Category: Talk Like A Pirate Day

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Some say he drinks too much to remember.
And others say he doesn’t drink enough to forget.
Bleary-eyed, climbing into his hammock, cabin spinning.
The rocking back and forth.
Is it the waves and the ship, or just how much he drank?
It doesn’t matter. He leans out of his hammock and throws up.
The hammock wobbles. He falls into the puddle of vomit.
Passing out.
He’ll do the same thing tomorrow. And the day after that.
“Another goddamned day of this shit,” he mumbles.
And passes out again.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Instead of looting and pillaging, he liked to go exploring.
“And then loot and pillage?” asked his mateys.
“No,” said George. “I write articles for a travel magazine.”
His favorite place to visit had been the Kingdom of Green.
It was land of endless fields and forests, and the castle on the hill shone in the sun.
“It’s gone, George,” said a messenger from the magazine. “The king died, and the queen soon after. It’s all in ruin.”
George folded his map, put it in a drawer, and wept.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Give him a ship, and he’ll give you back a shipwreck.
One time, he wrecked on the rocks of an island where everyone wore green.
“Come with me,” said a villager. “The king and queen are waiting.”
The royal couple offered to fix George’s ship, but he had to promise never to loot or pillage the land.
George kept his word, and he changed the maps to read “Dangerous rocks and monsters.”
That way, pirates would forever avoid that land.
George assumed that they lived happily ever after.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Once, when George wasn’t careful about some pirate secrets, a fellow pirate shushed him and said “The walls have ears.”
Ever since then, George had been nervous about talking near walls.
He’d only talk to people outdoors where there weren’t any walls.
Or in gazebos. Because they’re kind of like buildings, but don’t have any walls.
Railings, maybe. But those are more like lattices or fences.
The captain watched George trying to construct a gazebo on the main deck.
“I should have been a farmer,” he muttered to himself.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
While his shipmates were fending off a deadly sea monster, George was at the childrens’ hospital, entertaining patients with pirate stories.
The kids loved it when George showed up and told his stories.
His shipmates, not so much.
Sea monsters are even more dangerous when you fight them shorthanded, and as clumsy as George was, he could have been useful as a decoy or bait.
In the middle of a story, George’s phone rang.
He flicked it to vibrate mode.
“Sorry about that,” said George. “Now where was I?”

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He also wasn’t a very good tenant at Miss Mapleton’s Boarding House.
Every morning, George used up all the hot water.
The sink’s drain was always clogged with his beard stubble.
Thank goodness Mr. Grant in seven was a plumber.
He also left the seat up. And never, ever flushed.
Miss Mapleton was always warning George that if he kept this up, she’d throw him out.
But she never did.
Because as bad as a tenant George was, at least he paid his rent in full, and on time.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
This didn’t matter to the production assistant who was rounding up extras for the latest Disney pirate movie.
“Who wants twenty dollars a day?” he shouted. “And a hot lunch, too!”
George and his shipmates waved their cutlasses around, growling and scowling, doing whatever the director told them to do.
“CUT!” shouted the director, and he walked up to George. “This one’s playing Angry Birds on his phone.”
So, George was fired from the movie.
Which was a good thing. Everyone else got food poisoning from the catered lunch.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He wasn’t a very good poet either.
He tried to write a poem about pirates,
But nothing rhymes well with pirate.
Well, maybe admire it. And retire it.
“What about other languages?” said the captain. “Spanish for pirate is pirata. Lots of Spanish words rhyme with it.”
“I don’t know Spanish,” said George.
“In French, pirate is… pirate,” said the captain. “But I’m sure there’s lots of French words that rhyme with it.”
“I don’t know French, either,” said George.
Nobody told George that poetry doesn’t have to rhyme.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Other pirates would drink all night, and then wreck their rowboats on the way back to the ship.
George usually ended up as a designated rower, or he’d call an Uber rowboat, even though he never drank excessively like others did.
His shipmates mocked him for his cautiousness.
“You’re a pirate!” they shouted. “You’re supposed to be drunk and careless!”
George stuck to his routine, and he got back to the ship safely.
Just in time to throw life preservers out to his reckless shipmates, thrashing in the water.