Notice the white beard? No, it is not really made of yarn and paste. It means Mickey is old.
I was born in November of 1456. That year Vlad the Impaler (yes, the guy who inspired Dracula) killed the Prince of Wallachia and took over his throne, ruling the part of Eastern Europe that includes Transylvania.
Halley’s Comet made an appearance that year, just as it did the year Mark Twain was born, and well before Donald Trump became President of the United States. Before even the comet itself was named by the Astronomer Halley. So if it was truly an omen of the end of the world, it came more than 500 years too early. Maybe that’s why it has to keep coming back around
The Ottoman Empire tried to march into Albania and take it over, but the outnumbered forces of Skanderbeg defeated them at the Battle of Oronichea, proving that bullies don’t always win.
And codpieces were in fashion, proving that men lack any sort of fashion-sense whether it was back then or even now, more than 500 years later.
But, of course, you knew all of that without me telling you. It was an eventful year.
So Mickey is now 561 and 1/2 years old. You’d think by that age he’d have learned not to tell lies or exaggerate things by 500. No such luck. But perhaps I can explain how this particular purple hoo-haw came to be.
You see it began in a classroom back when I was about 40 years of age. That’s right, in 1496. I was lecturing young Will Shakespeare about not putting his name on other people’s writing (which was doubly ironic, because the plagiaristic lad would not be born himself until 1564).
Young Will responded, “You are old, Schoolmaster Mickey. Shouldn’t you have retired already?”
“Just how old do you think I am?” I responded.
“I dunno, seventy or eighty maybe.”
I practically wet myself from shock. I have long looked older than my actual years. But I never let a chance for a good comeback with a slow burning sizzle added to it.
“Well, actually, I am 540 years old. I have been considering retirement for quite some time.”
“Really?” He looked shocked. So, either he really believed me, as thirteen-year-old English students readily will, or he was a much better actor than he was an original author of school essays.
And ever since that fateful day, I have always exaggerated my age to sound truly impressive. I even went back in time and did the math, figuring out what my birthday had to have been to make what I said to the class sound true.
Now, be warned, this is a story full of lies. But as with any work of fiction, it does bear significant relationships to the truth. I will leave it to you to try to discern what those relationships are.
Angel Thinking
Yes, you are about to read more Mickian nonsense about an agnostical atheist who believes angels are real. Heck, I not only believe in angels, I am one.
The word itself comes from Biblical Greek where angelos was the word for messenger. And because the pre-twelfth century translators of the Bible looked at the “el” part and thought of the Hebrew word that meant “God”, they used angel to mean a messenger from God.
Now, I am not being a sacrilegious atheist when I claim to be an angel. That is mainly because I am not technically an atheist. I do believe that a spiritual creative essence informs the universe, but I am actually an agnostic because that means I actually don’t know anything “A” for “not” and “gnostic” for “a know-er of stuff”. I am a teleological idiot because I actually don’t know anything about anything. But I do have the ability to look at evidence, weigh it, and reach a logical conclusion about what is most probably true, and I firmly believe in that only until more evidence comes along. I believe that particular thinking process is what is known as science (at least until better evidence comes along). So, scientifically considering the issue, I stupidly believe I am an angel. I bring possible knowledge from God.
Grandma Beyer used to have a picture like this in sepia tones on her bedroom wall in Mason City. I studied that guardian angel picture for hours as a child.
Thinking about stuff hard enough gives you insight, at least if you don’t over-heat your brain with hard thinking and catch your hair on fire. A lot of stuff has been happening that I have been thinking hard about. Here are some examples.
So, as an angel, here is what I believe God is saying;
“As human beings, we all need to learn to love one another more. Love is the only answer that cures hate.” – God (No, really, he said this to me!)
Seriously. We need to take the weather anomalies as a sign that the time for climate change denial is long over. We need to work together with all people on the planet to lovingly change those things we do that have caused the crisis. We need to lovingly make peace with North Korea. Fighting them will only lead to the Biblical ending of the story coming to pass. I have an anomalous agnostical faith that there is a lot of truth in the Christian Bible. (The spell checker doesn’t like “agnostical” either.) Loving other people besides ourselves and the people who know and love us is the only possible solution to the problems before us.
Of course, I am saying all this angelic crappola tongue-in-cheek because I am, after all, a humorist, and I agnostically don’t know anything at all. But that doesn’t mean I don’t mean what I say.
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