George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He remembered in the cartoons when Charlie would try to kick the football and Lucy would pull the football away at the last minute.
So, he pondered a way to do this with pirates.
“What if I make someone walk the plank, but just as they’re about to walk the plank, I pull it away and they end up falling in the shark-infested water?” said George.
“Then they’re still in the shark-infested water anyway,” said the captain, walking away.
George went back to his bunk and sulked for days.
Author: R.
George at the movies
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He liked to go to the movies, but he hated when he had to go to the bathroom in the middle of a film.
So, he’d try to go before the movie, but those Cokes always went through him quickly and he’d have to get up and go anyway.
He’d try to get through the movie without a Coke, but he’d get thirsty, and get up to buy one.
And then he’d have to go to the bathroom soon after.
George gave up, and watched movies on home video.
George goes to the carnival
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was really good at carnival midway games, though.
Instead of practicing with his sword and flintlock pistol, he’d stack up milk bottles and knock them down with a baseball.
Or he’d set up a ring toss game. Or that squirt gun with the clown heads and balloons thing, whatever the hell that was.
When he went to the carnival, he always came back with a huge bag full of stuffed animals.
They weren’t as valuable as buried treasure or hostages, but try giving your date a struggling hostage.
Weekly Challenge #976 – It’s Me
- Lisa
- Richard
- Lizzie
- Serendipidy
- Norval Joe
- Tom
- Planet Z
LISA
The Carer
“It’s me!” I hear after a rattle of the key in my lock.
It doesn’t tell me much does it? An endless troupe of people through my door. I wouldn’t mind if they were just here to chat but they feed me too and it seems like an invasion.
They open my curtains when I want to sleep. Make me tea when I don’t feel thirsty. Bathe me when I’d rather not be naked in front of a stranger.
“It’s me!” They say it again as they fill my kettle. A woman’s voice. “Mum, can you hear me? It’s me…”
RICHARD
— It’s me —
“It’s not you, it’s me.”
Well tell me something I didn’t know! And it doesn’t exactly make me feel any better about breaking up!
Of course it was her. She’d never made any effort in our relationship, leaving me to work my butt off to try and make it succeed.
Now she wanted to end it, finally admitting she was at fault.
“I’m sorry.” I said. “But I’m not prepared to lose you. You really think that you’re in charge… but, it’s not you, it’s me!”
She protested of course, but it didn’t stop me handcuffing her to the radiator.
LIZZIE
It’s me. I’m the one who wrote that. When you look at me, you’ll know what it’s like to be me. But you don’t look. You don’t. You’re inside yourself in a world of fantasy that exists only in your head. A chosen blindness that makes everything collapse. But you’re not worried. No. You prefer it this way. You are you, and everyone else is not real. So, when you look in the mirror, you will pretend to find out what it’s like to be me, and I’ll say “that is me”. But you won’t know, and you won’t care.
TOM
Shibboleth
It’s me! Cried Benny. Silence. “Come on Rudy open the gate.” A slot appeared in the door and a note poked out. Benny read it. “I don’t remember the password. We change the password all the time.” Silence. “OK cupcake-tornado. Silence. A second note appear. “What do you mean last week?” It’s me, Rudy, your brother-in law. Silence. A third note appeared. Benny crumpled the paper. “I have no idea who Linda’s second grade teach was.” The sun was dipping into the horizon, not a good time to be in Zombie Ally. Benny slid a 100-pound note under the door.
SERENDIPIDY
That noise you hear in the dead of night, all cosy in your bed. The noise that stirs you into sweaty wakefulness, confused and fearful as you strain to hear, wondering if it’s just your imagination, or if somebody else really is in the house.
That’s answered soon enough, when you hear the slow, muffled drag of footsteps along the hallway, the creak of the loose floorboard outside your bedroom door.
With horror, you stare as the doorknob slowly turns, the sweat on your brow turning cold, the fear building into terror.
