I am so angry I want to write this down so that the world had a record of how anger goes. When my mother died, my brother, my sister and I cleaned out my father's house. Among the loot were three bottles of whisky that had been in my father's attic for thirty years. My father no longer drinks spirits, so we each got a bottle. I carried mine half way round the world to Oregon and let friends taste whisky that had begun life in the nineteen sixties.
I stashed the bottle. Which is not to say that I hid it well, or locked it up in a safe. I just put it out of the way and visited it from time to time. When last seen, more than half a bottle of the stuff was waiting for the right moments.
This evening I thought, "I haven't had a taste of that in a long, long while. Why not, now? Life is to be seized. Perhaps before a colonoscopy, the right answer is a drop of ancient whisky?"
I went, I looked, the bottle is gone. No one in my family drinks whisky. So may he or she who stole it find much happiness in the deed. Bastard.
Meanwhile I'll agree that Walter and all the others who say ice is a mistake do have a point. The dram with which I diluted the urge to go and disembowel all thieves tasted very well with just a dribble of water in it. But if the thief would just reveal him or herself, stand right out there on the lawn, I'd run him or her through...choice of sword, rusty or no, up to the victim.
David Ritchie, Portland, Oregon ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
