Birds Being Birds

It wasn’t a good after-school afternoon for Edith Whistle yesterday. As usual, she was doing all the work of running the “Whistle & Thistle Biker Bar & Episcopal Ladies Tea House” all by herself.

Her husband, Bob, who always claims that Edith is the thistle in The Whistle & Thistle, was in the railroad corner, showing a bunch of fifth graders how to make little trees for the railroad layout and treating them to free black cows.

“They ought to be expanding the hobo jungle beside those tracks,” muttered Edith, “because that’s where they’re all going to end up, useless bums.”

She looked over to the Episcopal ladies corner. Mrs. Hobart Hazlewood III was sipping Earl Grey and drilling a couple of freshmen on algebra. With the sense of entitlement Episcopal ladies always seem to have, she was rewarding them for right answers with donuts out of the glass stand which she had taken from the counter beside the cash register. Edith knew that Hannah Hazlewood would forget to pay.

“The rich think people like me ought to support them,” Edith muttered.

“That’s why they’re rich,” a soft voice muttered back at her. “They keep their own money and spend other people’s. That’s what my mother says, along with a lot of other stuff.”

“Oh no,” thought Edith. “Tiffany Lampe is here. She’s such a nice girl, but I know she’s going to…”

“Got any work for me, Mrs. Whistle?”

“…beg for a job again,” Edith finished her thought.

“Tiffany, if I could possibly hire someone, it would be you. But look around you. We’ve got a whole lot of business, but nobody is paying. I can’t afford help. There’s no point of you coming in here and…”

Tiffany began to sniffle.

“I don’t really come to ask for a job, Mrs. Whistle. It’s just an excuse not to go home.”

“Oh, my,” said Edith. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing special. Nothing different. It’s just that Mom never stops talking. She doesn’t yell at me, or like that. She’s proud of my grades and everything. It’s just that she never stops…”

She looked up at Edith, tears beginning to run down her smooth cheeks.

“She’s driving me crazy. What can I do to get her to stop talking all the time, Mrs. Whistle?”

Edith looked at her husband and the laughing little boys. She looked at Hannah Hazlewood smiling as Dusty Rhodes finally understood about “x.”

“Tiffany, you can tell a bird to stop singing, tell it to stop flying. It wouldn’t understand you. But if it did, and you convinced it, talked it into quitting its singing, talked it into stopping that flying, well, it wouldn’t be a bird anymore.”

She handed Tiffany a tissue.

“You’d better start by putting some more donuts in that stand over there, and sweeping up those tree leavings under that railroad table,” said the thistle.