The Curious Case of Benjamin Bottom, part 2: Marriage with the father
And here, as it came to pass dear reader,
the case of Mr. Benjamin Bottom who aborted himself from his mother at age 55, gets even stranger when the male line of the family is taken into account.
Once Mr. Bottom's mother had died his father effectively became a widower and available for remarriage. Mr. Bottom—who was up to this time a foetus had never had a name, since he had been bereft of a birth certificate—now was in desperate need of one...
And here an innovative plan was hatched as never before had there been! Mr. Bottom and his father resolved to get married and thereby procure for the former a last name and a first name (which could, by law, be chosen by one of these latter) in one fell swoop.
However, there was a penultimate step standing the way of this! It had yet to be proven for this 55 year old man who went from foetus to adult, that he was a "person," owing to the odd morphology of alimentation and growth that defined his development.
And here personology experts from all over the world were summoned in what portended to become the world's most intellectually stunning trial... Featuring the world's greatest forensic philosophers, psychiatrists, human rights lawyers, psychoanalysts and psychologists, constitution writers, sociologists, cultural anthropologists, paleontologists and psycho-geneticists, to name a few...
After several years
of deliberations in the Hague and Strasbourg (yes! dear reader, it took both courts to decide this case) it all came down to whether Mr. Bottom could grow a beard one time only or ad infinitum (which meant that he had to be observed under controlled conditions in a hospital setting...)
However, the committee of personologists (that included the world's greatest forensic philosophers, psychiatrists, human rights lawyers, etc...) that supervised the experiment got into a row over whether the initial conditions of the experiment began with a clean (shaven) face or a beard (because Mr. Bottom had yet to be observed shaving).
While they deliberated Mr. Bottom Senior eloped with a young stunning brunette sporting a caramel complexion and emerald eyes—named Carmella either to an island of Tahiti and/or the Seychelles.
This being the case,
it now became an entirely moot point whether Mr. Bottom was a person or not, if the marriage (with the father) were to be called off…
This fact though was lost on the committee of personologists who after many years of deliberation had forgotten what the original purpose of the experiment had been, especially since the courts had moved on to more serious cases of genocide, illegal migration, human trafficking (including only body parts), sexual slavery of minors by paedophiliac fathers and charges against the newly founded anti-science of agnotology—putting on trial a Stanford professor named Proctor who had become all the rage...
Hence, some say that Mr. Bottom Junior languished forgotten in the hospital for years and died shortly after his release and that it was his father Mr. Bottom Senior who had traveled around the world while keeping a journal under the name of Agathon, Angus & Allison...
Others however maintain the contrarian position that it was Benjamin (the younger one) who met and eloped with a nurse from the hospital who jettisoned themselves away (while the father died standing at the aisle waiting for his son to grow a beard )...
[ The truth remains to be seen in part 3... ]
- Once 'Father' and 'Son,' Now a Married Couple
Norman MacArthur, left, and Bill Novak were married on Sunday after spending more than a decade as father and son.
