Category: Talk Like A Pirate Day

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
You’re supposed to treat your Jolly Roger flag with utmost care, but George had a bad habit of leaving it out in a storm, and it would end up soaked and ragged.
Or he’d wash it with the reds, and it would come out with a pink skull and crossbones instead of white.
So he’d put in a cup of bleach, and out would come a solid white flag.
George sold it to the French Navy.
And with the money he got for it, bought a new Jolly Roger.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was fascinated with the ship in a bottle in the captain’s cabin.
The bottle was one of many that the captain had consumed since George had joined the crew.
The boat, the captain had made it himself, painstakingly fitting and gluing each piece together.
In spite of his shaky hands, the result of drinking so much. Because of George.
“Do you think I could get a job on that boat?” whispered George. “Would you write me a letter of recommendation?”
The captain pulled out another bottle and drank.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Above his bunk, he’d carved BE A BETTER PIRATE.
So it would be the first thing he’d see in the morning, and the last thing he saw at night.
He’d wake up and read that note and think “Yes, I can be a better pirate!”
And then go through his day, proving himself wrong with every screwup, mistake, and accident.
When the day was blessedly over, George would drag his battered and bruised body back into his bunk.
Seeing the note, smirking and muttering “Yeah, right!”
And falling asleep.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
The captain demoted George down to work in the galley.
George saw this as an opportunity to improve the ship’s food.
He refurbished the galley with new equipment, and he filled the shelves with cookbooks and spices.
The cheap tinware of old wouldn’t be good enough for George… he filled the cupboard with the finest dinnerware and placesettings.
When all was ready, he showed it to the captain.
“There’s no room for any food, you idiot,” the captain said.
George pawned everything to buy crates of hardtack and jerky.

“George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.”
The old man sat on the steps of the library, muttering these eleven words over and over.
He didn’t take any notice of the rain or the passers-by.
Saying those words in an endless loop.
Like some mantra, chanted by a guru on the bank of a mystic river to appease the gods.
And then he stopped.
Standing up slowly, shaky, bending over… falling down the steps.
Landing at the bottom, lying still, face to the heavens.
Were those tears, or was it just the rain on his face.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Until a radioactive spider bit him.
George spent three days in his bunk, shivering and fevering, only getting up to throw up and go back to bed.
After three days, George didn’t climb the walls or shoot webs from his hands.
Nor did he put on a red and blue costume and fight crime.
No, George was dying from radiation sickness.
All of his hair fell out, he threw up a lot more, and he lost a lot of weight.
And then he died.
His crewmates threw him overboard.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He kept a diary of his adventures, and he turned them into a webcomic.
George wasn’t very good at drawing, but thanks to templates and the creation platform, it didn’t take much to arrange the stock images and then add the text for a decent story.
Creating tavern and beach scenes was easy, but any time he tried to create a comic panel with pirate ships on the sea, the browser window crashed.
“Lousy sea panel!” grumbled George, rebooting his tablet and hoping the system had saved his work.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was usually the first pirate to be out when the crew played Simon Says.
He’d sit on the rail and watch the birds while the other pirates kept playing.
Eventually, there’d be a winner, and the group would regather to play another round.
George would lose quickly again, and go back to watching the birds.
“You’re not very good at this, are you?” asked the captain.
“I have no idea,” said George. “I try to lose quickly so I can go back to watching birds.”
And he smiled.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
When the captain demanded that every pirate on his ship wear a uniform, every pirate put them on and stood out on the deck.
Except George.
“They’re too tight, so it’s hard to move and fight in them,” he said. “They’re bright colors, which make it hard for us to sneak around. And they’re dryclean only. Where the hell are we going to find a drycleaners out at sea?”
The captain yelled “KILL THAT REBEL!”
George easily outran them, escaped to Port Royal, and opened a Dry Cleaning shop.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
This wasn’t for a lack of planning, though.
George made elaborate plans for everything, writing up lists and working out contingency plans should something go wrong.
Of course, if those contingency plans went wrong, he’d have backup plans to those plans, too.
Keeping all of these plans in his head at once got confusing to George, and he’d end up just standing there trying to remember what he was going to do.
“What’s that smell?” said the captain.
Oh, thought George. I was on my way to the head.