Fable 2

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a kindly chicken named Ralph who survived the bibliographical plagues of modern style, stream-of-thought, and second person. That's like locusts, boils and fleas. It had already survived the bugaboo of electric spelling, the hysterical blindness of punctuation czars and evisceration of friends and family critiques. Then he found EE and everything began to look up. Minions commented. Minions giggled and chortled. Queries improved. Chapters clarified. EE gave an approval.

But, my children as we all know, the kindly chicken was doomed to fail, fail every time. Oh think of the heartbreak of the novel unpublished, the novel unfinished, the novel unwritten, and the novel unconceived. None of these could be as harsh as the heartbreak of psoriasis. Ooops, I digress.

None of these great tragedies can compare to that of our kindly chicken Ralph who had big dreams of being an author. A chicken doomed to fail, doomed never to be published, doomed, doomed, doomed. I say! DOOMED!

The final blow, the great right-hook from the void, the massive fall from grace came one fine summer day in a plain white envelope. It enclosed a simple letter. All it took was eleven words: "Dear Kindly Chicken, it's nothing but fowl droppings and chicken scratch." And so Ralph stood on the edge of the void vis-à-vis nothing. Ralph, the kindly chicken was so depressed that he never heard the farmer's approach. The massive cleaver of fate landed with a thud.

And the moral of the story is, if you're a kindly chicken, stick to laying eggs and don't try to get famous by making chicken scratches on paper or the farmer might make you into a chicken pot pie or maybe a succulent fricassee.

--Dave F.