Royko- Charlie Won’t Forget No. 47

A story that seems to start out nice and cheerful, takes a turn for the worst. A man named Charlie just wanted to celebrate his birthday at work. A few glasses of champagne wouldn’t hurt anyone, right? Well, for Charlie it hurt him.

After a long night of drinking and almost getting into a fight, Charlie ends up in jail. He constantly says he has money to bail himself out and once he pulls out the money, he gets himself into more trouble. The other drunks that are in weekend court with Charlie started strangling and trying to rob him. He cries out for help and fortunately gets placed into a cell by himself.

It seems that no matter what Charlie does to have a good birthday it always backfires. He tries to enjoy himself for his birthday and he gets labeled a drunk. Anytime he asks for help, he gets threatened and called a drunk again. All because Charlie wanted to have a good birthday.

During his case just got called a drunk and was dismissed. Charlie wanted to avoid the men he encountered in weekend jail, but they find him and get his money out of him. It’s hard for police to protect you in the public when there aren’t many around. Charlie just can’t seem to catch a break on his birthday.

Only one person was willing to help Charlie and even then there wasn’t much to be done to catch the goons who stole his money. Charlie couldn’t outrun them, he could catch them, he couldn’t even find police that weren’t doing something else to help him.

The last line of the column says, “But next year, stick to cake.” Hopefully, this becomes a lesson for Charlie. Nothing good will come from his excessive drinking, but eating cake can’t do much harm for him. At least he won’t be getting called a drunk if he’s only eating cake.