Now outside of Rosedale K-12 school, was Rosewood, a preppy rich school for the “gifted”. Gifted, my foot, these kids only got there because of their mommy and daddy’s money. Now me and my men notice we had a particular uptick in profits from the Fast Fizz Lizz sodas that we had been selling. Nothing suspicious so far, but me and Weekend Special decided to investigate why our beverage was very popular in the Rosewood area of Rose County.

We disguise ourselves as boy scouts to see what things were like outside of Rosewood at 4 pm. We approached the gate attendant and gave our spiel. “Hello” I said, “We are here for the Pinewood Derby meeting this evening”. The attendant put down his week old newspaper, and that’s when we noticed that this guy was like 80 years old with a billion wrinkles! I tried not to gag when he finally spoke with gross halitosis, “So you scouts are headed for a swell time, huh?” I nodded and looked at Weekend who was looking at a crow. I elbowed him and he shook himself and said, “Sorry boss, yup we are going to piney derb”. The attendant opened the gate and we went in.

We saw what appeared to be 8th graders all huddled around one tall kid. I immediately recognized the hombre, It was Jackson Ford the star of the Rosewood basketball team. This guy was in the local paper on breaking a Pennsylvania state record in the number of baskets for a junior high player. I was curious as to what he was doing when I saw him selling familiar bottles that a kid was calling “Cranium Gear”. What that means, I can’t tell you. But what I can tell you is that this snake was buying my product, and replacing the label and upselling it. This guy was stealing from me! I gritted my teeth, but I took a deep breath and walked over.

“Ahem”, the crowd of older kids stopped and spread thin and then surrounded me and Weekend Special. “I believe that you are selling a licensed product that you don’t have the patent for”, I asserted. Ford, glared at me and said, “Who the heck are you? You kids are from that peasant school down the road. What are you doing here?” “Yeah, what are you doing here?” said three guys next to Ford. “Yeah, what are you doing here”? Weekend Special yelled whilst pointing at me. “Weekend, you’re with me!” “Oh, sorry boss”.

“You know for a fact that you are stealing from my hard earned collective, and I won’t let you guys get away with it”. I stood as tall as I could, but the 8th graders started laughing and howling. I looked over for my back up man, Weekend and you’ll never believe where he was. No seriously you reading this, I don’t know where he was cause he vanished into thin air and I was alone with these jugheads.

I had no time to be mad, (I was furious at Weekend Special) because I was surrounded by the rivals of my enterprise. I was on enemy turf and out of my element. Between you and me I’m more of a man of brains than fighting prowess, and I was grabbed by a couple kids and tied to a wooden plank and sent adrift in the indoor pool of the school.

I couldn’t think of a more embarrassing way to go out than floating on a piece of wood in a chlorinated secret urination location. I thought all was lost until I saw my ticket to the Steelers game; a sharp edge protruding from the ladder to the deep end.

I shimmied over to it and cut myself free and grabbed the ladder and climbed out of the premature water trap.

*****

I arrived home to the base of operations soaking wet and bruised, and I told the associates working there that I’ll give them a progress report the next day.