Harold, the Poopflinger’s Great Book

Harold, the Poopflinger’s Great Book

By Reimer (nee Portapotty) Doug

Harold, the Poopflinger (king of his country) was an educated man, never doubt that for a minute. His prodigious output of fictional writings attests to his learning. No necessity suggests the need to subject his remaining documents to the scrutiny of computerized studies in order to ascertain with certainty the intense philosophicality of the man. It may well have been his name itself—an exception, a uniqueness, in the nation that bore him—that drove him to push himself so relentlessly at subtle leanings and the wisdom of books. The national treasury lay at his disposal and he decided at an early age to spend as much of it as he desired on the patriation of bound texts from various and sometimes far-flung corners of the world. 

       That is how he accumulated most of the extant texts of the Alexandrian library (they happily had been largely preserved, despite the persistent historical accounts of the great burning) and read a good portion of them in his spare time. His venerable tutor, Putkins, without whose careful direction he could not have read the amount or kind he did, encouraged him, while he was still only twelve, to punctuate his daily habits with consuming literature (while sitting in the outhouse, fiddling with himself in secret and not so secret, whining for his string of nurses to pleasure him one more time before lunch, flying his paper airplanes, sneaking smokes from his father’s cigar supply), to carry books with him everywhere and to read as many as he could. He soon averaged thirty-five books a day, one for each activity in which he engaged. He based the duration of any personal endeavor on the time required to start and finish a book. So, while, for instance, undressing Mamitha Sqirl (pronounced with a long “i” as in “stye” and “smile”), the cook’s helper, and diddling her as she lay on the kitchen cutting block whisking cream, he read Plotinus’s The Vindication of Woman and of Man. This occupied about fifteen minutes. He had been taught speed-reading by the sagacious Putkins.

So, as it was, the Alexandrian library resided on his estate until its palace, too, unfortunately burned to the ground and then not a book remained. (Harold should have known better than to entertain himself with too many lighted candles all gathered in close quarters around Hermione Crescenta’s--the chimney sweep’s--voluminous crinolines--secretly borrowed by the said gay blade from his mother’s dressing room and, after a bath of her, encouraged onto the girlish figure of this his newest conquest.) By that time Poopflinger had ingested six thousand and fifty-seven volumes and grown sick of reading. Since he knew virtually all written knowledge then available to be known in the world, he gave up the habit and decided to spend more quality time in dalliance. Fifteen-minute rendezvouses became twenty-five. Hasty and playful nippings turned into extended forays into the secrets of the removal of clothing.

Harold enjoyed himself thoroughly until he died suddenly while libationing with a close friend, a renowned clergyman by name of Roger the Snivel (nicknamed Smackbottom by his parishioners). The reverend had not even time to pronounce official prayers for Poopflinger’s salvation before His Eminence expired and that was the end of him. I was going to say, when I was so rudely interrupted by the story of this gallant’s high learning, that he wrote many a fine book himself, books which many read then and would be reading now but, alas, mostly burnt in the conflagration. Only a few have survived. I do have in my possession a copy of one that I intend to translate into Spanish. It resembles the account of Don Quixote by the famed Cervantes, only written in a more solemn style, and with less levity. A strong, reverent delivery it assumes, with here and there the elicitation of a chuckle.