Many people will not believe that I completed the pilgrimage, hobbling and foot sore, to the ancient Basilica of San Dalle, where, after washing my feet in the Holy Well of Saint Verruka, I did prostrate myself before the sacred relics of Igbert the Distracted, which comprise his miraculously preserved left big toe and a fragment of shine bone kept in an old medieval shoe box beneath the altar of the Basilica.
Alas, apparently Igbert the Distracted does not believe it either since he still has not answered my prayer.
I asked Father Bunion about this rather unmistakable snub. I had, after all, traveled some considerable distance and ruined my favorite sweater whilst prostrate on the unswept floor. The priest told me that Igbert probably grew tired of my long-winded petitioning and, as his epithet implies, got distracted, then forgot all about poor me and my problem.
"And if the convoluted first sentence of this very blog post is anything to go by," Father Bunion continued, "I don't blame him at all. What, may I ask, was the nature of your petition? And try to keep it short."
I'm very concerned that nobody reads my blog posts, I explained.
Father Bunion nodded sadly. "Consider the parable of Prolix the Boring Scribe and his endless scroll of papyrus. Every time Prolix finished one discursive screed to his satisfaction he suddenly found himself faced with another blank page and felt the need to write yet another discursive screed. Eventually his collected screeds were published by Omnibus the Tome-Maker and became famous for being the least borrowed book in the Library of Alexandria. The moral of this story is: don't feel the need to fill a blank text window with words just because it's there."
And I suppose I should stop inventing preposterous and irrelevant characters like Igbert the Distracted and Father Bunion? But the fictitious priest did not reply because he was already gone.
