Postmodern short fiction

Wisteria Lemming

One of Fourteen Semolina Pilchards.

Wisteria Lemming

The committee convened on the fifth at 10:30 a.m., which was a little early for alcoholic beverages.

Given that the majority of the members were blackout drinkers there was a good chance there would be no recollection of when the proceedings began. On the other hand, there was a bad chance the liquor would have a deleterious effect on the tensions in the room.

Such was the tempestuous nature of the views regarding the issue, the convening authority thought it best to conduct the hearing in a bouncy house. That was until someone pointed out use of such a structure would result in many spilled tipples.

As a result, the panel was impaneled in a paneled chamber of the New Amsterdam Club, a tedious establishment whose antiquated board still festered over the Treaty of Braganza.

Fortunately, they kept their objections to a studious minimum, banning Ceylon tea from the smoking salon on Commonwealth Day.

In recent years, the younger crowd has even called for that prohibition to be lifted, in lieu of prohibiting smoking, thus adding more evidence that standards are being forsaken purely for the sake of forsaking them.

The chair felt secure in the knowledge that the matter could be handled discreetly. The order to prevent revelation of the subject of the discussions had been successful, largely due to the number of those involved having gained great control of the gag reflex after many sessions of genuflection with other members.

And yes, we do mean members. Do with that as you will.

The order of business was called. Attendance was taken. As a result, we are still not sure who was there.

An effort had been made to have a stenographer on hand to record the testimony, queries, and arguments. Once it was learned just how much stenographers charge for their services, the idea was mooted and booted.

The vice-chair called in his granddaughter to transcribe the goings-on using her Samsung Galaxy8. It turned out she was surprisingly accurate but lacked the ability to keep up with the debate. As a result, the transcript reads like a cell phone conversation on a train, with one or another speaker cutting out for minutes at a time.

Some effort was made to ask attendees to supply the missing verbosity ex post facto. Most wrote back that they were much better at multiple choice tests than fill-in-the-blank.

The committee secretary, one Wisteria Lemming (Not that there are many, but what does one expect. Only one Semolina Pilchard climbed up the Eiffel Tower in recorded history.), read the instrument establishing the commission.

In summary, the directive ordered the assembled to determine what measures might be taken to resolve the issue of ‘tomb,’ ‘bomb,’ and ‘comb’ not rhyming.

Rhyming the latter two with ‘tomb’ made their pronunciation the same as ‘boom’ and ‘cum’ as in ‘cumin’ or ‘cum laude.’

If ‘comb’ was the standard, ‘tomb’ would be ‘tome’ and ‘bomb’ would be ‘beau-m,’ approximating the way Peter Sellers pronounced it in the Pink Panther movies, which was funny because it was wrong and made the French look preposterous. Not that the French need any help looking preposterous.

Using ‘bomb’ as the base would result in ‘tom’ and ‘comm’ for the other two.

Quite frankly, the issue was daunting.

Since the liberum veto applied, no resolution could be forthcoming without unanimous agreement on the settlement.

Initially, some headway was made when a genial chap noted that ‘tomb’ and ‘womb’ rhyme. That is, progress seemed possible until the next speaker praised the first for orating with aplomb without even noticing she was making matters worse.

Those matters took a further turn away from any contented conclusion when someone moved to include an addendum to the final report to explain why the ‘bee’ remains silent in these words.

Given the prospect of the group actually getting to the point of drafting a final report seemed quite farfetched, the motion was stifled and quashed before a second could be recognized. That led to mutterings about ‘quashed’ being one of those pesky outliers in pronunciation.

Soon, more than a handful chanted “bashed, cashed, dashed, gashed, hashed, lashed, mashed, sashed,” over and over, mighty glad not to be in the room where the border state pronunciation of ‘washed’ was under consideration.

Indeed, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence if it hasn’t been warshed.

Miss Lemming reckoned she would be held responsible for the commissioners sliding off topic and failing in their duty. After all, it was in her purview as secretary to secure an accurate list of participants for inclusion in the findings of this august body. Had she done so, the poor dear could have named only those who had been active in the ludicrous debates.

It is always best to be specific when scapegoating to avoid the pitfalls engendered when entire classes of people are painted with the same brush of shame.

Unfortunately, specificity requires specifics. The youthful commission secretary only knew the details in that way one knows the answer when one is asked a trigonometry question two days after the final exam.

Wisteria had the passing notion to require each deliberant to sign out when leaving the increasingly fetid room. That could only happen if the body adjourned, which wasn’t likely to happen before tea no matter how great the need for fresh air.

All she could hope was that the gentleman in the back who was slipping into somnolence could stop repeating ‘quashed washed’ like some demented wordsmith’s mantra before he began rendering the words as ‘crosswalks.’

Not that doing so would result in any great tragedy. The lady simply didn’t want to have to hear her projected conclusion to the situation come true.

It was bad enough she would be forced to agree that her premonition about ‘aplomb’ being the turning point to chaos if it were not included in the original directive to the group had actually resulted in the slow death that she envisioned coming when the debate no longer lingers on the matter at hand and instead finds merit in wasting time on the most preventable digressions from a line of thought one can imagine.

Good grief! What is the penitence owed for drafting a sentence with 75 words?

Oh, for the bell to ring to signal tea is ready.

Short explanation

This is the third Semolina Pilchard I have presented to the Medium.com community. They are playful, absurdist jaunts down twisting paths.

[N.B. Please take a look at the first Semolina Pilchard published on Medium for an explanation of the term.]

[N.B. I love using words like “jaunt” that are so specific to the task and funny to my ear.]

[N.B. Eight of the fourteen pieces have been published in literary journals. Sadly, Wisteria Lemming isn’t one of them…yet.]