of yet another conundrum. Ensconced by a window with a lovely view of a bus stop, I blankly stared at a bench where lay a sleeping bum.

Suddenly, a pickup truck screeched to a halt in front of the bench. A lumberjack of woman jumped out of the driver's side of the truck and swaggered over to the sleeping derelict. Comically glancing from left to right like a crazed keystone cop, she yanked the bum's baseball cap off his head and stuck it on her own head, jerking it down over her eyebrows. Then she quickly jumped back inside the pickup and tore out of sight, burning rubber all the way.

Oh why, oh why, oh why-o?

Realizing that I would never know the rest of the story, I launched into such a fit of rage that the greasy spoon's bouncer kicked me out. Can I help it if I'm a guy who desperately needs closure? To top everything else off, I forgot to pick up my ball and chain's bread and milk and was denied re-entry at home. Humph! The rest of that story should have landed her in litigation.

For peace of mind, I've resolved henceforth to hang closely to my Pathological Liars Anonymous meetings. Now there's a place where the rest of any story is told in its entirety. And then some.

Steve ... Eskew ... Good day?

- Steve Eskew

Retired businessman Steve Eskew received master's degrees in dramatic arts and communication studies from the University of Nebraska at Omaha after he turned 50. After one of his professors asked him to write a theater column, he began a career as a journalist at The Daily Nonpareil in Council Bluffs, Iowa. This led to hundreds of publications in a number of newspapers, most of which appear on his website, eskewtotherescue.com.