Posted December 16, 2007

Fiction

BABY

By Jacqueline Barry

Farmington Hills, MI

 

She remembers that sweet smell, you know the one, that freshly bathed and powdered baby smell. Oh, he doesn't smell like that now but how could he? Even she knows that after a certain amount of time it would be impossible for him to smell like a brand new baby. . . still, he has a smell of his own that she finds comforting just knowing he is with her.

 

Yesterday she dressed him in the cutest little blue denim shorts, a red and white checked shirt, dark blue socks and the "new" tennis shoes she'd bought last week from Wal-Mart. He was so adorable. She wanted to take him visiting to show him off but it wasn't possible because her husband, Rick, wanted her to finish painting the spare room she’d been putting off forever. He can be a real stickler about details like that so instead she put the baby in his swing and worked on getting the room done.

When she finally completed the job she got the baby to bed and took the swing back down in the basement where it was kept now since Rick gets so upset when he sees she'd left the old thing just sitting in the living room.

Having got that done she proceeded to make dinner. She felt pretty good about finishing the painting of the spare room and knew Rick would be pleased too so she decided on a special dinner to make the evening perfect. His all time favorite meal, Chili and Corn Bread.

"Hey honey. . . I'm home," Rick hollered as he came in the door.

"I have a surprise for you tonight" was her answer as she walked up and wrapped her arms around his neck for a kiss.

"Oh yeah? What’s that?"

"I finally got the spare room painted and made your favorite dinner!" she said obviously pleased with herself.

Stumbling around the kitchen trying to make coffee and get Rick's breakfast the next morning Sarah wondered to herself how her husband managed to sleep like a rock each and every night. She, herself, had been up most of the night with a crying baby and it showed this morning. Must be a blessing men are just born with.

As soon as Rick left for work the baby woke up crying. Time for his feeding too she thought as she went to prepare her nipples with the cleansing pads she’d picked up the other day. She got him from his bed and settled herself into a comfortable rocking chair in the living room to breast feed him.

"Damn!" Rick hollered to himself just before pulling off onto the highway on his way to work "How could I forget the wheelbarrow?" Turning around he thought he'd just slip into the basement through the outside door so he wouldn't wake Sarah if she'd gone back to bed. He was aware of her getting up and down all night long and knew she was exhausted. She hadn’t slept well for a very long time.

As quietly as he could Rick descended the stairs to the basement and looked around for the wheelbarrow. He finally spotted it way off in the far corner and walked over to it but as he reached to grab it something caught his eye. The old kitchen hutch had been flat against the wall when he'd brought it down after they remodelled the kitchen but now it was all jockeyed around and something was behind it. Pulling out the hutch Rick felt a stab shoot through his heart. The swing. Then something beyond that caught his eye. A baby bassinette, shoved way in the corner, with blankets piled high in it. He reached as far as he could without moving the hutch any further and got a hold of the corner of the bassinette and yanked it out. Now he was totally confused because inside of it there was dirt. "What the hell. . . ?" he muttered to himself.

He decided this was not something he could ignore no matter how much Sarah didn't want to throw out the old baby things. He'd tried for so long now to be understanding and patient like the Physiatrist said to but this was too much!

When he got to the top of the stairs he turned toward the hall to enter the living room and that's where he froze. There, sitting and rocking, was Sarah singing Lullabies and holding something all black and decayed to her breast.

Country Fried Pork Meal

By Ed Palermo

 

I'm standing in the kitchen wearing the same shirt I wore yesterday, only now it's inside-out. I believe this is almost as good as cleaning the shirt and I have seen no rigorous evidence to the contrary. Comments on this subject from anyone holding a degree in microbiology are certainly welcome. I'm supposed to be getting ready to drive two hundred and fifty miles, but I'm not in the proper state of mind. I'm reading the instructions on the package of a microwaveable dinner. This is the kind that comes in a plastic try with three little separate compartments, each containing some ambiguous food-like product. Judy enters, holding a bunch of mail.

