Make the Living Room Great Again: A Fable

Make the Living Room Great Again: A Fable
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Ada Bee

Ada Bee

Ada Bee

The King of the Living Room surveyed his kingdom. He didn’t like what he saw. He hated his kingdom.

“This living room isn’t what it used to be,” the King of the Living Room said. “So sad.”

“When I was a child, the living room was much bigger. I used to be able to jump off the couch. I peed in the corner and now the whole damn room smells like urine.”

“So here’s what we are going to do. From here on out it’s the Living room first! Not the kitchen, not the bathroom, not the bedroom. Living room first! This living room is a disaster and I’m the only one who is going to fix it.”

And that’s what the King of the Living Room did. The plushest carpet. Paint melted from ancient Peruvian gold. He replaced an entire wall with a TV. Of course, he didn’t do it himself. He was the King!

“I’m hungry! Bring me some food!” Making the living room Great Again had made the King of the Living Room hungry.

“But sir,” the King’s subject said, “the kitchen . . . it’s in shambles. The fridge doesn’t work. The food is spoiled and all of the cooking supplies have been taken.”

“So nasty,” said the King. “Turn down my bed. I’m going to take a nap.”

“But . . . sir,” the subject stammered.

“What now?!”

“The bedroom is gone.”

“How can a bedroom be gone?”

“Well, sir, while we poured all our attention and resources into the living room, we stopped caring for the bedroom. It struggled without our support, fell into civil war, and eventually burned to the ground.”

“How can a bedroom fall into civil war?”

“I don’t know, sir, but it did. That’s nothing compared to the genocide and environmental degradation taking place in the bathroom.”

The King of the Living Room sat on the couch he had bought--or someone else had bought with his money--at Michael Jackson’s estate sale. He couldn’t eat because of the state of the kitchen. He couldn’t sleep because of the state of bedroom. He couldn’t even take a leak because of the state of the bathroom.

While he was making the Living Room Great again, the rest of the house had fallen into disrepair. Turns out the problems of the other rooms eventually became his problems. But now it was too late to do anything about it.

He grabbed the remote to turn on his wall-sized TV to look for someone to blame. But the TV wouldn’t turn on.

“Subject, I think the remote needs new batteries,” The King of the Living Room said.

“Sir . . . the batteries were in the kitchen.”

So the King of the Living Room sat on his Michael Jackson couch before the blank, wall-sized TV, staring at a reflection of himself.

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