Monday, July 22, 2013

Scrambled- an unlikely story


Scrambled

 

Howard Dumpty was branded a nerd from the time he began secondary education.  Not only was he cantankerous and slovenly, but he was inept and clumsy.  Because of this and the constant derision suffered, he became fodder for all sort of abuse from his school contemporaries. He was such a “non person” that classmates nick-named him “Ho-Hum” Dumpty.  Howard became antisocial.  He kept to himself.  With hardly any social life,  Dumpty turned to his studies for escape and therein found an admirable affinity for absorbing facts and knowledge.  He excelled at math and science , and was a whiz at history and geography . He couldn’t impress anyone with these skills because no one wanted to be around him.  It was a lonely childhood for him.

An easy candidate for the best Universities, Howard settled on Yale and went to California . Again, he excelled at his studies but was an utter social failure.  One would have thought that he would outgrow his gangly body and develop some coordination.  He did not.  If Dumpty had a hole in his sock, he would have tripped over it.  He did manage to become very good at financials and, before even obtaining his Bachelor’s degree, he was already dabbling in the stock market.  This continued throughout a well thought out masters program to the point that Howard Dumpty became a wealthy man well before he had his advanced degree.  This academic egghead was pursued by every brokerage house of any note and settled on becoming an analyst at JP Morgan Chased.  Being a large company, there were lots of lovely ladies whom did not escape Howard’s attention at Chased.  However, most of the “Chasers” were unavailable to Dumpty. The ones that were attracted to Howard were those we generally categorize as “gold diggers”.  One in particular, Mary Merrie was particularly aggressive when it came to Dumpty, and  knew how to  keep her eye on the prize.  It was but one year that Howard had a big home in Los Gatos, a  big Mercedes, and a  new wife named Mary. Yes, that very one

 Predictably, Mary made herself very comfortable controlling the purse strings of the Dumpty household and became known on a first name basis at all the trendy Los Gatos boutiques.  However, there came a time that Mary grew tired of just shopping and tennis lessons, and suggested to Howard that they should really broaden their horizons by travelling a bit.  Dumpty was so compliant in having a woman who would not only make decisions for him  but whom actually would put up with his laggard mannerisms, that he readily agreed to this request; as he did for anything Mary wanted, as adversarial as she was wont to be..

They  decided to travel to China. The day after  arrival in Beijing, Howard wanted to visit the  Forbidden City, but Mary, contrary as  always, wanted to visit the Great Wall.  You know where they ended up.  At one point Mary had Howard pose sitting on the Great Wall . She kept needling him to pose in different positions.  Howard accommodated her requests to the point he lost his balance and…People’s Hospital could not revive poor Howard, and our prodding Mary was left a very wealthy widow in the prime of her life.

Mary, ever the resourceful woman, found herself keeping company with a  wealthy frozen food scion named Peter Callender.   Callender made his fortune  in an  industry founded on a superb pumpkin pie recipe of his Long Beach Mother, Marie.  They married, and Mary went thru his money faster than an Investment banker on the mortgage desk.  Alas, in a scant year Mary was divorced, dripping in jewels and a lifetime supply of frozen dinners .  She continued treating those around her with disdain, with a disposition of saccharine sweetness one minute and  sour vinegar the next. Compared to her, Leona Helmsley was Sister Theresa. 

True to her character, Mary was soon in the market for a third husband.  This time she was looking for something more than just the money. Her eyes settled on the handsome divorcee’ Andrew Borden.  It didn’t take Mary long to entice, manipulate, and drag Andrew to the altar.  

This was to be an unfortunate marriage. Again.  But this time, for Mary.  Andrew had daughters from his previous marriage. One child, Lizzie, was particularly hot tempered.   Borden had more money than sense and it would have kept Mary happy till  the end of her years . That occured much sooner than expected because Mary treated Andrew’s children as serfs. This fermented quickly into animosity in her neglected daughter-in laws.  That alienation festered in Lizzie for years, until finally she reached a breaking point one day..  and well.. I think you know what happened. In forty minutes that was the end of Mary. A minute later Andrew was also gone as an afterthought.

The court trial was historic and  received a huge amount of publicity, but, in the end,  Lizzie went free.  Not to be intimidated by notoriety in her infamy, She changed her name to Sarah Heath, and moved to Alaska to get as far away from the maddening crowd as possible.  There, she fell under the charms of an oil worker named Todd Palin and they wed.  Old ways die hard and, even with her new life, our long forgotten Lizzie lives on famously, continuing to make controversy under her new name . 

Because of the incidence of a long forgotten Dumpty ineptness, we have a new vanguard for America !

-Jerry Wendt 2011 925 words

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