Our correspondent in Hell has sent me another dispatch.
{beginning of email}
As I
mentioned a while back, most of the people in Hell seemed to be in a
continuous, continual, constant, unremitting hurry to do the same pointless
thing over and over. Sort of like their human lives. But I saw one ordinary
man—no this, was no Noah or General McArthur—who was sitting with a dazed look
on his face. A woman sat beside him. I just had to go ask them for their story.
“I was a
computer software designer,” the man said. “But that’s not what got me sent to
hell. I got sent to hell because I was a negligent parent.”
“Me
too,” said the woman who had obviously been his wife.
“Now, that,” I said, drawing myself up into
dudgeonly pride, “is a legitimate thing to be condemned for! Anyone who abuses,
or even neglects, a little child…”
“Whoa,”
said Karl. “You might want to hear their story.”
“Well,
then, please continue, Mr…” I tried to cover my embarrassment.
“I am
Monsieur Royal,” said the engineer. “And Madame Royal. Among the Americans, the
French are famous for being liberals. You know, not too many of us go to
church, and the ones who do are unlikely to be fundamentalists who attack other
people’s beliefs. And this goes for the way we raise our children also. We
considered ourselves to be typical French parents, though of course many French
families are dysfunctional, as in any society. When I was raising my daughter…”
“Just
one child?” asked Karl. “That explains part of it. You were not fruitful, did
not multiply and fill the Earth. You did not have your quiver full of sons and
daughters.”
“According
to the fundamentalists, I am supposed to just say, I love my husband, and then let him insert his organ into me as
many times as he can.”
“I love
my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while,” said Karl.
“Wrong
Marx,” I said. “That’s a Groucho line. But, please continue.”
“Failure
to be prodigiously fecund was not the charge leveled against us when we were
sent here,” said M. Royal. “It was, as I said, negligence. We raised our
daughter with discipline, but it was a spiritual kind of discipline. Not
religious, but spiritual. When she did something wrong, as every child does, we
let her know we were ashamed of what she did—not of her, but of what she
did—and then we would explain to her the reason or reasons why what she did was
wrong. Mostly having to do with love and respect for other people. I don’t
think we had to physically punish her. Is this correct, mon aimée?”
“Oui,” Mme. Royal said.
“Oh,” I
said. “So you did raise her with self-discipline. Very well. What was the
problem?”
“Well,
it says in the Proverbs, chapter 17 verse 24, he who loves his child will not spare the rod.”
“Right,”
I said. “Discipline shows love. I still don’t get it.”
“Do I
have to explain everything to him?” asked M. Royal.
“Yes,”
said Joe.
“We
never used the rod on our daughter,” M. Royal said.
“But,
that phrase is figurative! Oh,” I said, suddenly realizing my error. “So the
fundamentalists will not allow any parents into heaven who have not beat their
children physically with a rod or other blunt instrument?”
“You
only need to do it once,” said Mme. Royal. “That is enough to get you into
heaven on a technicality. Unless there is something else the fundamentalists do
not like about you.”
“Like
being a French liberal,” said the General.
“Well,”
I said, “It’s not so bad down here. Tell me. How did your daughter turn out?”
“Oh,
she’s doing fine. A little wild sometimes, definitely offbeat, as you Americains say. She is currently the
environmental minister of France.”
“Well,”
said Noah, “that does it. She will be down here before too long. Please
remember to invite all of us to the reunion party when she gets here.”
{end of email}
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