ENCHANTÉ – MOTHER’S HARD TIMES
Kathy is facing another hard day trying to keep her young offspring in line. Being a mom is a continuous battle. And so it is today: She feels compelled to give little Frankie a bang on his bottom because he pushed his sister onto the floor. We’re listening to the ensuing discussion with Frankie after he was punished and his reaction to his stressed mom that has many more troubling consequences. (Based on a real story).
“You took the risk, Mom!”
“What you mean, Frankie?”
“You wouldn’t have me trouble you all the time if you hadn’t done it.”
“What you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You and dad.”
“What about me and dad?”
“You doing it.”
“Doing what?”
Some hesitation on Frankie’s side. Then he mumbles, grinning, “making love.”
“Who told you that?”
“Miss Tilly at school.”
“And what else did Miss Tilly tell you?”
“If you don’t want babies you must use a papa-stopper.”
“A what? Is that what they teach you in school?”
“Amy knows it too. Tommy told her.”
“Your sister is only eight! And you are only ten! You tell your friend Tommy to stay away from Amy. It’s scandalous! I’ll raise hell about this in next week’s PTA!”
“You may not say ‘hell’ Miss Dooley said. What’s a papa-stopper look like?”
“Well, did Miss Tilly not tell you?”
“She drew one on the blackboard, but I’ve never seen one.”
“What? On the blackboard? I’ll go straight to the principal and have her fired!”
“What’s so bad?”
“I’ll tell you when I get back!”
Kathy sits with the principal.
“You know Mrs. Johnson; our state law requires that we provide sex education. Even the Republican Party voted for it.”
“Why so young? When I was eight or ten, I’d never heard of it.”
“We have the highest rate of teen pregnancies in the industrial world. You want your kids to be one of those victims? In The Netherlands, they teach kids about love as of Kindergarten, and they have the lowest teen pregnancies in the world.”
“Kindergarten age is four; what do they know! My eight-year-old knows no more. Isn’t it bad enough that my boy’s ten-year-old friend tells my eight-year-old girl?”
“You exaggerate.”
“No, I don’t. Frankie said Tommy did.”
“I’ll tell Tommy not to tell anyone in second grade. But I won’t fire Miss Tilly. She’s an excellent teacher and a mother of six.”
“Six? My goodness! Does she know about the pill?”
“Let’s not go there, Mrs. Johnson. Good day.”
Kathy walks with hubby Frank senior in front of their beach house.
“I clam up telling kids about sex,” Kathy says. “Can you do it for me, Frank?”
“How did you learn about sex?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“Why not? Was it in school?”
“Certainly not. We’d be expelled if we were talking sex.”
“Where then?”
“I said, I’m not telling you.”
“You’re not saying I was your first kisser? You did pretty well at the prom.”
“I got it from the movies.”
“Hah! And my hard-on and what followed? Did you get that from the movies, too?”
“Come on! They never show you the bottom part.”
“How then?”
“Frank, you’re embarrassing me!”
“You see? I bet you had sex before me. And you didn’t get pregnant like so many others. So who told you?”
“My mother.”
“When?”
“When I had my first period.”
“Aha! Wise mother! You know how many girls get pregnant nowadays at that age and wished they’d been told?”
“I see where you’re heading. We better tell the kids then. It’s so hard to be a mom.”
“Not harder than your mother. At least you have Miss Tilly.”
“But she has six children, Frank!”
Kathy and Frank are discussing how they’re going to tell the kids.
“The books tell you to use the proper terms, not the slang ones,” Frank says.
“But I feel uncomfortable about even using the proper terms. I prefer the little words, you know, willie and foo foo. They’re still so small!”
“As long as we tell them to keep their willie and foo foo private and not for use with or by others. That’s why we call them private parts.”
“But what when they start feeling sexy?”
“Well, by that time trouble starts. Remember? We’d better tell them to put a stop on it.”
“Oh Frank, Frankie asked what a papa stopper was. Miss Tilly told him.”
Frank laughs. “You told me she has six children.”
Next, Kathy and Frank have dinner with the kids.
“How’s Miss Tilly doing, Frankie?” Kathy asks.
Frankie looks up, a suspicious glance in his eyes. “Why you’re askin’?”
“Oh, just to know… What’s the latest gossip in school?”
“Amy used the F-word and got punished,” Frankie says, pointing his fork at Amy.
Amy puts her fork down with a broad grin.
