Bubbles
by Eric Miller
Bud and Bliss
Payton were surprised when their daughter Penny
announced that she wanted to have her wedding and
her reception in their backyard. Panicking, Bud
hired a professional wedding planner, with whom
he soon became disillusioned. Against the
protests of his wife and daughter, he divorced
himself from the planner.
Leafing
through the Yellow Pages with one hand, and
tapping Google searches with the other, Bud found
tents and tables, a caterer and a florist, porta-potties
and place settings, but alas, no band.
Finally, he found an accordion player and a
trombone player, neither of whom had ever played
together, willing to give it a try.
As the wedding
day approached, Bud tethered himself to the
Weather Channel to watch storm systems intent on
raining on his daughter’s parade. However,
when the awaited moment came, the clouds broke,
the sun glittered, the guests arrived happy, the
cleric spoke eloquently, the food and drink were
fabulous, and the trombone and accordion
demonstrated the principle of serendipitous
synergy. Whatever that combined sound was,
it sounded real good. Bud’s daughter
was ecstatic. He felt like Queen for a Day.
Bud and Bliss
had their retirement papers down on the
boss’s desk at the plant before the last
tent from the wedding hit the ground. They were
both revved and ready to roll, and as they drove
out of the plant parking lot, they were seen
strewing 35 years of responsibilities out of the
car window, as if they were merely ticker tape.
As they headed into the sunset, they were blinded
more by their dreams than the sun itself.
Bubbling over
with happiness, Bud and Bliss opened a bottle of
first class bubbly, a real deal Champagne,
straight from Epernay. They clicked their glasses
and celebrated being blessed with quality
real estate to sell. Bud picked up the phone and
called their realtor.
“Let’s
do it. Put that house for sale sign up
tomorrow, so we can watch the parade of buyers
start passing through,” he ordered, a bit
too confidently.
The headline
in the morning paper read: “Real estate
bubble bursts.”
To the Paytons,
the news sounded like a whoosh of water gushing
from their water bed. The realtor told them to
take whatever was offered, to stuff it in their
saddlebags, and to ride their horses, at full
speed, out of town. There was no parade, no
offers made, and Bud and Bliss were stuck. They
took the house off the market and decided to stay
put. The very next day, a man knocked on their
door and said that he wanted to buy their house.
He offered a fair price, which they accepted. Although
Bud should have been bubbly with relief, it was
frustration that bubbled through his veins, as
the buyer was a bit of a bubble-head with whom to
deal.
When the
Paytons opened the door to walk out of their
house for the very last time, they were tickled. Bubbles
have a nice way of doing that to you.
|
