Terrence and the exotic fruit...

Once there was an average boy. This boy's name was Terrence. This is not the sort of name that gets you to the top of the social heap in schools of any grade. This is not the sort of name that rockets you to the top of the business world. Terrence was familiar with the former and soon would become quite aware of the latter. That is not what this story is about. Stop thinking about it.

Terrence, as stated previously was an average boy, with the average amount of friends, and as you might have guessed, the average amount of enemies. Do you remember the name of yours? I do.

Terrence also remembered the name of his enemy. Donald Rider. This may not sound like the name of a greatly feared enemy, but if you are an average boy named Terrence, it holds a significant amount of dread.

Terrence particularly dreaded lunch time. This was the time where most average children examined the contents of their lunches and planned for mergers and trade agreements with other average children. Children such as Charlie Dwyer had trade embargos placed on them due to his mother's tendency to place beet salads and other organic items in his lunch. No respectable youth would be caught dead trading a perfectly good Ho-Ho for some sprouts. Yuck.

Terrence appreciated the usual trade, but the other average children had begun to shy away from him. The reason for this was that Donald Rider took a liking to taking Terrence's lunch during lunchtime. There was always the possibility that one would become one of Donald Rider's victims by the inadvertent association with Terrence. This was simply unacceptable.

Terrence had exactly twenty seven lunches taken from him by Donald Rider this year alone. Terrence did not mind so much, but his mother and father were very poor and worked very hard to provide him a lunch. Terrence's father always told him, "Son, always stand up for what is right and true. The sun and rain shines and falls on every man. You are just as good as any other. Terrence thought about this one day as he was thinking about the rumblings of his empty stomach.

It was then that an idea began to form. The idea began to take shape. It was the shape of his empty stomach which is sort of a kidney bean shape. It was also kind of pink in color. The idea was devious and wonderful. It was subtle and perfect. It was also guaranteed to work because Donald Rider was the sort of stupid bully that infects every school. Terrence finally had enough. His hunger had hatched a brilliance previously unknown.

On the way home, Terrence stopped by Mr. Granger's produce store. "Do you have any rotten oranges?" Terrence asked. Mr. Granger looked quizzically at the lad and simply nodded his head in the direction of the back. Terrence quickly found what he was looking for. It was fuzzy. it was smelly. It was the most perfect rotten orange he had ever seen. This was not true of course, as he had once seen a more perfect rotten orance when he was seven and a half at his aunt's house. Terrence did not recall this at the time, so to be fair, we'll let him believe it was in fact the most perfect rotten orange he had ever seen in his life. Terrence picked the rotten orange gingerly in a brown sack and carried it home.

The following day, Terrence looked on as the clock clicked slowly by. The time finally came and he bolted to the door. Finding his usual seat in the cafeteria, Terrence laid out his lunch in a neat fashion. Terrence sensed Donald Rider enter the room. He could feel his bully evil emenating as he came closer and closer. "Alright, dink." Donald Rider said, "What'chya got for me today?"

Terrence did his best to avoid eye contact with Donald Rider. It's always best to avoid eye contact. Donald Rider picked up the peanut butter and jelly sandwich and stuffed it in his mouth. Donald Rider took a long drink of Terrence's chocolate milk (this was strategically selected by Terrence for reasons you will soon understand).

Donald Rider's eye's shifted over the remainder of the lunch and his eyes caught on the rotten orange. "What's this" Donald Rider said, "A rotten orange?" "Haven't you ever seen a jaus-teece fruit before?" Terrence replied. "A what" "A jaus-teece fruit. It's from Madagaspar in Tarzan-nista." Terrence said quite calmly. "EVERYONE knows that" he continued with a snide look.

Donald Rider looked confusedly at Terrence, then back at the fruit. Donald Rider was quite unable to grasp what was happening. His prey was not responding as usual. He could sense something was wrong but did not have the capacity to figure out what. "It just looks like a rotten orange." "Whatever." Said Terrence, "If you don't know what a Jaus-teece fruit is, then that is your problem." "I know what it is, stink-plug" Donald Rider replied defiantly, "I've eaten like a thousand of these things. I eat them all the time." "No you haven't. You never have and you're too scared to eat one now." Terrence responded with narrowing eyes.

Now to those unversed in the world of "Bully / Victim" interaction, such resistance from the prey is completely unacceptable and will frequently be dealt with by wedgies, twirlies, or some other act to regain dominance. As previously noted, Donald Rider would have no such thing and needed to place this imp back in his place of subserviance.

"I'll show you." Donald Rider said and proceeded to choke down the entire rotten orange. Terrence calmly looked at Donald Rider. Donald Rider's look of satisfaction lasted for exactly 7.5 seconds. The look slowly shifted from satisfaction, to a distant far off look, to confusion, to worry, to uneasy surprise, and was quickly followed by vomit ("Huwaaaaaaugh!).

Vomit in and of itself is quite an unpleasant topic, but can in fact be made more unpleasant. The specific way in which this particular case of vomit was made worse was held in the fact that at this moment, Mrs. Lando the P.E. teacher was walking by with a full platter of beef stroganoff. That was not the bad part. The bad part was that Donald Rider vomited on Mrs. Lando's shoes and lower legs ("Huwaaaaaaaugh!). Mrs. Lando responded in kind and barfed on Donald Rider's head ("Huwaaaaaaaugh!). Children seeing the comotion througout the cafeteria began to exercise their rights to foodular expulsion in a flurry of foodular expulsing.