The door swings open.
I’m here.
It’s me!
NORVAL JOE
Billbert woke to someone shaking his foot and shouted in surprise.
“Billbert. Calm down. It’s me, Dad. Your mother had to go to work early, and you kids need to get up and go to school.”
Linoliamanda rubbed her eyes. “I don’t have any clean clothes.”
Sabrina glared at Billbert when he said, “Mom bought Sabrina tons of new clothes yesterday. I’m sure you can use some of them.”
Sabrina shook her head. “She’s too skinny for my clothes.”
Linoliamanda glared at the other girl. “I’m not that skinny!”
Sabrina looked Linoliamanda up and down. “Well, parts of you are.”
PLANET Z
Back in grade school, regular milk was five cents, chocolate milk was six.
My mother would give my brother a dime and tell him to buy a regular milk for each of us.
Instead, he bought chocolate milk, pocketed the change, and threatened to beat the shit out of me if I said anything.
I would steal nickels and pennies from my father’s coin collection, which I got beaten for.
Then I said why. And my brother got beaten.
Which got me beaten again.
I keep a jar of spare change, and I shake it to clear the memories away.
George goes postal
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
After several close calls, he gave up piracy and took a job aboard a cargo ship on the Atlantic.
They carried Italian workers to America, and their mail home on the return trip.
George looked through the envelopes.
He couldn’t read Italian, but the money that the workers sent home, well, what’s one less dollar?
When the Postal Service investigated, he’d pocket everything and sink the ship.
Bad weather, they called it.
Then he’d join another cargo ship under a new name.
“Welcome aboard, Jorge!”
“Thank you,” said George.
George and the black freighter
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
When his ship exploded, George clung to the figurehead and washed ashore on an island.
He built a raft, and gathered up dead crewmates’ corpses to use for buoyancy.
The tide pulled him out to sea, he caught seagulls to eat.
For days, he floated, dehydrated and starving.
The experience drove him mad.
When George made it back to Port Royal, he went berserk and killed some people before feeling back to the ocean.
The Navy caught him, and his defense was getting the idea from some comic book.
George posessed
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
They say the worst and bloodiest of the pirates were possessed by The Devil himself.
George, being not very good, and only bloody when he tripped and skinned his knees, was likely possessed by some minor spirit or supernatural presence.
I suspect it was a part-time accountant for a small family business.
One that was replaced easily by Quickbooks, and still somewhat sore about it.
Unlike that kid who levitated her bed and vomited green pea soup, George had a slight facial tic.
Nothing really worthy of an exorcism.
George makes tea
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Being a pirate was enough for Tinkerbell to harass George constantly.
One day, George managed to swat Tinkerbell with his cutlass, and he damaged her wing.
The stricken fairy fell to the ground.
George stuck her in a teapot and closed the lid.
Tinkerbell sprinkled fairy dust on the teapot so it could fly, and she smacked George with it over and over.
George filled the teapot with water, held it to the stove, and waited until Tinkerbell’s screams were drowned out by its whistle.
Then he made tea.
George the dentist
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
So, he gave up being a pirate for a while.
People still called him “George The Pirate” though.
Even when he finished his medical degree and took up dentistry.
He put an old treasure chest in the office for the kids to pick out a prize after their cleaning.
But only if they were good.
The bad kids are forced to walk the plank.
Which really isn’t so bad, since George’s office is on the first floor.
Not that he tells them that, as he puts the blindfold on.
George picks a nose
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
The other pirates bossed him around a lot, and made him do humiliating tasks for them.
Lefty McGee, the pirate with a hook for a hand, would order George to pick his nose for him.
“But you’ve still got your right hand,” said George. “Can’t you do that yourself?”
“That, indeed, I do,” said Lefty. “But it’s kind of awkward to dig into my left nostril with it.”
George winced and refused, and he also drew the line at giving Lefty foot-rubs. “That gnarly peg leg gives me splinters.”