The Mad Tea Party
(The Cheshire Cat's smile only) Hello hellooooooooooo again
everyone! (Bringing body back) Welcome back to the MADDEST
show on television! This week, we have a very special
guest. The Mad Hatter will be making a special appearance
today. Please brace yourselves, because if you think I am
maddening, you are in for a treat! Now give a warm welcome to the
Mad Hatter!
(applause)
Cheshire Cat: Well hello
there, Mad Hatter. (Bringing face and body back) We are so
excited to have you on the show today.
Mad Hatter: Hello,
Cat. I am ever so excited to be here, as well. Or am I here
because I'm excited? Hmmm.
Cheshire Cat:
Hehehe, always so quizzical you are, Hatter. No one knows
what you're saying half the time and I love it.
Mad Hatter: I don't even
know where you are right now, Cat, but I've learned one must always
make time for riddles... or does one make riddles for time? Hmmm.
Cheshire Cat: (Bringing
body back) I am where I always am, Hatter. Now, as much as I love
your riddles and rhetoric, this was not the intended path for our show
today. I've learned that you had the great pleasure of meeting
our dear Alice. Please tell us about your encounter.
Mad Hatter: Oh,
yes. We were at the house of my good friend, the March Hare, and
Alice
showed up uninvited to our Tea Party.
Cheshire Cat: Hehe, oh
yes. Your friend the Hare did give her quite the welcoming.
Mad Hatter: Hmm, I do
forget that you, too, like to show up uninvited, only you have your
strange invisibility. You were sitting at the table with us, I'm
sure.
Cheshire Cat: Of
course. You, the Hare, and the dormouse were all squooshed up at
one end of the very large table...
Mad Hatter: Squooshed!
We had no room! And Alice was quite rude to argue with us when we
told her that we had no room. She was a guest, after all, and a
guest should never argue with the host.
I noticed that her hair was quite long, and when I told her "Your hair
wants cutting," she was offended. I guess some people do not like
honesty. We also began to bicker a little bit because I told her
that she needed to say what she means, and she replied that she means
what she says, which is the same thing. Of course, the two
statements are quite different, much as "You are what you eat" and "You
eat what you are" differ drastically, as well.
Cheshire Cat: Hehehe, I'm
lucky I was there to witness all of this because you really are
confusing the audience, I'm sure, with all of your little
sidetracks. You and the Hare put on quite the show for Alice,
though. She was lucky enough to see the "clock" of yours
that tells the day of the month rather than the time, and how the Hare
slathered the inside of it with butter and dunked it in his tea.
Hehehe, he must have thought that was a genius idea!
Anywho, you told her about how close you were with Time, that is, until
the Queen decided to off his head.
Mad Hatter: Dreadful,
really. Ever since the Queen off'd Time's head, it has
permanently been six o'clock, which is Tea Time.
Cheshire Cat: And this is
why you had "no room" at your tea table. Since the time is always
Tea Time, you have no time to wash the tea dishes, so you all simply
rotate around the table as the dishes are used up. Because of
your rudeness, Alice left Tea Time offended, and I highly doubt the
poor girl will ever come back to Wonderland. Such a shame.
Well boys and girls, I DO hope you learned a lot in today's show.
I know that my friend, the Mad Hatter, can be extremely confusing, if
not annoying. Remember, next week we will be meeting with the
VERY mad Queen. It's a good thing she can never find me to off my
head!
Author's Note: I retold A Mad Tea Party from the both the
Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter's point-of-view. I wanted it to
be obvious in my retelling that the Mad Hatter truly is mad and is not
even coherent enough to tell his version of the story in a way that
anyone can understand, except for the Cheshire Cat, of course, who was
there! The Cheshire Cat is supposed to come off as both amused
and exasperated with the Mad Hatter for being so annoyingly
confusing! The term "mad hatter" comes from the fact that mercury
was used to cure felt hats and the hat makers had no way of escaping
some of the fumes in the process. Many of the hatters suffered
mercury poisoning from all of the mercury they inhaled in the hat
making process, which led to their sometimes slurred, confusing
speech. Even worse, a lot of times some of the mercury would get
loose in the hatters' workshops and slowly drive them mad! This
is the most probable reason for why the Mad Hatter
was so MAD!! Thank goodness he was because he is a great addition
to the final story!
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