Horrible, Overwrought Prose Wednesday

Alright! This might be a new, pseudo-regular feature! Terrible, awful, nigh on unreadable prose inspired by the children's books I read my son as many as ten times in a row. This inaugural post was inspired by The Berenstain Bear's B Book. Enjoy.




Once upon a time, there were three friends. One was a big brown bear, one was a blue bull, and the third was a beautiful baboon. They were as alike in friendship and camaraderie as they were different in cladism. Truer friends could not have been found.

They did everything together, these three. Of the many activities they did together, blowing bubbles was perhaps their favorite. The peaceful aura and delightful dynamisms of the blown and soon burst bubbles was the perfect accompaniment for a lazy summer afternoon.

One day, Big Brown Bear suggested a new activity. It included blowing bubbles, so automatically it was palatable to the other two. In addition to blowing bubbles, Big Brown Bear also suggested that they bike backwards, all three riding one bike. Big Brown Bear thought that he should probably be the one to run the pedals, as he was the strongest. The others heartily agreed. And so they went, merrily blowing bubbles while Big Brown Bear propelled them backward faster and faster.

All of a sudden, the bicycle shuddered with the unmistakable sound of an impact. Bananas and the boxes they had heretofore been stored in went flying. For a moment, the sky turned yellow, as if the sun had come down to earth in the form of a matte yellow, lumpy blanket. And just as quickly, the sky returned and the ground became an unnavigable morass of phallic yellow fruit and corrugated cardboard.

It is at this point in our story that the friendship, that indispensable closeness amongst the three, starts to unravel. It is not a pretty sight.

From under the pile of broken and bruised bananas came the muffled voice of a character known only as Black Bug. “Consarnit! You stupid punks! Why can’t you look where you are going,” he shouted from beneath the mess. Slowly, he twisted and turned, prodded and pushed, and freed himself from his golden prison. “Oh, it’s you,” he half snarled half sighed as he looked at the bubble-blowing trio.

“What,” said Blue Bull. “I’ve never met you before in my life, you crazy old codger.”

“Nor have I,” huffed Beautiful Baboon through clenched and indignant teeth.

“I wasn’t talking to you two ninnies, I was talking to that sorry excuse for an animal,” shouted an increasingly agitated Black Bug. “He’s been nothing but trouble for me. Him and his banana addiction. He’s stolen from me, lied to me, and now this. You sicken me, Big Brown Bear, you sicken me.”

Big Brown Bear looked upon the feeble bug, and with disdain in his voice mumbled “whatever, old man.” He looked at his two friends and said, “let’s get out of here. We don’t need to listen to this.” And with that, they biked off, but not before Big Brown Bear surreptitiously grabbed several bananas from the scattered dozens.

Within minutes, the backward moving bicycle shuddered again with impact, albeit less intense than the banana-based collision. This time, the three friends did not stop, they just looked straight ahead and saw the shape of Billy Bunny and his recently-intact breadbasket fading quickly toward the horizon. Loaves of bread lay battered on the ground in the aftermath of the accident. Loaves of bread and one yellow, slippery and almost unnoticeable banana peel.

As the trip progressed, the bike began to swerve more and more erratically. Soon another collision occurred. And another. Brother Bob’s baseball bus lay in ruins. Buster Beagle’s banjo-bagpipe-bugle band lay piled on top of each other. At the bottom of the pile of musical dogs lay our intrepid trio. Their trip was over. Four crashes in one trip was bad enough, but even worse, the last conflict broke Baby Birds balloon, and that was the straw that broke suspicion’s back.

Soon, Blue Bull and Beautiful Baboon began noticing things they hadn’t seen before. Whether they had ignored them on purpose or just never had a reason to look was a moot point. Blue Bull realized that every time he visited Big Brown Bear’s house, it reeked of new and old bananas. Beautiful Baboon realized that Big Brown Bear’s coat had the sheen that only high levels of potassium could create. After weeks of seeing these little things, there was only one conclusion that could logically be reached. Cutting through their denial, Big Brown Bear’s two closest, nay only, friends realized that what Black Bug said was true.

So they confronted him. They staged a banintervention. Everything that was within their power, they did, hoping against hope that they could shatter Big Brown Bear’s addiction. But it was all for naught. There is no such thing as Bananaholics Anonymous. No resources for the banana addicted. In the end, there was nothing for Blue Bull and Beautiful Baboon to do but walk away, exhausted and demoralized.

Big Brown Bear moved out of the neighborhood. He dropped out of their lives completely. And yet their lives went on. They still blew bubbles together, but it wasn’t the same. Nothing ever would be again, but so goes life.

Years later, on a brisk fall day, Blue Bull sat on his front porch reading the newspaper. Tucked away in the corner of the “Local” section was a brief mention of a drifter found dead under a pile of cardboard in a culvert. “Known only as Big Brown, the transient’s body was the third to be found this month,” read the article. The cause of death was listed as “intravenous banana use.” Blue Bull read it twice. He sat there on his porch and wept for the death of his old friend. He wept for the good times and the bad. He wept for his blindness to reality and his failed efforts. And most of all, he wept for the loss of innocence and joy at the hands of Chiquita.

Fin