 

"Joe," she says, waving a fistful of mail at me, "It's seven-fifteen. What the fuck're you doing?"

 

"Making myself a microwaveable dinner."

 

"What? What kind is it?"

 

"I'm not entirely sure, but if we believe the inscription on its cardboard container, it will somehow transubstantiate into a Country Fried Pork Meal in only 3-5 minutes on HIGH."

 

"Well I want pizza. And don't we have to go in like forty-five minutes? And isn't that the same shirt you had on yesterday?"

 

"Isn't it true that this label could be nothing but a cruel joke? This package could contain anything. Pizza isn't out of the question. Upon rather judicious inspection, I find no evidence of pork in any of these three plastic compartments. None."

 

"Let's just call Happy's. And you should change that shirt."

 

"With the aide of electron microscopy, we'd be able to obtain an image of the frozen object's surface, almost down to atomic resolution. We'd reveal a vast universe of intricate nooks and crannies, each one more fascinating than the last. The topography would become our own personal frontier, ripe for exploration, atom by atom. But this still might not yield any evidence of pork. In that case, we'd need to use the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. But that endeavor, I'm afraid, would require driving through New Jersey."

 

"What's the number for Happy's? Or we can get Tios if you really want. But I want pizza."

 

"It dawns on me now, in some sense, that the object resembles South Carolina. This is an important piece of the puzzle, which we must factor into our thinking. Unfortunately, however, we require more funding and a more skilled team of investigators (no offense). Maybe the Department of Homeland Security has some excess US dollars to invest in our brave campaign. There's a possibility that this so-called dinner is in fact a terrorist plot."

 

"I'm getting half pepperoni. You want half something?"

 

"I want whole something, Judith."

 

"Whole what?"

 

"The whole truth, my dear. And nothing but."

 

"OK, well, you're getting whole pepperoni. OK?"

 

"Alright, fine. But I'm not changing my shirt. It's fine the way it is."

 

"You wore it yestahday."

 

"But now it's inside-out. And isn't the pizza gonna take forty-five minutes just to get here."

 

"We can eat it in the fucking car!" she shouts, throwing the telephone book onto the floor. She turns and runs into the bedroom, crying hysterically. I pick up the phone book and I find the number to Happy's Pizza. I call and request a medium pie with pepperoni. The guy on the other end of the phone asks me to repeat myself. I ask for a medium pizza (instead of "pie") and suddenly he gets the idea, as if I'd ever be calling for any other reason. It'll be here in half an hour, he informs me. I go into the bedroom to try and talk some sense into her.

 

"The pizza's gonna be here in a half hour," I say to the curled-up, humanoid mass on the side of the bed closest the wall. She unravels herself, and faces me.

 

"I don't care!" she says to me, "I hate pizza! I'm sick of it! I have it every -- fucking -- day!"

 

Big Jim, the Mormon, and Hitler's Grandson

By Quincey Burkhalter

Roswell,NM

Note: This piece is the fifth section of a longer piece, which chapters appear in previous and will appear in later issues of The Lotus Reader (see previous issues of Lotus Reader)

I was bloody, sore, and soaked to the bone. I had wrecked my bike on the way to work and in the process of trying to save the bike, fallen in the canal.
I had walked three miles and come very near to hypothermia. I walked in the
front door of Big Jim's Gas and More. The Mormon was behind the register.

"Calvin, you're here," he said. "Clock in and get on the register. Craig's
in the cooler."

I wanted to say, I'm bleeding, I'm soaked to the bone, I was almost killed
by some asshole in a '79 Bronco. I can barely walk, look at my ankle it's
swollen. Instead, I limped behind the counter, dumbfounded, and put my smock on. When I walked up to the register the Mormon calmly stepped aside.

