PART 2
What’s happened so far: Ragnar the Embellisher wrote a book about the history of lutefisk, a gelatinous whitefish dish served at Yule Tide in Norse culture. Mort the Hipster Blogger was upset because he had agreed to write about a guy, that wrote a book about, what Mort repeatedly referred to as, “fish Jell-O”. There was, also, a beautiful woman driving a Mustang, who wouldn’t give either one of them the time of day. All were drinking coffee in a Denny’s. And, of course, don’t forget the Narrator.
“Almost 50 readers,” barked Mort. He was working up a truck load of hipster irony to dump all over the riled up Viking. Sensing weakness, Ragnar had challenged the readership numbers of Mort’s blog, suggesting that even Mort’s mother didn’t bother to read it. “My mom doesn’t read my blog because she isn’t ‘deck’ enough. A term you wouldn’t understand. Check that out in your thesaurus.” Earlier, when Mort had repeatedly called lutefisk “fish Jello”, Ragnar suggested he might want to use a thesaurus to learn some different words (irony of ironies, Mort didn’t know the difference between a thesaurus and a dictionary — but, that’s just the opinion of the Narrator).
“Almost fifty?” snorted Ragnar. “That many?”
“Well, really, maybe about thirty-five.”
“Thirty-five?” Ragnar continued to snort as he struggled to decide about whom he was the most honked-off — the condescending hipster/blogger or his soon-to-be convalescing agent/brother-in-law (the idiot that set up the whole interview mess).
“If I write a piece about fish Jello, no one will ever read my blog, again,” Mort spat out.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Ragnar attempted to offer some quasi-comfort. “You won’t lose any readers. No one is reading your stuff, now.”
The caffeine fueled conversation raged on. It was as if arrogant ineptitude had picked a slap fight with pointless particulars. For forty-five minutes, the two drudges of the writing universe argued about which one of them wanted to do the interview the least. Although they had never met, both seemed well-equipped at observational verbal abuse (“You couldn’t write a two-worded birthday card,” “You couldn’t dangle a participle.” “Huh?”).
Eventually, the server quit refilling their cups and two of the other three customers left the restaurant out of fear for their sanity. Only the beautiful, Mustang driving woman remained, the back of her head was all that could be seen from her distant booth. As the two jibber jabbers wound down their attacks, having run low on verbal fuel, the object of their conversation turned from who was the most adamant about not conducting an interview to who had the better shot with the pretty pony girl.
“You couldn’t get a date with her even if you wore size fourteen, gold-plated shoes,” one of them argued – which one was irrelevant.
“Like you could get anywhere with her, Mister Brilliant Wordsmith.”
“Huh?” Again it didn’t make any difference which one of the two said what. They had no more of a chance with the Mustang lady than getting a cat to do anything on command. Both had the dating skillsets of an adolescent tree sloth – but, again, that’s just the opinion of the Narrator.
Having had enough of arguing over which one got credit for refusing to do the interview and who had the least chance with the beautiful woman in the far booth (or any woman, for that matter) Ragnar and Mort simultaneously grew a small pair (that’s one each) and decide to approach the woman and see where things might take them. Sensing each other’s intentions, both of the social wunderkinds jumped up and attempted a smooth exit from their booth – resulting in overturned condiments, cups and saucers tumbling to the floor, and a general lack of anything resembling “smooth”.
Amid the chaos of upended napkin holders and flying tableware, Ragnar and Mort watched in anguish as the beautiful woman walked out of the Denny’s, escorted by (did you guess it?) the Narrator.

Larry Wilson is a mostly lifelong resident of Niles. His optimistic “glass full to overflowing” view of life shapes his writing. His essays stem from experiences, compilations and recollections from friends and family. Wilson touts himself as “a dubiously licensed teller of tall tales, sworn to uphold the precept of ‘It’s my story; that’s the way I’m telling it.’” He can be reached at wflw@hotmail.com.