Snapdragons are Snobs

Snapdragons are Snobs

."Jill's calling to complain about her latest fight with her on-again-off-again boyfriend Merl." I mute the TV and drop my cell on the coffee table.

"How could she ever be serious about a guy named Merl? He's all pickup trucks, sports bars and pool tournaments. I think these are totally good things, but should never be mentioned in the same sentence as Jill. She's the quintessential New York snob. If it exists outside the boundaries of 'The City', it doesn't really exist for her. The only reason she dates him is because, for some unknown reason, Country became this year's chic distraction to that pretentious, uptown, snob crowd she runs with."

Mimi turns her petal-circled yellow mum face toward me and says, "She's a snapdragon. I've warned you about hanging around with snapdragons.

"Not like you and your chrysanthemum sisters, right?"
         "

Exactly. We're the humblest of flowers."

I decide not to point out that a really humble flower wouldn't brag about being humble. Instead I continued to vent. "It's completely impossible to confide your deepest feelings to a New Yorker, snapdragon or not, at least any New Yorker we know."

"If you confide the slightest detail of your intimate life," I continued, "you might as well tweet it to a thousand other sad losers who spend their life trying desperately to get someone, anyone, to notice them. You might not understand since you don't have an intimate life." I look deep into her petals. "You don't--right?

"No comment." She turns her face away.

"Okay, then, let's catch a little TV before it's time to get to work. How about some news to get our sinuses opened?" I think I hear her humph. "Sorry, in your case stomata." I cancel mute.

From D,C. our reporter Tad Michels gives us the latest on the Syrian civil war.

"Tad? What the hell do you know about the Middle East? You rich-boy, vacuous toad.? Ever since we graduated from college you've kiss-assed your way through a dozen on-camera jobs. In all that time, the closest you ever got to something international was the night you slept with the daughter of the Egyptian Ambassador's chauffeur."

With her head still turned away from me she says, "I bet your snapdragon friend, Jill, would drool all over Tad if she could get her claws into him.

"Yeah," I snarl. "Couldn't you just picture it, Mimi. Merl standing outside Jill's uptown flat as she and Tad walk off laughing at him. In the background a sad country song drones on.
There's a cut shot to a bottle of beer as the announcer says. "Old Steerhorn Beer, it'll never leave you for some city slicker."

Mimi turns her blossom face my way. "Please don't talk about beer. My uncle Hastings was a hop. He and his family were raised in Bavaria and things didn't turn out well for them."

"Sorry, I didn't realize." I stared at the muted TV as Tad mugged for the camera.}Jill and old Tad should really get together. They could have one tastefully sired son who'd grow up, graduate from Harvard Law. Eventually he became lead attorney of the New Your chapter of the ACLU, making everyone in his secular progressive, hypocrite, up town, we're more compassionate than you family, immensely proud."

"Could we just go take a nice walk in the park? We can ask that dog we saw yesterday about the squirrels."

"You're right. It would be nice to talk to someone who actually values you as a human being for a change--no offense."

That's how Mimi and I find ourselves here in the park, spread out on my high school cheerleader's blanket talking to a schnauzer about fox squirrels.