Grumpy

NATIONAL GROUCH DAY

 

            This week, for your entertainment, I decided to write a piece of micro fiction based on the closest holiday. That just happened to be National Grouch Day. Go figure! Who wants to celebrate all the grouchiness in their lives? Then again, the question of how you would go about celebrating a holiday like this certainly jump started my creative center.

            In honor of all the grouchy people in the world I present:

 

 

MR. GROUCH

 

            Bill Muffel sat at his assigned table, in an uncomfortable chair, with the remains of a meal that had not only been bland, but served by incompetents. He was surprised that the food actually made reached the table instead of landing in his lap. And then there was the matter of his dining companions that could be summed up in one word - IDIOTS.

            All-in-all this whole affair was nonsense. Who ever heard of giving out an award for Grouch of the Year? He half expected to see the room filled of furry-green puppets popping out of garbage cans. Instead, there was a cornucopia of curmudgeons sitting at the tables, one more sour-faced than the next. Why the organizers of this event had invited him, he couldn’t imagine.
            Finally, a thin man with a face that could curdle milk stepped up to the podium. He cleared his voice—about a dozen times—until the room settled down. All the while his baleful glare panned the crowd as if daring anyone to talk.
            “Let’s get this over with,” he barked. “Aren’t you all so very impressed to have been invited to the first annual Grouch awards?”
            The room rumbled with unhappy responses to the question.
            “Eh, pipe down,” said the emcee. “It was a rhetorical question. I don’t really care what any of you think. Now, don’t interrupt me again. The sooner you let me finish the sooner I can get out of here.”
            A murmur of consent coursed through the room. Bill nodded his head in response to the first sensible thing he’d heard all day. If Mr. No-Personality could just deliver on his promise, Bill could make it home in time to watch the last half of This Loser’s Life; the only true to life show on television.
          “This year” the emcee continued, “the award goes to Bill Muffet for apparently being the biggest pain in the neck that Phoenix has ever seen. The awards committee put together a list of accomplishments that earned him the award, but if I read all of it my ice cream will melt before I can finish it. Just know that Mr. Muffet has been a grade-A grump to all his neighbors and coworkers.”
          The wait staff clapped at the announcement. The attendees just turned in their chairs, looking for the winner, their faces even gloomier than before.

Since the people at his table had already started pointing at him he decided that the only way to get out of here in a reasonable amount of time was to go up and accept the award. He stood and stomped up front, thinking along the way that the awards committee must be made up of individuals of low intelligence and brooding temperament.

The award itself was a cheap wood plank, with a garbage green unhappy face on it, and the word “Grouch” printed in big bold, red letters. If they were going to perpetrate a face like this the least they could do is spend more than a buck and a half on the award.

Bill snagged the Grouch plaque out of the emcee’s hands and leaned towards the microphone. “Thanks, for nothing,” he grumbled. Then he marched back to his seat, ignoring the cacophonous sounds of booing and hissing that came from the crowd.

The emcee moved back up to the microphone and clearly announced, “That’s it. Now, go home!”