(for those of you who have complained about the flashing FLASHes...it's intentional. You're supposed to get a headache.)
It all began one deliciously ironic Saturday morning in ancient Lafonia, when Saturdays hadn't been invented yet. My little sister was out in the pasture, collecting the sap buckets from our family's prize-winning crop of Bizzit flowers. For those ignorant botanists out there (or those of you born after Saturdays were invented), Bizzit flowers were towering flower-plants that produced a sweet and sour sap, well-known in all regions of Lafonia. This tasty sap was utilized in everyday functions, including cooking, but for special occasions, the specially aged sap, thin and crystal-clear, was brought out for everyone's enjoyment. The particular event being celebrated today was my birth. Due to some very confounded business involving a stick game and time-traveling properties of the Bizzit flower, my little sister had managed to be born ahead of me. The stick game is of minor importance in this tale (other than the fact that it was how I was conceived), so we won't dwell on it. The Bizzit flower, its sap, and its properties allowing time travel are quite vital to this tale, and therefore I will leave it out to confuse you.
I was born! What a grand opera! One of life's little dramas!
There I was, a repulsive hag of a teenaged princess, sitting in my most princess-y fashion next to a well. Just for dramatic effect, I happened to be crying dainty princess tears and dabbing away at my eyes with a beautiful, princessly hankie. I was, of course, waiting for a brave and gallant person of the male persuasion to arrive and solve my problems with bare minimal effort. Naturally, no male-persuasioned person appeared, my problems remained unresolved, and the princessly hankie was rapidly running out of dry spots. In this day and age (it was, obviously, 2076), it was very hard to get aid from anyone, much less a gallant and brave fellow--especially if you were an ugly, repulsive, and apparently whiny princess. One might think that the princess (me) was actually enchanted and that my wildly beautiful looks would be revealed one day, possibly at the conclusion of an idealistic, romanticized tale, but alas, this was not the case. My horrible looks remained, and nothing special happened. I sat there and waited some more. Nothing continued to happen. I shrugged resignedly and got up, brushing some grass off my annoyingly perfect gown. Still nothing happened. I stamped my foot, frustrated. I had hoped that my action of getting up would inspire something to happen, but there was no such luck. I had to help myself.
A rather plain, nondescript girl of about age 4 was learning how to milk goats. She was obviously me. I was frightened of the big goat. Its every twitch made me start with fright, and it had large eyes that seemed to look straight through me and into the general direction of the local convenience store. Everyone in my community liked to congregate at the convenience store on lazy summer afternoons and also at not-so-lazy, not-so-summery, not-very-afternoony times. I couldn't imagine why this would affect the goat, but I'm sure it itself had some idea.
I was once again sitting next to a well, but this time, I seemed to be a Japanese goldfish of the disgruntled sort. I was not a Japanese goldfish postal worker. (Disclaimer: This is not to say that postal workers are disgruntled or vice versa. I like all three of my mailpersons a lot. They bring me a lot of mail, and it's usually more interesting than the e-mail I get every minute or so.) Anyway, back to being a goldfish. One might think it is hard to be "sitting next to a well" if I am a fish, but if you are thinking that, then you are narrow-minded. Being an open-minded Japanese goldfish is fascinating. Especially if you are sitting in the open air instead of swimming around in water, as most fish (live) do. (Disclaimer: This is not to imply that dead fish do not also swim around in water. Dead fish? Swim? Ah, you are being narrow-minded again!) Let me clear my gills, then I'll give you a recipe to cure all that bothersome narrow-mindedness. Hold on.
HeLL's Recipe For Curing Narrow-mindedness
Okay, if you just followed that recipe, you are definitely not narrow-minded!!! You probably can't hear out of your right ear, either. Ha ha! Ha ha! Oh, this cracks me up! Hahahahahahaha!
Riiip! The shiny, heavy blade of a halberd tore my sleeve and cut into my arm. I slashed out with my broadsword reflexively, wincing as my arm felt the sting of pain shooting through it. The man wielding the halberd laughed darkly and shouted something triumphantly in a thick, gutteral tongue. I sprang away from his next attack, leaping onto a large rock nearby. When the man swung his weapon at me once more, I grabbed hold of it and used it as an anchor to launch myself at him. My kick succeeding in knocking him away to the side, allowing me to wrench the halberd away from him. Rubbing his neck angrily, the man turned to me, fury glittering erratically in his eyes. I used the blunt end of his halberd to deal him a fatal blow to his solar plexus...but not before he whispered fiercely in Kiswahili, "Coward! It takes more than that to conquer the all-powerful Ehsaytee!!"
I swooned as romantically as possible, and a pair of strong hands caught me before I fell. Unfortunately, it wasn't a heroic hero of heroes; it was merely a bodybuilder prison guard. I came to and sighed in a rather disatisfied way. My life did not seem to be going the way it was supposed to. In fact, my life didn't seem to be going in any sort of chronological or coherent order at all. My life seemed to be a random juxtapositioning of various scenes from many different lives. Either that or I was hallucinating during a physics test again. It was hard to tell. Of course, my brain nagged me with the fact that I wasn't taking physics, I had never taken physics, and how exactly would one "take" physics anyway? It was a rather alarming question and one I couldn't answer. I worried that perhaps my brain cells had somehow been depleting themselves at some sort of alarming rate, such as .7% compounded weekly.
I am growing tired of my ridiculous life story, as anyone can see by that weak up there. I have begun a story about a boy named Jim. Click here to read it.
P.S. The boy named Jim may very well be a penguin named Jim. For all you know.
