Gum Drops and Candy Cigarettes Give You Cancer

A Chapter by HighBrowCulture

The Fifth.

-5-

Gum Drops and Candy Cigarettes Give You Cancer

Sullivan Duckett Jr. A man with a unique 9-digit number like a Jew so the government knows exactly when and where he is and what the hell he’s up to.

Until now.

They had no idea that at this very moment the mad jackal was careening and swerving and bending and winding like a cute bullet bouncing in the belly of a giant.

But Duckett wasn’t concerned. It was all just human props. Pretty, pretty human props. A kind of makeup you dress a wound with on your wedding day until the sun shines just right and you see it and your jaw drops at a hundred miles an hour.

Karma is an assumption. But if the same amount of time that’s invested in sports and Jesus and cartoons was devoted to conditioning children to fear karma, there just might be a conscience with fire brick for a wall instead of switch grass. Only in the synthetic sense of course.

Hell is a kind of check. It encourages people to avoid doing bad things. And heaven is incentive. But it dilutes good deeds. Funny thing is even jelly fish don’t need positive and negative reinforcement, hell and heaven, to say no to genocide and war.

The first time Duckett saw karma was on the way to school one day. A bunch of teenagers tried splashing him by driving through a puddle. But they missed, went over the curb, and hit a fire hydrant. The water pressure is enough to blow teeth out. It shot straight up the undercarriage and blew one kid clean through the roof.

Duckett didn’t find it as funny as he should have. He didn’t even tell anyone at school what he saw. It might have had something to do with his age.

You see he was at the age where girls, before their n*****s are perky gum drops and their ovaries start dropping depth charges down peach chutes, are lepers. They have a bug called cooties and you have to perform daily vaccine rituals.

Circle circle dot dot

Now I’ve got my cootie shot

The cooties go away when chemicals start turning a boy’s pissing apparatus into a gorge blimp. This occurs more rapidly when women oil their bodies and twist them erotically like daisies.

Oil is a base for beautification. Paint, fatty foods, car parts, and heresy. People who used to badmouth the church were oiled and burned or boiled in oil. People get most creative when they need to figure out how to kill someone. Properly.

Duckett was part of the first generation to learn from the computer. A company called Sierra wanted to earn money and help teach so they designed the Oregon Trail (TRADEMARK). It was and will forever be the greatest video game ever made.

“Duckett you want to be in my party?”

Kevin looked like a piglet, snout and everything. This was a case where you were right to judge the book by its ugly cover.

“PSYCHE! I don’t want some Indian in my party.”

The kid was a proper moron. He believed in things which were properly false. Santa Claus, talking M & Ms (TRADEMARK), his mother when she said he was brilliant, and the fact that Native Americans were savages who deserved everything they got.

His middle name was Andrew after Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson and the rest of America had an issue with the people who had been there centuries before Jamestown. John Marshall and the Christian Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee nation was in fact not a nation at all and therefore had no right to complain. But secretly they didn’t want any savages in the court building disturbing Lady Justice. Besides, Congress had already passed an Act allowing Jackson to evict them. And law is law. Something about not paying taxes was one reason. So Jackson had his army escort them west. 4,000 didn’t make. The black slaves used their bodies to fertilize the fields.

But Kevin’s father hadn’t picked his middle name for that reason. He picked it because Andrew Jackson was Chuck Norris of the 19^th century. In a duel he let his opponent fire first. The man hit Jackson in the shoulders. History tells us that Jackson left, took a knee, aimed, and then put a slug through the b*****d’s eye. It’s a good thing he won. Otherwise America wouldn’t have been liberated from the savages.

Red for sacrifice. A few soldiers died in the service of their country cleaning out the Indians.

White for justice, equality, the purity of our legal system, and the superior race who enforced it all. They made sure the savages understood they were subhuman by law.

Blue for Kevin. It’s his favorite color. The color of tears.

After all the pioneers died of yellow fever and rattle snake bites on the Oregon Duckett and his class went out for recess.

Recess is essential to a child’s growth. There is no better time to learn social Darwinism.

