...Allegories

So I knew this couple once.  I’ll resist the urge to put that in quotes.  Quotation marks annoy me.  People who pantomime quotation marks while speaking really annoy me.  Almost as much as laugh tracks, because laugh tracks seriously annoy me.  But I digress…

I knew this couple once.  We weren’t friends.  I didn’t even really like them.  In fact I didn’t like them at all.  They weren’t, how do you say, “accepted by the community for being good neighbors”  (WTH!  Quotation marks!  Argh!).  Well about two years ago this couple separated.  I was happy to see them split and hoped the divorce would be quick and easy.  To be honest, I was rooting for her; I hoped she would get the house and start taking care of the yard while he disappeared in to the mountains to spend the rest of his days studying zen.  Or something equally as passive.  Unfortunately that didn’t happen.  It soon devolved in to an all out civil war.  Seriously…civil war.  It turned ugly.  Real.  Real.  Ugly.  Everyone knew he was a complete asshole, but recently she had started consorting with known felons, drug dealers, and gang bangers; you know, the upstanding citizens of Cell Block I.  Fights started breaking out at all hours of the day and night.  Soon the whole neighborhood was talking about the chaos.  There were lots of discussions at dinner parties and BBQs and wine tastings about how crazy and tragic it was becoming, but no one actually did anything about it.  She started calling all her new found friends in for help.  Or maybe it wasn’t her inviting them over, maybe it was these dregs of society seizing an opportunity to turn this once-quaint cottage in to a crack house.  Who knows.  We all had our own problems and no time or inclination to figure out there’s.

Well, I’ve got this friend.  He saw what was going on across the street and thought…hey, she needs some help.  She talks about HOAs and painting the shutters and if someone would only help her kick that deadbeat out, she could exterminate that herd of possums living under the front porch, start following the by-laws and rejoin all the other fine upstanding citizens of the neighborhood.  This friend of mine is a good dude, I won’t deny that, but maybe a little naïve.  Or maybe its just that he’s new to the neighborhood and wants to prove to the rest of us how truly philanthropic he is.

So what does he do?  He gives the drug dealers and gang bangers and known felons 60 million dollars to help her take over the house.  And the real ironic part?  He had just told his kids they were going to take a 20% pay cut in their allowance because he couldn’t afford it.

Too obvious?  Ya.  Probably.