Don't Let the Glasses Fool You

All I wanted was what was coming to me, which was a wristband that would allow me to walk around my own damn town. See, every year they have this Mushroom Festival in town here, because we grow mushrooms. We don't all grow mushrooms and we don't live in mushroom-shaped houses and we don't have mushrooms with every meal, OK? And there's no special reason for it. Back in the 1920s, someone around here got the idea to grow mushrooms, and other people thought it was kind of cool—mushrooms are grown indoors, which must have been appealing to people who'd been farming mostly in the outdoors all their lives—and it just sort of, uh, snowballed.

So they have this festival, and town gets all crowded to where you can barely walk. It's basically a street festival with a parade and music and a whole lot of booths selling a bunch of gewgaws. There's a tent about mushrooms, but mostly it's just stuff. This year they're charging admission, but if you lived in town you could get two free wristbands. So yesterday I went over to the town hall. No, they said, you have to go to the fire hall. OK, over I go. Three fire people are leaning against various objects by a door, smoking cigarettes, and since nobody says hello I address this woman. A stocky woman, as I recall, with an unfashionable hair style. I say this not to be catty—heaven forfend—but only because all the articles in the writing magazines urge you to use vivid details to make your writing come alive. Stocky gal, as I say.
 
I told her I was there to get a wristband. "We stopped giving them out yesterday," she said, in a smoke-rasped voice. "That was the cutoff date."

She took another drag on her cigarette. Nobody else moved or looked at me or acknowledged my presence except by making it clear, with their body English, that my presence should now be removed. The woman was clearly enjoying, with regal serenity, her power not to give out any more wristbands since the cutoff date was yesterday. But I thought I'd keep trying. You have to be persistent in this world.

"So there aren't any more?" I asked.

"Well, there are, but Thursday was the cutoff date. That's what it said in the postcard," she said. And took another drag.

My friends, I am a patient and tolerant man, and usually as gentle as a parson, but I confess that I walked away seething. And of course the perfect comeback came to me too late—the British call it "stair wit"—but I realized I should have asked whether she, herself, read the fine print in every piece of junk mail she got. But I will have my revenge, oh yes I will! Hear me now, Officious Cow! Hear me, Indolent Leaning Bystanders! Hear me, Babbits of Officialdom! I call down a curse upon your festival! May it be lashed by rain! May it be buffeted by wind! May the gewgaws go unsold! May the municipal overtime and insurance riders go for naught! Hear me, and lament, for I will be avenged, you miserable worms!