“Life is Filled with Disappointment”

I own stock in Watertown Industries. They are a company that makes life preservers. They’ve been around since 1875. Watertown is famous for saving the life of Teddy Roosevelt during the Spanish American War. Roosevelt manned a tugboat from Miami to Cuba thinking that the Spanish soldiers would think it was just a tugboat. But the thing is, Roosevelt was a meglomaniac and stood at the front of the tugboat with lights on him, while a small orchestra played the 1812 Overture. The tugboat was fired on by the Spanish and it sunk in the Bay of Pigs. The tugboat happened to be equipped with Watertown life preservers.

The thing is, yesterday I found out on the Huffington Post that Watertown Industries paid off government officials back in the 1932 to prevent the passage of the Chesterton Sink or Swim bill that would have subsidized the teaching of all Americans how to swim. Secret memos showed that Watertown Industries felt that it would have put them out of business. The thing is, I’m a crappy swimmer. I do some kind of self-taught tread-water crawl stroke that makes kids at the pool point at me and laugh. I blame Watertown Industries.

So I told my broker to sell all my shares of Watertown Industries stock. The thing is, I own ten shares, and the price had plummeted to ten cents a share. So after paying a commission, I ended up with a check for ninety cents. Now I’m angry about two things.