1
A LONELY SHOE
MONDAY
It was morning and Jack’s head was still hidden under his duvet. It wasn’t that Jack didn’t like mornings. It was just that he would have preferred them if they happened slightly later in the day. Maybe half past eleven. Possibly even later on the weekends.
“Jack! Time to get up,” Jack’s mother yelled from downstairs. “You don’t want to be late for school.”
It was a strange thing for his mother to yell. After all, being late for school was something that didn’t worry Jack in the slightest.
Rubbing his eyes with both hands, he crawled from under the duvet and peeped out of his curtains. The sun was beaming down through a cloudless sky. Jack found this annoying, as it meant that P.E. would be outside today. Getting sweaty and tired was bad, but getting sweaty and tired and muddy was even worse.
As Jack looked out the window he noticed a single shoe lying in the middle of the road.
“How did that get there?” he wondered. To Jack, a shoe lying in the middle of the road was annoying. There was no sensible or reasonable explanation for it, and Jack hated unexplained mysteries. When reading detective books he almost always found himself flipping to the last few pages to find out who the murderer was. An unexplained mystery felt almost physically uncomfortable, like an unscratched itch or a crumpled sock inside a shoe.
By the time Jack got downstairs his cereal was getting soggy. Jack’s father’s mustache appeared over the top of his newspaper. As always, Jack’s father’s face quickly followed the mustache. Jack’s father’s face and Jack’s father’s mustache had a sort of double act going in that way. You rarely saw one without the other.
“Morning, Jack,” said the mustache.
“Morning, Dad.”
“Eat your cereal,” said Jack’s mother.
Jack poked his cereal with a spoon and frowned. Why did parents always make you do things that you didn’t want to do? In Jack’s books heroes were almost always orphans, or their parents had been kidnapped, or they just didn’t seem to feel the need for parents at all. After all, Peter Pan probably would never have defeated Captain Hook if his parents had been around. They would never have let him use a pointed sword, for a start. And it’s almost impossible to kill a maniacal pirate with a pair of safety scissors.
Jack thought that maybe people only ever became heroes because they didn’t have parents.
The mustache looked at its watch. “You’ll have to get a move on if you want to catch your bus.”
“Here’s your P.E. kit.” Jack’s mother handed him a bag. “I washed it.”
Jack looked halfheartedly at the bag. It made him wonder about heroes again. If heroes didn’t have parents, then who did their laundry? As far as he could remember, Peter Pan never found himself wrestling with an enchanted washing machine and a pair of magically dirty pants.2
“Mum,” Jack said in his nicest voice, “I don’t suppose you could give me a note to get out of P.E.?”
His mother sighed. She had heard this before. “What is it about P.E. that you hate so much?”
“Partly getting muddy, but mainly P.E. teachers.”
“Not a good enough reason. So, no note.”
It was Jack’s turn to sigh as he picked up his schoolbag and P.E. kit. As he was walking out the door he stopped and turned around to his parents. “Mum, how hard is it to do your own laundry? Would it take me a long time to wash my own clothes?”
She arched an eyebrow as she looked at him. “Well, the ironing might take you a while. You wouldn’t have much free time if you had to do it.”
“I’m glad I’m not a hero, then,” Jack said as he left to catch his bus.
The mustache looked at Jack’s mother. “That boy gets stranger all the time.”
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
PIRATES
KILLING WITH SAFETY SCISSORS
Many people will tell you it is impossible to kill pirates with safety scissors. However, it is only almost impossible. You can kill pirates with a pair of safety scissors but you have to persuade them to lie still for an awfully long time before you can achieve it. And even if you do persuade them to lie down in the first place they tend to get bored halfway through and wander off to dig up some treasure or pillage a Caribbean island.
Copyright © 2016 by Paul Gamble
