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Sunday, November 27, 2011

69. Corporations

It was the grossest thing you can imagine. I was enjoying perhaps the last warm day of the year sitting on a park bench admiring my city’s skyline. I was, mind you, not bothering a soul. Actually, I had dozed when I awoke to a horrible, screeching, teeth-setting-on-edge sound.

Who should appear but an exceedingly overweight man waddling along the sidewalk playing an accordion? May I add that he was playing it rather badly? I believe he was attempting the old protestant hymn “When We All Get to Heaven.”

I averted my eyes but he sank beside me and nearly pushed me off the bench. He smelled terrible. His arm pounded me as he continued to play. I rose and started to walk away.

“Hey Big Dope, where you goin”? he said.

“As far from you as I can get,” I said. “What kind of person are you trying to be?” I hadn’t seen C.W. since before Thanksgiving and had, of course, been expecting the worst.

“I’m a corporation person,” he said.

“A what?”

“A corporation. Can’t you tell?”

“A corporation?”

He began to play the accordion again. Needless to say, people were beginning to stare.

“You are going to get arrested,” I said.

“How can you arrest me? I’m not physical.” He lit off on what sounded vaguely like “Lady of Spain.”

I groaned.

“Why do you think you are a corporation? And besides, you stink.”

“Naturally I’m a little fulsome. Can’t you see how well I eat?” He hit a sour note and held in it an ear-shattering vibrato.

“You are destroying the peace of the park for everyone else,” I said.

“Their comfort isn’t my problem,” he shouted over the “music.” “My job is to produce and feed my dependents. Gorging isn’t always pretty.”

I stared.

“Listen,” he said. What emerged next might have sounded to a person with a good imagination as “Beer Barrel Polka.”

I cringed.

“What do you think?” he said.

“I think someone is going to knock your block off if you don’t quit.”

“Can’t touch me,” he said. “I’m not really here. I’m a corporation. I only exist in contemplation of the law.”

“Then why are you in such an annoying configuration?”

“Corporations are people,” he said. “Don’t you know that?”

I sighed.

“At least that’s what your species’ supreme agency for hearing legal appeals says.”

“Our Supreme Court said it but that may not make it so in all cases,” I said. “Just look at you.”

Don't worry. Be happy.Corporations
will take good care of you. - C.W.
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t be such a ninny.” With this, he made some unrecognizable sound on the instrument. “I call this ‘A Light From On High.’”

I flinched.

“I wrote it for the justices that made me a person. I like to think of them as my fathers.”

“Your what?”

“Yep. I transmitted their dossiers to Falloonia today as part of my ‘Great Legal Minds’ series.”

I gasped.

“You want to get something to eat?” he said.

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