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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