Hypothetically Heckling Hyperbolically
Scene: If Huey had been a couple years younger and able to overhear Ronny and Elmer’s peri-drowning conversation...
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(TL;DR)
Ronny: Magic mirror of the sea, who is the unlikeliest to smile besides me?
Huey: Me.
Elmer: True that. Psyche! It’s me.
Ronny: Shit.
Elmer: Cope. I do. Anyway, you’re going to make Maiza smile, and you’re gonna like it. You’ll like it till you drop dead from smiling!
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Ronny: Mortal, I can grant you power beyond your wildest dreams. Perfect immortality. Freezing time. Extreme farsightedness. Command over the human race. Money go brr. Anything. Anything! Think big. Bigger. BIGGER. Think deep.
“After thinking for a little while...”
Elmer: s m i l e
Ronny: Elaborate.
Elmer: Laugh from the bottom of your heart, at the top of your lungs, like you’re having fun, like you’re overjoyed. Woo me like one of your French girls, bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, lips parted just so in the latest fashion of joie de vivre. Tell me how you smile, you who are called a demon, and what makes you really and truly happy.
Ronny: What? No. Who are you.
Huey: Addict. Smile Junkie. Joyster.
Ronny: Listen. Before you are two buttons. The red one can get you permanently clean on the spot. The blue one gets you a one-time BSOD except the :( is a :). Choose wisely.
Elmer: :)
Ronny:
Ronny: This is the most difficult, most challenging, most unfeasible wish ever asked of me. You ask for what is impossible now, nigh impossible in the near future, and forever the unlikeliest of the unlikely to occur.
Huey: Oh, God, don’t encourage him.
Elmer: so what I’m hearing is that there’s a chance
Huey: Elmer, remember when I asked you “would a man who had no personal experience with happy smiles be able to give them to others?” and you went ‘point taken?’ Think carefully.
Elmer: So, what you want to do, Ron, what you do in this sort of situations is you attach yourself to someone else in similar smileless straits, straits sans smiles to quote your French girls, and you make them your pet—pet project, yeah, and you just, you know, do what it takes until they give you a laugh right from the gut. Ron, I betcha anything you’ll be able to smile after that, I mean, we’re talking my tried and true methods here. And partner, if we reunite, smile then, because you owe me—I love ya, Ron, but I’ll find you, and you’d better be glad that you met me again. ‘I can smile now! How d’ya like them apples?!’ …I’ll even take a reason like that, so please, show me your smile.
Ronny: Methods?
Huey: His only one.
Ronny: Has it ever worked?
Huey: No.
Elmer: It worked on you.
Huey: You know which party he meant.
Elmer: Look, I was going to suggest that Ronny stick close to Maiza, what with the dead brother and other dead so-and-sos being a real bummer and all, but... I guess I could wish for Ronny to tag alone with me until I smile for real instead...
Ronny: Wait. Hold on. Wait, demon, there’s still time to change my wish—I hadn’t pressed it y—Maiza! I wish for Maiza! My mind is made up.
Elmer: Ah, you’ve chosen the blue button after all. I figured you would.
Huey: Dare I ask why you didn’t wish for my smile?
Elmer: Well... When weighing my options, I like to choose the one that has the highest chance of succeeding.
Huey: So that’s why you didn’t wish for a genuine smile to call your own, Mr. Empty Ending?!
Elmer: Words can’t hurt me :). Not if I’m empty, right? You should try it sometime oh wait you are. What was that about failed methods, again? Cheer up! You know you want to you. You’ll never best me in the sans émotions racket, so you may as well give up and smile. Come on. Give up. Embrace failure. It’s futile to grieve the dead, but to be so delusional as to try and Lazarus-Frankenstein your wife when not even Ronny can? Move on. Smile for me like your French mother.
Ronny: Mortal, heed me as I literally drown out your words via an ocean of hurt.
Elmer: Huey’s mom :) would know :) a thing or two about that :). Hey, Huey, look to your right, I think I can see Monica from here! Smile and wave!
Huey: The line is breaking up—sounds—gargling?—can’t hear—
Elmer: Remember, demon, that with but a smile you summon meeeee!
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i’m struggling to get to sleep a little, so i’m going back over childhood memories and stumbled across one that was almost a one hit KO.
I read a lot as a kid. My parents encouraged this, and got me a lot of books. Enough that, at one point, early in the morning and the only one awake, I was able to cover nearly every square inch of our living room in books. This probably led my parents to the realization that I, perhaps, had too many books, and we should get rid of some.
I was fine with that. I didn’t like to read books twice, you see, because I already knew where they were going and they didn’t entertain me anymore. That’s a philosophy that has changed, somewhat, with age, but that’s besides the point— there were a few books I wanted to keep. Strawberry Shortcake and something to do with mermaids. The few issues of the Beano I had. The Tin Soldier.
My parents boxed up a ton of books, and handed them in to my first grade classroom. Multiple large boxes of books. A comical amount of books. My teacher, Mrs. B, was very appreciative, But.
I don’t remember how this was uncovered. I don’t remember how I realized it, but… the tin soldier had been given away too. I didn’t mention it a paragraph ago, but it was my favourite book. I loved that book. It was about a tin soldier, missing a leg, in love with a princess or a ballerina. He got lost, or dropped, or maybe went on an adventure, I don’t recall, but in the end found his way back to the princess and was happy.
We did look through those boxes. Didn’t find it.
In sixth grade, I moved.
Well— technically, it was the summer between fifth and sixth grade that I moved. Still. In the years between, we never found that book. I had honestly forgotten about it. Sure, I had cried, but I did eventually find other books.
I guess word got around that I was moving. It was… something like the last day of school— not quite the end, but close. I remember snow on the ground, grey and slushy and mostly gone. I was just getting on the school bus to go home when Mrs. B came bustling out of the school.
She caught my backpack handle to get my attention, and I stopped on the steps of the school bus, looking down at her for what may well have been the last time I ever saw her. She had a book in her frail hands. The Tin Soldier.
She had never forgotten. She kept looking for that book. There was an apple sticky note on the front, addressed to me. It said some incredibly kind things, though most of the words are lost to memory. Encourage your creativity, I think, was the gist of it.
I just. Four years. She kept looking for that book for me for four years. I still have it, now, over a decade later. She must have had other, more important things to do. Four years! Where on earth had it been? I still don’t know, can’t imagine what could have possibly happened to it in the interim short of it slipping into a dimensional pocket. I loved that teacher.
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