SERIALIZATION OF “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle” – Chapter 18 of 61
WARBLE WAXES PSYCHOTIC ABOUT PEANUT ENVY
CHAPTER 18
Warble Waxes Psychotic About Peanut Envy
“George Washington invented the peanut?” Mullah asks incredulously.
Warble yanks the baseball cap off Albert’s head, hurls it to the ground, and stomps on it several times, jumping up in the air to get more “oomph” into it, kicking violently downward as he reaches the apex of each leap. “Dad-blast it to smithereens! Think outside your buns for once, Gitani! Why must I, of all people, have to travel with such a group of blithering idiots?! Of COURSE George Washington invented the peanut! How did you even graduate from culinary academy without knowing that, you mush-for-brains?!”
“Beats me,” Mullah sighs.
“I don’t blame them,” Warble fumes. “And I wish they would bring corporal punishment back to school! Dull and pestilential scholars like you must have deserved it—every last bit of it, in fact.”
“All right, all right, Warble,” Ward re-enters the fray. “Now George Washington, you say, invented the peanut. What’s so bad about that, anyway?”
“What’s so bad about that?! What’s so bad about that, you say?” Warble mocks, the pitch of his voice rising higher and higher. “I’ll tell you what was so bad about that: by inventing the peanut, George Washington became—by design, I’m nigh convinced—the progenitor of peanut envy.”
“Peanut envy? I’ve never heard of it,” Ward claims.
“So, you were also dozing through your Psychology, Health, and P.E. classes too, were you?” Warble accuses.
Warble groans, sighs, rolls his eyes, scratches his head, and taps his toes impatiently before continuing.
“OK, since I haven’t got much choice, I’ll serve as your remedial educator, just this once: Peanut envy ensues when one person either has more, larger, or riper peanuts in their lunch box than their counterparts—whether this be at school, work, or any other public or private place. And this psychological malady has caused such a distraction to people down through the centuries that the nation’s GDP has been adversely affected as a result.”
“Really—it harms the GDP?” Ward says.
“Yes, the Grandly Designed Peanut, or GDP, the most magnificent example of wood sculpturing ever done—completed by Whistler’s mother while her son was painting her--continues to be stolen from the White House lawn (where it is properly ensconced) and whittled away, piece by piece, before being surreptitiously restored to its proper resting place in the dead of night, until the once stately icon of national pride and potency has been reduced to a mere puny and flaccid caricature of its former illustrious self.”
“Warble...” Ward begins to object.
“Consumer Warble to you, you pee-on, you member of the common rabble, you!” Warble scolds.
“All right, then: Consumer Warble, I think you’ve gone—if you’ll excuse the expression—psycho!” Ward dares to say.
“Exactly, Ward!” Warble says, his anger melting away like a glacier in the Himalayas. “Finally, you’re getting the point! I guess you did wake up from your naps once in awhile in psychology class. One must always use psychology to get ahead in this world. One has to think psychologically, which means thinking like a psycho—you see, if you use the logic of a psycho, you’re thinking psycho-logically."
"That explains a lot," Mary says, under her breath.
"Thank you, Mary,” Warble says, doffing an imaginary hat. “No need to thank me, though.
“On the other hand, even though turnabout is widely considered to be fair play, my dear one, I consider it my burden--I mean my duty--to explain these things to you. After all, you’d be pretty much lost without me."
"Explaining things to me is your burden, Warble?" Mary asks, raising an eyebrow menacingly.
"Sure, Mary. It’s kind of like the big fat fellas in the NFL."
"How do you mean?" Mary wants to know, curious in spite of herself.
"You know: surely you’ve heard of the ‘wide man’s burden.’ That euphemism refers to the obligation fat guys have to play on the line on football teams, even if they’d rather be the quarterback, and get all the money and girls.
“Just as it’s the wide man’s burden to play on the line, and the thin man’s burden to be a lowly punter or play some other such wimpy position, it’s my burden to explain to you all those pearls of wisdom that I have so painstakingly gathered into my vast storehouse of knowledge over the years," Warble explains.
"How could I ever repay you, Warble?" Mary asks sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
"You couldn’t in a million years, Mary,” Warble sighs smugly. “But, I’m not complaining. To get back to the point, though: We need to banish Washington back to England where the old tea-drinking, toffee-eating, fox-hunting, frosted-wig-wearing, wooden-toothed old coot belongs."
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Blackbird Crow Raven’s “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle” is being serialized in this space each Sunday and Thursday; it is also available in its entirety from here.
You can listen to the recording of this excerpt, by the author, here: