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MIRTH
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THE
NOT-SO LATEST
December
14, 1999 by
Patrick
Keller In
his spare time, Eddie Campbell
broke the laws of
physics. It
all began on an ordinary Saturday
in the late spring. Eddie woke up
and promptly fingered himself in
the eye. Eddie's coordination was
atrocious, especially in the
mornings. This was not the sort
of boy one would expect to
discover ways of doing the
impossible. He
blinked a few times, and after
regaining some sense of depth,
finally managed to rub the sleep
out of his eyes. Still
half-asleep, he put on his
slippers and plodded down the
stairs. Exactly
five seconds later, Eddie felt a
sharp pain in his ankle, the kind
of pain which one usually gets
from stepping on a
dog. Not
that stepping on a dog is
particularly painful (it can
actually be strangely
pleasurable, depending on the
breed of dog) but the dog's
reaction usually is. "Sorry
there, Wag," Eddie said to his
dog, who was, in fact, named
after a verb. The boy tried to
simultaneously subdue the pain in
his ankle and pet the dog, both
of which he completely and
utterly failed to do. Instead, he
rubbed the wrong ankle and poked
the dog in the eye, which
probably served Wag right for
sleeping on the stairs again.
Eddie gave up and walked the rest
of the way down the
stairs. He
plopped down in the den, and was
immediately startled by his
mother's voice, yelling at him
from the other room about the
as-yet unproven link between
distance to the television and
blindness in young children. The
TV wasn't even on yet, but his
mother had a sixth sense about
those sorts of things. Eddie's
father, Edwin Michael Campbell,
Senior, was sitting on the couch
behind Eddie, re-reading his
notes from the previous night's
experiments. Or so he would claim
if anyone had bothered to ask
him. To the impartial observer,
it might instead appear that he
was asleep and drooling.
The
sound of Eddie turning on the TV
startled him awake. When he
looked up, he had to double check
that this was not a particularly
vivid dream. After all, rarely
outside of the dreamworld does
one encounter one's own son
floating several inches off the
floor, and if one does, it's
always a cause for worry. Knowing
his son was neither a practicing
monk nor an amateur magician,
Edwin was able to narrow the
possibilities of exactly what was
happening very quickly: His son
was violating one of Newton's
laws. In his living room, no
less. And
on top of all that, he was
entirely too close to the
set. Edwin
smacked the boy and told him not
to do any of it again or he would
take away a week's
allowance. Eddie
just grinned. That
next day, Eddie skipped baseball
practice and read through a
textbook he had stolen from his
father's office. Each chapter
would begin with some immutable
law of physics. In large bold
letters. Red ones. Eddie
would read each one carefully to
figure out exactly what each rule
said can't be done. And then
Eddie would do it. Breaking
the speed of light was the most
difficult. Not that the actual
speed was difficult to attain;
actually, Eddie found that he
could do this quite easily. The
hard part was not blowing up old
Wag. Ever the faithful pet, Wag
absolutely refused to leave
Eddie's side. Even when the boy
became a relativistic blur.
Returning to this side of quantum
physics, Eddie noticed that the
friction and sonic booms he had
left in his wake had destroyed
massive amounts of the lawn,
broken windows for miles and left
Wag permanently deaf. Eddie
walked sheepishly inside his
house and hoped no one would
notice. It took Wag several
minutes to notice Eddie was gone,
but then Wag limped home as
well. That
night, Eddie's dad came home and
noticed that not only was the
lawn in cinders and the driveway
gone, but the dog was missing
most of his hair and refused to
come out of the basement. At
first, Mr. Campbell suspected the
Russians, but then he remembered
what his son had done that
morning. He gave Eddie his famed
lecture number
fourteen1, but the boy
refused to fess up. On
Monday, Eddie figured that the
best way to avoid another mess
(or worse, another lecture) was
to change his method a little. He
would begin by violating the
smaller theorems and work his way
up to the bigger laws. This
particular time, he began by
shifting the decimal point in
Avogadro's number while his
brother Alex lifted weights. The
dumbbells would become incredibly
light on the way up, and suddenly
get unbelievably heavy on the way
down. Eddie watched with glee as
the weights fell to the ground
with a thud, cracking the
concrete in the basement floor
(which, it is worth noting, were
still covered with glass from the
shattered windows). In utter
disbelief, his brother ran to get
one of his friends to try the
dumbbells for him. After they
inevitably found the weights
normal again, Eddie repeated the
decimal shift until his brother
got so frustrated that he had to
be sedated. (It
was only later that Eddie fully
realized the chaos that his last
little stunt had caused. He had
single-handedly managed to
disrupt weight-lifting
tournaments and workouts all over
the world. Not to mention
generated millions in business
for the dieting
industry.) His
father arrived home shortly
thereafter and noticed that Eddie
hadn't swept up the glass or
walked Wag , who had become
increasingly paranoid and nearly
incontinent, like he was supposed
to. Plus, Alex was a vegetable.
While he couldn't pin that on
Eddie, it was hard to dispute the
neglected chores. The elder
Campbell launched into his
patented lecture number
four2. "You
know, Eddie," Edwin Senior said
at one point, "the Earth does not
revolve around you." So, just for
fun when his father wasn't
looking, Eddie increased his mass
exponentially, causing the Earth
to revolve around him, just for a
moment. That
evening after dinner, Mr.
Campbell told his two sons that
he had the honor of hosting the
annual Post-Academic Year
cocktail party at the house on
Friday. All Dr. Campbell's
physicist colleagues would be
there and both boys were expected
to be on their best behavior,
which was not a problem for poor
Alex who was still seriously
overmedicated and could barely
sit up enough at the dinner table
to drool in his soup. Then, while
mother was cleaning up the table
and dragging Alex away, Edwin
Senior took special care to take
his younger son aside and tell
him to stop his little
experiments. "These little
'episodes' could put me out of a
job, Eddie." Mr. Campbell thought
he noticed a glint in his son's
eyes, but he wasn't sure. So he
dismissed the boy to his
room. Of
course, Eddie completely ignored
his father's commands and kept
practicing. And practicing
usually entails
mistakes... Footnotes: 1"Why
It Is Very Bad To Incinerate The
Yard." (c) 1956, E. M. Campbell
Sr. 2"Personal
Responsibility" AKA "When I Was
Your Age, I Had To Do Four Hours
Of Chores To Do Before I Could
Even Think About
Playing."
Part
Two coming soon, unless I get a
hail of protest. But if y'all
like this, I might try it more
often. Any
resemblance between this column
and Patrick Keller is purely
coincidental. This story and all
the contents of this message are
(c) 1999 Patrick Keller, Gern
Blansten Productions. You may
redistribute this piece, provided
the text is unaltered and it
contains this notice. As always,
if you know someone sick and
twisted who might like this
stuff, let me know. Blah blah
blah e-mail me at
blansten@iname.com
blah blah blah
Also
featured in the not-so
latest: All
contents of this web site -- even the
periods -- are TM & © Patrick
Keller, Gern Blansten Productions, so
don't try to steal 'em. Any unlawful
distribution, copying or non-educational
use is highly frowned upon, and will be
prosecuted when I get enough money to hire
a lawyer. Violators will be spanked.
Shoplifters will be persecuted.
Prosecutors will be violated. |
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