The beggar and the fat man

Out in the work shed is some composite material consisting of cypress, pine and number of other evergreens. I acquired it in Rome, the eternal city, when I happened upon a beggar and a fat man quarrelling over the remains of a ground-score donut and felt the need to interpose. Surprised by the noise factor these two men were creating over half a donut, I investigated further and saw their fight was also over a well-aged stalk of celery. As I approached, the argument escalated until they appeared as a rabid wolf pack, solemnly devouring a fresh kill. It was obvious to me these men had lived hard lives of manual labor, perhaps down at the dry-dock, and I wanted to help. When I tried to speak with them, the fat man just stared like a mannequin, but the beggar spoke as eloquently as a diplomat. He told me of his life, and how he used to work for an evil man building four-hundred-day clocks out of parchment. It was grueling work but he felt it was his chosen roll in life and vowed to never doff this proverbial hat. His employer would certainly not be found in Heroic verse, an offensive, berating man who paid hardly enough to provide one rasher a day. Through constant vigilance the employees were able to avoid group molestation which the employer had decreed a team building exercise. He recalled that fateful Christmas eve at the five-and-ten when he, out of desperation, attempted to steal for his only offspring the stoop ball he couldn’t afford. Finding it more difficult than he anticipated for a man to hide a ball under his shirt, he was delayed and missed his bus to work causing him to lose his job and subsequently the home in which he, his wife Wanda and son Billy did formally cohabit. He swore the Penates had abandoned him for some inexplicable reason. He was stiff with anger when he spoke of how he and his family had been living ever since in the turret of a dilapidated old fortress by the coast. Then he said how much he missed watching girls gymnastics, with those docile little ladies bouncing here and there. Though I thought that last part was weird, I gave the silly sap-story sucker twenty bucks and he gave me this really nice piece of composite material consisting of cypress and those other evergreens.