TO-WIT: Letter From Hell
Dearest My Editor:
For many years now, I have been more or less submitting my material on time, dancing dutifully to the deadline imposed on my creative spirit by the tyrannical sovereignty of irrational minds. And not once, not once mind you, have I uttered a single complaint out loud. Not once have I so much as begged for a reprieve without awfully good cause, and not once have I failed to amuse. (All right, once, but as a collective group, they have no sense of humor.) So when I come to you now, hat in hand and empty handed, I trust you will lend me your ear.
I do not have a column for you this month. My comedic black hole, that corner of my psyche bound together by the combined effects of gravity and neurosis, that seemingly limitless repository from which I have extracted so much wit and wisdom over lo these many years, is, at the moment, bone dry.
Perhaps you think this is just another example of my worm on the hook routine, the spastic and involuntary contraction that invariably occurs when my creative sensibilities are pierced by the barb of a deadline, but you are wrong. You needn’t remind me that I have already killed off six parents, seven grandparents, two spouses, a couple of siblings and an innumerable number of beloved household pets, and all without the slightest remorse (although I still miss the dog), in vain attempts to beg off a deadline, but I remember those losses all too well as I sit here completely alone at my typewriter.
This time however I have a more credible explanation. For many years now, I have always assumed that my colleagues were well-intentioned folk, of able mind and generous wit, and I have employed generous wit in dealing with them. I had fancied that my efforts to amuse have been met with, well, amusement. Such however is clearly no longer the case, and as a direct, legal and proximate result, I am sending off this sniveling little epistle rather than the column for which you yearn.
As with much of my professional angst, this matter starts in divorce. I don’t know why I continue to take divorce cases, for divorce clients laugh neither loud nor often, and not one of them has funds sufficient to adequately compensate me for embarking with them on the tour of Hell that awaits us. It is a pastime ill-suited for obsessive wits, and I should have known it was especially true of this particular divorce case when, from the beginning, opposing counsel started sending me in quadruplicate, by fax, Federal Express, certified and regular mail, all simultaneously mind you, copies of the very same letters and pleadings, and they were voluminous.
I was at first taken aback, but from the form, content, volume and spelling, I assumed that I had found a kindred wit and I at once joined the merry fray by serving all my responses to him by overnight mail, regular mail, UPS and singing telegrams.
He replied with this message, again in four-part harmony:
I have no idea what it is you’re doing.
Could we please concentrate on suing?
I was delighted and I responded as follows:
It was nice to get your letter.
Hope your meter soon gets better.
I cannot here repeat his reply, but he rhymed the word “wit” with a common tough derogatory scatological reference. That, coupled with his utilization of a U-Haul It to serve his next set of pleadings, should have tipped me off that he was not amused. I, however, was having too much fun to be derailed by the obvious, and I continued my humorous assault by pointing out to him many of his spelling and grammatical mistakes. (I wanted to do them all but it would have taken far too much time.)
Imagine my surprise when I realized he was not amused. Possessed of neither wit nor a command of the English language, he took to evidencing his anger at me by spitting onto each and every one of his quadruplicate communiqués. When I thereafter advised him that my faxed copies were received sputum free, he fired his secretary.
From there matters got out of hand, and what should have been a routine divorce case has now spiraled down into the far reaches of Hell, my client and I aboard as unwilling passengers, while my colleague files pleadings on top of motions on top of briefs, all seeking recovery of face, until nothing now is left of the body of law save its barren and haunting bones.
For the last two weeks, he has been incessant, spewing forth matter like Vesuvius. My fax machine is constantly in receipt, Federal Express is now using homing pigeons to deliver each moment’s emission, and, if you will permit me yet another cosmic reference, my colleague has passed to red dwarf status, expanding at a cataclysmic rate, and the end, I fear, is close at hand.
And so it is I need a reprieve. I am solely responsible for his imminent demise, and I must take pause to reflect upon this pitiful disembodiment of one who, though utterly devoid of ability, wit, intellect, good will and good judgment, was once nonetheless a colleague. I will have a column for you next month, by which time I am certain the euphoria will have worn off.
Very truly yours,
S. Sponte, Esq.
© 1989, S. Sponte, Esq.