Bringing Home the Drunken Fife

A fairy story ( or to be more exact an elf story) with a moral.

Once upon a time not very long ago there was a wonderful, happy, old couple. They had wonderful children and grandchildren who lived far away from them. So they sold the old family home and bought a new house in the big city ,near the children. It came with a  huge mortgage but they were not afraid because he had done the math and with social security and his pension they could make the payments and have enough to live happily on. ( I told you it was a fairy tale)

So for a short time they were as happy as an old couple with arthritis and a huge variety of aliments could be. The grandkids visited often and the daughter even let them take care of her dog while she worked. Life was very good.

Then one day as they were coming out of  Wal Mart they found a short little guy in a green suit with funny shoes ( they curled on the end ) leaning against their car. He was as drunk as he could be and he kept saying over and over, “ My name is Larkin Fife and I can’t find my wife”. Our old couple thought this was very strange  but felt sorry for him so they took him home to sober him up.

It was when he was sober they discovered that he wasn’t a short little guy but an elf ( everybody knows elves shouldn’t drink). He was so thankful for their kindness that he gave them one wish for any one thing they would want. They thought and thought and finally decided on one of those big flat screen television sets mounted over their fireplace. Their old TV was big but had a small screen and was a bit of an eye sore. Our elf spun around three times and clicked his shoes together ( that is how elves do magic) and there on the wall over the fireplace was a beautiful 42 inch flat screen television. The old man and the old woman were so happy that she cried. At that point our elf vanished in a puff of smoke ( if your going to vanish a bit of theatrics doesn’t hurt the effect).

Soon, however, they discovered that their thirteen over the air channels they could get ( some of which were fuzzy) were no longer satisfactory. So they got cable with 240 regular channels ,three movie channels, and the NFL sports channel. It only cost $ 100 a month but surely it was worth it.

Soon after that our happy couple noticed that the TV didn’t look right be