You’ll be happy to know that Smart Ass Cripple turned down his invitation to the Royal wedding. I did so proactively and preemptively. When I heard the royal news of the royal engagement I wrote the royal family and told them I would not be able to attend so don’t waste royal postage sending me a royal invitation. So they didn’t.
I said I was royally sorry. I said I had a previous commitment. I can’t remember whether I said it was jury duty or a root canal. It’s not that I don’t admire the royal family. I aspire to be just like them. Who wouldn’t want to live a life where you can sit on your ass all day in a palace while servants bring you caviar, paid for by the taxpayers? But I know being royalty is not all wall-to-wall bliss. Their spectrum of acceptable behaviors is so limited that they can’t even fart without it being turned into a scandal. I’m sure they often envy the freedom of those of us whose farts are far too common to warrant publicly scrutiny.
I declined my invitation because I was royally intimidated by the prospect of buying a royal wedding gift. These are people who have sapphire-encrusted nose hair trimmers. My budget for a royal wedding gift would be about 25 British pounds. So the entertainment at the reception was sure to include me being knighted with the title of royal cheap ass.
But then the royal couple announced that in lieu of gifts they wanted donations sent to a list of charities selected by them. They set up a website to accept contributions. I was royally pissed. What an idiot I was to turn down my invitation. This charity bit would have given me the perfect cover for showing up empty-handed. And since contributions could be given anonymously on the website, nobody would ever know that I was the cheap ass who only contributed 25 British pounds.
But the charity I want to give to wasn’t on the list, probably because it doesn’t yet exist. But it will soon and it will be called something like the Victims of the Purge of the Independent Living Fund. As an austerity measure, the British government announced a few months back that it will be phasing out the Independent Living Fund by 2015. About 21,000 significantly crippled up English people receive about £300 a week from the £359-million fund, which repients use to pay people to help them in their homes so they can stay out of institutions.
So pretty soon they’ll be among the growing ranks of charity cases scrambling for the royal table scraps. Cripples who are charity cases have an extremely limited spectrum of acceptable behaviors too. The competition is stiff. You’re up against heavyweight heart wrenchers, like starving children and elephants being poached for their tusks. So you’d better be all sunshine all the time, like the Special Olympics, or people will give their money to more deserving victims. Being a crippled charity case is as stifling as being royalty, but without the palace and servants and caviar to ease the pain.
As soon as the Victims of the Purge of the Independent Living Fund is established, I’ll donate my £25. Then we’ll only have £358,999,975 million more to raise. It will be up to you and me to give because I doubt the British public will be able to help much. They’re pretty tapped out after paying for a royal wedding.
The royal family has their plate full too, what with so many exemplary victims vying for their charity. But maybe they can find it in their hearts to send these victims some leftover wedding cake.