There was a line of people all the way to the back of the store. The Mormon
moved to the other register. I stood there looking down at this conglomeration of keys and slowly started punching them. I asked for an I.D. from the guy behind the counter and slowly punched some more keys. "Is that all?" I said. The guy said it was. "Fifteen forty-two," I said. That's when the shit hit the fan. The customer said I had over charged him. I explained that this was a convenience store and things cost a little more here. He started yelling for the manager.

"Can I help you, sir?" the Mormon calmly said.

"This jerk doesn't know how to work a fucking register! It took him two days
to ring up my order. Then, he over charged me."

The Mormon calmly looked over the ticket and rerang it. Craig walked behind
us and started to ring out the customers on the other register. The guy was
satisfied with what the Mormon came up with and left.

"Craig, hold down the fort," the Mormon said. "Calvin, can I talk to you." I
followed him to the break room. "Clint," he said. I looked around to see who
he was talking to. "We need to talk about how you run the register." I
realized he was talking to me.

I wanted to say, that was my first time. You just witnessed my first time.
But I had been employed here nearly a month. The Mormon wouldn't believe me if I said I had never worked the register. I told him when he hired me that
I had worked a register just like this at my last job. My last job was as a
janitor. "You've come up short three times so far on your shift."

"It was Hit. . . It was Craig," I said knowing I couldn't reveal the truth
yet. I wanted to say, I've been in the cooler. Craig hasn't let me work up
front. Instead, I said, "I'm dyslexic."

"You are? Hey, that's a relief. Why didn't you tell us before?"

I hadn't needed the excuse until now, I thought. "I hoped it wouldn't get in
the way," I said.

"Tell you what," he said. "Why don't you work the cooler tonight and let
Craig watch the front for a change. I'll help you." He told Craig what was
going on and we walked to the back. I kept up with the Mormon who was always in fast-forward mode. Then I remembered my ankle. I started limping.

"Ain't got long you know," the Mormon said as he opened the door to the
cooler.

"'Til what?" I said.

"The big guy," he said. "Gotta hidey-ho, buster."

"What?"

"The big guy, you know, Big Joe."

"The owner?"

"Yup, you got it, the owner, the big cheese. So, gotta hidey-ho. No
questions. That's why I brought you back here, Kyle."

"Kevin."

"Huh?"

"Nothing."

"You see Chris."

"Kevin."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"O.K., the big banana's gonna be here. Gotta hidey-ho. Cooler's not gonna
get up to specks on it's own. That's why I brought you back here. You're a
hard worker, Curtis."

The only thing I can figure is that The Mormon got too close to the Agent
Orange when he was in Nam. He started to do the thing I had learned the
first day. Up, down, pull out the twelves, and slide. Up, down, pull out the
twelves, and slide. I followed suit. There was absolutely no reason to be
going at this crazy pace the cooler was about half filled. It was Wednesday
and the only reason it was down to half was that the first shift had not touched the cooler since last night. I could tell. I had put tape on the top of the Red, White, and Blue beer all the way to the bottom. They would have had to cut the tape to move any of the twelve packs. The tape was intact. All of this would take a couple of hours to fill, even with customers coming in. With the Mormon back here with me we would be finished in less than thirty minutes and I would have to go back up front with you know who.

"Two days," he said. "Yup, gotta hidey-ho. Big Joe's gonna be here in two
days."

"Jim."

"Huh."

"Big Jim."

"Yeah, what about him?"

"His name's Big Jim."

"I know. What's your point?"

"Never mind."

"You know Calvin I feel sorry for you."

"Why's that?" I said.

"That Craig guy," said the Mormon. "He's not the easiest guy to get along
with."

I was quiet. Maybe the Mormon knows, I thought. I doubt it. He can't even
remember my name.

