I can't say how it was any where else, but in 1969 in the town of Mesa, Arizona, there was only one thing a boy had to do in order to be accepted by his fourth grade peers, and that was to get into a fight. It really didn't matter who one fought just as long as it wasn't a girl, and it didn't matter who won the fight just as long as there was bloodshed. We had just moved into the area so I didn't have time to develop a good reason to assault anyone and therefore I was free to pick a victim objectively, free from the social politics and ethical influences that can distract a kid from pursuing the pure motive. For my purpose, I sought the wimpiest looking kid in the class.

Panning the classroom on that morning of the second week of school I targeted the victim of my choice; he had long skinny limbs and high-water trousers, freckles, and ears so big that it would take a normal person more than a lifetime to grow into them. Being that the kid's ears were obviously made for my purpose, I snuck up behind him and gave each ear a simultaneous flick while the teacher blindly busied herself scrawling on the blackboard.

I repeated the attack thrice. On the fourth attempt the kid anticipated me and jerked around with a look that informed me that my challenge had been met, and that immediately after the last bell tolled that day there would be bloodshed on the playground. Having secured the prerequisite for attaining acceptability, I was now free to direct my attention to other promising, more sustentative, social-geopolitical interests.

We learned more during recess than we ever could while imprisoned in that stifled classroom bound to a desk; after all, life is about dynamics, not statics. Recess was filled with the buzz of the marbles playing-season which was, in practice, a case study in social engineering, finance, economic risk, capitalism, marketing and thrift for all the enterprising boys and girls. The motif of education was playing for keeps. During this scuffle some of the girls preferred playing jacks. In retrospection these dainty little creatures were practicing disciplines as well; and always played in eye meandering distance of the enterprising boys. When jacks proved ineffectual toward their purpose, they skipped rope or played hopscotch. I'd have to go and wait out the years before I'd discover the purpose of these little rosy ones' actions; as it turned out, they were the first to get married later in life.

I was well primed for the marbles entrepreneurship lesson when recess came and I darted out for the playground immediately upon hearing the toll of the bell. By then I'd learned that fights were traditionally held after school while the teachers were too busy closing down the compound to intercede. What I didn't consider was that my opponent was an independent thinker and preferred anarchy over tradition. --Well; just as I reached the playground I heard a voice behind me call out, "Hey, Stupid--" Turning, I caught the first blow on the left ear and before I could arrive at the right answer I received a flurry of blows about the eyes, nose, mouth, chin, shins, cheek-bones, knees and gut; knocking the wind out of me. Aside from this however, to my credit, just as I collapsed as an acceptable-casualty, I did manage to connect one of my own fists with the scoundrel's head. Gazing up through a teary blur I could see his victorious smile with a gap in his mouth where I'd knocked out his front tooth.

Meanwhile, sounding way out in the distance, the hysterical blasting of the teacher's whistle was heard as she came swooping down upon the two of us like a buzzard onto road-kill. The whole thing happened so fast that it was over before most of the class knew what had happened. The aggressive entrepreneurs amongst the gamers had already set up shop and were hollering "try your luck" when the teacher grabbed my foe by the ear, and me by the arm to haul us off toward the principal's office.

My first stop before addition to my injuries was the nurse's office where the nurse emulsified my wounds and shoved a tissue into my nostril as a plug so I wouldn't bleed all over the place while the principal administered the swats. After the nurse's dabbing and plugging I was made to sit on a bench next to my assailant where we awaited maximum gluteus-punishment. The moment called for getting acquainted so I broke the silence with the best diplomatic words I could muster: "Uh; my name's Mike; what's yours?"

"Yuh bedder relax;" was the response. "We'll be sittin' here a long time before ole man Henerson tans our hide. First he's gotta talk to our folks an' then he'll make us wait some-more and try and keep us sceered and anticipatin' so we'll respec' him an' feel sorry when he whales on us and suspen's us and then turns us over to our folks an' tells 'em to whale on us an' punish us som'-more."

"Suspends us?!" I interjected.

"Oh don' worry; it's respec'ful gittin' suspen'ed. B'sides, yuh'll prob'bly only git suspen'ed for the res' uh the day; my vacation-'ll be longer, much longer, I think."

Naïve as I was, I responded, "Uh... vacation; what do you mean, 'vacation?!'"

"D'juh-ever notice how yer dog and everyone else respec's yuh more af'er yuh git back from vacation? Well gittin' suspen'ed's like that; it makes yuh respec'able. --By the way, folks call me 'The Geek,' or 'Geek' fer short: Pleased-tah-meet-chuh."

