A Farewell to Porridge

Want a Sunday funny? This may work if you've enjoyed/suffered Hemingway often enough in your life.

Originally published by Dan Greenberg, as "Three Bears in Search of an Author," in Esquire, Feb. 1958, pp. 46-47. "A Farewell to Porridge" is Goldilocks and the Three Bears presented in pseudo-Ernest Hemingway's voice. And it is funny.

To get you started:

In the late autumn of that year we lived in a house in the forest that looked across the river to the mountains, but we always thought we lived on the plain because we couldn't see the forest for the trees.

Sometimes people would come to the door and ask if we would like to subscribe to the Saturday Evening Post or buy Fuller brushes, but when we would answer the bell, they would see we were only bears and go away.

Sometimes we would go for long walks along the river and you could almost forget for a little while that you were a bear and not people.

Once when we were out strolling for a very long time, we came home and you could see that someone had broken in and the door was open.

"La port est ouverte," said Mama Bear. "The door should not be open." Mama Bear had French blood on her father's side.

Read the rest of it here.