 

Escape from Angora

By Robert McVey

New York, NY

 

Phronsie Pepper sat in a pinafore by a bowl of unpeeled potatoes illustrated with dotted skins as the other little Peppers prepared dinner in a world without brain chips, flashmobs and neutron bombs. The kitchen curtains were fluffy, the tablecloth was checkered, and the family dog sat expectantly, confident in the receipt of her fair share of home-cooked food, rather than being poisoned by the pet food industry due to deregulation for corporate profits.

 

Phronsie, perhaps a shortened version (now that I'm old enough to know) for Sophronia, was my role model at this time of my life because I had gender identity disorder, a/k/a if I were female, I could have done that which would have been expected of me by my father rather than that which I could not do which he expected, whatever that was, but whatever that was, it cost me my father's love, and I knew it.

 

''Daddy doesn't like me,'' I said at three and a half, with a child's clarity to my mother, who tried to talk me out of it, tried to rethink and rewrite my narrative to me, but even without my knowing psychosis would have been the result of any yielding, I refused to make revisions (''No, he doesn't like me, all right. ''), but I could look at Phronsie Pepper and the tied-back curtains and the potatoes in their bowl with a flower pattern and dream.

 

So I dreamed. I had to take my dreams where I could find them, being post-titty. Phronsie had a high top-knot of hair in the line drawing which I used as a piece of what I could find towards the retention of my semi-sanity, and I tried to model my hair after hers, and I realize today, fifty years later, I'm still trying to model it after hers. And I like to think at times I've achieved it.

 

Perhaps as well in some man's eye someday I will have achieved it, and he will say: ''Yes. You look like Phronsie Pepper. '' She was the littlest, perhaps a touch selfish. But I think she had a good heart. All the Peppers did. There wasn't a Judas Iscariot among them. I think the father was dead. (I don't mean to make a connection there.)

 

I asked so little at that time, that when I looked at the drawing of Phronsie, I didn't ask her head to move. If I had, I would have become psychotic and had to go live in Angora, which my mother told me was the name of the state madhouse. Phronsie and I stayed where we were, and where we were, we are.

 

Poetry

 

Above the Air

 

By Lunna Estrange

San Diego, California

 

He and I sat in adjacent chairs

Floating beyond the building

And into the orange and gold sunlight

That painted itself across the sky as we emerged

His words floated and fell,

Bounced softly onto the coffee table

And pattered back into the sky

In a steady stream of poetry

The music they created

Was in the color that buzzed

Around my blue-gray hair

That faded into a pixilated ocean of infinite smallness

And sparks were flickering

Over the twilight

twilight's horizon

As they swept through the luscious lips of literature

Aged like wine for the better

NOTEBOOK

By Sean C. Bowen

Marlboro, NY

in my notebook
i
never write on the pages in order
just flip open to any blank space at all
and allow the words to unfold freely
i
descend again into the lines on the page
giving my pen the run of the place
it's definitely the alpha here
might even write something obscene or vulgar
but wait
remember
even in nature - the wolf kills
and isn't that part of the beauty of it all?
so it's like this-
a troublesome pack of words might slowly and deliberately
stalk and attack like rituals for survival
hunting with precision because there are young ones to feed
ensuring indeed a strong new generation
while the weak slip away in silence
it IS nature i tell you.

 

Super Highway

By Gary Beck

New York, NY

The lights from cars, trucks, buses
pierce the night highway,
birthing us kin a moment or two
with other estranged drivers,
as we race past foreign vehicles,
intent on unknown places,
in a land that dispossesses us.

Fragments

 

By Quincey Burkhalter
Roswell, NM

All the pieces of a roller-coaster
falling all around me
falling in bits & pieces
Smoke and ashes from Volcanoes

Try as i might I can't reach
the place along the coast there
That place they are longing for
A distant ocean where the wind blows
cold

Falling loose and spiraling petals
Petals of forgotten flowers.
Fires fade into the hollow,
hollow winds among the black stone

Chains of fog break away from silence
pull away rivulets of my thoughts there.
Thoughts that have less meaning,
broken spirit among the breaking
light.

