Old Balthasar

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 14, Verse 35

"A king rejoices in servants who know what they are doing;

he is angry with those who cause trouble."

CHIPPED WISDOM:

My wife and I stopped watching "Downton Abbey" after the conclusion of Season 3.  Not because they killed off Matthew Crawley-- we didn't give a shit about that.  We stopped watching it for the same reason we stopped watching "E.R." all those years ago: because helicopters kept falling on that one-armed bastard.  We stopped watching "Law & Order" because, really, how many times can you watch Olivia get raped or Stabler get shot in the shoulder.  In a courtroom.  It's like, I don't know-- there comes a point where it just gets to be too much.  And we had reached that point with "Downton," where Maggie Smith's cutting quips became as predictable and formulaic as the fare on a hospital dinner tray, where characters and situations repeated themselves until they became absurd and, frankly, unwatchable.  Like Muppets getting raped. 

Nobody wants to watch that.

What did stick with me, though, about "Downton Abbey" was a feeling that I very much did and do want a butler.  He'd be leathery-- far more leathery than Carson-- and he'd be impossibly ancient.  He'd be stooped over and bent up like a pretzel, his gnarled and gnurled fingers crippled and his stroke-stricken jaw would be slack.  My butler would drool ever so slightly-- never enough to cause anybody alarm, but just enough that I would give him a barely perceptible look and lift my left eyebrow just a jot and that would be his cue to reach into the threadbare pocket of his black-and-gray wool striped trousers, pull out his yellowed handkerchief and dab his lower lip.  Or shuffle aimlessly over to the living room window curtain and rub his face up against it.

His name would be "Old Balthasar."  Well, what his name is actually isn't important-- but that's what we'd call him.  When you have a butler, you get to name them.  They're rather like guinea pigs in that respect.  And you can make them sleep on the floor covered in pine shavings.  As long as you pay them I'm pretty sure that's legal.  

Old Balthasar would be forgetful and occasionally incontinent-- only of urine-- and he would drop things of moderate value.  His eyebrows would resemble two snow-kissed forests and he would have a war wound, a slight head injury that would cause him to sporadically slip into some mysterious Asian language and fall down the stairs.  At ritzy dinner parties, Old Balthasar would sometimes sit down at the table, preferably on the lap of one of the guests, and butter his lips with a gravy spoon.  He would eat only roots, persimmons, and Lucky Charms.  He would sleep in Dr. Dentons and never button the butt-flap.  Old Balthasar would polish the limousine with a diaper and corn syrup.  He was sure he owned a dog-- it was... somewhere.  His sweater drawer.  Never mind, sir.....

From my description of Old B, I guess you can pretty readily figure out that I don't want a butler for the reasons people traditionally want butlers; you know, to help.  I want Old Balthasar around because nobody else does.  Because people look clear past all the good and value contained therein, and because butlering is meaningful work that has gone from this corner of the world.  Did you know that Asia is the continent with the fastest growing demand for butlers?  And Buicks?  This should surprise no one.  

My mother-in-law saves people-- cast off wretches and borderlines, kids who cut themselves and cut school, kids who've given birth and have been molested and are on drugs.  Kids who are deaf and foreign and homosexual-- the undesirables of the world.  And the reasons for which she performs this Mother Theresa-like service are slightly less-than-saintly, and, yes, I begrudge her for it.  But I suppose there's a little bit of savior syndrome in me, too.  I can't bare to see a quality gentleman like Old Balthasar be put out to pasture just because he sometimes wears his dentures as a hat and makes crepes out of hard taco shells.  Because, in his day, he was sharp as a tack and no helicopter or courtroom shooter could take him out.  So, if he wants to spend his autumn years wiping my ass and pre-chewing my food for me: I'm all over it.  

Balthasar?  Let's roll.