Idiots' Box

We were standing in line to get some funnel cakes. It seemed reasonable to assume that there would be enough for each of us. We were hungering for those deep-fat-fried curls of dough, dusted with sweetness. We wanted to eat our cakes and feel the warm weight of fatness as it came. We cared for nothing else but filling our mouths, chewing it up, making it part of our selves. Five bucks for that was nothing. But the line was moving slowly. Things seemed to be reaching a head near the vendor's cart.

Funnel cakes were four dollars. The man who worked the register was out of change. No more cakes until I get some ones, he said. That caused a row. We were willing to murder the folks without the right change, sure. It would be easy. All of us had various guns. But that wasn't the problem. Each of us had fives, crisp and new. Most of us had at least two fives, actually. Most of us would want to eat more than just one funnel cake. Our goal was true American fatness, not some mealy European imitation. No, the problem was not a lack of exact change but an unwillingness on the part of the cashier to deviate from policy, which clearly stated that without ones in the change drawer commerce as we knew it would have to halt suddenly and with no regard for our feelings or hungers.

Also there was the issue of dough and the fact that they were out of it.

I caught word of these two sad facts as the din of collective disappointment circulated throughout the lengthening line. Everyone was angry but passive. The invectives were harsh but what could be done? I pulled out my stepladder and climbed until I rose above the crowd. Heads turned and took me in. I was basking in the aura of dumb wonder.

Is this what it feels like, I thought for the sake of my memoirs, what He felt like on top of that mountain, speaking to His people?

Friends, I spoke, friends, why are you standing, mute and passive? We have the right to be fat! I said.

Fat, fat! They echoed. Their eyes were full of light.

We deserve for supply to meet demand, I shouted, when we are willing to pay our Christian wage for the sake of jolly fatness!

Fat, fat, they said. Fat! Some of them began to rock from side to side.

We will run amok if they try to stand between us and our fat, I said. We are good men and women and we will not be denied our share of--

FAT, FAT, FAT, the crowd was foaming. Three fat women seized the tub of hot fat and were hoisting it aloft. Other fats lay upon the ground while the fat cascaded from the tipped tureen. Open-mouthed, they thirsted for the fat and they were not unsatisfied.

In the fat melee my ladder was knocked over. I fell to the ground.

There beside me was the funnel cake vendor, obviously broken. We lay prone in a sea of dancing fats. He looked at me with pity. You see, he said, why we have these rules?

A fat stepped on my arm, pinning me to the hot earth. Another fat died upon me, crushing me down, denying my lungs, ending my life.