Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we do what the voices in our head tell us to do! Heck, those little pesky voices might be bored gods. Best not to offend them by ignoring them, huh?
I knew a dude in college who was so stuck up that you could see inside his nostrils. You know the kind. Everyone detested him, including me.
Well, not exactly everyone. I was shocked to the core one day when a nice girl I didn't know very well actually expressed regret that I knew Mr. Snobby so much better than she did. It transpired that she had a crush on the fool.
Always the helpful Girl Guide, I told him. He promptly asked her out, and they're married to this day.
I've lived in the same house for 20 years, so my address hasn't changed in awhile. For the past 15 years, Mr. Snobby and family have been sending me Xmas cards, even though I never send them one.
Their cards always consist of a family portrait and a long, one-page xeroxed letter (in smallest type font) detailing their year.
Don't you just bloody hate those things? The form letters, I mean. And they're always written in the third person:
"Mr. Snobby, after 20 years of making millions as a hedge fund manager, left his cushy company this year to start his own firm. In the first six months of this year, Snobby, Inc. pulled in $30 million in revenue.
"Mrs. Snobby raised $100,000 for the Fuglyville Symphony Orchestra. Wow! It was a full-time job for her, let me tell you. She hardly had a moment to bake those PTA brownies and keep up with her tennis game.
"Snobby, Jr. got accepted early decision to Harvard, after his original research on the causes of prairie dog population decline became the basis for a Nobel Prize-winning theory of dog demographics.
"Our dear little Snobette continues to make her way through the ballet ranks, having performed Swan Lake with the Fuglyville Private Academy All-Stars this Xmas.
"We hope your year has been as wonderful as ours. Keep in touch!"
Keep in touch? Are you for really, Mr. Snobby? If I saw you walking down the street I'd duck into a manhole. Take your perfect family, your kept wife and genius kids, and stuff them in a pig bladder.
Sour grapes? Okay, guilty as charged. But I do hate those damned xeroxed Xmas letters. Even Decibel the parrot doesn't want them in the bottom of his cage.
FROM ANNE
THE MERLIN OF BERKELEY SPRINGS
4 comments:
Gee, we always send out things like that, but most of the recipients thank us for the news (we've moved a lot so we send them out to our far-flung friends and relations), and personally, I like to receive them.
Of course, I try to show the human side of our lives (mentioning things like how our one daughter got speech and occupational therapy from Early Intervention and later an epilepsy diagnosis), and any draft that looks to braggy gets changed to a humbler view.
I still haven't done the one from this year, and have been feeling a bit guilty about it, because we have yet again moved and had other big changes in our lives that I'm just itching to announce.
I'm sending out one of those next year...mine will say:so far no one has had to go to jail yet.
OMG, I have a cousin who probably sends those out to people who will listen to her. Last time I heard her talk to someone she was going on and on about the number of degrees her child will end up with from one of those Rev. Jim's College for the Gullible to Learn to Spot and Lead The More Gullible kind of schools.
She was trying so hard to make sure everyone in the room would overhear her joy. If she'd had a bullhorn she wouldn't have been louder.
I think you should start sending out ones with totally made-up accomplishments they never could reach. You know, just got back from the Moon, and that kind of thing. :)
I used to get letters like that, as I think back on it, they were from Christians.
Post a Comment