 

Nonfiction

The American Revolution- A Parody

By Marian Hooper

Structure of Colonial Society

 

American society was young. Literally. The majority of Americans were children. And everyone was making a lot of money except (strangely enough) the Puritan colonies. This is mostly strange because they were one of the only colonies that did not end up resorting to cannibalism out of starvation in the early days.

 

JAMESTOWN: Shut up, you don’t know what it was like!

 

Well, that is what Jamestown would have said, except they had all become cannibals and eaten each other, leaving none left to comment.

 

King George pretty much had the childhood of a stereotypical poor, inner city kid. His father was a playboy and died while George was a child, George never received a good education. Plus, his grandfather thought George was an idiot.

 

PSYCHOLOGIST: So..how does this make you feel?

GEORGE: *cries*

 

The comically named “Whigs” were a political party largely controlling Parliament. They got angry when George elected a friend to be the Earl of Bute. This didn’t matter much because George switched people in an out of his cabinet. He couldn’t seem to find anyone he liked.

 

PSYCHOLOGIST: So..how does this make you feel?

GEORGE: *cries*

 

While England was fine with this arrangement (?) the colonists were not. This caused them to spend time developing rhymes such as

 

No Taxation Without Representation

Colonists did not like the Parliament. Instead, they preferred elected assemblies. That fact that Parliament was an elected assembly, however, did not faze them.

 

COLONISTS: We want political reform!

ENGLAND: Shut up, not yet.

 

Since the Parliament did not actually represent the colonists, the colonists figured that the Parliament shouldn’t tax them either.

ENGLAND: So, you are angry because we are taxing you?

COLONISTS: No, no, we are angry because you don’t have the right to tax us.

ENGLAND: We own you..of course we have the right to tax you.

COLONISTS: Nu-uh, the Parliament doesn’t have elected Americans I mean colonists in it.

ENGLAND: But..we had a monarchy for like..forever. Isn’t that less representative?

COLONISTS: Uhh..

ENGLAND: I mean really, if there was a time to complain, that should really have been it.

 

The young colonists started a school newspaper, and things really took off from there.

 

Eroding the Bonds of Empire

King George tries to eliminate his childhood insecurities by keeping armies in the colonies even after the Seven years war, which actually only supported his reputation as an idiot. This cost tons of money.

 

GEORGE: Come on... the armies will protect the Indians from the colonists.

COLONISTS: What?

GEORGE: I mean””

COLONISTS: Whoa, hold on. You are making us pay taxed for armies that protect the Indians against us?

 

The Indians weren’t in favor of the army either.

 

INDIANS: *rebel against British troops*

 

Of course, the Indians had also stopped receiving diplomatic fights, restrictions were placed on their trade, and American colonists killed innocent Indians.

 

BEN FRANKLINS: *gathers cronies*

 

In conclusion, the English hated the colonists, the Indians hated the colonists, the colonists hated the English, and everyone hated King George, whose self esteem was probably at an all time low.

 

To make matters worse for George, he had to start worrying about

 

Paying off the National Debt

The English crown went through a period of time where they did the complete opposite of what they should have done.

 

ENGLAND: *passes Sugar Act*

AMERICANS: Threaten violence and boycott.

ENGLAND: *passes Stamp Act*

AMERICANS: *violence and boycott*

Etc.

PSYCHOLOGIST: So..how does this make you feel?

GEORGE: *cries*

The king fired Grenville (man in charge of stamp acts) because the king did not like Grenville, another genius political decision. Lord Rockingham, replacing Grenville, was “young, inexperience, and terrified of public speaking”.

 

ROCKINGHAM: Let’s.. uh..do away with..uh..stamp act”¦

GRENVILLE:*permeating with jealousy* Let’s do the opposite of whatever Rockingham says!

 

Around this point, the textbook writers sprinkled Ben Franklin’s name in again, an act that had occurred about every paragraph, despite the fact that Franklin was probably electrocuting himself with a kite at the time.

