Scheherazade at Breakfast

"Why was she a brat?"
"Oh, she was awful. Eat that bacon in your hand, I'll tell you."

"Well?"

"Her name was... Veronica something..."

"Veruca Salt."

"VERUCA. Yes. Horrid girl. Spoiled spoiled spoiled. She wanted to have everything she saw. And she walked in a room and saw these squirrels. Trained squirrels..."

"What could they do?"

"Another bite of egg, please."

[cut cut chew]

"So, these squirrels were trained to... to... uh, tell whether the golden eggs that Willy Wonka had were good eggs or bad eggs —is that right? The good eggs were pure 24-carat gold—"

"What's 24 carrots?"

"Eat some more."

[slurp chew chew]

"Use your knife."

"A carat is a way of measuring how perfect a, uh, gem is, or precious metal... uh..."

"24-carat means it's all gold, and if it's less than 24-carats, then it has other metals mixed in."

"YES. Exactly. So these squirrels knew exactly which eggs were 24-carat gold, and they would save them, and throw the other eggs, the bad eggs, down the garbage chute.

"The bad gold eggs?"

"Yeah... uh... so—another bite— anyway, Veruca saw these squirrels and she had to have one, and said, 'Daddy, Daddy, I want a squirrel and I want it now!' And her daddy said, 'All right, Wonka, how much for a squirrel?" And Willy Wonka said, 'These squirrels are not for sale, they're my special squirrels,' and Veruca starts screaming yelling and having a tantrum and she runs at the squirrels and tries to—"

[miming remote control] "Pause. Eat. And drink some OJ."

(chew chew sip)

"Play."

"Veruca tries to catch the squirrels, but they all come up to her and start surrounding her and sniffing her and they decide to throw her— hey, you're almost done with your eggs, just that one bite—and they throw her down the garbage chute, because, you see, she's a bad egg.

"So she's covered with garbage?—done!"

"Good job! Yes, she's in the garbage, and then the Oompa-Loompas appear, and they sing: What do you do when your girl is a BRAT? She is as sly as a Siamese CAT! Something something something to SHAME! But you know who's to blame? The-mo-tha-and-the-fa-a-tha..."*

[Daddies put their hands by their faces and do the side-to-side Oompa-Loompa dance. Son laughs. Breakfast is complete.]

*Lyrics, as well as the entire Willy Wonka plot, acknowledged as completely mangled.