Play Dead
I’m fixing to play dead.
Mind you that I place emphasis on the word “play,” which meant that I intended to disappear from the clutches of the government Office of Circumlocution, by leaving the distinct impression that I was deceased, that being the only solution I could come up with to triumph over them.
The trouble was, I had no idea how I was going to accomplish this feat of becoming invisible and thereby enabling myself to make a fresh start with my life, but the truth of the matter was that I simply had to do it.
The problem was my business, the success of it, not due to competition or lack of enterprise, but rather from the efforts of the Office of Circumlocution.
It seems that due to the supreme success of my business it had ended up on the hit list of the NSA and the IRS. All those code words like expansion, profitability, popularity, hiring people and the like had put my company right at the top of their list.
However, the NSA couldn’t appear to know that they knew, and the IRS were stretched to their limit enforcing fines upon folks who had lost their health insurance, and neither of the agencies could convince Congress to increase their funding.
This is how the Office of Circumlocution came into being, by an executive order, to take up the slack of the two out of control agencies who had come under recent reluctant investigation.
Staffing the Office of Circumlocution took its rapid and natural course, with government positions being bestowed upon the nephews and nieces, great-nephews and great-nieces of senators and congressmen.
There were also cousins and their friends, and the cousins and friends of the cousins and friends, the daughters of donors, their fiancees and former staff assistants, all of whom were hired with grand titles, salaries and bonus arrangements, after which they were all indoctrinated with the dual purpose of the Office of Circumlocution—to counteract enterprise by keeping a damper on entrepreneurial spirit, and to imperil important business being done without intervention and regulation.
They came upon me in waves and droves. The Office of Circumlocution sent auditors, accountants, lawyers, clerks, assessors, surveyors, observers and the assistants of all the above.
After months of investigations of the obvious, they came down upon me with the great might and authority of the Office of Circumlocution, with court-ordered policy changes requiring me to double my staff, reduce salaries, and pay millions of dollars in fines for violation of exceeding the acceptable level of profits.
It all began back when I was a kid and decided I would take my old pickup truck and buy a load of watermelons for 50 cents each and see if I could sell them for a dollar each. That was the beginning, the seed that grew into a multimillion dollar enterprise that today sprawled all over metropolitan Atlanta.
I had a registered trademark with our logo as a Horn-of-Plenty with VegX superimposed over it. Anyone who viewed our web site between 8 and 10 a.m. and placed an order, or did it by phone, had their order of fresh vegetables and fruits delivered to their doorstep no later than 5 p.m. or it was free.
We had a fleet of white vans with our logo emblazoned on each side, all of which departed our warehouse adjacent to the Georgia State Farmer’s Market each afternoon laden with butter beans, corn, tomatoes, and peaches, each order iced down in separate containers.
One fine afternoon, after I had witnessed the departure of the VegX fleet of vans, I was down at the market negotiating with a grower from Valdosta, over the price of a load of 500 cantaloupes, when my cell phone rang and my front office informed me that Investigative Agent Tally Vinegate, from the Office of Circumlocution was in my office and was requesting me to be fixing to have an audience with her.