The Adventures of Rodney the Unsuspecting Tapir

[Narcoleptic Tree Nut]

I'm gonna post some of my brain farts here! emotion_kirakira


I haven't proofread very thoroughly yet, sooo... yeah, sorry. xD  

[Narcoleptic Tree Nut]

Rodney took great pride in his routines. Every morning was the same; he’d hop out of bed, slip on a brilliant robe of deep red and grey, slide over to the bathroom and pull his toothbrush out of a mug filled to the brim with a mixture of 1tbsp baking soda and ½cup water. People often asked him why he did this, since it couldn’t be a way of cleaning or whitening the bristles seeing as though it was always place handle first in the mixture, but he’d never answer. He wouldn’t answer many of these questions, for he took much pride in his odd mannerisms and was afraid that one day someone would discover that he, in fact, had no clue as to why he did them. He strongly believed that if you assert enough confidence into something, people will eventually stop questioning it no matter how odd or silly it may seem.

When he finished brushing his impeccably straight teeth he would make the mixture again using the baking soda he kept in a spice rack in his medicine cabinet. He figured that if spice jars were relatively the same size and shape of pill bottles (which he had no need for, he was in perfectly good health), why not store them in a cabinet made for items of that size? It made much more sense to him to keep things in a cabinet the size of the items that needed a cabinet rather than in one closer to where the food is prepared. He really only used baking soda, anyhow; Rodney was not one for spices. In fact, he disliked spices so much that all he would have for breakfast was a plain salad, rinsed. He found the concept of “dressing” to be silly and childish. Truly mature beings would have no problem with a naked salad. If nature had intended for lettuce to have clothes it would have grown them in tracksuits and leotards. Some of his friends believed he didn’t quite understand “dressing,” but when they would approach the subject to him he would just get irritated and confused. They decided an evening of charades was much more pleasant than three hours of calming him down and then going to bed early.

After his exhilarating breakfast of naked salad, rinsed (he made a point of this every time he mentioned or thought of his breakfast; just because the lettuce is naked it doesn’t have to be dirty- that just means the cynics have won), he would saunter over to his large, comfortable chair by his large, uncomfortable window (it was much too thin to sit on), and read a large, rather awkward book. Well, if you were opened and thoroughly stared at, examined, thoughts read and analyzed, then shut and left to sit on a table or shelf until the next person came along to take your deepest thoughts and fears apart word by word, would you feel comfortable? I’d think not. Don’t ridicule this book for feeling awkward in the hands of a beast such as Rodney.

By the time he’d finished these tasks he would move on to his afternoon routine, which mainly consisted of figuring out a good method to reading his book. He would start slow, and build his way up to scanning full pages and turning them with a flourish, studying the shapes of the lovely letters and wishing they could form themselves into characters that could act out stories like the kind he eventually resorts to imagining while reading. It was a boring and tedious chore, looking at every single word on a page, so of course one’s mind wanders. Rodney’s stories were always wonderful and thinking of them was his favorite part of the day. He only wished he could find a way to record them so he could remember them later, but to his knowledge no one has come up with a way of doing such a thing. It’s a bit sad really. He wondered if anyone else made stories, or if perhaps he invented them? He was sure he could become very famous if anyone would let him share his stores with them, but most of the people he approached with them would just giggle or walk away.

Once he’d had his fill of looking at words he’s close the book and set it down on the end table, and he’d always get the feeling that the book was annoyed at him, exasperated at the thought of another night alone on an end table. He would quickly shake this feeling and stand outside in the sun in a stance that could only mean, “My, the sun sure is pretty darn cool- except it’s not because it is fire, but it’s got a great personality and that’s what counts.” He would stand there with his chest puffed out, grinning and surveying the neighborhood, slowly turning his head from one side of the street to the other. Passersby would feel he was slightly creepy, but he didn’t mind. If enjoying the world and all the naked salads it entails is creepy, then so be it. He was satisfied with life and that’s all that matters.

As the sun set he would gallop inside and make himself another delightful salad, this time with a spring in his step and his favorite song played at full volume in his head. Meals are better prepared in a musical montage, and with all that wonderful oxygen in his lungs and the incredibly uplifting knowledge of a delicious and psychologically empowered salad with the confidence to be itself, rinsed, it was hard not to dance his way into frenzy until he was too tired he had to sit. He thought it was always so perfect that when one is tired and they sit at a table, the reason for their exhaustion, in this case the salad, is sitting there waiting for them to eat. It never occurred to Rodney that other people had other reasons of being tired, and that perhaps they did not sit at a table, but rather a wooden bench or a yoga mat, and maybe they didn’t like salad. Of course, none of Rodney’s many thoughts consisted of people not liking salad, so it was only logical that this idea never occurred to him. Rodney was quite possibly salad’s number one fan; he even had a foam finger saying so.

