kadyrabbit

Hello parents of P.S. 118, my name is Ryan Marhover, for those of you who don’t know me I am the new 4th grade Health teacher. I’ve called this meeting not because of the poor MAB test scores or any hygiene issues—though if Stinky’s parents could stay after for a bit that would be great. No, I have something a little more serious to discuss. Frankly, I’m extremelysurprised no one from outside the city limits has brought this up to you guys before—all your children’s heads are horribly disfigured.

Now I know this may be strange coming from an outsider.  As you all know I didn’t grow up in this neighborhood and I’ve had some trouble adjusting to your ways and the cold emotional-distance of city life.  I mean—you let an orphan boy grow up aloneon a stoop.  Then named him “Stoop Kid.” That’s not exactly warm community behavior.  

For the most part I’ve ignored your more strange behavior. Like that young girl I caught making out with a gum-sculpted figurine of another student—or that kid that just stands behind me breathing heavily—but I have to draw the line somewhere and I draw it at safety.

How as parents and grandparents have you not noticed that your children’s head shape?  They look like a race of mutated squash.  Our class picture legitimately looks like a cornucopia at a farmers market.  I have one student who does nothing but tell urban legends and has what I believed was a three-foot high cylindrical Afro. NOPE. Turns out that’s what his head looks like under there.

That’s not all. One child’s head has such sharp points it looks like it a mosaic of broken soda bottles.  Ironically, he actually is the Yahoo soda kid. Oh Karen your boy Sid’s nose is two-feet long—also it sort of looks like a dong. COMING OUT OF HIS FOREHEAD. But hey, let’s not forget the piece-de-resistance; I have a 4th grader with his little shrunken dwarf ears set two-feet apart on opposite ends of a gargantuan, sideways egghead. I am of course talking about Arnold.

Now a lot of things can cause the type of conditions I am talking about.  Most are fine in the long term and your kids can live a completely normal life.  However, I’m shocked that none of you—including you Bob as the Beeper King—have paged the EPA to do an inspection on your water. Don’t you think it’s odd that everyone in this neighborhood looks like this?  I mean you allown televisions; you can see that other people in other cities don’t have heads shaped like discount produce, right?  I’m afraid I have to insist that you as a community look into this before another generation of hip urban youths is affected.

I mean come on—Arnold is literally nicknamed “football head”. Look at that gigantic head he has to lug around.  Seriously, his neck is going to snap at like the slightest jostle.  Safety should be our main concern. Let’s help these kids.

Scenes from Next Year's Oscar-Nominated Biopics

Alexander Fleming’s wife lies in bed coughing pitifully, waiting for the sickness to take her. Fleming paces in the background—back and forth, back and forth—a brooding silhouette against the drawn curtains. “Alex,” she whispers, almost too softly for him to hear. He kneels down beside her, takes her hand. “Promise me…” She is overcome by another coughing fit. “Anything,” Fleming whispers back. Their eyes meet, and they both realize it’s for the last time. “Promise me you’ll find a cure for bacterial infections.” Her head falls to the pillow, and the empty space it leaves draws Fleming’s gaze to a moldy sandwich on the far nightstand.

***

“Keep dreaming, pal,” the barkeep scoffs. “No one has ever composed a symphony while deaf. It can’t be done.” “I believe what you mean to say,” Beethoven says, a twinkle in his eye, “is that no one has done it yet.”

***

The apple hits the stage floor with a thud. The audience is frozen, unsure of what they’ve just seen. Then, a few scattered murmurs, giving way to excited chatter. And then, one man in the third row rises to his feet as if drawn by invisible marionette strings, a stunned, blank look on his face. He begins to clap. Two more join him, and then entire sections, and suddenly every scientist in the auditorium is on his feet. The roar is deafening. “God damn it, Isaac,” Newton’s previously disapproving father murmurs from the back of the room. “You really did it. You really discovered gravity.”

***

“One if by land, two if by sea,” Paul Revere repeats, staring out the window. And—is this a trick of the eye? No. A light, in the distance, flickering… “They’re coming,” he whispers. “By sea.”

***

The final curtain falls and for a moment it seems as though time has stopped. And then: applause, scattered at first but building upon itself, like a snowball rolling down a hill, and now the whole auditorium is on its feet. “God damn it, Shakespeare,” whispers Shakespeare’s former lover who spurned him but is totally regretting it now. “You did it. You wrote Hamlet.”

***

“The ideas that Freud espouses are not just wrongheaded,” sputters the physician, loosening his weird little early-nineteenth century necktie, “but they are dangerous! To claim that psychopathology can be treated through a dialogue between the patient and the analyst, it—it will be the end of us all! This man must be stopped, or my name is not Wilhelm Motherpenis! Whoops, I mean—” “I rest my case,” says Freud. Everyone applauds for fifteen minutes straight.