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| Subject: Jonah Week
MY JONAH WEEK
By Scriviner
Well, things are starting to get a little more normal around here. I had a Jonah week, where everything seemed to go wrong. I’ll tell you about it.
We started out with a bad wind storm which resulted in the loss of one of my large Spruce trees. When it happened, l was sitting in my easy chair and I happened to glance up and noticed that my eleven-year-old granddaughter, Katherine, was suspended in the air in the middle of my living room. "This is exceedingly puzzling," I thought. There she was, levitating right before my very eyes, while trembling and shouting "WOW!, WOW!, "WOW!", over and over again. She’d seen the tree topple, and it obviously had made quite an impression on her! Finally, after several seconds, whatever force that had gripped her let go, and she tumbled to the floor. I have to caution you that if you ask her about it, she will deny it. She is of that age when she doesn't want to be different from others. I've tried to explain to her that possessing supernatural powers, like the ability to levitate, is nothing to be ashamed of and that she should embrace her difference and use her power for good. It would be useful in rescuing cats from trees, for instance.
One good thing about the storm is that it brought out a residual bit of my wife’s Scandinavian accent, which I dearly love. Stina, my wife, vehemently hates wind. It makes her exceedingly nervous, and with this storm, Stina ran true to form. Right after the tree was felled, she rushed to the window, exclaiming "OH! DA VIND! DA VIND!" I thought that was pretty neat.
So, anyway, after our tree adventure, my Jeep’s starter went out. Of course, it failed when the car had one thousand too many miles to remain under warranty. It cost me close to a thousand bucks to it get back on the road.
Then, we got a official letter from the Finnish government. It was all in Finnish, of course. The only word that I could understand was "magistrate", which set off alarm bells. "What could the Finnish court want with Stina?" I asked myself, “This is bound to be bad.” Turning to her, I could only croak, "What have you done?" She claimed innocence, so we took the letter to the Honorary Finnish Consul, who explained that it was only a ballot for the Finland presidential election. Whew! We dodged a bullet there. It doesn't look like Stina will have to serve any time in a Finnish pokey!
Finally, to top it all off, after suffering so grievously all week, two mischievous imps entered the picture and nearly administered the coup de grace to what little remained of my sanity. It’s difficult to write about this latest indignity, but I’ll do my best.
A word of caution, though. I hope that you are sitting down as you read this, as it’s a terrible tale to tell. I’m afraid that I just experienced something that has utterly destroyed my faith in the innate goodness of humanity. I hesitate to recount this latest ordeal to you, as simply recalling the horror is almost more than my health can bear. Yet, I have heard that sometimes articulating one’s fears and feelings of dread can have a cathartic effect. So, with that end in mind, I am going to muster my courage and narrate my terrible experience to you.
On the morning in question, when I awakened I was my normal self, with my reasonably steely nerves, my full head of jet black hair, and my constitution of a thirty-year-old athlete. The sun was streaming lazily through my bedroom window and the song birds were singing their hearts out. I quickly bounded from my bed and sat at my desk to begin my day.
It is my wont to start each day with philosophical ruminations about the great issues of our day, like “Who am I, and who is that woman that lives with me?” or “Why on earth do I live in Alaska, where it is always so cold?”
I followed my usual routine that morning. So, there I was, busily ruminating about vitally important matters and completely oblivious to the rest of the world. Just as I was about to make a significant intellectual breakthrough, a breakthrough that would have benefitted all mankind, I was suddenly jarred back to reality when two little imps CRASHED open my door and ran uninvited into my office. Then, at the top of their lungs they started screaming in unearthly voices, “GRANDPA IS A POOPY BUTT! GRANDPA IS A POOPY BUTT!” Then, after what seemed like an eternity, they ran giggling from the room, without neglecting to SLAM the door.
You can’t imagine how I felt. I was shocked to the very core of my being. Intense waves of fear washed over me. My suffering was so unendurably acute that, in but a moment, practically all my hair fell out and the few strands that remained turned white. And, that’s not all. My hands developed strong, persistent tremors, and my physique, which was once the envy of everyone, crumbled. In mere moments my life fell apart, and I am now a broken man, an empty husk, a mere shadow of what I was upon wakening that morning. In fact, my nerves were so shot that the imps’ little Poopy Butt stunt very nearly became a self-fulfilling prophesy.
“Who were those imps?” you ask. Well, the whole dreaded experience happened so fast that I wasn’t able, at the time, to make a positive identification. But, my subsequent investigation and my analysis of an abundance of circumstantial evidence has revealed that the only possible suspects are two, three-year-old mischief makers, named Abigail and Gabriella. Fortunately, I know where they live, so I’m gonna have my revenge on those two poopy heads! |
Jonah Week
