George’s personas

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
After several failed attempts to pillage, loot, and plunder, George consulted a marketing firm to work up customer personas so he could better target his pirating services.
The firm returned a report that laid out generic personalities that George should target, such as merchant ship owners, small badly-defended ports, and sailors on Spanish galleons full of gold.
George thanked the marketing firm, and then looted their offices.
“But we didn’t list marketing firms in the report!” they said.
George shrugged, and rolled their color copier back to his ship.

George and Bob Uecker

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
You know, like how Bob Uecker was a mediocre baseball player.
At least Bob was in beer commercials, movies, television shows, and did play-by-play for the Milwaukee Brewers.
George was a pirate. Nothing else.
He tried to do play-by-play for his pirate ship, but the crew found it really annoying when he narrated their battles.
He’d rattle of statistics and other nonsense as they fought and he sat.
“I must be in the front row!” George said, as two rather large pirates picked him up and threw him overboard.

George in the lineup

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
If George were arrested for his crimes on the high seas, people wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup.
“Number three,” the sea captain says.
“That’s a circus clown,” says the detective. “Try again.”
“Six?”
“There isn’t a number six.”
“Oh, wait… I know… number 201.”
“That’s the room number on the door.”
Exasperated, the detective dismisses the lineup, and George is released.
To go back to his ship, free to be a pirate once again.
Knowing, that if he ever gets caught, not to worry.

George’s wine collection

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
His shipmates drank rum and grog, while he maintained a wine cellar in a corner of the ship’s hold.
He kept it hidden from the others, stacking up a pile of old sails and crates.
Every now and then, someone would spot George tossing an empty bottle over the rail into the sea.
“Oh, sorry,” he’d say, “that’s the last one. If only you’d been around when I opened it.”
One day, they took heavy cannonfire, and George’s precious wine collection was smashed to bits.
George wept for days.

Weekly Challenge #980 – Teach

The next topic is COMMENT

NORVAL JOE

Billbert wandered toward his English class wondering who the red-haired girl might be, and why she would be spying on him. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her before, but she was clearly a student at the school.

Behind him, someone said, “I should teach you a lesson.”

Billbert wondered who they might be talking to when another someone grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around, and snarled, “Are you ignoring me?”

The bully who had harassed him before was flanked by his two goons.

Not far behind them, a girl with red hair and freckles watched, obviously interested.

RICHARD

— Hooked! —
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll disappear every weekend, come rain or shine, to sit on river banks and neglect his family and responsibilities.
When he’s not actually fishing, he’ll be spending his time in bars and pubs, bragging about the size of his catches, and boring anyone who cares to listen about ‘the one that got away’.
Tasks at home will be left incomplete, the wife and kids left to fend for themselves, he’s never there when he’s needed.
Please, never teach a man to fish.

SERENDIPIDY

I always wanted to teach.
Whilst my contemporaries wanted to be nurses and vets, I’d already set my sights on becoming a teacher, and so, that’s what I became.
Kids are great. Those young minds: so malleable and enquiring. Like sponges ready to soak up knowledge and concepts.
Perfect receptacles for receiving my special indoctrination.
Thousands of them passed through my hands, my mini-acolytes and disciples, all of them being primed and made ready for the Day of Reckoning.
And it’s coming soon.
So, you’d better watch your children, because, come the hour…
They’ll be coming to get you!

LIZZIE

She would always hold a book and ask the kids to “read” from it. On each page, nothing but a few smudges and a handful of lost letters. The kids would then come up with a story. She would write it down on the blackboard, making everyone cringe and giggle when the chalk squeaked. The story would be copied to a notebook which would find its way onto a bookshelf. The next day, the same old smudges, the same old lost letters would inspire a new story. She hoped the kids would remember this for the rest of their lives.

