Room For Squares
In Which the Requisite Nut Jokes Are Made, Discussed, and Moved On From With A Minimum of Embarrassment
Maybe it was the euphoria that followed not having the gum chewing girl's mother around anymore— certainly there was something in the air that made me rather happy, as she was led away and the air was filled with the sounds that children make after their toy-dispenser has been unexpectedly taken away with them. Or maybe it was the music making me a little feisty; I don't know. Either way, the result was the same.
"Let's boogie!" I said.
"Okay!" said Mandy, as though she'd been waiting for me to say that through half a movie.
Eventually, she was detached, and we moved on.
We were able to take the Glass Elevator after that, a feat which hasn't been accomplished for some time, because we use Windex and birds kept flying into it and smashing themselves all over the glass. It was gross. Ew. Plus, they went totally to waste, since not even the Oompa Loompas would make them into crow pie; and its been my experience that the Oompa Loompas eat everything, which is part of the reason why it was kind of dangerous to bring small children into the factory in the first place. At least none of them brought any pets.
Herding five children into an elevator is no fun. The gum chewing girl whined that she was claustrophobic, the fat boy kept crying about his mother, the spoilt girl demanded three elevators for at home in different colors to correspond with her outfits (why would anyone want to correspond with an outfit? Clothes can't write letters. I don't get this. It makes no sense. Does life come with some sort of guidebook or something?), Nebbish the Third got sick as soon as the elevator started moving, and Mandy and her "father," whose mustache was slipping further and further down his chin till it resembled the kind of goatee Colonel Sanders would be proud to wear, were punching all the buttons simultaneously.
So, the elevator stalled. No surprise there, really. I think it was utterly baffled. Elevators are not the most intelligent of God's creatures— if God created the elevator, which I doubt, quite frankly. There's something to be said for intelligent design, and if I (or God, for that matter) had created an elevator, I (and certainly he) would have included some reasoning capabilities, of which this elevator had none. It wouldn't go up; it wouldn't go down; it wouldn't go sideways, frontways, longways, backways, noways, broadways— anything!
"I thought you said it went any way you like," said Nebbish the Third.
"It does, if you treat it nicely," I said, patting the glass and ignoring the strangled shrieks of pervy merriment that came from the corner where Mandy and George Becky were now engaged with making squeaky noises on the glass with their fingernails.
At that point, the gum chewing girl decided she was really claustrophobic and started going crazy ape bonkers stark raving mad as a balloon on us, biting people on the ankles and landing a hefty kick to Mr. Nebbish when he tried to calm her down. Not that he didn't deserve it. I think anyone who starts a statement with, "Now, little girl," gets exactly what he deserves.
"Now, li'l girl," I said severely, and she burst into tears.
Eventually we got the doors open, prying them with our fingers— or, rather, Mr. Nebbish was convinced to pry at them with his fingers. He wasn't using them, anyway. Certainly not after they got smashed a few times.
We were just climbing out of the elevator when the Oompa Loompa repair crew showed up. I made sure to congratulate them heartily on their excellent timing, and then carried on.
"Next is the nut room," I said, "where we put all the crazy people."
"What do crazy people have to do with candy?" asked Nebbish the Third, rolling his eyes.
"You don't want to know," I said, secretively.
They all eyed me. "Mr. Wonka, if you continue making these sorts of hints about what you put in your candy, I would suggest you contact your lawyer before too much longer," said Mr. Nebbish.
I tsk-tsked at him. "Lawyers, I wouldn't have a lawyer in the factory! He might chew the furniture. Come along, people. In the nut room. I'm sure most of you will feel right at home."
"I have nuts at home, you know," said the spoilt girl's father. I blinked at him for a moment.
"No better place for them," I said finally, "but have a look at mine."
"If you insist," he grumbled, and I shoved him into the room with my cane.
As I had intimated, or suggested, or advised, or indicated, or invoked, or attested, or pointed to, or promised, or betoken, or bespoke, or presaged, or foreshadowed, or foretold, or specified, or denoted, or implied, or prefigured, or prophesied, and curse those Oompa Loompas for continually taking away my thesaurus! Which brings me to another thought— what's another word for 'thesaurus'?