“Is this true, Amy?” Kathy asks. Frank’s face shows he’s about to burst into laughter and that he has trouble not to.
Amy grins again, looking at her brother. “F*&in,” she says to him, dragging out the word, giggling, her eyes shining a naughty glance.
Kathy raises her voice. “That’s a very bad word, Amy! I forbid you to use it, here and anywhere! You don’t even know what it means!”
Amy giggles again. “Hee, hee, hee. Tommy told me. Like daddy and mommy doing it.”
“I don’t think we need Miss Tilly anymore,” Frank says, getting angry. “Now you guys: you listen carefully. This is serious business. Sit quiet. No more jokes!”
And so Kathy and Frank explain love and its physical consequences in fourth-graders’ terms to the best of their ability.
Amy has been listening half while drawing lines on her placemat with her fork. Then she looks up to her mommy and says, “Tommy told me you can blow up a papa stopper like a balloon. Can you buy me one?”
***
“What would you like for mother’s day?” Frank asks.
“Eight hours of sleep, and champagne on the beach with you alone.”
Read this story about another Frank and Frankie!
ENCHANTÉ – BODY FADS AND MORE
Fred and I sit at the counter of our favorite bar, listening to two women arguing.
“Better you follow those TV ads on eating light,” one says, pointing at her companion’s plate full of French fries.
“Do you think I need it? Look at your fat self!” her companion bristles.
“Oh, you! Don’t get uptight. There’re many fat ones like you who do.”
“You believe that TV stuff works?” asks a male friend at her side.
“They’re just selling food,” his neighbor butts in. “You ever watch those ads? Granola bars, dripping cheese, dripping lasagna, everything’s dripping, just to make you feel good.”
“It’s a fad,” Fred agrees. “They only want your money.”
“Like those ads on shaving,” says the woman with the fries. “Another new fad.”
“They want me to shave my mustache, my beard, my legs!” says her woman friend. “My bathtub’s red with blood.”
“You women also have hair on your teeth,” says the male friend. “How do you get rid of those? Look at them wild feminists at those rallies.”
“It’s all Trump’s fault,” says the woman with the fries. “He started it with talking pussies.”
“I’m sure he’d been taking too many testosterone pills,” the other woman says.
“You take those pills?” the male friend asks his buddy.
“Every day, to stay in shape,” he replies. “You take pills?” he asks the slimmer woman.
“Only one, if you’re interested.” She smiles at him. “How many testopills do you take?”
“Only one, if you’re interested.” He smiles back at her.
“Is this a pick-up call?” She eyes him intently.
“Right, but like that TV ad with the two bathtubs, the fine print, and without the blood.”
“You can start by getting me another Bloody Mary.”
Fred asks me, “How many pills do you take?”
“About twelve. You get these magazines how to avoid dying early. I’m a sucker.”
“Do they make you feel any better?” asks Fred.
“I wouldn’t know unless I stopped taking them. And because I’m afraid of dying early, I keep taking them. So I’ll never know until I die.”
“That’s the whole idea, of course,” Fred says. “It’s a billion dollar industry even though the small print always says consult your doctor first.”
“Like those TV ads on medicine,” says the woman near us. “If you see the horror that could happen to you when you take them, you think twice.”
“Are your twelve pills all testopills?” the other woman asks me.
“Your friend over there says he takes only one a day,” I say. “So why should I take twelve?”
“Because you look it.” Everybody laughs at me.
Amy, the blonde bartender, comes by with new drinks and saves me from more embarrassment.
“The news just said the blonde woman lost,” she says.
“Mary The Pan?” asks Fred.
“It’s Marine,” says our pesky woman neighbor. “Trump’s blonde friend. Macaron won.”
“It’s Macron,” I say. “Macaron is a cookie.”
“Whatever,” she says, looking at me as if she’s ready to murder me. “Obama voted for him.”
“Come on, silly,” her fat friend says. “We can’t vote in France since we started calling French fries Freedom fries. Besides, Mackerel is not a socialist, they say, so why would Obama vote for him?”
“The name is Macron, silly, you just heard,” her companion bites back. “Mackerel is a marine fish.”
“So mackerel being marine fish, and Marine’s name being Marine, Macron and Marine must be the same.”
“That’s the most crooked analysis I’ve ever heard,” my neighbor tells her friend. “You should get yourself analyzed.”
Fred and I, having heard enough, are making a move to get up.
