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!”
