I was inspired today by disappointments in the weather. It’s April 1, yet our wakeup temperature in
Fairway today was 30 degrees. We still
haven’t forgiven Old Man Winter for delivering the coldest season in 15 years
to Tybee Island for our first snowbird winter there. Consequently, a storyline crossed my mind ...
probably a short story. I'd hope it
wouldn't take a whole novel.
So here's the deal.
The doer is a weatherman, maybe Bryan Busby from KMBC-9 in Kansas City
or Pat Shingleton from WBRZ-2 in Baton Rouge.
The story begins just outside Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where the doer
is trying to locate victim number one, Punxsutawney Phil. I’ll refer to the doer as Weatherman, since it
is still a tossup between Busby and Shingleton.
Weatherman believes he must strike a blow for Americans from sea to
shining sea by capturing and water boarding the evil groundhog until he agrees
to cast a vote to end winter.
Upon succeeding in forcing his will on the famous rodent,
Weatherman should make haste to find his next victim, Phil’s Southern
competition, General Beauregard Lee
of the Yellow Game Ranch in Lilburn, Georgia, near Atlanta. However, since he’s just across the Keystone State
from Pottsville, he decides to take a side trip to enjoy a few Yuengling Light Lagers,
before heading south. What a blessing
that decision was and not only because of the cool, crisp deliciousness of the
beer. After two of the wonderful brews,
the proverbial light bulb illuminated above Weatherman’s pate. It turned out that being a good old boy from
the South made General Beauregard Lee an easy target for beer bribery. It only took two Yuengling Lights to coax the
little guy to cast a vote to end winter.
Weatherman is now
full of himself and his mission for mankind.
With two down and one to go, he’s ready to strike off in pursuit of the
last impediment to the arrival of spring weather. His research tells him the culprit, he who is
supposed to pay the weather bill, is located in Washington, DC. Some digging reveals that this bad actor, who
for simplification purposes I’ll call Payer, has found a home in the Obama
administration.
Excited to have
found employment in this tough job market, Payer smoked some rope … and
inhaled. Apparently confusion
ensued. Overhearing talk in the halls of
the White House such as “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” and
being in his rope-a-doped state, Payer mistook the comment to mean, if you like your weather, you can keep your
weather. Unfortunately for US citizens,
this misunderstanding occurred in the dead of winter. Since Payer’s singular responsibility is
paying the weather bill and since not paying the weather bill in the dead of
winter would enable Americans to keep their current weather, Payer figured he
could take some time off, smoke some more rope, and keep everyone happy.
As you might
expect, all did not go well. Continued
rope smoking, coupled with disdain from the many who believed he was shirking
his responsibilities in a most cavalier manner, caused Payer to become paranoid
and go into hiding. Though Payer is not
so good at paying the weather bill, he is exceedingly good at hiding. After a lengthy search for the seemingly
vanished Payer, Weatherman had no choice but to return to the newsroom and
continue to make the big bucks for telling fictional stories about the weather.
