Story of My Life

            I was a bit of a paranoid little kid. I was always fretting about the kidnappings I had heard about on TV. I worried constantly about being kidnapped and what would happen if I was. I’d cry and cry to my mother asking, what if I was kidnapped? She replied, “They’d give you back,” and stopped letting me watch the news.

            “They’d give you back.” Honestly, a statement like that only adds more questions to the fire. I mean, why didn’t they just give back all the other kids, too? I just couldn’t understand.

            Then came the day that I learned I talked a lot. Not just a higher than average amount, but a ton. That’s roughly two-thousand pounds of words that I would talk per conversation, per story, per moment. I understood. The kidnappers would never be able to shut me up. No gags, tape, or threats could quiet me! I had discovered my best defense! The gift of gab!

            Apparently O. Henry can relate. Or at least he can imagine stories that make me feel like he can relate. It doesn’t really matter which – I still enjoyed the story. O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” was hilariously relatable. There really weren’t any quips or small tastes of humor throughout, just the one superb punch line. It wasn’t his verbal gymnastics that wowed and amazed me (because there weren’t much – just story-telling, plain and dry). It wasn’t the details into the kidnappers’ personal lives that fully explained why they did what they did (because there weren’t much – except the knowledge that they had some money and needed more). It wasn’t the clever dialogue that kept me thinking, “Why can’t comebacks like that be thought of in real life?” (because there weren’t really any – no witty repartees or vocal sparring back and forth). It was his patience in waiting until the end when the reader was primed and ready for the kidnappers to receive the $2000 from a frantic parent whose only care is the safety of his child. But alas, what actually occurred did not line up with any of our expectations. The dad says, “You can pay me to take him back,” and it actually works because the kid drove them so crazy.

            O. Henry, or as I like to think of him: O, Henry. Yes, O, Henry, you have fooled us again. Taken our expectations and thrown them to the wind. Taken the textbook examples of humor we read about in days gone recently by and introduced them in actual writing. Taken our compassion for this poor kidnapped child and family, and created a cognitive shift to a new understanding. O, Henry, how did you do it? Simply, patiently, and perfectly.

Thank you, Henry. Or may I call you “O”?