The Fall of Thrombolia

When they team up, imagination and reality can produce some powerful effects.  They overthrew the Thrombolian throne, for instance, and less than seven years after its creation.

It came into existence the day I not only injured my children by refusing to serve dessert before dinner, but insulted them as well: I vetoed their demand to watch the midnight movie.  This unreasonableness on my part led to a severe case of the sulks.  Randy, my older boy, age ten, was particularly bitter.  "You can't be our real mommy," he pouted.  "The way you treat us we must be adopted!"

I decided to fight lunacy with lunacy.  "Certainly you're adopted," I agreed.  "Your true mother is Queen of Thrombolia."

My response worked beautifully, demonstrating once again the adroitness with which I get from the frying pan to the fire.  No longer was I addressing two petulant boys; I was now facing two Grand Inquisitors.  Under the incessant torture of their questions‑-the six-year-old, Bob, was particularly skilled in this form of barbarity‑-I broke down and revealed the whole story.

Thrombolia was under attack by the wicked Throglomites, who wanted its vast cucumber fields for their own sinister purposes.  The Queen of Thrombolia, unwilling to see her lush, green countryside pickled, had sworn that not a gherkin would they get.  Thus began the Great Pickle War, and to insure the safety of her two princes, she'd bundled Rand and Bob into my care.  When she had made the world a safer place for cucumbers, she would return for the boys.  Till then they were under her royal orders to obey me implicitly, a point I stressed several times as I related the tale.

My full confession having been made, I served dinner and dismissed Thrombolia from my mind.  Not so my sons.  For weeks afterwards my granting of any wish could elicit princely promises: "When Thrombolia wins, we're going to take you back with us."  My less acceptable actions might produce a muttered, "I hope Thrombolia wins soon," or an even more menacing sotto voce: "Mumble, mumble, Thrombolia, mumble, mumble, execution!"

The years diminished the frequency of these references to their Embattled Homeland, but never really ended them.  From time to time, and for no reason I could fathom, one or the other would poke his head into the kitchen and inquire absent mindedly, "How go things in Thrombolia?"  He'd receive the latest war bulletin in response.

These communiqués were being issued no more often than twice a year when the boys' grandmother took Randy to Hungary for the summer.  From that then Communist country, on postcards suitable for framing, came messages truly breathtaking in their brevity.  For example, a magnificent view of the Danube carried no more than the cryptic query, "Did I leave my left sneaker home?"  

Such entries in the weekly Describe Europe in Twenty-five Words or Less Contest left me, too, with little to say: "Dear Rand, There are not one but two left sneakers under your bed.  Write soon."  My other dispatches were equally mundane until there arrived a charming shot of a castle and moat.  On it Rand had demanded, "Which way to Thrombolia?  I must fight for the motherland!" 

Inspired now past the prosaic, I responded "Thrombolia lies on the northwest side of a mountain pass, and can be reached only by yak train.  However, reliable sources inform me the deaths in the cucumber fields are extensive, and the Queen urges that you avoid‑-repeat, avoid‑-exposure.  Long live the Gherkin crown!"

Curiously enough, it was my letter containing this mysterious (to everyone else) message that arrived in Europe with its seal broken.  Rightly or wrongly Rand came to the conclusion some government bureaucrat had assumed we were espionage agents.  He rose to the challenge.  Back came an aerial shot of Budapest with the statement, "Code Gherkin broken; urgent you switch to Code Cucumber.  Thrombolia over all!"  Under his signature, however, was his grandmother's postscript, short but certain.  "Your last letter arrived open.  Write sensibly."

Six thousand miles away, I was in poor position to dispute an injunction from behind the Iron Curtain.  With no small regrets I moved to topple the government.  "Dear Rand," I wrote, "Your mother has lost the long fight and the Cucumber throne reigns no more.  But knowing her rich, green blood still flows in your veins, I can accept her briny fate.  Come back soon."

Three days before I was to meet him at the airport, Rand's final postcard was delivered.  It showed an architectural detail from a cathedral; a grinning gargoyle was very much in evidence.  On the back of this card was scribbled: "Looking forward to seeing you.  You've been just like a mother to me. (Signed) The Pretender to the Throne.  P.S.  That wasn't my sneaker you sent‑-that was Bob's."