Whatever Happened to Humbug?

I still could not believe my luck. Ever since the fall, I had been dating the youngest and prettiest of the bank president's secretaries, an unbelievably-beautiful redhead in her 30s. On this day, December 23^rd, I had a lunch date with her, near her workplace. It was a date, like all the other dates with her, I did not care to miss.

I suppose that luck is a finite item for most of us, and, where you spend a big bunch all in one place, as I had, you have to pay for it in several dribs and plentiful drabs of bad luck. That was the thought that came to mind when I stepped out of the Metro at her stop, only to be pelted by miserably cold raindrops a-plenty. This despite none of the TV weather hucksters having predicted anything like it the night before.

While I was clothed enough to meet the accepted standards of decency, I was also naked enough to have no umbrella. So unexpected was the rain that, even those enterprising street vendors who generally pop up with overpriced umbrage whenever wet weather comes, were caught off-guard. There wasn't a one of them in site.

It was too far to walk to the lady's office without some sort of cover, so I quickly looked for a place where I might buy an umbrella. The closest thing around was a store called Sonny's Surplus. Well, surplus or not, if they had what I wanted, they were about to make a sale.

After I dashed in, I checked and found nothing in the front of the store that looked the least bit helpful. That went for the two salesladies behind the counter, who were entirely occupied with their own doubtlessly-important conversation. Well, fine, I had plenty of time yet, so I decided to nose around on my own.

Sonny did have what I wanted, but, as I finally discovered, at the back of the store. I was about to make my selection and take it to the counter up front, when an angry, wet street crazy barged through the front door and started yelling incoherently. What a surprise.

He quickly scared all the other customers out of the store, then turned his wrath on the ladies behind the counter. After a few seconds of argle-bargle, one of them said in her most soothing voice, "Hey, lighten up, man. It's Christmas."

"YEAH?" the visitor replied. "Well m*%&*# f* Christmas, m*&^#@ f*&% Santy Clause, AND M*&%#* F*#% YOU!" With those stirring words he stormed out of the store.

One of the ladies turned to the other and said, "That's the new Ebenezer Scrooge."