King For A Day

It has been an extraordinary time to be alive. For the last 100 years or so something has occurred that has never happened before: a person can be king for a day. What I'm talking about I experienced a couple of weekends ago. I attended a wedding and was treated to being waited on by a staff of attentive and responsive servers bartenders and other employees of the venue. Of course I did not think much about this until I had my fourth beer (an excellent summer-brew: Bell's Oberon). As I walked about the place I appreciated the dark suits and the veritable rainbow of dresses, the elegance that a gas station attendant could achieve given the proper setting and atmosphere. Men who turn wrenches for a living still look the noble emperor when attired in garments of severe angles and dignity. That under the soft glowing lights of the dance floor, all were miraculously transformed. Thoughts of chores that must be finished, time-clocks that must be punched, children who must be cared for, and bills that cry to be paid; all are washed gently from the brain by that dripping light and elegant music.

Granted, the excesses of a great hall in the palace at Versailles can not be compared to a wedding hall within the price range of a nervous and happy blue collar working father. Yet with enough beer and imagination we could all easily be in some remote court, playing the wealthy and noble Lord. Yet these people could never take themselves that seriously, because come Monday they will go back to being Wal-Mart drones, or paper pushers. For them, they know the dangers of flying to high from their inescapable landing place, usually somewhere that they spend most of their lives without wanting to be there.

I then began to wonder what the mindset of a person who feels they belong at the top is? Those who feel that they should not only be king for a day, but a king forever. I could not help but feel that if their powers of imagination and ambition were so monstrously huge, that they must in some way be insane. The flights of imagination, and the twisted webs of rationalizations that must be performed to come to such a conclusion are well beyond my meager means. Perhaps I lack the ability to pierce the boundaries of my imagination that I have learned over many years, you know, the ones that keep you sane, the places in your mind that you just know its a bad place to visit, and to visit too often risks being trapped there for the rest of your life. These kings are in a place many of us would be unwilling to follow.

I have been a participant and also a parent in the grand experiment of getting a group of kids to take their turn with a much coveted toy. It usually works extremely well, the first few kids will take their turn and pass on the toy, confident that justice will prevail, everyone will take their turn and that he will have another in time. Unfortunately there is always a problem, there is always one little asshole who doesn't want to take his turn. For reasons I cannot begin to fathom, he feels that he has a right to trump the good of the others for his own. I have seen kids who would break the toy in a rage rather than take his turn and pass it on.

So who are these men whom we allow to continue in their temper tantrums, these men who live on the tops of New York skyscrapers, these men who own their own jets, who are worth more than some small countries. Why do we allow them to get away with not taking their turns? We had better do something about it soon, else the working classes will not be able to afford to be a king for even a day anymore. I think its about damn time we started making them take their turn at the wheel, and let us have a few more days of being a king.