DOCTOR FUNNY APRIL BONER (THE MISTAKE KIND) PROMPT
Quince the Fruiterer
And the young Judas Is-a-carrot who betrayed her Father
For this tale to have meaning, I need to start with a little background. You might not necessarily want it but them’s the apples or other fruit of your choice.
Background:
For a few years up until I was twelve years old, my father owned and operated a grocery store at the end of the street where we lived. That brings to mind the song, “On the Street Where You Live” — hum along, if you must!
Grocery stores in those days were the only place to buy your groceries. Milk was purchased from a dairy, meat was purchased from butcher shops. My uncle had one of those but that‘s irrelevant one way or another.
We lived in a small town.
The end of background.
Middle Bit:
When I was fourteen, I (surprisingly) garnered permission and funds from my parents to fly to a city where my best friend was staying with her father for a week during the school holidays.
Her parents were separated because her father was an alcoholic. If my parents knew about that, they paid it no mind.
Mary and I had three days of beer, cigarettes (both purloined from her father), black coffee, and no food because the father’s cupboards were bare and we had no money. We trudged the city both day and night to fudge our way into dance clubs (mainly for the peanuts on the bar) and arrived back at friend’s place in the wee hours of the morning.
By the third day, my raging headache, brought on by lack of food and sleep, threatened to kill me. I couldn’t wait to get home.
I caught a bus from our tiny provincial airport and was, surprisingly, met by my mother. Surprising because Mother did not do bus stop meetings.
“Well,” she grimaced with her usual warmth, “how was the big city?”
“I hated it!” I whimpered, attempting to elicit a needy hug.
“Well, that’s too bad!” she quipped, turning abruptly on her heels. “Your father sold the house without telling me and we’re moving to a big city!”
I was devastated! Having grown up in the small country town I loved, this sudden and unforeseen departure meant leaving halfway through a high school year and farewelling all my friends and my favourite activities.
Arriving home, I discovered a house full of packed boxes and a bunch of my favourite books set aside for charity. We would be leaving within a couple of days.
Needless to say, the five-hour car ride to the big city was hostile. Even the feral cat, “owned” by my little sister was miserable, eventually fighting its way out of a makeshift container and finding refuge in my sixties hairdo.
I suffered scalp injuries that remain to this day. My sister’s delight in the incident also remains to this day!
The end of middle bit.
Pertinent Bit Where I Make a Big Boner (Mistake):
Fast forward to the mid-1960s. I was sixteen, married, and returning to live in my hometown.
Without too much difficulty, I landed an interview at Shark and Shyster, the top lawyers in town. A new junior partner, Finagler, was due to arrive and he required a law clerk/secretary.
“Pick me!” I cried enthusiastically.
They did!
I instantly hated the job because Shark and Shyster weren’t exactly my kind of people and Finagler turned out to be almost as clueless as me.
It didn’t help that I couldn’t type anything without using a full bottle of corrector fluid. In my defence, I was fast, but my accuracy was approximately 10 per cent, which is why one shouldn’t change high schools mid-year!
The corrector fluid was a massive problem because I frequently had to type information onto a sort of membrane that was later inked and attached to a duplicating machine. Multiple copies were produced by furiously turning a handle.
My finished copies all had unsightly black blobs where the corrector fluid had been applied.
A friggin’, illegible mess by all accounts!
Another issue was that I ranked as a junior secretary, working beneath a girl whose husband I had ‘tinkered with’, back in the day when we were all kids around town.
She hated me and encouraged the rest of the secretarial pool to join in.
A lot of hate going on, right?
Consequently, I felt the need to gain some cred within the firm because I was being put upon by the girls and losing favour rapidly with the lawyers.
One day, as I was sneaking my abomination of typed work onto my boss’s desk during his coffee break, I overheard a conversation between all three partners in the next office.
“Archie McFlee,” mumbled Shark, “does anybody know where he might be? We don’t seem to be able to locate him.”
Hesitantly popping my head around the door, I excused myself and told them I knew an Archie McFlee.
Keeping a poker face, Shark recited McFlee’s last known address (the house that Dad had sold out from under my mother). I nodded smugly and told them he was my father. I gave Shark Dad’s new address, slowly becoming aware that I had somehow dropped a very big ball.
A clue may have been the high-fives around the room and the cheers of triumph from the partners.
Now painfully certain of my blunder, I took an early lunch and rushed outside to a pay phone. My father and I had a tenuous relationship at best and so I was quite nervous as I placed my collect call. (I still had no money).
Dad answered before I had the chance to chicken out so I bravely told him what I had done, then cringed, waiting for the blast. Instead, there was a very pregnant silence.
“Dad?” I whispered, still cringing.
“Yeah. I probably should have told you at the time. We made that sudden move to the city because I owed people a lot of money. One of them was Quince, the Fruit Market bloke. Looks like he hired a lawyer.”
“Looks like,” I agreed, my heart still in my throat. “Um, I could recommend a barrister or two if you like,” I ventured.
“Naw. Don’t worry about it. I’ll represent myself.”
I was only sixteen (sing a song, children) but I had heard that wise saying about someone who defends themselves in a court of law having a fool for a client.
“Are you sure,” I warned.
“Yeah, no worries,” he assured me and disconnected the call.
Epilogue:
And we can all guess how that turned out!