Suddenly I realized just how simplistic my thinking had been; Geek had attended to high aspirations throughout the debacle while I had focused on the common. While my original purpose was simply to be accepted, Geek was purposing to turn acceptance into that greater attainment called "respect." For this mastery of modus operandi, and his deliberate and unabashed slaughter of the English language, I felt sure that Geek would be a great politician someday, maybe even the president of the United States.

Geek then went on to describe all the fights he'd gotten into with one, two, and even three dweebs at the same time, and won, and how he'd been dragged into old man Henderson's office by his ears so many times that his ears just kept stretching and getting bigger in consequence. He also told me that my lucky blow had been a first from anyone, and therefore it would place me at the head of the respectable class, just below him, of course. When I offered an apology for knocking out his front tooth he wouldn't hear it, saying he used up a spool of string and broke a doorknob trying to yank it out on his own after he'd heard his parents plotting to have a dentist pull it, and that he'd threatened and protested, stating that it would cost the dentist at least one finger if his parents permitted him to try and do so.

In retrospection Geek seemed happy with himself then and always in that he'd subdued and obtained the dominion over his whole world in the same way that he'd managed to create it. Finding myself likeminded in spirit I sensed a binding kinship, as if I'd found a long lost relative who was, by very nature, in perfect behavioral agreement with my own perfectly untamable species. Meanwhile our bonding conversation drifted from the present situation to its dynamic possibilities. Under the given obviously artificially constructed atmosphere it was easy to ignore the calculated anxiety created by the "almighty schoolin'-gods" (as Geek contemptuously called them) to psychologically prime us for punitive damages they planned to apply below from above, and so Geek and I used the time for defining our higher aspirations including considerations for the preservation of our species, our likes and dislikes, and anticipations for future vacations including workable escape plans for the unavoidable incarcerations (as we anticipated many).

"If you get suspended for the rest of the week, what're you going to do during your vacation?" I asked.   Go slaggin'. "What's that?"

"Lookin' for collec'ables floatin' down the canal that git hanged up at the wawder-level drop gates an' 'long the wawder banks."

"Are there any snakes or lizards out there?" I asked, with refined interest.

"Once we found a python that must-uh bin twen'y feet long an' must-uh escaped from a zoo or somethin'. But it warn't no good 'cause it fell tuh pieces when we slagged it 'cause it'd bin driffin' too long. Course there's lots-uh live stuff aroun' too, but it's the driffin' stuff that I like bes'. Las' summer me and Creep found a dead skunk that must-uh floated a hun'red miles from the mountains an' was bloated big and fat like a wawdermelon an' so we scooped it in-tuh a sack an' climbed up on-tuh ole man Hen'erson's roof, bein' he was on vacation, an' dumped it down his chimley."

"Who's Creep?" I asked.  "Creep's the big nosed kid sittin' in the back uh the class eatin' his boogers." That's sick," I retorted.   "No, that's consequen'al and therefo' poli'ical lev'rage as my dad says. Creep's parents make him eat stuff he don' like, an' if he did'nit eat his boogers he'd prob'ly starve tah-death 'cause his parents don' un'erstan' his constinution. --Creep'll do anythin' fer yuh if yuh un'erstan' that."

Right about then old man Henderson opened his door and with the gravest look I'd ever seen plastered on an old geezer's face, pointed to Geek and motioned for him to come into his office.

A few wondering moments passed before the redounding whacks of the paddle made me jump. Then the door opened again and Geek stepped out walking funny presenting a beaming grin of another successful victory to the world; and in coincidence, to both me and to my mother, who had just walked in just in time to see the spectacle. I couldn't help but grin in return, which was translated by old man Henderson as requiring more swats and a stiffer overall sentence for me. My mother was then told to wait outside his office while he severely exercised his paddle on my constitution. Afterwards he summoned my mother in to collect what was left of me claiming I was "encourageable," a word I couldn't find in the dictionary (when I checked later) that I figured was framed by him to terrorize my mother into a state of unquestioning compliance. After finishing his windy lecture and appearing well pleased with himself, the old carp declared my sentence. I was to be suspended from school for the remainder of the week--the very same sentence he'd blessed Geek with. This was quite an accomplishment I figured, being that this was only my second week of school!

I spent most of my vacation confined to my room but did manage to successfully practice the tactical means of escape prescribed by Geek on several occasions. Just as he had intimated, my bedroom window proved to be an excellent portal to the land of the living. I'd observed that my mother checked to see if I was still alive every two or three hours while my dad was at work, so I limited my excursions to about an hour and a half during that intermediate time. Meanwhile, to establish the illusion of the punishment affect, I left the radio playing melancholy old folks' music as a psychokinetic deterrent to my mother's uncanny intuitive predisposition for disrupting my dissident activities.

