Jonathots Daily Blog
(4050)
Sitting Twenty
Actually, there was no Yellow Pages printed out by the local community.
Even though the town was emotionally depressed, spiritually entrenched and socially retarded, it had culturally caught up to the current century in technology. Therefore most astute businesspeople found their information via their computers. Yet there were several private schools in the city which had agreed to put together a Yellow Pages, including telephone numbers and business ads, to raise money for their institutions so that their students could have at least some good of the better, if not the best.
Karin’s editor, in a fit of civic pride and an unusual bout of generosity, had purchased twenty of the volumes, which now lay around the office ignored, threatening to be fire hazards.
Karin tired of web surfing, so she resorted to one of the catalogues, which began with a table of contents, including:
Agencies
Banks
Child Psychologists
Doctors
Educators
Financiers
Grocers
Helping Hands
Insurance Companies
Judges
Kan-Ga-Roofing
Labor Organizations
Mothers
Newspapers
Office Supplies
Priests
Q-Tie-Pie Child Care
Religious Organizations
Senators
Teachers
UNICEF
Videos
Women
X-Ray Technicians
Youth Clubs, and the
Zoo
Yes, everything from A to Z. It seemed that blessed benefactors were bountiful—an alliteration of possibilities of people to hit up.
Karin entered the project optimistic and energetic, but soon found that no one wanted to become involved—at least not directly or openly. Yet amazingly, almost everyone offered something, even if it was just negative advice. After about six hours of calling, Karin sat back, having secured the following assistance through her persistence:
One Port-a-john toilet
Sixteen orange construction cones
Seven miscellaneous books in Aramaic
Two fluorescent green soccer balls
Four pairs of tennis shoes
One hundred dollars-worth of gift certificates for food items
One teddy bear
A bag of army men
Three Bibles
Two Korans
A single copy of the Talmud
Seventeen sympathetic sentiments
Eighteen guarantees to participate “if someone else does something first”
A promise from a politician to do his part after he was elected
And a bag of all-black jellybeans
Karin perused the list carefully, trying to determine if there was any theme to the collection, and finally decided that the common thread to the whole encounter was: thoughtful but basically worthless.
Persisting, she decided to chase down one more idea. Some press coverage would help, but nobody at the wire services and news agencies expressed interest. A universal chorus arose from all hearers. It was either, “no story there,” or the story that was there was too scary to chase.
As a matter of fact, one cranky son-of-a-gun called the situation “blasphemous.” When Karin inquired what made it blasphemous, he replied, “That’s easy. If you want to make money and you live in the Middle East, anything that’s too hot to handle is best determined to be blasphemous.”
He continued, “It would be like someone calling me on the phone who said he had a huge scoop about an abortion doctor who discovered the mysterious gay gene while vacationing with his mistress in Red China.” His conclusion to Karin? “Although intriguing, there’s no part of the topic that’s public-friendly, so therefore, it must be classified as blasphemous and be avoided—like a Biblical plague.”
Karin listened carefully, wanting to object to comparing the two boys to locusts, but before she could speak, he added, “Arabs and Jews want to pretend that they don’t have a problem, and they certainly don’t want two upstarts reminding them that they are lying to each other.”
She tried to insert a thought, but the line was dead. She was pretty sure he hung up on her. Still, one possibility remained.
She picked up her phone one last time and called…
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