Category: My stories

“George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.”
That’s written in the center of The George The Pirate game board.
Players roll dice and move their ship tokens around it.
You can land on Treasure and pick up gold, Shipwreck Rock and lose a turn, or Port to resupply.
If you land on someone’s space, you have a battle.
Then there’s the Uh Oh spaces. You draw an Uh Oh card.
Lots of bad things can happen.
The captain looked over the game on the table.
“Cute,” he said. “But I asked you to clean the cannons.”

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He’d been taking to long periods of melancholy and self-doubt.
Or he’d obsess on the most esoteric things.
“A container is a container because it contains things,” said George. “If it’s empty, is it still a container.”
“Well, it still contains nothing, right?” said the captain.
“Yes, but nothing is nothing,” said George. “I don’t think it counts.”
“What if a container has the potential to contain things?” said George.
As the two debated, their ship drifted closer and closer to the massive container ship they’d planned to raid.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Consultants put together a focus group to figure out what was wrong with George.
“Why doesn’t he have an eyepatch?” said a housewife from Burbank. “And a peg leg. And a hook for a hand.”
“George is such a weak name,” said a lawyer from Thousand Oaks. “Maybe some color of beard could be his name?”
Others suggested that George be recast as a sidekick to a better pirate.
They prepared a report for George, who threw it in the trash.
Along with all of their invoices and bills.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He hadn’t planned on becoming a pirate.
He hadn’t planned on eighty thousand dollars in student loans, either.
All for a Bachelor’s degree in Social Justice.
Nobody would hire him.
“What if you paid for me to get my Masters and PhD?” he’d ask the interviewers.
Security escorted him out.
George tried to organize protests against them, but nobody would join.
“Call us when you have a Masters or PhD,” said the ACLU.
That night, George noticed some pirates robbing the company’s warehouse.
George smiled, and he joined them.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
His annual reviews reflected this, and George got “Needs Improvement” while other pirates got “Meets Expectations” or “Exceeds Expectations.”
George didn’t get a raise or bonus, and he envied the other pirates for their fancy new gold teeth and shiny new cutlasses.
Rummy Joe showed off his bright new parrot. “He speaks five languages,” he said.
George sighed and went back to work.
He figured that whoever got killed, he’d just loot their body for the coins, pry out their gold teeth, and exchange his old cutlass for theirs.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
So he quit his job, started a supply company, and he sold high-quality equipment to ship captains.
Pirates would then attack the ships and steal the supplies.
He indirectly became the most popular brand of pirate supplies in the world.
Pirates would proudly wear his George the Pirate gear, and civilian posers would buy it up to look cool, only for the pirates to steal.
He started a chain restaurant franchise, built a theme park.
Proudly shouting “THAR SHE BLOWS!” and cutting the opening day ribbon with his cutlass.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was always stopping and asking for directions.
This was awkward at best, and dangerous at worst.
Stopping in the middle of a battle for directions led to many unnecessary confrontations.
Trying to make the best of it, the crew would board and capture the enemy vessels.
One time, George got so lost, he wound up on the moon.
Nobody’s sure how he managed that, but the lack of air made it very hard to sail.
And breathe.
“Hard to starboard!” gasped the captain, and the ship turned around.