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The Tale of Bad Little Boys  Part ll

By Michael Paul Menzel

During those excursions I wandered about the canal searching for collectables while hoping to cross paths with my new friend. The first thing I found during one trip was a huge dead wondrously-bloated carp caught in an embankment of reeds. I could hardly wait to discover the thing to Geek, hoping he'd show me the best way to transport it onto old man Henderson's roof so we could dump it down his chimney; but Geek was nowhere to be found until that weekend. By then we had both served our time and were free to come and go as we pleased. Meanwhile the beached carp had exploded into a carpet of manically seething maggots overcast with a swarm of flies. Geek and I agreed that it was a pity that the scene had not erupted in old man Henderson's fireplace but, Geek was quick to direct my attention back to the big picture wherein both he and I were in the process of becoming more respectable, and that everybody would be presently thinking about our heroism, and that old man Henderson would automatically blame any miraculous happenstance on us, should such occur.

When Geek and I returned to school the following week I was amazed to find just how respectable we'd become; it seemed like everybody wanted to get to know me and share whatever knowledge they'd gained in advancing themselves within the ever expanding Marbles Republic. Even from without--from within the realm of mystery--the dainty neophytes formed circles of jacks-players, rope-skippers or hopscotchers according to whatever the terrain afforded them, that they may present a busy eye-service.

The attention and idolatry served me well and at the end of the marbles season I'd acquired a wealth superior to all except Creep and Geek who had each accumulated at least ten or twenty times more marbles than I had and, in fact, had not only busted nearly every kid in the realm, but had left those still possessing marbles owing more than they actually possessed. This was not owing to honest skill however, and if the reader suspects jealousy on my part I have no defense against the allegation; but frankly Geek couldn't hit anything with a marble that was smaller than a dog or a cat, and not without the aid of a slingshot; and as for Creep, I only saw him try and shoot a marble once.

Now Creep had the biggest hooked nose that was ever attached to a kid in the history of the world, I think; and when he finally got a good grip on the marble and his thumb-knuckle was turning white from building up shooting pressure, his nostrils started to flare out like a mad bull's; and having poised and aimed and let the marble fly, instead of the marble shooting forward toward the target, it shot straight up and wedged itself in his right nostril; and, being unable to pop it out in an expedient fashion, Creep became so panicky that he couldn't think rationally enough to re-flare his nostrils to let the thing loose. Well, anyway, in his growing hysteria he was reduced to a state of mindless lunacy, howling and staggering about like he'd been mortally damaged in the head. When the nurse was summoned she found herself useless and was obliged to call an ambulance and they hauled him off to the hospital. That was the last time Creep tried honest marbling, to my knowledge.

A few days after the catastrophe Creep started carrying a pencil, a note book, a large sack of marbles and the strangest looking gaming instrument I'd ever seen, calling it "a slide rule." He then stated that he and Geek were partners in the "Marbles and Loan" business. Later it was made known that Creep had appointed himself to be "Chief Loan Agent" of the enterprise and that he'd appointed Geek as his "Chief Collection Agent" and, that they were now "loaning out marbles to all their fellow entrepreneurs at ten percent interest compounded daily."

Later Creep showed me what he called a "mathematical formula" to figure out just how many marbles a person would owe in order to pay a marbles-debt. The formula looked something like this: Q=P(1+I)D where the "Q" denoted the quantity of marbles owed to the lender, the "I" represented the rate of interest (ten percent), the exponent "D" represented the units of time which was the number of days of compounded interest, and the "P" represented the principle, or the original number of marbles borrowed from the lender.

Of course the consequences of submitting to this scheme was a mystery to me and since I'd recently experienced marble-bankruptcy having lost all while trying to win a rare bumblebee-boulder, in my ignorance I overlooked Creep's explanatory frills and simply asked him how many marbles I would owe if I borrowed five. Well, Creep slid the moveable parts of his slide rule here and there and stated that I would owe six marbles after two days. I knew I could easily win at least six dozen marbles within that time frame so I borrowed the five and agreed to his terms without any further questions.