LISA

Working Late
Ambulance Staff, Nurses and Doctors bustled around the bed. The surgeon was on call. Her Husband, whilst working late, had somehow had a car accident. She watched the monitors, the staff fuss around him, someone was saying they couldn’t save his leg
And then another victim of the RTA arrived on a trolley: his passenger.
Unrecognisable beneath the blood. But blonde.
Blonde, like the hair she’d found in their bed; she’d wanted to teach him a lesson he’d never forget but thought maybe he’d already learnt something tonight and left him and his mistresses to sort things out for themselves.

TOM

Luck of the Irish

My great grandfather came from Cork. He was from a long line of doctors stretching back into vailed time. He was not interested in the healing ways; he was into making money. No better place to make your way in the world was Chicago in the 1800s. Did very well for himself. That’s until he and a bunch of his fellow traders on the mercantile exchange tried to corner the wheat market. They came damn close, but no banana. Which try I’m not famously rich and do not prowl the hall of the powerful and connected. Better off for it.

A Calling.

I thought I had a calling in my youth. The choice in my faith was Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, Benedictines, Carmelites, Salesians, Cistercians, Trappists. In the 70s all the orders were happily open to bring you into their flock. I chose the Augustinians because I thought my calling was to teach. The Tolentine Seminary was two miles from my home. Augustinian’s priests said mass at my local church. I took the application tests down the street at St. Rita’s. In a tiny clerical error, I ended up not attending minor seminary. I never became a priest, but did become a teacher.

PLANET Z

Those who can’t do teach, and you would think Mr. Johnson the shop teacher’s missing fingers and eyepatch would prove it.
But the guy used to be a zookeeper, and he had a nasty habit of doing things with the animals that you’ll never find in the brochures, and a rather feisty and proud wolverine let the guy know that no means no.
Some say that he’s also got a bad habit with the cheerleaders, and one bit off his fingers and poked out his eye, but as long as he keeps his hands on the bandsaw, I’m okay, really.

George walks the dog

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
The only hostage he ever took was the family dog.
And the truth was, he was taking it for a walk.
When the kids asked if they could have a dog, they said they’d care for it and walk it, but they didn’t.
“If I have to take this thing for a walk one more time, I’m taking it to the pound,” announced George.
The next day, George took the dog for a walk… to the pound.
Then he walked to the nearest pirate ship and joined the crew.

George metrics

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Instead of repeatedly telling George that he wasn’t a very good pirate, which was slowing a lot of things down on the ship, the other pirates used the ship’s metrics tracking application to pile on George.
Pretty soon, the entire message wall was full of nasty notes and sniping.
George didn’t read any of it. He preferred to watch cat videos.
The other pirates complained about that, too.
George finally logged on and complained that everyone was typing up bad reviews instead of looting and pillaging.
The captain agreed.

George’s new career

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Or, at least that’s what the other pirates said.
When George took a serious look at his mistakes, he realized that only a few of them were genuinely his fault,.
A large amount of the problems were, in fact, other pirates screwing up, but blaming George.
This made George very frustrated. And very angry.
But would anyone listen? Would anything change?
He thought about the captain… the biggest screw-up of all.
Probably not.
George shrugged and “fell” overboard.
As he swam for shore, he thought about a new career.

George worships a potato

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He’d bonked his head on the bulkhead and taken to worshipping a potato.
Eventually, the potato would rot and begin to smell.
Pirates don’t smell good to begin with, so when his crewmates complained about the smell, you know it was bad.
George would drop the old potato overboard and get a fresh potato to worship.
“It’s like the Dalai Lama and his reincarnations,” said George. “Except with a potato.”
George bonked his head on the bulkhead and stopped worshipping the potato.
“They worship me now,” he whispered, grinning.

George gets merged

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He read the headlines about corporate mergers among media giants, and he figured that it was only a matter of time before it would spread to the pirate community.
Sure enough, a Disney executive showed up with a briefcase full of cash and contracts.
“We want to create a real Pirates of the Carribean tourist experience,” he said. “Interested?”
George took the executive hostage and held him for ransom.
And he tore up the contracts. Better to sail under the Jolly Roger than the despicable mouse ears of Disney.