“Get your testopills, honey, before it’s too late,” I hear on our way out. “Obamacare is going broke.”
ENCHANTÉ – One Hundred Days
Fred and I sat at a cocktail bar on the Champs Elysées in Paris talking with Napoléon. He had agreed to a four hundred thousand dollar fee to come back from hiding and talk to us about his one hundred days. Our funding was sponsored by anonymous Wall Street backers.
“Mr. Napoléon, thank you for being here. It’s a pleasure seeing you again after we dumped our history books.”
“The pleasure is mine,” Napoléon said. “It’s pretty boring up there in St. Héléna. This comeback gave me the opportunity to frolic with Robert Branson on one of his Virgin Islands. As you know from history, I adore virgins. But I loved Josephine.”
Virgin and Josephine
“We do remember that, your highness”, Fred said. “We also remember you were beaten by the Russians in 1812 and sent to St. Elba. You know we still have problems with the Russians. Our opposition party says they meddled in our recent elections. What’s your view?”
“Meddling in someone else’s business has been Russia’s prime sport during the centuries. Nothing new. Remember Raspoutin? It surprised me that your opposition party kept their doors wide open for them to walk in and take all those pictures and listening in.”
“What would you have done?” I asked.
“I can’t speak for your opposition party but we solved these issues by marrying a Russian princess. Or for your opposition leader having a liaison with a Russian prince. She could have prevented all that. I heard Mr. Putin was available. He has a load of testosterone. Didn’t she give him half of your uranium? That’s a nice dowry.”
“But the opposition party is accusing the other party that it was their good relations with the Russians that made them lose the elections, ” Fred explained.
“I was also told that the losing party had fireworks planned accompanied by Tchaikowsky’s 1812 overture. That’s a major Russian piece of music and composed after they beat me. Mr. Putin may have put a stop to the music because he didn’t want to publicize his laison with the leader of the opposition party. Maybe that’s why they blame the other party now.”
“You know there’s much talk about the first one hundred days in American politics,” Fred said.
“So I’ve heard. My one hundred days coming from St. Elba seem to have gone viral once more. But as usual the American media gets it backwards. My one hundred days came at the end of my illustrious career.”
“Why do you think that 200 hundred years later this is still so important?” Fred asked.
“Because I didn’t achieve anything in those days. You remember I had my Waterloo.”
“But here in the US they want politicians to achieve everything in their first one hundred days. All the media are making that their sole news story,” I said.
“It only shows that in two hundred years you guys have learned nothing,” Napoléon said. “My final one hundred days were only meant to firm up a legacy to be remembered. As you see, I’m still remembered.”
“But here they want a list of major achievements,” Fred tried to clarify.
“Oh, I had achievements all right. I first beat the Austrians, the Prussians, the Russians. Then Wellington got me because I suffered from hemorrhoids in my saddle.”
“So what do you think of our first one hundred days?” I asked.
“The concept has been bastardized. Except warfare, you shouldn’t achieve anything serious in those days. What would you have to show for in the next one hundred days? And the next? All you have to do is sit quiet and blame your opponents for making your country look bad.”
“You think we look bad?” Fred asked.
“You sure do. Everybody in the world wants Obama back. He talked but did nothing, that’s good politics.”
“But when the monarchy took over, they banned you to St. Helena,” I recalled. “And nobody wanted you back.”
“I went there on sick leave,” Napoléon explained. “Then my premiums went through the roof, so I couldn’t pay for them anymore. Otherwise, I would’ve been back again. To fix Napoléoncare.”
“Couldn’t you use your Veterans Care? As the Commander in Chief?” Fred asked.
“I would have to ride a horse for forty kilometers before reaching a hospital or doctor. I couldn’t because of my hemorrhoids. And they couldn’t come to me because they were too busy taking care of the dying and the burying. After two hundred years, you still have the same problem in the US.”
“It seems hard to get things done in one hundred days,” Fred philosophized.
“You said it,” Napoléon agreed. “The previous reign in France gave me a mess! Think of my achievements in the fifteen-some years of my reign! Catholic religion reinstated; monks were no longer suppressed; people got their land back; I reinstated law and order, created the Napoleonic laws and established a Constitution; I modernized education and got rid of common core; I revitalized the sluggish economy and improved agriculture; I sanitized taxation, and rebuilt the military! I made France great again. Vive la France!”
“That’s impressive,” Fred said. “Did you copy that from the Trump Administration?”