A satisfying salad and a few moments of contemplating his day, his life, and the world in which these two wondrous things take place in, Rodney heaves a heavy but enlightened sigh and stands from his chair with a dignity and grace that surprises and satisfies him. He marches to his toothbrush with its very wet and baking soda encrusted handle and brushes his beautiful teeth while staring into his middle-aged, soulful eyes. “I am very good at being alive,” he thinks to himself. “I am good at eating salad and I am good at brushing my teeth. I am good at enjoying my salad and my tooth brush and these are things that are good at me because they make me feel good. I am good.” It is with these encouraging words that Rodney falls into a whimsical sleep after methodically climbing into bed. Having completed his many daily routines, he feels accomplished and satisfied, and dreams of salad and toothbrushes living together in harmony.

These are events that happen every day, the same exact way, at the same exact times, without fail. It wasn’t that Rodney had an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; he was just a creature of extreme habit. He wouldn’t be particularly upset if any of his routines went wrong, he was just so good at them that they always went perfectly. However, this morning went slightly awry; this morning, and the many following it, would change his life forever, effecting many other lives in the process and making most of them much better as a result. For you see, this is a story, and most if not all stories usually go in this fashion. Rodney’s usually did, and it just so happens that, even though he didn’t create this one, he was in it; and that makes it his.  

[Narcoleptic Tree Nut]

This morning started like any other; he hopped out of bed with his usual gusto and pride at successfully completing a full night’s sleep, but he noticed that his feet touched the floor with more impact than usual-- almost as if his bed grew overnight, giving him a greater distance to fall from his bed to the ground. With a quick glance at the room around him, he noticed that his ceiling was much farther from the top of his head than usual, and cleverly deduced that his bedroom had, in fact, stretched; a simple solution to a small problem. Rodney had this handy defense mechanism where, when in a situation such as this one, the easiest and most reassuring form of reasoning is good enough to satisfy any uneasiness he began to feel. The conclusion that the room had merely stretched to give him more head room made enough sense to him, and he could now carry about his day worry free. He slid to his bathroom in the usual fashion, but he found that it took a few more strides than usual and decided that his entire house was stretched, and he was very pleased by this. People often strive for larger houses, so why should he take this change for granted?

As he reached the bathroom, however, he noticed that he could not see over the sink. This posed a problem, as he could not reach or use his most cherished toothbrush. He pulled out the stack of drawers next to the cabinet under the sink, and used them as stairs to reach a good height for the sink, and when he reached across it to grab his toothbrush he caught a quick glimpse of an unfamiliar reflection reaching for the same item. He stood there, arm outreached, and the figure he saw out of the corner of his eye remained unmoving. Did someone break in during the night, replace the mirror with a window and build a replica of his bathroom? This solution did anything but ease his worries, so he quickly moved on to a better one. Someone broke in, realized he was a kind and gentle person and, instead of stealing anything they gave him a nice fur coat and a lovely little mask. This eased him long enough to gain the courage to slowly turn his head toward the mirror. The face looking back at him certainly wasn’t his own, but if was still kind and soulful, so he let out a sigh and contemplated his situation. Brushing his teeth usually cheered him up, so he decided to try that. He once again reached for the toothbrush, but his small grip failed him and it fell through his four, stubby, hoof-like fingers. It rattled into the sink and rested near the drain, and finally his calm was disturbed.

He leapt onto the floor and backed up against the wall, hitting a coat rack that he liked to keep in the bathroom “just in case” and knocking it into the shower, which broke a picture of a fence he had hung up in there “just in case.” This was a phrase he often used to explain his odd decorating sense. You never know when you might forget to take your coat off to go to the bathroom or when you might want to look at a good, sturdy fence while you’re in the shower.

He breathed heavily for a while and stood, suddenly realizing that it wasn’t his house that stretched, but him that shrunk. He took a moment to study himself, and discovered that he was covered from head to toe in wooly brown fur. He had four relatively short legs and a stub of a tail, which he wiggled slightly and quickly became quite fond of. The fondness for his tail reminded him of his poor toothbrush, discarded into the sink like a toothbrush that had been discarded into the sink. Rodney never was one for metaphors; he preferred to keep the identities of object and situations constant in order to avoid confusion.

Rodney swallowed his fear and confusion and methodically made his way up the makeshift stairs to the sink, where he tried again picking up his loyal toothbrush, avoiding making eye contact with the strange figure in the mirror that could only be his own face. It took him a few tries, but he eventually worked his toes into a tight enough grip around the handle and raised the brush to his teeth, only to find a short trunk-like nose in the way. He had to face reality, and take a look at this new obstacle.

The mirror showed a brown furry face to match his body, with white rings around his mouth and the tips of his small round ears perked up on the top of his head. His nose was longer than a pig snout but much shorter than an elephant trunk, and he lifted it with ease using a strange new set of facial muscles. It proved to be very difficult to coordinate his short front legs and his odd long nose, and he spent most of the morning figuring out the best method of brushing his teeth, feeling a great sense of accomplishment when he had finished. However, since it had taken much longer to do this morning routine than usual, he felt faint with hunger and had much difficulty safely descending his drawer-stairs. He absent mindedly placed his toothbrush into the empty mug, forgetting to mix his baking soda/water solution, and sulked into the kitchen where he dreaded to discover that he was too short to reach the lettuce he kept in the top shelf on the refrigerator.  

[Narcoleptic Tree Nut]

I can't believe I actually made a novel out of this crap. I feel so accomplished/silly.