The Jolly Old Party Snack

I think I know what it is to be a professional writer.  I have a large project I’m working on – the script, a short story that I just have to write inspired by the most remarkable wedding I attended over the weekend, and a blog post which, being Monday, must be a work of original fiction.

I don’t want to write the work of original fiction for the bog.  I want to write the short story, even as the script tugs at me as says, “Get me done.  You’re going to love the end.”  The discipline that lets me finish any of my writing insists that the blog must come first.

I know, I’ll just copy an entry from Washington Orville Hampton’s diary.

May 12, 1983 – Budapest.

This is truly a remarkable age we are living in.  I’m staying at the Prague and Pony, unspeakable thousands of miles from home, yet this afternoon upon waking – it was a very late night of  draw – so hungry I couldn’t stand it but between shifts in the hotel kitchen, I found a sort of delicatessen across the street and was able to get not just a pastrami on strange brown bread but also a cup of Pringles.

I remarked to the man behind me how much I loved the processed potato snack and he smiled before buying my lunch.  I thanked him and he suggested we take one of the sidewalk tables and enjoy the early afternoon together.  It was the least I could do for a fellow traveler and he spoke the Queen’s English with such charm that I could think of no more entertaining way to pass the time.

He also had a cup of the Pringles and devoured them with the sort of passion generally reserved for confections coated in chocolate.  The conversation worked its way around, as conversations do and in a moment’s pause I took up the cup and commented on the snack food being labeled a Crisp rather than a Chip.

For his part he shook his head and wondered, obviously not for the first time, why we insisted on calling crisps chips on the other side of the pond.  In good natured fun I assured him that it was because they were chips, not crisps.  We’d invented them first.

“But not the Pringles,” he said.  I thought on that.  On the bottom of the package it said they’d been made in Jacksonville, Florida.  “Is there a Jacksonville in Spain’s Florida?” I inquired.  “No,” he assured me.  “They are made in your Jacksonville.  It was the only place I could find the right ingredients.”

Now, I must admit that my curiosity was aroused. He’d only introduced himself as Christopher.  I looked at him again, could it be?  He beamed back at me and, with a flourish, said, “Lord Christopher Pringle the Second, at your service.”

That made more sense.  He was the heir, not old Chris Pringle himself.