Well, three months passed after that transaction and the marbles season was drawing to a close. By then I'd mastered the art of the trade and, having won many of the most profitable of the season's contests, had skilful accumulated nearly three thousand marbles including a collection of rarities. Notwithstanding, in the midst of my public boasting my conscience made me stop and consider humbly that I had Creep and Geek to thank for loaning me the original five marbles that carried me to fame and fortune and, to my discredit, I had never returned the promised marbles that had made the whole thing possible. --I immediately quit doing what I was doing, grabbed a generous handful of marbles including a couple of rare agates, and walked over and placed them in Creep's hand in front of God and everybody. What followed shed light on the reason why Creep and Geek had recently changed the name of their enterprise to the ominous title, "The Fed," a title, no doubt, to designate that the people of the Marbles Republic had lost their self-determination, and that their republic had been transfigured into a tyrannical despot.

Well, Creep shook his head at my charitable gesture, pressed the marbles back into my hand and, before I could protest, opened up his notebook, calculated that ninety days had passed since I'd agreed to the terms of the loan, took out his slide rule, slid the moveable parts here and there, and then, while looking me straight in the eye with a look that one may visualize as that of a fox looking into the eye of a retarded chicken, stated, "You owe THE FED twenty-six-thousand-five-hundred-and-sixty-five marbles." I heard of a zillion-trillion before, but I'd never heard of such an incomprehensibly large number expressed so precisely. Creep's exactitude demanded compliance and I instinctively knew that the debt was unplayable so long as I had a place to live and shoes to wear, so I sheepishly looked toward my friend Geek, the "Chief Collection Agent," for a comradeship-type of support. Instead of an understanding ombudsman however, Geek presented a similar look suggesting that he was something akin to Creep's twin brother, and now both of them glared back at me like two ravenous foxes at one now-proved-to-be retarded and quite friend less chicken. "I suggist yuh pay up les' some kid ten miles away f'om here finds yer lizards an snakes driffin* belly-up down the canal," answered Geek with an exaggerated grin that grossly accentuated the hole in his face where I'd knocked out his tooth.

I wasn't ready for another vacation considering the likelihood that this time I would be so busted up that recreation would be painfully burdensome. On the other hand, I felt horribly betrayed by my friends. Forthwith the feeling of betrayal was exacerbated by an irritating sense of responsibility to maintain a form of honor even to the point of martyrdom if necessary; so I slugged Creep in the nose as hard as I could and barely missed doing the same to Geek before a flurry of fists brought me to the ground.

Immediately the air was assaulted with the hysterical blasting of the teacher's whistle and we three were hauled off to have our constitutions exercised once again.

The following week the Three Encourageables returned from vacation as reconciled friends having adopted this non-word as the official name of their new confederation. On that very day old man Henderson declared over the intercom in the most terrifying voice ever heard by mortals in Kinderdom that marbles were no longer permitted on the school grounds, and that anyone caught with the said contraband would be severely punished and suspended.

On that day, looking around the classroom one would think that that dark announcement defined the end of the world and, afterward, seeing how recess came and went with an air of sackcloth and ashes, one would think that the sun had darkened itself in shame too--along with all things pertaining to the land of the living, magnifying the extreme displeasure of Kinderdom's disciplinary gods. Yet inexplicably the next day was cloudless, bright and sunny. Young men jousted and sported about Kinderdom celebrating an indefinable yet undeniable victory, while young ladies fluttered about in glorious competition with flowers, birds and butterflies. New enterprises sprang up everywhere; skateboards, wooden swords and paper figures, balsawood planes, clackers, dodge-ball, crack the whip, smear-the-queer and specifically a new economy based on the equal value-trading of goods and services, and a new money system too, that honored bubblegum cards, yoyos, seashells, lunches, colored pencils, lizards and even beetle-bugs as currencies of exchange; everything it seemed, except marbles--tacitly declaring that it was the dawn of a very dark age for Creep and Geek, and unfortunately by familiar association, for me as well.

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All of the zillions of marbles we had acquired had become next to worthless in one day. To us it seemed as if our heaven and earth had passed away and we were now exiles roaming about the outermost parts of Kinderdorn with our accursed marbles, sometimes making secret deals with other seemingly irredeemable riffraff under the pain of something akin to death should we ever get caught. We had become despised in our world; the rosy ones hid from us while once disinterested dogs growled, barked and nipped at our heels as we fled from angry shadows. We lost all respectability under the sun for the remainder of that year, and whenever we drew an assailable dweeb away from the flock to try and bust up in order to regain respectability, at least ten saint bound-dweebs would come to his rescue with fists and wooden swords swinging and would all but exterminate our usurious, marble loving, despicably incorrigible, tribe.

And this, I suppose, is the answer awaiting all bad little boys under the sun.

Mr. U.I.R. Dining with a fly Grashopper- Soup Tale of Bad Little Boys

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