Colonel Birdwhistle’s Constant Hat

October 15, 2013.Reading time 5 minutes.

The children here in Portsong constantly ask why my head is rarely found without a cover and you might be wondering the same thing. So please, sit beside me here on the yellow bench and I’ll tell you my story. It may surprise you to know that although my face is full of whiskers, the dome above my beard has nary a hair upon it. This all started when I was but a young Captain in His Majesty’s service in Africa. In those days, I rarely had the chance to look into a mirror. But somewhere along the line, I believe when I was in my thirties, I noticed my forehead had started to grow taller. Being young, I didn’t think a thing of it until my forehead had grown so high it stretched over the top of my head. Within a year, I had lost all of the ruddy hair I had brought into the world.

Hearing this, you might assume I now wear hats because I am vain. Rubbish! That is not the case. I don’t at all mind being bald. Since I am told he knows every hair – or lack thereof, I assume I have exactly as many as God intends me to have. Looking down, he sees my head’s reflection much more than I do. If my head is fine by him, then it is fine by me.

My zeal for hats came about quite by accident. It so happened, the unit in my command drew a patrol assignment that had us pitching camp in the savannah for a fortnight. We had done this many times. We knew the dangers and how to avoid them. After one particularly draining day, I bedded down under the dark African sky. How I loved sleeping in the open air – the vast grass expanse on all sides covered only by a blanket of deep blue heaven dotted with millions of tiny stars. Wild sounds and strange smells that kept a new recruit awake had become a soothing lullaby to me. On this night, I had no trouble finding sleep and rested comfortably until I was roused by a feather tickling my nose. I opened my eyes to see my alarmed men staring at me, obviously unsure of what to do.

The feather in my nose was surrounded by others and connected to a two-hundred pound bird perched just above my head, ready to sit. Whilst I slept, she had scratched the grass and straw around me into a crude nest and now decided it was time to try it out. The men had their rifles at the ready, but wouldn’t shoot with my head so near the target. Fortunately, just before she plopped on top of me, a sharp young private fired a warning shot into the air making her squawk so loud she took part of my hearing with her as she fled into the night. But that wasn’t the last we saw of her and her maternal instincts. Convinced my head was her egg, the relentless ostrich followed us for two weeks trying to sit on me any time I came to rest. Although they wouldn’t laugh around their superior officer, my men found it hilarious. (In the course of time, I had to agree…it was quite funny.)

When we finally returned to our post, the forlorn bird disappeared and I took up the habit of wearing hats. Not all are for protection, some are simply for style. After an incident with a certain young lad here in town, I have often returned to wearing my pith helmet for safety. But that is a story for a different day.

And now you know why Colonel Clarence J. Birdwhistle is rarely found without a hat.

Math for Boys – Virgil’s Theory of Relative Trouble

October 11, 2013.Reading time 4 minutes.

There’s lotsa things about school I don’t get. I know I’ll never catch on to grammar. There are way too many excepts in the “i before e” rule to keep up. Whoever thought up English oughta be dragged out to a field somewhere and beat with a mackerel. Ms. Singer will never give me plus marks for my handwriting. She puts “be neater” in big red letters at the top of everything I hand in. That makes me mad. Teachers shouldn’t grade angry. One time, she must have been grading real angry because she tore the page and her red ink looked like it said, “be nexter”. So I walked it back up to her desk and asked her what “nexter” was. She just let out a big sigh, threw up her hands, and stomped out of the classroom. I don’t know where she went, but she was a lot calmer when she came back. She stomps out a lot when I ask her stuff.

I might not understand grammar, but I get math. I don’t know why, numbers just make sense to me. Math can be useful to a boy, especially one like me who finds himself in trouble all the time. I’ve come up with what I call my Theory of Relative Trouble and it all has to do with estimation. Here’s how it goes: A boy’s reaction to trouble is directly proportionate to its estimated potential. My brother Webster helped me come up with the big words, but the theory is all mine!

Example: You knock down a stack of apples at Gentry’s store, do you:

A) Apologize and help him clean it up?

B) Run out of the store and down the street?

C) Knock over a display of walnuts to cause a diversion?

I can promise that A is not the answer. Only my pal Henry would help him out and he’s got more manners than any boy I know. He is what you call an exception, so A is out for the rest of us. If you chose C, I like your style, but it’s really an overreaction when you go back to my theory of estimation. You have to consider the trouble. The correct answer is B, run, and I’ll tell ya why. First of all, nobody really likes old Gentry, so they won’t go in to help him catch you when you run. Second, he’s big in the belly and I’ve seen him breath heavy just from sweeping his stoop. So he can’t chase you and if he does, it won’t be for long. Third, if by some stroke of back luck, someone like Sheriff Whitaker happened to be outside and grabbed you by the collar, the sum of trouble wouldn’t be great. You’d just have to clean up the apples (and walnuts if you tried that angle, heh-heh.)

So, the equation goes something like this: R ά pT, or reaction is proportionate to the potential trouble. In order to use this equation properly, you have to plan your trouble well in advance and we all know that boys don’t plan much of anything – things just happen. So we always have to have a back-up plan in our pocket. I like to call my plan tearing out (AKA: running like your backsides on fire.) I’ll cover that the next time they let me type on this thing…if they can catch me.