A draught horse, serendipity, and a bankruptcy
Forstraught on October 30, 2022.
A draught horse was caught in a claught. It was distraught: The situation fraught. Would all come to naught? It ought to, I thought, then laughed roughly. The draught horse neighed and fought the wrought-iron claught in which it was caught. It was tough all right, but not as tough as the one I bought my daughter back in—
“Since when do you have a daughter?” Becasue interrupted.
“Since, uh, at least… 1999,” I answered. “Things were murky back then… confusion reigned. But things were much more concise! Uh, the girl-next-refrigerator may have played a part, you know, and…” I trailed off.
My redheaded huzzey-muffet eyed me balefully. I took another waught of my draught and lost my train of thought.
“Since when do you have a draft horse?” She ploughed forward with more questions—even spelling them modernly. But this one was easy to answer.
“Well!” I began. “Back in the 1990s, when I served in the U.S. Horse Force…”
That was Monday.
A catastrophic toilet-flushing accident had turned my garage into an above-ground septic tank. I realized I needed a new garage. Fortune must have been smiling on me this week, for the Fnords next door were having a garage sale! But upon my arrival, I quickly learned that the garage was not for sale—only the things inside it.
“This is just like that time I needed a new yard,” I mumbled bitterly and walked home empty-handed.
That was Tuesday.
The Sun was up and the goats were belching up a storm in the goatburping park on Shoehorner Street. I was walking my pet kerfrumpt down Hegelian Avenue and noticed a new sign on the steps of City Hall: “This is a smoke-free facility.”
“Not if I set it on fire, it’s not!”
That was Wednesday.
Increasing my blogging efficiency was top on my mind this week. I knew I would be late again unless I made drastic changes to my daily routine. I unbolted my toilet from the bathroom floor and planted it right in front of my computer.
That was Thursday.
Euphoria washed over me as I experienced the serendipity of finishing both a bottle of shampoo and conditioner in perfect concert with each other. I had never been so elated.
That was Friday.
I pnipped and I pneeped and I did a Pnårpy dance.
That was Saturday.
Those fnordbitten savages and that randy Tandy computer notwithstanding, one thing this week was certain: A lot had happened, a lot had not happened, and a lot more was sure to happen next week. Even more would not happen of course, but that didn’t mean that nothing would happen. Something always happens. (Well, except that week in 1953 where literally nothing happened for the entire seven days, but that was an outlier.)
I thought back to that randy Tandy with a shudder. That bit of salacious anti-computationalism and Levantine foot-fetishism had been responsible for the destruction of my palatial abode (and every squirrel nest) on Bouillabaisse Boulevard, but I had had my revenge: In 2015, when RadioShack finally went utterly bankrupt, at long last, I took all the credit. With as much gusto and glee, I took credit.
“It was me! Me, me, me! All me!!!” I had congratulated myself—loudly and shrilly there in that courtroom that day. The Bankruptcy Court judge didn’t believe a word of it, and my rebuttal—to their objections that I even appear in their court—fell on deaf ears. Then, amidst my triumphant hopping up and down on the witness stand, my voluminous buttocks fell real hard right on that flabbergasted lawyer’s face! A mistrial was declared, the jury went home without squawking a verdict, the bankruptcy trustee took early retirement, and—last I heard—was living out his days as a cockroach farmer in Burkina Faso.
That’ll show them to send horny computers to devour my house!
“And every squirrel nest,” the ghosts of Bouba and Kiki reminded me.
“And every squirrel nest!” I repeated back to them. They nodded sagely and disappeared in a puff of alabaster and doorknobs.
I went outdoors, pulled all the frozen, barren squirrel nests down from the leafless trees, tore them to shreds, tore the shreds into tinier shreds, and then ate them all. Passers-by would have stopped to stare, but they had all frozen to death too.
Becasue told me to come back indoors before the police squirrels came to round me up, and we had some dessert.
And that was Sunday.