Wednesday, December 19, 2007

a preschool mystery

Some nonsense that I wrote some time ago.

It was raining that Tuesday morning in May and the playground was closed. Worms were crawling on the sidewalk, puddles were begging to be jumped in, and here I was, trapped in a classroom with the four walls slowly closing in on me. A dark mood had settled over the room. Somber games of checkers, a few quiet puzzles, even the umbrella sword fight seemed forced. Nerves were on edge and the locals were getting twitchy. Maybe it was that our underwear was still riding up from splashing in the gutters this morning, maybe it was the knowledge that the end of school was so close we could kick it in the shin, or maybe, just maybe, it was the waiting, the uncertainty, the knowledge that at any moment...

The window panes rattled with the shock of the blast. I don't know what was worse, the thunderclap or the screams of little Betsy Widderschmidt. It didn't take much to make Betsy scream. Girls like her made me wonder why guys put so much value on large chests. To me it just meant more screaming power.

When the screaming didn't stop I looked up from last Thursday's comics page to see what was the matter. There lie Jimbo Smith, in the ruins of a Lincoln Log cabin, with a suction dart stuck to his head. Someone in this classroom had shot him and it was my job to find out who.

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