James G Dunton

A Maid and a Million Men James G Dunton

There was a party up in Heaven the night that I was born and my mother's Guardian Angel was playing one of those now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don't shell games with the Court Jester while the Head-Man so far forgot himself, under the influence of the chorus of angelic yessers, as to do sleight-of-hand tricks with the Vital Statistics and the Orders of the Day. The whole court laughed to see such sport and even my mother's Guardian Angel must have thought it was a good joke on my father. I heard the angels laughing as I came into the world and I cried out, as soon as I could, that it certainly didn't take much to entertain some people. Angels have no sense of humor, anyway; I've since discovered that you have to go in the other direction if you want to appreciate good jokes. Why, up there in Heaven, the whole court thought this was a wow, judging by the celestial thunder-peals of glee which accompanied the parlor tricks, but if you can see anything funny in playing a trick like that on an unsuspecting couple of innocent young lovers who thought Birth Control was a pullman porter, then I hope you go to hell where red-hot jokes are the devil's own sport! Furthermore, the joke was not only on my parents, but also on us-for, you see, it happened that not only was I twins but also the other half of the consignment was a boy who should have been a girl while I was a girl who should have been a boy. The Head-Man certainly proved himself a magician; he scrambled our souls and temperaments and everything else so thoroughly that it would have required a better man than the Court Physician to put us together again as the Creator intended us to be, before that weak moment of kittenishness.