“You got your timeline wrong. The Trump Administration copied it from me.”
“How did you do all that?” I asked
“Executive orders, my friend. If they weren’t executed, I executed the non-executors.”
“I wish we had that system here,” Fred said. “Too many chefs in the kitchen and half of them don’t even know how to cook a simple omelet without breaking eggs.”
“Do you think America needs a border wall?” I asked.
“I solved that differently. I conquered my neighbors left and right and made them my soldiers. That’s how I got rid of them.”
“What’s your advice to America now?”
“Ask your Democrats to hire me. They need a leader. At four hundred thousand dollars a consultation I’m cheap.”
ENCHANTÉ – HAIR AND POLITICS
Fred and I sat at a bar drinking beer overhearing other guys drinking beer.
“I bet that that Mary The Pan wins the French elections,” one said.
“How so?” asked his buddy.
“’Cause she’s blond. Trump’s blond too.”
“But Hillary’s blond, and she lost,” his buddy said.
“I bet she wore a wig when she did,” the other guy said.
“No, that’s Maxine Waters, she does.”
“You mean if she put on a blond wig she’d become President?”
“She’d bleach it, then impeach it,” the other guy said.
“Noticed Putin’s hair’s blond?”
“I hear he’s auditioned for Fox News.”
“No kidding! Fox’s women are all blond; the men are bald or black-haired.”
“That’s racist,” a blond fellow butted in.
“Why? They all paint it, black or white,” someone else said.
“So to become President, you must be blond or paint your hair?” his friend asked.
“If you look at the primaries, only the blond ones made it.”
“But the former POTUS hair was black,” another guy said.
“Yeah, but he was black,” his neighbor pointed out.
“That’s racist,” the blond fellow repeated.
“You must be a liberal,” his neighbor said. “Only liberals call everything racist.”
“And you must be a white supremacist,” the blond fellow sneered, his voice rising.
“And you must keep your mouth shut,” his neighbor shouted, hammering his empty stein on the counter.
“Hey, guys, cool it, let’s have another blond!” Fred said.
Fresh blonds came along.
“I’ll have a black stout,” I asked the bald bartender.
“You must be a racist!” the blond fellow gibed.
“I knew you’d say that Blondie,” I said. “Go paint your hair somewhere else!”
“I stay right here,” the blond fellow said. “Free speech.”
“Free speech your ass!” Fred said. “You guys get always rude when you lose an argument.”
A blonde waitress behind the counter joined us arguing men.
“Gentlemen prefer blondes,” she said, handing me my black stout, staring down the blond loudmouth. “But for that, you must be a gentleman first.”
The blond fellow blushed and shut up.
“Hi, Amy,” one guy greeted her, glad that the ruckus abated. “We got an issue here.”
“Yeah, who wins the French elections?” Fred’s neighbor asked her. “I bet it’s Mary.”
“We just had elections, didn’t we?” Amy said.
“I mean that Mary The Pan in Paris.”
“Isn’t she a boxer?” Ami asked, holding up her arm and flexing her biceps.
“She wants to be French President, and she’s blonde like you,” Fred clarified.
“Like Hillary?” Amy said. “Then she must win.”
“But she’s extreme rightwing,” Fred’s neighbor said.
“I never eat wings,” Ami said, “left or right. Bad for your hormones.”
“Fred,” I said, “now she’s talking! I’m getting hungry.”
“I got nice spicy wings for you; just a minute,” Amy offered.
“But what about my hormones?”
“You’ve got white hair,” Amy said. “You won’t know the difference.”
“Right,” the blond fellow came back. “With that hair, you must be rightwing.”
Fred and I looked at each other.
“We’ll offer you another blond, Blondie,” Fred growled. “If you stop yammering. You guys lost.”
“Right-o,” Blondie cheered. “Blond trumps.”
ENCHANTÉ – EASTER BLESSINGS
A last meal and blessing hand
Bring us peace in warring land
Make your neighbor a best friend
Hate has no place in holy land
My heart will fold as red as blood
Forgive I will my tears will flood
You were created to be good
An undivided brotherhood
Shout that peace is good for all
Not just for you in clustered walls
Tear them down your flags of hate
They are NOT an act of faith
Shaking hands across the line
Sharing meals of bread and wine
Showing trust in someone’s heart
Making one a world apart
[But keep that dagger just in case
The other earthling shows bad grace ]
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