A special BOOM story: The good man from television

I do not know if something like this has happened to anyone else, but I was desperate. I was neglected, unnoticed, a poor devil who could not call anyone's attention no matter what he did. I was condemned to a life of loneliness, a life without friends, without love and, which is the worst, without hope that anything would change. The darkness of my everyday living would occasionally be illuminated by charming smiles of the charming host of the TV news program. I knew, of course, that those smiles were not intended for me exclusively, but for all citizens, provided they behaved appropriately. If we did not behave, or if some irresponsible and malicious individual misbehaved, all of us were reprimanded. The only thing which brought some pleasure to me would disappear then, and the complete darkness would ensue. And all that was caused by a handful of boisterous fools who decided to complicate the lives of ordinary, quiet and sad people.

I knew that something was wrong again when Mr. Komrakov opened the prime time news program on TV. Whenever he opened the news program, it was a sign that things went wrong and that a period of darkness was before me.

However, one of the following days, while I was walking down the street absorbed in my own dark thoughts, a TV-crew stopped me and asked me what I thought about THAT. I was overjoyed because I was finally given the opportunity to say openly what was bothering me and to call those evildoers by their real name. The reporter was delighted with what I said. She asked me if I could answer the same question the next day. I did not understand why, but I wanted to be helpful, so I answered that I could. Since that day, I have been answering the same question on television time and time again. Only, they disguise me every time, so that the viewers should not recognize me. Sometimes they glue a moustache or a beard or a false nose onto my face, or they dye my hair. They even disguised me as a woman once or twice. When I saw myself on TV in the evening, I could hardly recognize myself. When I answer the question, I always smile, hoping that people like me will suffer less for it. This makes my living happier in these hard times. The awareness that I am helping people in trouble makes me feel like an ordinary person perhaps for the first time in my life. I would like things to remain this way.

Teddy Bear

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