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Lou Weiss: Put me in, Queen, I'm ready to play

Lou Weiss
| Saturday, February 8, 2020 7:00 p.m.
AP
With Harry and Meghan moving on, the royals surely have a job opening.

Dear Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth,

My mother has long threatened to disinherit me if I continue to vote Republican. You also have recent experience with noncompliant family members.

I think that for a lad in my difficult circumstances, I see a way to satisfy both my mother and you.

Now that Prince Harry has started to take bookings to appear at weddings and bar mitzvahs, I — no, make that an aspiring “Royal We” — would like to throw our hat in the ring to have it replaced with a crown.

We have been bred from our youth to assume this job. The signs were all around us.

Here is our case for a place in the Royal Flow Chart:

Title: We were always referred to — lovingly by our parents and sarcastically by our sisters — as “the Prince.” True, they did do all of the dishes, but once a year we performed the removement of the Royal air conditioners.

Lineage: Our roots go back to King David, albeit with the odd boxer and bootlegger thrown into the mix for roguish character.

Name: We were given the name Louis, which our kickball intimates pronounced Louie — the name of kings in Europe and mobsters in the U.S.

Scent: While all of our less than royal peers in eighth grade were using Old Spice, we classed it up with English Leather.

Language: Growing up in Western Pennsylvania, we spoke Pittsburghese, which some have said is similar to English.

Feuding Relatives: While Britain may have the War of the Roses, our family had “The War of the Chopped Liver,” where my grandmother Bertha and her sister Hattie lived at opposite ends of the eighth floor of their senior independent living home for decades without speaking due to a dispute as to who made the better canape.

Furnishings: The Monarch may be coronated on the Throne of Scone, but growing up we had furniture so valuable that it had to be protected by clear plastic zip-on covers.

Education: While we may have reverted to the Cliffs Notes versions in high school, we took a Shakespeare class in college and we are pretty sure that we can tell the difference between Richard the III and Henry the V. One of them had a hump back.

Libations: While we have never tasted whiskey, our father would, after a day of work or a Sunday with his children, prepare himself a drink of Crown Royal. We assumed that the purple sack had the express approval of the monarchy.

Equestrian: We spent a summer teaching horseback riding (English, of course) at Emma Kaufmann Camp in West Virginia. We were short on proper tack so the kids wore backwards plastic Cincinnati Reds batting helmets for head protection.

Entertainment: While my native countrymen were engrossed with “Breaking Bad,” we were enamored of “Downton Abbey,” albeit with subtitles.

Food: We have had scones but found them a bit tasteless. Our wife makes a mandel bread, sort of a Jewish biscotti, from the recipe box of Flo Sonnenklar, a lovely neighbor of our mother’s. It will just knock your royal socks off. Coated with cinnamon sugar, it is “to die for” without using a guillotine.

Every other day, our mother loves to quote the line from King Lear, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is to have a thankless child.”

Your Majesty: Let’s show our mother and all of our therapists that a thankful child should get his just royal rewards. As an added inducement, along with us comes the Sonnenklar mandel bread recipe.

Lou Weiss, a carpet salesman, lives in Squirrel Hill.


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