Popular Protest

 

Charles Townshend became in charge of policy decisions.

 

At one Parliamentary debate”¦

TOWNSHEND: Bask in my glory, for I can solve the problem of getting money from the colonists.

PARLIAMENT: We’ve already tried taxing them, what else can we do?

TOWNSHEND: Trust me.

 

Parliament mistakenly did trust Townshend, who actually had no idea how to get money from colonists aside from the good old fashioned bandit-raids. Townshend started taxing colonists for imports. Colonists were so used to violence and boycotting that they didn’t even need to call any meeting this time. They simply started smashing stuff.

 

PSYCHOLOGIST: So..how does this make you feel?

GEORGE: *cries*

 

Massachusetts drafted a letter suggesting ways to annoy Townshend. No other colonies really noticed. Then an English secretary declared the letter treason and suddenly all the colonists started obsessively supporting it. It became a symbol for patriotism in America.

 

ENGLISH SECRETARY: *hits head on wall* Stupid, stupid stupid! Well, at least no one will remember this in the future”¦

 

Tired of creating catchy subject titles, the textbook writers bluntly noted a

 

Fatal Show of Force

 

At some point, the British became idiots and thought that since the Americans said they wanted freedom, they actually wanted oppression. This was based on overusing reverse psychology, something King George was a fan of since he was so often crying at the psychologist’s office.

 

AMERICANS: No taxation without representation!

BRITISH: *send redcoats to hang out near Boston and shout obscenities at colonists*

AMERICANS: *young boys throw rocks and snowballs at redcoats*

REDCOATS: Bloody, they’re attacking! *Fire at young boys, kill five*

AMERICANS: *stares*

REDCOATS: *shifty eyed* Maybe no one saw us”¦

 

The news was in the headlines of every newspaper within the week.

 

The seemingly annual minister-switch occurred, this time Lord North replaced Townshend. He took away a lot of taxes but kept the tea one. Colonists didn’t really care, mostly because--stay with me here--it was just tea.

 

Things looked like they would be peaceful for a time, but both colonists and Britons thought this would be too boring. They unanimously decided to crank up the violent protests. Officials became corrupt, colonists burned stuff. A lot of violence happened but no one remembers that because of

The Final Provocation: The Boston Tea Party

 

It wasn’t really a final provocation, despite the title the sleep-deprived textbook writers came up with while trying to sober up on coffee grounds over a messy keyboard. In fact, the Intolerable Act and Prohibitory Act came after the Tea Act, and they were both more provocative and final than tea could ever be. But the Boston Tea party was a lot funnier than either of these.

 

The Tea Act cut out the sales for intermediaries while simultaneously taxing blah blah blah blah. Anyway, this is how it happened:

 

PARLIAMENT: *Passes Tea Act*

EAST INDIA TEA SHIP: *heads to Boston*

BOSTON: We won’t let English tea enter our markets!

EAST INDIA TEA SHIP: Yeah, we just crossed an ocean with this stuff. No way are we turning back.

BOSTON: Well, you’re not coming in. *stare off between East India tea ship and Boston for a few days*

 

This is the point that history gets ridiculous.

 

COLONISTS: *Disguise themselves as Mohawks and dump tea over side of ship, presumably while no one was looking*

BRITAIN: Why did you do that?

COLONISTS: What?

BRITAIN: Dress up like Indians and dump tea over the side of the ship!

COLONISTS: Oh that. We were sending you a message.

BRITAIN: What message?

COLONISTS: That the colonists won’t stand for Britain taxing us.

BRITAIN: Then why did you dress up like Indians?

COLONISTS: Huh?

BRITAIN: If you wanted to send us a message saying what the colonists thought, shouldn’t you have dressed up like, I don’t know, colonists? I mean, if you dress up like Indians, it just sends the message than Indians don’t like tea.

COLONISTS: Oh yeah. Guess we didn’t think that one through.

