In my last entry, I mentioned I had written a story for NYC Midnight. It was a 500 word story with a 24 hour deadline. Even when I wrote it I was saying it was heading for the virtual dustbin as it was a little silly, and I was right. It didn’t even get an honourable mention. I’ll put it on here and you can read it if you want.
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A Squirt of Revenge
Ryan was amusing himself in the playground behind his house. He was swinging on the swings and going in dizzying circles around the merry-go-round. His mother was working from home and casting the occasional glance his way to verify he was safe.
Three boys came around the trail and into the playground. They were walking with menacing swaggers. “Hey look, it’s little Ryan from second grade,” said the biggest, most menacing of the group. “Looks like he’s lost his mommy,” and the other boys laughed.
“I didn’t lose my mom, Derek, she’s behind that fence keeping an eye on me.” Ryan knew Derek wanted to be a bully, but at school he was kept in check.
“Looks like your mommy sent you with a can of bug spray. We wouldn’t want baby Ry-Ry to get a bug bite at the park.” Derek grabbed the bottle of repellent and threw it into forest. The other boys laughed again. “Well baby Ry-Ry, you better go find your spray before mommy finds out you lost it.”
Ryan held back hot tears. “Thanks, you jerk!” He ran into the forest after the bottle. He didn’t think his mom would care too much about it, but the stillness of the trees was a welcome diversion to being insulted by thugs.
The forest was dark after the bright sun, and he wouldn’t find anything until his eyes adjusted to the gloom. A squeaky voice nearby made him jump. “I saw the whole thing. Those boys are cowards, picking on someone small and alone.” A little elf stepped out from behind a shrub. “Sorry if I startled you. I am Tim. We elves are everywhere but we mostly stay out of sight. I could give you some magic to defend yourself with – just a little bit, not enough to harm anyone seriously, and only enough to use once. Would you like that?”
“Yes! Please, that would be great,” Ryan said.
Tim touched Ryan on the forehead, and he could feel a tingling in his skin.
“Now hurry, your mom will look and not see you at the park and she’ll panic.”
Ryan knew the elf was right. He took a quick glance around and decided to go back to the playground.
“Thanks, Tim!”
Back in the daylight, Derek and his gang were at the far end of the park throwing rocks at a tree when they noticed their little subject had returned. “What’s the matter, didn’t find your bug spray, babykins?”
“No, but I found something even better, come and see,” he called back.
Derek approached Ryan, towering above him scowling as hard as he could. Ryan closed his eyes and called upon his one dose of magic. Suddenly Derek and his mates’ bowels let go, and they went running for home crying, as diarrhea ran down their legs.
“Wouldn’t it have just been easier to be nice?” he called after them.
A squeaky laugh emanated faintly from the forest.
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The judges said the dialogue and the method of revenge were age appropriate and well done. They criticized me for not putting more detail into the elf, and even ignoring Ryan’s reaction to the elf which likely would have been surprise or maybe even fright at first. They acknowledged the lack of words would have made me cut something else out, and they suggested I cut out his mother to buy more words. Anyway, I agree with that, I guess.
I also talked in my last blog about a test I had to write. I got 81% and passed, but I don’t get to be relief foreman because the superintendent says I need to take more courses. It gets further away with each test. It’s like putting a doughnut on fishing line and reeling it in, making some fat kid (me) run after it.
Speaking of doughnuts, you know what’s starting to bug me? The combination of cute kids and menacing parents that greet me at the exit of the grocery store, trying to sell me stuff. I dodged by the Krispee Kreme kids yesterday, but the Scouts guilted me into buying an apple today, as a couple of fathers were giving me menacing looks. At work I have a full box of Girl Guide cookies in a drawer that I bought last week. Girl Guide cookies used to have two flavours, chocolate and vanilla, and they were actually decent. Now they have this thin chocolate mint thing, almost like an After Eight wafer, and it just isn’t that good. But when a big-eyed 6 year old with a sad expression is selling them, I am doomed. Pretty soon the Salvation Army will come and replace the Guides, Scouts, Air Cadets, Wheelchair Rugby, Girls’ Soccer, Boys’ Hockey, Cancer Researchers, Veterans with poppies, and whoever else is out there making eye contact with you and your groceries. And the Sally Ann doesn’t take “I don’t have any cash” as an excuse – they have credit and debit tap options so you can’t say no without being a grinch of the highest order.
Speaking of polite ways to be embezzled from, what’s the deal with tip options? I remember not too long ago 10% was the going rate for tipping wait staff at restaurants. Then it crept up to 15, then 18, now 20%. I now feel like a total jerk if I leave less than 18%, especially if the waitress, let’s say, has made an effort to interact with me. That’s ok, at least they served me. The really awful tip options are the ones at regular businesses like the beer store. Sometimes the staff at the beer store helps me out, but that is sort of their job. When they offer me assistance, I will consider giving a couple bucks. But when some goth girl has stood at the counter looking at her phone chewing gum while I search helplessly for the Moosehead Radlers, she can kiss my ass if she thinks I’m giving her anything. Once I was handed a debit machine in a store and I couldn’t quickly find the solution to declining the tip, so I wound up tipping some lazy kid who spent my entire time in the store texting her buds. That set me off, and I quit going to that store for at least a year, even though it’s about 500 feet from my front door. Take that!
Another fairly new thing to do is to stand on the median on a busy street and beg from people who stopped at the red light. They always have a cardboard sign that explains their predicament, with most signs being too long winded to read at one light. Those people probably need the money and would get the most use out of it, but the thinking is it will likely be spent on drugs or booze, so you’re doing them more harm than good. I was told a story not long ago. At the light at 1st Ave and the exit from Hwy 1 in Vancouver, there’s a guy claiming to be starving, needing anything you can give him. So lots of kind people hand him bananas and apples, things to keep him alive, you know. But there’s a big Welcome to Vancouver sign nearby, behind which is a mountain of bananas, apples, muffins and such that the guy chucks as soon as you drive off. So I give these people change sometimes, but I’m always a little leery, too.