He’s drinking his morning cup of coffee, before he goes to work.
He’s reacting to something he sees in the morning paper. His blurred face, double imaged, might be expressing anything from laughter to a scream of rage. Considering normal news stories, either reaction might be appropriate.
If he’s in America, it could be a story about a little girl who came home after school one day with a tiger- whom, she said, had followed her home “to be my friend”. The tiger had escaped from the local zoo, and was returned there without incident.
Or a story about three young men at a party who, after drinking and taking drugs for several hours, jumped together to their deaths from a open window above the street, after assuring their girlfriends that they could fly. The girls seem to have made no attempt to stop them.
Or the story about a little girl pushed from the car by her mother and abandoned in the middle of a high speed expressway at rush hour because she “wouldn’t be quiet”.
If he’s having breakfast here the Philippines, it could be a story about “Elbow Reading”, the latest “wisdom”, learned in Sri Lanka- by Peachpie Kayugan.
“Really” said Peachpie, “You can tell a lot about a person’s future from their elbows”.
Peachpie’s elbow readings are in great demand among the elite.
Or a story about angry voters in a local election who filed a case against a winning candidate: “He distributed 500 peso bills in sacks of rice to us, to secure our votes”, they charged, “but we later discovered that the rice was even below NFA quality, and the 500 peso bills were also counterfeit!”
Or a story about a man who was shot to death while praying before a statue of the Virgin in the town park. The man had previously been accused of stealing several chickens from his neighbors. “He was lucky that he died while in prayer,” a local priest told reporters, “It was a sign that God wanted him to go directly to paradise”.
These incidents may or may not be true. Journalists sometimes invent stories like this as “filler” to cover blank spaces on the page. But they are, at least, within the realm of possibility. Things like this actually do happen. If you want a peaceful cup of coffee in the morning, just don’t read the paper.
