Scott: Ashok

Catching Houdini the Rabbit was anti-climactic.  Martha saw him eating some Cherios on the kitchen floor one morning and decided to start a conversation.

“So… nice weather, huh?” she said in her most nonthreatening voice.

“My mom can smell storms coming an hour away… I bet you can smell ‘em, what, two hours away?”

Houdini looked up from his meal and wiggled his nose.

“Wow, four whole hours in advance?!  You should work for the weather channel.”

They went on to discuss politics and the pros and cons of marshmellows.  Then Martha picked him up and put him in a box without a struggle.  Now it was time to round up the gang.

She got out her seasoned violin from its case and played a familiar snippet from Robin Hood the musical that had somehow become the cattle call for Martha’s posse of third-graders.  All the walls inside the apartment building were paper-thin and at times seemed to have an amplifying effect on various instruments and especially “personal” sounds.  The four exterior walls, in contrast, were dungeon-thick – giving the occupants the feeling of living in the improvized honey-comb of a swarm of bees who were forced to settle in a man-made structure.  It was determined years prior that such an unfortunate acoustic situation would allow for only one resident musician.  For about a week the hive buzzed with impromptu auditions.  Martha won and so the cry of her violin now wrang out unimpeded.

Darwin answered first.  He ran through the front door and was immediately blinded by the orange sunset flooding in through the window, obviously suffering from a post-nap hang-over.  A wave, a “Hey” and a plop on the living room chair.

Roger was next.  He strutted in with a look of forced indifference, brandishing a protuberant bulge in his right pocket.

“Hi Roger.  Watcha got there?”

“Oh…just a walky-talky,” he said, struggling to take it out with some degree of proficeincy.

“That’s cool.  Hey, when you talk to people with that they can say ‘Roger that Roger’” Martha observed.

“I already know that” Roger informed her.

Martha had baby-sat the three since they were toddlers.  She didn’t really need the five-dollars-an-hour anymore.  She continued spending time with them because they were, quite simply, cool.  At least she recognized the possibility for genuine coolness, an attribute that she believed comes naturally at birth and is systematically rooted out of us all.  Her sacred duty was to preserve this essence, or at least get a better understanding of how it is destroyed.

Ashok was always last.  Martha may very well have lost interest in the bunch if it weren’t for this most peculiar boy.