Mr. Dwyer (No relation to Charlie Dwyer the kid with the trade embargo, but in fact the Mr. Dwyer who was the school's janitor) looked on at the growing mess and wondered quite silently to himself why he had not followed his dream of being an ice dancer. Ice dancers never had to deal with this sort of thing.

Terrence on the other hand, though speckled with bits of jaus-teese (Justice) fruit and chocolate milk, looked on with a glow of personal satisfaction, knowing that a new day had dawned and a significant page had turned in his life.

The End.

--> Read more...

Willy's last stand...

There was once a little boy named Willy. Willy was a small and timid boy who did not like to draw attention to himself in any way. Willy was often overlooked when selecting teams for dodge ball and other playground games. Willy did not like this, but refused to bring it up.

Once, both teams were completely picked and ran off to play "Red Rover." Willy stood there alone wondering why nobody picked him for the team. He did not particularly like "Red Rover", and would much rather played another game, but he would have liked to have been picked none the less.

Willy enjoyed drawing and art was by far his best subject. Willy did not however like math. Math was his "white whale" so to speak. Worse yet, his teacher, Mrs. Bottom DID like math very much and made the class spend an inordinate amount of time on the subject. As if this was not bad enough, Mrs. Bottom enjoyed letting the other students know how poorly little Willy did in math.

One day, Mrs. Bottom called little Willy up in front of the entire class. "Willy, you are the worst at math in the ENTIRE CLASS!" The entire class erupted into laughter. Willy sulked and walked quietly back past the entire class to his chair. "Alright" he thought "If you say so, I AM THE WORST AT MATH IN THE ENTIRE CLASS!"

From that time on, Willy chose to draw, rather than to do the math work. He did not care about math anymore because Mrs. Bottom had declared him the worst. "Why should I try, if the teacher says that I am no good at math?" he declared to himself.

So it went, for several weeks. Willy refused to do math, and Mrs. Bottom continued pouring more fuel on the fire. Division, multiplication, fractions...deeper and deeper his frustration grew.

Finally, one day, Willy had enough. He was not willing to feel badly about his math challenges any more. He devised a plan to teach the teacher a lesson. It would be the pinnacle of his less than stellar school experience.

The day came. Willy was ready. In the middle of class, with Mrs. Bottom droning on and on about why one should think that divisibles were interresting, Willy stood up. He announced loudly, "This is entirely enough!" Mrs. Bottom stopped speaking. The students stopped not listening. All eyes focused on little Willy. "I have had enough of feeling bad about my lack of math abilities and will have no more of it!"

"Sit down and pay attention, little boy!" shouted Mrs. Bottom. "I think not foul one!" shouted the now determined little boy. And with that, Willy took off all of his clothes, down to his underwear. There he stood on top of his desk in his Spiderman Underoos. All eyes stared widely at Willy as he struck a somewhat heroic pose. "I will not be made to feel bad about myself because I do not do well in a subject that will not only have little effect on my adult life, but is also only deemed important by stuffed turkeys such as you, Mrs. Bottom!" he announced. "I am an individual who has great strengths in the creative realm, and there are millions who will enjoy my works that I will create in the future. There will only be a few hundred who will remember you because they had their joyful veneer tarnished because they were looked down on by you!"

Mrs. Bottom glared at the boy. "That will be quite enough!" she shouted as she lunged for Willy. Willy dodged her attempt and hopped to the book shelf. Like lightning, he climbed the shelf and then jumped onto the hanging lights. "Ha ha fiend! I've eluded your grasp!"

Mrs. Bottom poked at him with a long ruler. "NO CHILD HAS EVER ESCAPED SCHOOL!!! Not on my watch, anyways. Call Mr. Biggles the Principal." Marjorie Dorkman, the teacher's pet scurried over to the class phone and made the call. "CODE 1038, CODE 1038!!!" she shouted into the receiver.

Within minutes, Mr. Biggles and the local Police Chief were at the door. Looking wild eyed, Mr. Biggles pled with Willy to come down. "NEV-AAAAH!!!" Willy shouted defiantly. "Have it your way..." Mr. Biggles glared. "Call in the National Guard."

Willy jumped from the hanging lights and onto the hinged windows. "To freedom!!!" Willy climbed out the window and shimmied up the downspout and onto the roof. There, he marched back and forth yelling, "I am Spiderman! I am Spiderman!" over and over.

Classes emptied and all the school's students filled the parking lot to watch little Willy's protest. Fifth grade girls wept as they commented on how tremendously brave little Willy was. "He's dreamy. I can't believe he's only in fourth grade." they were heard to say.

The afternoon wore on into the evening. Still little Willy continued his stand. The firefighters refused to climb their ladders, due to a previously unknown widespread fear of heights. "We have never had to actually do anything like this before." The Fire Chief said, "Who knew we'd ever have to actually save anybody."

The Police were powerless, because the firefighters wouldn't let them use their ladders. "We just polished them for the third time this week." was their only reply.

The National Guard could not use their helicopters because the new President sold them so that he could finance mansions for underpriviledged homeless criminals who were here illegally from other countries.

And so it went. Little Willy marched on and on. He was given food and water by the fifth grade girls who rigged up a pulley system. He was given a much warmer Spiderman costume by his mother who was worried that he would "catch a draft" from marching in his underwear. He wore it proudly, despite the fact that it had a cape. Everyone knows that Spiderman doesn't have a cape.

On and on, he still marches. Willy's 36 years old now and still going strong. Mrs. Bottom went the way of the earth and Mr. Biggles retired to an insane assylum.

Willy's plan worked, and he has not had to do math a day in his life.

The End

--> Read more...