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Is this Cheating at Morals Tutoring? You decide!

It is 9 am, time for Audrey's court mandated daily hour of Morals Tutoring by a Qualified Morals Tutoring Professional, but the silence in her room is palpable.

She may have hurt Tutor's feelings. She is sitting in her blue denim jacket, and pink corduroys, with her back to him, quite content to work on her Thelma and Louise coloring book. She has told him terrible things, without even looking back over her shoulder at him, as he lies on her bed, sorting his Values Cards, bearing the Christian Martyrs, to decide on his Personal Values. St Sebastian today seems right, shot full of arrows. Audrey told him that he is not her Most Trusted Advisor; not even her Morals Tutor; he is just her babysitter, and she does not even need one. She knows it hurts him, and that is why she says it so calmly, like our future Queen, setting her Queendom to rights. The Servants must know their place, even Tutor. Brooding, face downcast, Tutor rises and dejectedly shuffles toward the door. Audrey does not see him, as her back is turned, but she senses him escaping. "Where are you going?," Audrey asks reproachfully. 

What fun would it be to be alone? Really alone? Much better to sit with back turned, imperious and self-sufficient, as the Tutor witnesses separateness and confirms it. How sweet to make a grownup whimper. No sense letting one escape.

Tutor knew that all along, because he suffers from the same problem of reality-mediated-by-the-other. Without Audrey, or some other child to have fun with, he would not be a Silly Grownup, anymore, he would be an ancient man growing more ancient every day. He only got to be thousands of years old because, luckily, there has always been another prince or princess or inheritor to coach.

So, Tutor returns to the bed. He knows it may be cheating, at least it is in a gray area, but he will write up today as 'Worked with Audrey for 60 minutes on Lessons from the Christian Martyrs." He did work with her, in a sense. She worked, he worked. They worked together? About as well as any client ever does with a morals tutor, I think.

Today, though, Tutor gets the last word. "OK, so I am not your babysitter. Some day I am going to be your P.O."

"What is a P.O.?", asks Audrey rising to the bait.

"Parole Officer!," shouts Tutors, exuberantly, his fists dancing over his own head, as Audrey does when excited. 

Our once and future Queen, serenely crayons on.  Her face says, "What a Stupid Grown Up." But she does not deign to make a sound.

The World Turned Upside Down within the Very Castle Itself

Momma, also known as Big Big Momma, though she is as slender and lithe as an Olympic fencer, but big in the eyes of the traders she daily defeats on course to own and rule the world before she hits 35, and big in the eyes of Audrey, who is still waist high, and big as a mother is big forever in the heart of the one she raises, is hovering outside Audrey's door. "It is rather quiet in there," she says to herself. "Too quiet; what are those two up to now?" Those two meaning Audrey and her Tutor.

When Momma opens the door, she sees two half creatures, two bodies cut off at the waist, butt-side up, and the two of them with their heads between their legs, faces red, hands clasping their own ankles, galumphing about the room.

"What in the name of Heaven are you two doing?," asks Momma. "You are supposed to be doing your lessons," she adds. "I am," chirps Audrey; "Tutor is preparing the Heir, Momma. He is teaching me how to turn the world upside down so it is right side up again!" You as faithful reader must know that Tutor, following both Stoic and Christian Doctrine, teaches that the last shall be first, and the meek shall inherit, some sweet day, when the world is righted at last. "Momma, you are upside down! You are walking on the ceiling. Be careful, Momma, you might fall down!" "Well," says Momma, playing along, "You had better save me. Turn me right side up, please." Audrey and Tutor turn to face each other, heads inverted, like a crack drill team from another planet. "Ready!," shouts Audrey. "Steady!," replies Tutor. "Go!," exclaims Audrey. And both stand so fast the blood drains to their feet, and they stagger about like drunks, until Audrey clutches her mother's legs, and Tutor falls rump first, to the floor. "I saved you, Momma," murmurs Audrey, "You are right side up now!"

I mentioned this strange episode to my colleague in Wealth Bondage, Dr. Amrit Chadwallah, BA in Forensic Hermeneutics, University of Calcutta, and PhD, English Language and Literature, Yale, now Senior Adjunct in Charge of Hidden Meaning in Wealth Bondage, and he assured me that, though the incident may be real, it is also a fable, or parable, for God writes the Book of Nature in Types, for our instruction. So, I took the bait, and asked what the parable means. He said, "The World Turned Upside Down is a trope going back to Diogenes, he of the famous barrel, who once counseled Alexander the Great, to give it a rest, and not bother conquering the world, since happiness could be found by sitting down in the sun by Diogenes and his dog by the barrel or dumpster in which the sage lived. Later, towards the end of his days, Diogenes asked to be buried face down, so that when the world turned right side up, he would be facing in the right direction. That trope," Chadwallah continued for my edification and yours too, if your hunger for hidden meanings has kept you reading thus far, "was taken up in the Enlightenment, as a subject of poems and masquerade balls, all leading up to the American and French Revolutions. Speaking now," said Chadwallah, "as the Shop Steward for the Wealth Bondage Chapter of SIEU in our fight for $15 dollars an hour, I take this parable as a sign that Revolution will come, not from the shop floor only, from the least among us, but from inside the very Castle of Wealth Bondage itself, through the good auspices of The Happy Tutor, Dungeon Master to the Stars, who has come again, to save us all from ourselves, and to mentor our once and future Good Queen Audrey, who I take to be a Type of Astraea, Goddess of Justice, who will own, rule, and save us all....." For this kind of tripe, Dr. Chadwallah expects $15 an hour? But he is a good friend, and we all need a dream or delusion if we are to get through another day in Wealth Bondage, The Way It Is. Most of us just pretend we are free, insofar as we consume, or that we can get free if we do as told, think as told, and don't make trouble  for our clients, donors, immediate superiors, or the higher ups, to whose status we aspire, as if that would do us any good. At least Chadwallah has a plan: let Tutor fix it for us. We certainly can't do anything about it for ourselves.