*laugh track*

 

John Adams “sensed the event would have far-reaching significance”. He wrote in his diary about this significance, which apparently somehow got published, which is probably why the event was remembered to have significance in the first place.

 

Britain responded to the tea incident by passing yet more acts. Their logic was: “Well, acts haven’t worked yet, so they’ve got to start working eventually”. In fact, they were just

 

Steps Toward Independence

The First Continental Congress gathered.

 

CONGRESSMAN 1: We must secede from Britain!

CONGRESSMAN 2: Nuh-uh

CONGRESSMAN 1: Uh-huh

CONGRESSMAN 2: Nuh-uh

CONGRESSMAN 1: Uh-uh

This is basically all that happened. As it turns out, early American leaders were not all that mature or willing to negotiate. They ended up “deciding” to continue what they’d been doing all along, mainly not buying British products.

 

General Gage dispatched troops to seize rebel supplies, which is strange because the American rebels didn’t actually have an army yet, and therefore didn’t have any supplies.

 

PAUL REVERE: The redcoats are coming!

BRITISH ARMY: The redcoats? That is the best code you could come up with? Seriously..we are wearing red coats”¦

 

A militia was gathered together to protect the imaginary American army. Someone accidentally fired a shot and a battle ensued. The Battle of Bunker Hill (which was not actually fought on Bunker Hill) followed and the British won, but the optimistic-to-a-fault colonists still took it as a victory.

The Second Continental Congress met. The formed an army and put George Washington in charge because 1) he was the only one who had actually had any battle experience and 2) he looked like he’d be a good general. Really.

 

It was at this point that military supplies were purchased, making General Gage a few weeks too early to capture the rebel supplies. Meanwhile, Congress continued to argue and achieve nothing, establishing a tradition that continues to this day. Finally, they made the Declaration of Independence. Then, the colonists had to actually start

 

Fighting for Independence

Basically, no one thought America would win. Not even the Americans. It was like a boxing match between the World Champion Heavyweight and, say, a rock. The British would have to actually take a dive in order to lose. But as mentioned before, the colonists were optimistic-to-a-fault.

 

COLONISTS: We beat “˜em at Bunker Hill, we can beat “˜em anywhere!

WASHINGTON: Uh”¦no. No, that’s”¦that’s wrong. Incorrect. We need tons of planning, a well trained army””

COLONISTS: Nah, we can beat them with our militia, anytime, anywhere.

WASHINGTON: Have you actually seen the British army? You know how we call them Redcoats? That’s because they wear red coats. Our colonist army doesn’t even have coats. Some don’t even have clothing.

 

Actually, the militia ended up mattering a little. Sure it was untrained and barely fed, and it didn’t actually affect the outcome of any battles. But they did encourage other Americans to get involved.

 

A lot of African Americans also joined the army.

 

AFRICAN AMERICANS: If we join, we’ll win freedom!

COLONISTS: Haha..sure you will.

 

The British sent a bunch of forces to New York

 

BRITISH GENERAL: If we move strategically, we can cut off New England from the other colonists

WASHINGTON: *moves forced to New York*

BARELY TRAINED COLONIST ARMY: But General, we’ll never beat them!

WASHINGTON: Don’t say that!

BARELY TRAINED COLONIST ARMY: But we are…barely trained.

WASHINGTON: But we are fighting for freedom!

BARELY TRAINED COLONIST ARMY: Britain is too strong

WASHINGTON: We are stronger, for we are fighting for justice. God is on our side, and we cannot fail!

BARELY TRAINED COLONIST ARMY: Hooray!

 

The colonists lost. Big time. Historians call this the “underdog ends up losing” effect which rarely ever appears in movies, yet people generally assume will happen. Washington’s army kept on losing, and was driven into New Jersey.

 

The British issued pardons to whoever was loyal to King George. Lots of people signed, including (embarrassingly) one signer of the Declaration of Independence who goes unnamed even after death out of shame.

