A Town Crier’s Lament: Why I’m Quitting My Dream Job
HEAR YE! HEAR YE! My town-crying career is going nowhere and I’m leaving the industry.
I ran into Bertram the other day and found out that he’s town-crying in Canterbury now. Canterbury! From the Tales! Bertram started town-crying at the same time as me, and I’m still here in Skunthorpe. Sure, I know that before you get your big break, you have to put up with shit for a while. Literally—because the audience will throw shit at you if they don’t like you. Oh, that reminds me—
Also, we’ve run out of room in the witch-drowning well—it’s more drowned-witch than well at this point. So if you know of another well, please let the chief witch-hunter know.
In unrelated news, please be advised that we no longer have any drinking water.
Wow, no one is even listening. What am I doing out here with my stupid scroll? They’d listen to Bertram. Bertram’s my age and yet he has so many followers—people in Canterbury, who literally follow him around. Thinking about Bertram’s undeserved success makes me want to throw up. Or maybe that’s the fermented-witch drinking water.
HEAR YE! A new game has come from the East called “chess.” So you can now play that instead of Skunthorpe’s traditional sport of throwing hammers at one another.
Should I just move to L.A.? By which I mean Lake Ass, the lake that gives everyone tuberculosis. But I’ve heard that getting around takes forever if you can’t drive a cart. Because you have to keep stepping over the bodies of all the people who’ve died from tuberculosis.
I’ve been town-crying for a decade and I’m piss poor at it. By which I mean the only thing I technically own is one chamber pot. And that keeps attracting the feral dogs.
I should quit and become a cobbler, like my dad always wanted. Every time I would talk about my dreams, he would cough up blood. Though that was anytime I would talk about anything. He used to live in Lake Ass.
At least I’m trying to do something different with the form. I’m an observational town crier. I’m not a hack. Oh, “Hear ye! Hear ye! Take my wife, please—she’s for sale.” We’ve all heard that. It’s all crying about courtship, thinking about intimate relations, and then prostrating yourself before God for thine sins.
I guess I could try to work with the crowd. HEAR YE! HEAR YE! Is anyone here from out of town? No? No one here has ever been anywhere else? O.K., then.
I just thought town crying was my calling. When I was younger, everyone used to say, “Percival, you’re so loud,” and I just knew.
I’ve been thinking about writing an epic ballad about a town crier struggling to make it in the big city. You know what they say—yell about what you know. I need to stop waiting for opportunities and create my own, like that woman who goes from town to town showing off her burlap sack full of live fleas. Maybe one day I could have my own “Flea Bag” and garner as many accolades as she does. That’d be a nice change of pace from the reason I’m currently covered in fleas—I’m also covered in human shit, and there isn’t any non-witch-tainted water to wash it off with. Maybe then I’ll finally stand out from all the other people yelling in the street, delirious from fever. One can dream . . .
Until then—HEAR YE! HEAR YE! If you have leprosy and your arm or leg falls off, don’t just leave it in the street. That is probably what keeps attracting the feral dogs. ♦
