A Cruella Fate

Back in medieval times (well...2001), when I was working for Cruella de Ville, she received a summons for jury duty.

As expected, she took this about as well as a person who had been told their baby was sold to a Mexican drug cartel to pay for crack so obviously she tried her utmost to wriggle out of it. She had deferred over and over again and this was her final summons.

Being Cruella, however, she was under the impression that a different set of rules applied for beings of a “higher stature” such as herself, so she dutifully had our CFO and her personal butt-boy, The Cobra, call to try and convince them that really, Cruella was not at all necessary for any of their little trials as she was busy doing important things (like visiting a small Korean lady for a pedicure).

Naturally, the courts had heard it all before. In fact, if I was the person who worked for the jury selection department I would personally make it my life’s work to write a book about the most inventive excuses people give for excusing themselves from performing their civic duty. This court was having none of it. It was really sort of beautiful. You can pay thousands to a lady to carry a baby in her womb for you for nine months, you can buy shares in a private jet and spend summers on a yacht in the Mediterranean with a spoiled billionaire to sun your wrinkled old frame, but lady, when Uncle Sam wants YOU, no amount of cajoling or bullying will prevent you from hauling your spoiled carcass downtown, pronto.

This being Cruella, a woman physically incapable of doing anything for herself, she had to take The Cobra along with her for moral support, to explain the big words and to basically have someone to take the whole miserable ordeal out on. If it had been anyone else, I would have felt such overwhelming pity for the person's having to spend such long periods of time in close proximity to her that my heart would ache with the volume of it. However, since it was the Cobra I just prayed she was assigned to a case the approximate length of the OJ trial.

Anyway, a few days after the jury duty episode, Cruella had to go to the DMV to renew her driver’s license which had already expired. I wasn’t aware she even had a license as she has people drive her everywhere. The mere thought of her in control of a moving vehicle is only slightly less scary than the thought of a buzz-cutted Britney Spears, naked, swinging by her knees from a chandelier with a baby in one hand and an Uzi in the other. (on reflection, I realize this sounds like a plausible scene - set in slo-mo - in a Robert Rodriquez/Quentin Tarantino movie).

So, she did what she always does; she took The Cobra with her to the DMV then sat out in the car with her driver, while Cobra went in, stood in line for 20 minutes and finally is told that in the United States, people have to come and renew their license themselves. So Cobra tells the guy that his boss is “a very important person” and can’t possibly come in to a government facility where there are nasty germs, fluorescent lights and people of dubious national origins. The DMV guy, presumably of dubious national origin himself, completely unfazed, replied “I don’t care if she’s the Queen of England, if she wants a license, she better get her ass in here, now!”

So a glowering Cruella had to haul her stupid, pampered, fur-coat clad ego inside and do all the necessaries herself, including having a photo taken that made her look like someone was ramming a Swiffer up her back passage.

Isn’t that a beautiful story? I love it. In moments I’m feeling a little fragile emotionally, I imagine this scenario and immediately I’m full of the joys of life.