Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
“Life is weird, but, you go with God and roll with it.”
Not that 21-year-old Melvin Trent even wanted to have that much perspective on life at his age, but the divorce of his parents and Stepforth grandparents in one decade and Covid-19 and the reunification of his parents and grandparents in the next decade had caused him to really pay attention to how life's turns and twists could not be predicted.
Melvin was talking with his 16-year-old cousin Thomas Stepforth III, called Tom.
“When I was 18,” the elder cousin said, “I thought I had things figured out, but the last three years and especially this one have brought me to the place that I have lost confidence in my ability to figure out life – you just gotta live it.”
“Yeah, I'm kinda seeing that,” Tom said, “because even men like our Stepforth grandfather have found – and he's a billionaire – that everything can get shut down and so even he isn't running everything, and the people running everything aren't even running everything because Covid-19 is forcing them to do stuff they don't want to do.”
“The financial damage, Tom, is going to roll for years, as is the bitterness of people who are going to resent learning that they aren't in control of their lives after all.”
“Yeah, that's already getting bad in Lofton County, and the more entitled you feel you are, the more bitter and silly you are going to be,” Tom said. “We thought about covering this in the Lofton County Free Voice for kicks and giggles, but Mr. Varick is always reminding us that there was already an attempt to burn out the paper and kill everyone in it in 2019, so if we are going to have that happen, it has to be on something that is actually important. Anyway, somebody thought it was 1920 instead of 2020, and opened a whole speakeasy in Big Loft.”
“Wait, what?” Melvin said.
“Yep, a secret bar – really sort of a high-end club,” Tom said. “Somebody misread Sherlock Holmes and 3 John and called it the Diotrephes Club.”
“Oh no,” Melvin said. “Whenever people think putting some big Greek name on something is going to protect them … .”
“I know, right?” Tom said. “So, you know how Mr. N.O.T. Bright has been in the news for a minute, yelling about Covid restrictions like he has been yelling about a whole bunch of other things. Well, not all of his warehouses are shut down because they provide essential service, and he has this big basement in one of them. The problem is, it's the warehouse that stores cleaning fluids for both retail and wholesale.
“Pinot in the basement with a whole bunch of drunk people and Pine-Sol upstairs – sounds like a problem,” Melvin said.
“Oh, it was,” Tom said, “because hard liquor suppliers are not supposed to be supplying anybody in town except stores, so, the stock at the speakeasy had to be hauled over from stores. There are at least three things in life that you probably don't want to do in a situation like that. One, don't move your liquor at the same time you are moving your cleaning fluids. Second, don't be drunk when you decide to take downstairs. Third, don't be so drunk that you can't taste the difference.”
“Oh no,” Melvin said. “Oh no, no, no.”
“Everybody not in jail is in the hospital,” Tom said. “Meanwhile, somebody is cleaning their countertops and floors with the finest dark liquor from whatever corner store was open when this went down last night.”
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STOPThank you!
There were some happy housewives and unhappy husbands when they came home and poured their evening drinks.
! LOL
!ALIVE
YEP ... definitely!
Nice story
Thank you for reading!