pragalagma

I closed the three dollar book and sat down. I have it on very good authority that the lump on the back of your neck is hereditary. Your late father it is believed had a similar lump which he called his ‘little fellow’ and he would often pretend to play tennis with it. It wasn’t really pretend; he ended with quite a few welts in that area over the years. Of course we all know your uncle had the lump. It caused him no end of trouble. It’s his own fault really. He was wealthy and easily could have paid to get it removed. Lara said they were not allowed to discuss the lump at meal time or bedtime, but any other time was okay, in fact it was encouraged. But Lara said that, despite this, it was rather an unpleasant subject. None of her sisters found much interest in the lump at all really. Lara secretly kept notebooks and journals about the lump, which continued to fascinate her long after puberty. She never told anyone she kept her writings and hid them with your father’s favorite ring, which she stole from him at age four while visiting you on the island. Realizing the ring’s significance several years after taking it, she was too embarrassed to return it to him. An unfortunate oversight, as it would have cheered him so to have it once more in his compnay. Did you know he stole it himself in his youth at roughly the same age as Lara? Yes, in India of all places, from an Italian Jew named Michael who toured with him on occasion. This ring was hidden by Lara throughout her life in a paper bag under the bed, along with her booklets about the lump. She would make daily comments of her impressions and observations pertaining to the lump in one book, and stories and adventures of a fantastic kind, also pertaining to the lump, in another. In one such story in this latter book, a small girl remarkably like Lara in many ways (curly locks, cruel sisters, hunchback), releases a fairy from within her father’s lump. The fairy grows up quite rapidly, which was unfortunate for the little girl, as fairies turn into witches when they get older. The poor child dies at the end and her body is taken to the witches’ coven where it is reanimated as a “witchling”, an invention of Lara’s which she describes as “a witch, only smaller”. This coven of witches and its new witchling would later pop up in many of her other stories, and it was her psychiatrist Dr. Emmet Lambfuel that discovered the symbolism manifested within it. The witches were her sisters. When Lara’s sisters were taken by the United States and used as bait for their imperialist schemes, Lara was heartbroken. This is due mainly to the fact that the U.S. deliberately left her behind. Although her disabilities were probably the cause, Lar could not help but take it personally. As everyone knows, her sisters went on to become heroes of the conflict, tearing the U.S. apart from within with their mock sympathetic rhetoric. Their pop band of seemingly patriotic American noise subliminally deprogrammed millions of brainwashed youths and brought them back to our cause. Lara never heard of her sisters’ triumph, for it all occurred long after her exile. Her abuse at the hands of the Neber peoples robbed her of the ability to read. Lara’s stories were published but all traces of what Dr. Lambfuel, the first to read all 370 of her “Lump Manuscripts” as they were originally called, found as American (namely, all symbolism that compared her sisters to witches) were removed. The lump itself of course remained and has since caused quite the sensation here. Not many subway walls have lump imagery and enthusiasm graffitied on them (due to our wonderful enforcements) but you can be sure if this was America or someplace equally awful, they would. What compelled Lara to think of the lump with such reverence, and with such a grasp of literary wit? A day-in, day-out obsession, the lump became the focus and navel of her creative existence. It is only too fortunate her father was so disinclined to pay for its removal. You and your daughter both have the lump. Be proud of what that lump represents. Dr. Lambfuel would tell you it symbolizes a sister’s hatred for her siblings, and therefore, a traitorous thing. I say it stands for one of our country’s literary gems. Thankfully, you are poor and cannot afford to have it removed. Be proud that you are poor as it has made you all the more fortunate.