 

Luckily, there was some

 

Victory in a Year of Defeat

(The British version of the textbook titles this section “Defeat in a Year of Victory”)

 

General Burgoyne planed to fight rebels in the Hudson Valley. He was accompanied by a German band and thirty carts filled with liquor.

 

BURGOYNE: I’m not a drunk, I can quit anytime!

KING GEORGE: Been there, bro. *cries*

 

Rebels demolished Burgoyne’s army presumably while he was hugging and uncovering blocked childhood memories with King George.

 

WASHINGTON: *attacks British in Germantown*

BRITISH: *are losing*

WASHINGTON: We’re winning!

BARELY TRAINED COLONIST ARMY: No way.

WASHINGTON: Way.

BARELY TRAINED COLONIST ARMY: But if we are winning..then we are doing something right!

WASHINGTON: Yeah, great huh?

BARELY TRAINED COLONIST ARMY: *retreat*

WASHINGTON: What!?! *simmers in rage*

BARELY TRAINED COLONIST ARMY: *dies from disease*

 

The situation made just about no sense, but that’s how it happened. In order to take our minds off the failing Americans, the textbook writers turned their attention to

 

 

The French Alliance

Louis XVI wanted to help the colonists in order to embarrass the English as payback for mispronouncing the song “Frere Jacques” all these years (and stealing his date to prom). The Continental Congress sent Ben Franklin over to France to ask for military assistance, because everyone loves a balding, chubby man who was frequently shocking himself.

Actually, Franklin ended up doing a pretty good job in France. America became allies with the French, thus the inspirational title “The French Alliance”.

 

Since more battles would have cost extra paper on which to print, it was time for

 

The Final Campaign

At this point, the textbook writers continue their tradition of describing the psyche of all mentioned important people by calling Clinton “easily provoked to anger” which he may well have been, but probably did not affect the revolution all that much.

Clinton planned to take the South. The British succeeded for a while in a number of not particularly interesting battles, excepting the fact that one of the American commanders was named “Horatio “.

 

Oh, and Americans who helped the British (called “œTories”) were evil.

 

TORIES: *plunder at night and murder neighbors*

BRITISH: What have I unleashed on the world?

FRANKENSTEIN: That idea was copy written, you owe me $50.

BRITISH: You can’t copyright ideas.

FRANKENSTEIN: Yeah, I can.

BRITISH: Well, you can’t collect copyright dues from before you were created.

FRANKENSTEIN: Trust me, you have bigger things to worry about.

 

And they did. Revolutionaries shot down a force of Britons at King’s Mountain.

 

BRITON: *tries to surrender*

AMERICAN 1: *shoot Briton seven times*

AMERICAN 2: Maybe we should have, you know, let him surrender.

AMERICAN 1: Nah, this is all part of the war. After all, we are fighting for justice, so we can do anything we want to accomplish that goal.

EVERY AUTHOR OF EVERY ANTI-WAR EVER WRITTEN: You owe me $50.

 

Washington and the French defeated the British army in Virginia. The War being basically over, all that was left was

The Loyalist Dilemma

 

The Americans considered the Loyalists traitors and the English considered them second class citizens. This, presumably, sucked for Loyalists.

 

Winning the Peace

Congress sent Ben Franklin (who, given his pure quantity of actions, had probably cloned into three separate people by this time), John Adams, and John Jay to Europe.

 

FRANKLIN: So, will you recognize us as a country?

FRENCH: Well, you have to wait until Spain finishes recapturing Gibraltar from the British.

FRANKLIN: Why?

FRENCH: It’ll only take a minute.

One Minute Later

FRANKLIN: So, will you recognize us as a country?

ENGLAND: *shrug* sure

 

About as revolutioned-out as the rest up us, the textbook writers finally added a

 

Conclusion: Preserving Independence

The Americans won the American Revolution, but the Americans still had to think about building an American America.