It had been another hard day for Ontario premier Doug Ford and he drove his truck to his late mother’s house. The doctor had told him to self-isolate because one of his worker bees had come down with covid. Feeling sorry for himself, he got into an old pair of jammies and burrowed down in his mother’s old bed.
But he was awakened at the first dong of midnight from the grandfather clock. Was that chains he heard rattling outside the door? And, to his amazement, his late brother Rob walked through the door. Good ole Rob did not even have to open the door. He just rattled his chains, floated to the foot of the bed and stared down on his older brother.
“Listen up jerk,” he said fondly. “I’m here to tell you that you are going to be visited by a trio of spirits tonight. The first will be the ghost of the Spanish Flu that wiped out a lot of Ontario taxpayers a hundred years ago. Obviously, nobody ever learned anything from that.”
“Hey, we got vaccines now,” Dougie responded.
“Yah, but they’re too late, dummkopf,” replied the ghost. “Your vaccines are too late to help you.
“The next ghost will be of pandemics present,” brother Rob went on.
“That ghost is going to show you just how bad this pandemic is for the unemployed, the poor, and the people who have to work to survive.”
“But its their own fault,” Dougie responded, “We conservatives only help the guy who is helping himself to the profits to be made. Look at all the money we are making for millionaires today.”
Ghost Rob just glared at his brother. “Look stupid, you kept saying you were there for the people. The only thing you have convinced them of is that you don’t give a damn for them.
“Anyway, it hardly matters. The third ghost is the removals guy who will take your body to a freezer where you will wait for a lonely burial, when there is time,” he told him.
“But I’m alive,” shouted Dougie. And woke himself up.
That was when he called his office and arranged for the news conference to apologize and shed a tear for the people his clumsy orders were hurting.
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With apologies to Charles Dickens.
Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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