Kevin and the other tyrants organized a game of kickball. Kevin and Cody were always team captains. Kevin was like Commodus and Cody was like Ronald Reagan. They took turns picking and stacking their teams. Nobody wanted to be on Kevin’s team because he was an absolute a*****e but nobody minded being on his team because he usual won. Kevin could kick the ball nearly a mile and he always picked the best players. Cody picked the kids who tried the hardest and just wanted to have fun.

Duckett was picked by Kevin in the fourth round of picking because he had a catapult for an arm. Tough some days he was off.

“Alright let’s play.”

“We still have three left to pick.”

“They suck. I don’t want them.”

Kevin bounced the ball on the tar top and waited for Cody to sympathize. That’s why Kevin won. He didn’t leave himself room for compassion especially when it came to the rules.

“Just let her try.”

“Three strikes, she’s out.”

Becky was a stick girl born with a disease that ate her leg bones and nobody knew why.

“Come on Kevin roll the ball.”

“Screw you Cody she sucks and she’s out.”

“Then I’m out. I’m not playing.”

Cody sat against the gym wall and folded his arms. Commodus hated civil disobedience as much as Andrew Jackson hated Indians.

“You’re playing a*****e.”

Some of the kids, Duckett included, covered their ears in horror. One started to snitch but two of Kevin’s minions stopped the boy.

“Get up and play Cody.”

Kevin stormed over and threw the ball. It popped against the wall feet from Kevin’s head.

“Is it cause you’re a chicken? Afraid to lose?”

Cody kept quiet. He was thinking of something his mother taught him.

Stick and stones may break my bones

But words will never hurt me

Of course you learn later on, when you’re on your own, what a terrible lie that is.

“I said get up and play a*****e!”

Kevin slugged Cody in the jaw and waited but the protester wouldn’t budge. Three other kids wer standing behind Kevin snickering and egging him on.

One of them was named Stephen after the first martyr for Jesus. Saint Stephen was stoned to death by a mob for protesting.

“Cody just play. I’m out.”

Becky was crying. She knew it was all her fault. But no one else seemed to care. Some left; some stayed and looked for stones. The girls had already learned this was a typical display of boyish hierarchy and didn’t want to waste their recess. They left and started their own game.

Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack

All dressed in black black black

With silver buttons buttons button

All down her back back back

Kevin grabbed Cody by the collar and tried pulling him to his feet. But Cody was a Martin Luther King and he sat back down.

She asked her mother for fifty cents cents cents

To see the elephants elephants elephants

Jump over the fence fence fence

Kevin and his posse finally gave up on diplomacy and started clubbing Cody. Duckett and a few others watched and imaging themselves punishing Kevin and helping Cody.

He jumped so high high high

He touched the sky sky sky

And he didn’t look back back back

Til the Fourth of July July July

Kevin and his crew finished and left. Cody covered his wet eyes and bloodied nose with his Sonic the Hedgehog t-shirt. Nobody helped him because social Darwinism requires isolated self-preservation.

He jumped so low low low

He stubbed his toe toe toe

And that’s the end end end

Of the elephant show show show

Becky wanted in next but recess was over. The girls were glad because Becky was the slowest clapper and always stuttered the words. Becky shrugged and followed everyone else inside. No one remembered Cody until the teacher noticed he was missing.

“Where’s Cody?”

No one said a thing. They watched Kevin out of the corners of their eyes.

“I think he’s in the bathroom.”

The piglet smiled.

Cody came back a few minutes later and said he’d tripped playing kickball. Kevin never got in trouble. Karma waited 12 more years to pay him back and oh how it did. In full. He died from alcohol poisoning at a college frat party. The killer was moonshine. Andrew Jackson had gallons of it at his inauguration party. Three people died drinking in the name of democracy.

Red. White. And blue. But that was before drinking was considered a problem.

Duckett learned a valuable lesson from all this. Lying can and does get you out of trouble.

Pinky promise.

A list of Duckett and other American kids’ favorite toys:

-Yo-yo.

-Slip’ n Slide.

-Gigapet.

-Beanie Babies.

-Sega.

-Pokemon cards.

-Skip It.

-Water guns.