I had a point; I think I remember it. Ah yes.
As I had mentioned, the nut room contains nuts of all shapes and sizes and sorts. What's more, the actual nuts are, appropriately, shelled and sorted by some local crazy people I recruited from the Sanitarium in town. I watched as everyone duly reacted to this.
"Don't they ever revolt?" asked Nebbish the Third.
"Of course not!" I said. "But when they do, we just put them in straightjackets for a few hours. That's why we've trained them to be able to shell the nuts with their feet. And what happens when they find a bad nut, I'm sure you will ask? See that great big hole in the floor? It grinds the bad nuts up, like a garbage disposal. And we never have to deal with them again. Unless they come back," I said, sobering abruptly. My eyes widened. "Sometimes they come back—"
"But why crazy people?" asked the spoilt girl's father, who was undoubtedly wishing he'd thought of it first.
"Why, because it's a wonderful pun, of course!" I told him, beaming from ear to ear. "And it makes a wonderful conversation piece."
I noticed that the spoilt girl's face was gradually squinching up into the raisin-like expression that meant she was trying to put a sentence together and invariably presaged a comment of such astounding stupidity that I would call her the poster child for mandatory castration. However, this time she surprised even me.
"Daddy," she said, "I want a crazy person."
"You have one at home," said her father, frowning down at her concernedly.
"Mommy isn't enough! I want a trained crazy person."
He squinted at her, squinted at me, put his glasses on and squinted through those, squinted down into the room of nut-shelling nutsos, then finally said, "Mr. Wonka—"
"No," I said.
"But—"
"No."
"I just—"
"No."
"I—"
"Can you imagine the outrage there would be if I let you have a crazy person at any price?" I said, tapping my cane against the floor. "Think about it. If I let you have one, everyone would want one, there'd be crazy people all over the place, and chaos would undoubtedly ensue. I know that sounds kind of like a fun way to live, but think of the government. They'd feel that they weren't special if there were crazy people just wandering the streets instead of all cooped up in the Parliament Building."
"Daddy!" screeched the spoilt girl. "Make him stop talking and get me a psycho!"
It was then that we discovered that the one thing fathers are really, truly, honestly, dependably, verily, rightfully, actually, earnestly, sincerely, actively, materially, factually, effectively, alright alright! Give me that back!
It was then that we discovered that the one thing fathers are truly afraid of is their daughters.
The spoilt girl's nut-owning dad clambered over the fence with a sigh and started down the ladder into the enclosure. I leaned over the railing to watch, rather anxious about how things were going to turn out.
Not well, actually.
It wasn't so much chaos that ensued, as carnage. Hundreds of nut-crazed lunatics descended on the hapless Mr. Spoilt, pushing him grimly towards the looming hole in the middle of the floor, and when the screaming stopped, most of us were looking desperately the other way. I won't describe things. Just know that it wasn't pretty. Even the Oompa Loompas looked somewhat somber when they came out to sing, and you know, what with all the cocoa beans, they're never serious.
"The sad, sad tale of Mr. Salt
"And how his life ground to a halt
"Involves details you might not like
"To relate to your little tyke
"For one thing, your cute little tot
"Will wonder how the crazies were caught
"To tell them 'Traps' would be perturbing
"But what is even more disturbing
"Is how, at his daughter's proposal
"Dad put himself at their disposal
"Since they pitched him down the hole
"They don't seem to be merciful
"In fact, they seem quite irritated
"That their freedom is so underrated.
"In retribution, you will find,
"They flipped the switch from 'off' to 'grind'
"Being further 'peeved,' they say,
"The switch then went straight to 'puree.'
"That's the tale of Mr. Salt,
"And how his life ground to a halt."
Not in the best taste, I admit— but not a lot we can do about it now. I bowed to them; they bowed back, and presented the spoilt girl with a barrel of nuts to take some of the sting from her father's death.
Surprisingly, that seemed to work. She named the barrel Gilbert and seemed quite happy with it. Such a simple child.
We turned away from the nut room and I stared at the visitors to my factory for a moment, finding myself quite unable to recall why so many of them were so short. Perhaps it was something in the water.