h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When man was young and his ears were beautiful, long before the age of lobes. In a wondrous time of magic and mischief, when birds were birds and eggs were merely chicken shit there lived a boy. There lived a boy, and his friend. There was also a river, a fast, deep, wet, green river. There were fish in the river. They were cod. The boy didn’t know this, and nor did his friend, because they didn’t know their fish. Beautiful their ears may have been, but there was nothing but fluff between them. Like Pooh. With a ‘h’.

The boy was young, and maybe even younger. (At this remove it’s hard to tell. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge, and a lot of fish. Though the bridge came later, as may some of the fish.) His friend was the same, though slightly different. Both had parents, though he isn’t part of the tale. One of each set was a woman. In some respects little ever changes. Each mother, for so these women were, had only one child. One was the boy, and The Other was his friend. Though they lived near a river, neither of the boys could swim. They couldn’t swim, but they could sink like you wouldn’t believe. For these two boys of yesteryear, sinking was like an art form. Like Impressionism, but a bit more wet.

Early morning, Saturday, twenty-third of March. The boy and his friend were going for an early morning pre-breakfast sink, it was a ritual going back years. Each had two legs, and tended to follow The Other around, with a third strapped to his back in case of an emergency, though One had an extra finger. Inbreeding was common, and polydactyly was rife. Though evenly matched in height, weight, and inside leg the boy and his friend were as different as Each to the Other, and Each was very different. Just take a look at his legs. The Other lacked style, One lacked facial hair. It’s not uncommon, he was young. The Other’s facial hair was really from a goat anyway. Lies. Lies. Lies. They deserve capitals. Just like many (but not all) European countries.

To fill up space, the boys told each other stories. They also told Each stories, but only because he was there. The stories, sadly, were crap. When not telling crap stories or sinking the boys chased the sheep in the fields. Or hit each other with sticks (but this time not Each; it’s not cool to hit odd people with sticks) until One, or The Other became unconscious. When this happened, the conscious boy would drag The Other (or One, it depended on who fell first) to the river and drop him in. If he didn’t regain consciousness before he drowned then, then, as now, he died. The boys were tied at five deaths apiece; the sixth, Both knew (and he had told the boys, and I lied earlier) would be fatal.

It was on that sunny Saturday morn that the boys reached that mortal sixth death, together, in most tragically spectacular fashion. Butted into the river by an irate sheep seeking revenge, isn’t that the way it always happens? In a terrible chain of coincidences the boys had unwittingly made sport of the wrong sheep, a sheep that was already having a really bad day even before two young boys started to chase it round a field with sticks, and then, for the first, only, and last time beaten each other senseless with their uncaring sticks. Had just One been conscious (or The Other) when that sheep attacked they might have survived. He wasn‘t, and he wasn’t, and they didn’t. As They lay at the rivers edge he saw the two boys, One and The Other lying prone on the opposite bank. And he saw the sheep creep out from behind a shrub, with bloody murder in its heart (They could not see this; he inferred it from the following action. They had a penchant for grandiose exaggeration), and butt both boys into the fast, deep, wet, green river They, Both, One and The Other knew so well. It was over in seconds. They never stood a chance (Because they were unconscious, and because They couldn’t swim).

This is a story to show the folly of the recklessness of youth. Such disregard for danger, and such disrespect for sheep, as shown by those two boys back when man was young and his ears were beautiful resulted in two untimely deaths, one traumatic sighting (leading to a lucrative career in journalism), one friendless odd boy with three legs and one hugely satisfied but eternally damned sheep. The boys did not heed the lesson left ungiven by their mother, and they paid the highest price. I pray you heed the story told above. Don’t make the same mistakes as those two beautiful-eared sheep-harassing boys of yesteryear: learn your lessons well, and leave the sheep alone.