A completely original work of fiction

Don't you hate when people just take old stories or fables that everyone already knows and "contemporarizes them" or puts them in a new context? I do. Here is a story from Chad Robuckle's childhood. For those who don't know, Chad Robuckle is my imaginary friend who may or may not be a rapist.

The Boy Who Cried "Penguin"

When Chad Robuckle was growing up, he did not get along very well with his parents. He chalks it up to the fact that he was adopted and his parents were racists who hated the fact that they got stuck with a Mexican baby, but that's just him making stuff up. He's obviously just a regular white kid and he looks exactly like his dad so I don't think he's even adopted.

Anyway, like I said, Chad did not get along with his parents. They're actually really cool, nice people. Chad is just a dick. I remember growing up, he would always bitch and whine that his parents were "oppressing him" because they wouldn't let him smoke. This was when he was six, just so you know. Basically he would push and push til they just reached the limits of what a human being could put up with from their own child and then they would finally punish him. Which would just make him bitch even more about how awful they were.

I remember the day Coleco Vision came out, Chad threw his Atari at his grandmother because she said she didn't have the money to go out and buy him a new video game system. When his family got back from the hospital, they grounded him for three days and made him write a letter to his grandmother, apologizing to her for what he had done. He said he wasn't going to write any "stupid fucking letters to that old, dried up bitch" because "that stupid whore can't read it anyway since the Atari scratched her cornea when it hit her in the face." Nice guy, huh?

As time went on, Chad's behavioral problems only got worse. If he had been born ten years later, perhaps his parents could have taken him on the Montel Williams show to get him some help but unfortunately for everyone, daytime TV in the 80's was dominated by The Price is Right and The $25,000 Pyramid.

Finally, Chad's parents had enough of his shenanigans and placed him on "permanent grounded status". This meant Chad would go to school and come directly home and be confined to his room all afternoon. Don't feel too bad for him though, because first of all, he never came home right after school. Both his parents worked so he would just go and do whatever he wanted and then run home at 5:30 and act like he had been there the whole time. His older sister, Karin, was supposed to watch him but she was so scared of him, after what he had done to their grandma, she said and did whatever he told her to.

Second of all, Chad's bedroom was actually his parent's old master bedroom which he made them give to him instead. It was the size of a regular one-bedroom apartment and had its own bathroom. His parents had to share theirs with his three sisters because Chad wouldn't let anyone enter the "Spankatorium", as he called it. This bedroom was huge and even had a trampoline in it. Cable TV, his own phone line, that G.I. Joe aircraft carrier that was like seven feet long. What more could a kid want? Of course, his parents didn't dare try and take any of this stuff away from him. I'm surprised they even grounded him in the first place.

Anyway, I'm getting way off topic here. When Chad was nine, he decided that he had enough of his parent's tyranny and after watching a very informative episode of 20/20 one night on his big screen TV, Chad was inspired to finally reign in his parents under his control once and for all.

He waited til the next time they tried to punish him. I believe he got caught feeding his four year old sister, Marcy, some beer, when his dad ordered him to his room and forbid him, under the rules of the honor system, from watching any more of the Spice Channel for the next two weeks. His dad thought it was odd that Chad didn't throw a fit and sulk like he usually did, instead bounding up the stairs with a smile on his face.

When Chad got upstairs, he put on his headset phone, gathered his wits about him, took a deep breath and dialed 911. You see, Chad had seen John Stossel do a show about a new law that required the Police to make an arrest when they got a domestic violence call. I guess the law was designed so that wives or wimpy husbands who got their asses kicked wouldn't be "persuaded" into saying nothing had happened. So if the cops got a call, they had to arrest someone, even if nobody wanted to press charges. Seems like a pretty good idea huh?

Well Chad had perverted the law to suit his own means. The cops showed up and sure enough, even though both his parents denied that anything of the sort had taken place, his dad was hauled off to jail in handcuffs in front of the whole neighborhood.

Now, even though he had made an anonymous call, it didn't take a genius to figure out who was responsible and soon as he got bailed out of jail, his father marched up to Chad's room and barged right in after knocking. But Chad was ready for him. He held the phone up like a gun and informed his father he had already dialed nine and the first one and kept his finger on the one button the whole time. He told his father things were gonna be different from now on, unless he felt like getting another ass-fucking in the slammer. His father tried to explain that it was just a small-town, local jail and that kind of thing didn't really go on, but Chad would have none of it.

Dejected and completely out of ideas, Chad's father left the room. When he went downstairs, his wife showed him a 23 page booklet that their son had typed out for them, outlining the new rules of the house. Rule number one being that he, Chad Robuckle, was now in charge.

His parents really didn't know what the hell to do. If they took his phone away, Chad told them he'd just hit himself with a baseball bat and say they did it. They thought about locking him up in a mental hospital or sending him away to juevenile hall but he informed them that if didn't make a call every week at the same time to a certain newspaper, an envelope would automatically be opened by the editorial staff. He never said for sure what was inside, but once when he was drunk, he hinted that he "may have" taken pictures of himself in erotic poses and written a letter saying his father had done it.

So every day, Chad would push things a little farther and every day his parents would get a little more desperate. They could only let him go so far before they had to step in, often to protect their own safety or that of the other family members. When Chad tried to sell his sister to a Jordanian businessman, his father lost it and actully took him over his knee and spanked him. He made some idle threats about what would happen if Chad called the cops, but he knew he was screwed. Chad had been humiliated and wasn't going to let it go.

Eventually the family reached a pattern where things would escalate for a few weeks, Chad's parents would lose it and he would call the cops on them. His mother or father would be hauled off to jail, threats would be made and a kind of homeostasis would be reached for a little while.

The problem is, Chad called the cops so often, they began to get sick of him. They really didn't want to go out there and arrest an innocent man or woman, just because their son was a brat but Chad was pretty knowledgable when it came to the law. He kenw his rights and more importantly, he knew what it would look like if an "innocent child" told a jury that the police wouldn't come and help him when his parents were threatening him with bodily harm. Which, at this point, was actually true.

Finally though, everyone had had enough. When Chad became outraged that his allowance was only a hundred dollars a week, he decided to send a message to his parents by taking a dump in the refrigerator. His father, who now looked ten years older than he actually was, from all the stress his little bastard son had put him through, came home to find his son's fecal matter all over the six pack of beer he had been reaching for and he just lost it. He ran up to Chad's room with a hacksaw from the garage and held his son down on the ground and told him he was going to cut off his hands so he could never call the cops again. Chad was able to knee his father in the groin and push him off long enough to run away and lock himself in the Spankatorium with his phone. As luck would have it, this was also the day the police decided they had enough of his lies too, so when he called up, frantically begging for help, saying how his father was trying to cut off his hands, the cops told him to fuck off and hung up on him just as his father kicked down the door.

Ironically, having his hands chopped off was the best thing that could have happened to anyone in the Robuckle family. His father only served 3 months in prison and came out a brand new person, having discovered the Light of Islam. Chad's mother met a nice Real Estate agent and they were married soon after. His sisters didn't fare quite so well and now work at menial service industry jobs.

But the real winner, like always, was Chad himself. He got some cool, new robot hands and a 3 million dollar settlement from the town, as well as a public, personal apology from the former chief of police. But most importantly, he learned that it's never right to call the police and pretend that your parents are fighting just to get one of them arrested so that they'll give you whatever you want.

Wait a minute, no he didn't.