My Bad Son

Dear diary,

I have a bad son, his name is Covid. He just turned 19, and this is what he did (I told him not to do it, but he did it anyway because he’s a bad son):

He rose up early in the morning, out of the Potomac River, and went into the neighboring district, to wit: Columbia. He walked right up to one of the houses and knocked on the door.

A man answers. He takes one look at my son and sez:

“Whatever it is you’re planning on doing, just do it quick. I hate this world anyway; the only reason I don’t take my life ‘into my own hands’, as Captain Andy sez of Officer Sunshine in the film Wrong Cops (2013), is that long ago the Everlasting fixed his canon against self-slaughter, and I don’t want to end up in Hell, which, as Officer Rough explains in that very same scene, exists ‘beneath our feet’ & not up in the sky, where I wanna go, near Heaven.”

So my son kills this man. Then he takes a few steps into the house. There, standing in the hallway, is the man’s wife.

“What would you like to happen now?” my son asks.

“I’m just so glad to be rid of that awful man; I feel like rejoicing,” the wife replies. “Would you mind making love to me?”

So they do the forbidden dance known as La Samba.

Then my son steals a helicopter & flies to the site of the pyramids in Giza & drops a thermonuclear weapon. He remarks: “Finally, people will be able to stop wondering about the development & purpose of these mysteries,” as he laughs & flips the “BOMBS AWAY” switch.

Immediately after obliterating these monuments, however, my son feels a pang of guilt. So he lands the chopper, gets out and draws up some blueprints. He manages to have the scene rebuilt so that it looks exactly as it did before, even down to the smallest details like the torn-off casing, the Great Pyramid’s missing capstone, and the oddly shaped head on the Sphinx nearby (which was also blown away by the earlier destruction). And my son uses slaves to achieve these triumphs.

Then my son gets married to Athena, the virgin deity of the ancient Greeks. Athena proves to be a good influence on my son. At the wedding ceremony, the couple stands before the high priest during the vows; & we fathers (Zeus & I) are positioned to either side of our respective offspring; so I shuffle discreetly over & lean in & whisper to the bride:

“Please forgive my boy in advance, for he knows not what he does. He’s a bad son; he’s been a handful ever since birth. He turned 19 today, and I’m shocked that you agreed to marry him, for he’s kinda been on a wild spree, as of late — these last couple hours he’s been causing a lot of trouble: breaking up families, vandalizing and restoring cultural artifacts, trafficking in slave labor... But perhaps that’s what attracted you to him: perhaps you want a bad boy, a rebel or outcast. Maybe that makes you feel safe; maybe you see his unethical behavior as a guarantee of your own protection; like, in a land overrun by mobsters, the safest bet is to marry into the family of the Mob Boss. I guess I see your point. You’ve got brains, if that was your angle.”

Athena turns & winks at me; then she nudges me back towards the place where I should be standing, on the other side of Covid.

After the vows, the lovers enjoy their honeymoon. They go to a ski resort in Whistler, Canada. Every night, after slaloming down the steepest slope & ending in a snowplow turn, Athena lures my son into a bunker, which serves as a classroom. She teaches my son how to read & write. (That’s why I said above that Athena “proves to be a good influence on Covid”.) He eventually develops compassion for all beings, & he starts to believe in the mainstream news media.

During his final days, my son becomes extremely good at polo. He even figures out a way to play the sport using a robotic pony, so that a real animal doesn’t have to suffer under the wrath of his fierce equestrianship. At first the other riders make fun of him, but then after losing every single match for four years in a row, they attempt to copy his technique. And my son has turned over a new leaf, at this point — he’s almost gone full circle from bad to good, now — so instead of hiding the secrets of his success, like when magicians refuse to reveal how their tricks are done, he does the opposite: he offers his knowledge for a nominal fee. In other words, he finds employment as a polo coach. Soon every woman and man in his class grows as proficient at the game as my good son Covid, and the professional polo league becomes overrun with experts. No one can win a game henceforth, for ever: the matches always end as draws.

But one day my poor son feels a slight pain inside his left ear. At first he assumes it’s just a mechanical woodtick that stung him, because these new robo-ponies are basically magnets for the parasitical bug-bots that the CIA unleashed back in the twenties. But it’s probably brain cancer, because my son now falls into a deep sleep. He earns the best scores every night tho: 100% positive ratings from all the judges on his form & skills. He also gets high marks in the category of “Tossing & Turning”, since his movements are graceful, & his bed is not too creaky. Additionally he dominates the realms of “Snoring” AND “Sleep-speaking” — this is unheard of, as usually a soul who excels at the former will suck at the latter, or vice versa; but my son mastered both — as well as “Dream Interpretation”. (I’d like to think he inherited at least some portion of these talents from Yours Truly.)

Athena was able to remarry decently, too; so her future doesn’t even need to weigh on our conscience.