(At
a café table, surrounded by garlands, snow families, gingerbread houses, and
menorahs)
Friend
1: (While blowing on a hot drink) I feel like I can’t really relax and enjoy
the ambience of the moment when my attention keeps getting drawn to those
struggling baristas and their mile-long line.
Customer:
(On line next to the table) I used to be one of those – you tend to get in a
zone until the shift’s over. Just try to
tip, though, `cause that really helps out.
Friend
1: Heh-heh, oh boy. (Runs with wallet to
the tip jar and runs back to the table) What was I saying?
Friend
2: (Having finished three cookies and working on a fourth) How you can’t relax
in crowds.
Friend
1: Yeah. I want to fully experience the holiday
season this year but since everybody else is too, it’s kind of
distracting. (Sips drink and burns
tongue) And that’s now ruined. What I
should do is go home, curl up with a blanket, and read A Jolly Olde Solstice
Song like I do every year. I just
love that story – it truly gets the spirit of the season and what it’s all
about, know what I mean?
Friend
2: I’m surprised you like to read that one.
Friend
1: Why, you think it’s too sappy for me?
It is, but somehow it works. You
know, the heartfelt reunions, the plight of the poor, the importance of family
and friends, the reminder to tithe – this story literally has it all! --- ---- was a genius, I say, an absolute
genius, and I never use that word on anyone!
Friend
2: Can’t argue with that, but I’m surprised social-justice you enjoy it knowing
what he did.
Friend
1: Why, what’d he do?
Friend
2: You don’t know?
Friend
1: No, and get that smug look off your face – it drives everyone bonkers when
you do it.
Friend
2: Oh. (Frowns) I never realized I had a smug look.
Friend
1: Then I’m the first to tell you. So,
what’d he do? I’m irrationally anxious
about this now.
Friend
2: Well, for one thing, he was a polygamist.
Friend
1: He was a what-now?
Friend
2: He was married to four women and a plant – that last one wasn’t official,
but in his mind it was.
Friend
1: Ew! Did any of the four women know
about each other?
Friend
2: Two did, but what were they going to do about it? It was Victorian England – they’d consider
themselves lucky they weren’t being beaten every night.
Friend
1: I guess, but four wives? Why would he
even want to go past one?
Friend
2: Basically so he could get their families’ money and produce a bajillion
heirs he didn’t have to raise. Didn’t
you read his 10th son’s tell-all?
Friend
1: What, Father Mine, Where Art Thine Love? I thought that was just revisionist fiction.
Friend
2: No, it was pretty accurate non-fiction.
Family prime’s lawyer backed up most of it after having to sort through
the avalanche of ----‘s tawdry papers when he died.
Friend
1: Mm. Well, I suppose everyone has a
few skeletons in their closets, right?
It’s not as if he had any literal ones, right?
Friend
2: Weeellll….
Friend
1: (Slams paper cup onto the table) No.
Smug look off and tell me it’s a slanderous rumor with no basis in fact.
Friend
2: No and no – it could never be proven, but right before A Jolly Olde
Solstice Song was published there was this one guy who disappeared after a
big fight at ----‘s main house, and everybody thinks the London police covered
it up because the scandal would have destroyed the British Empire.
Friend
1: And who is this “everybody”?
Friend
2: You know, everybody.
Friend
1: Well that’s certainly definitive. Did
anybody ever think that maybe the guy just left town?
Friend
2: That’s the unpopular version; but there was this other time –
Friend
1: I don’t want to hear it.
Friend
2: Too bad: there was this other time where ---- said he was sent to debtors’
prison when he was an infant, when in fact he only had been pushed in his
carriage past one. He actually grew up
pretty well off and publicly stated that he wished beggars on the street would
just shove off already.
Friend
1: But – but – the plight of the poor!
Friend
2: He also said that he regretted that they’d always be with us, asking for
money.
Friend
1: (Stares at cold drink) I don’t understand.
How could something so wonderful have been written by someone who
embodied the exact opposite of the values he was writing about?! Why is everything like this always ruined by
their douchey creators?!
Friend
2: Who knows? Maybe that work was his
mitzvah.
Friend
1: I don’t think he was Jewish.
Friend
2: You don’t have to be Jewish to do a mitzvah, it’s just a good deed. Maybe A Jolly Olde Solstice Song was
his atonement for a lifetime of being a scumbag. A balance to offset his moral pollution, if
you will.
Friend
1: I guess. I certainly will never read
it in the same way again. I don’t even
know if I can ever read it again.
Friend
2: I wouldn’t let his sordid past bother you too much – you’d never read anything
again if you knew half of what their authors were really like.
very good; and, who are we talking about? HAHA.
ReplyDeleteThanks! Nobody in particular, but reading a lot recently about Charles Dickens had an influence :-).
ReplyDelete