One Man’s Struggle Against Close Mindedness and Bigotry

A Modern Fairy Tale by Colm Delaney

Mighty Joe Weevil was a mostly normal 5 year old, imagine a completely average looking boy, white skin, brown hair (although, slightly less tidy than his Mum would like), brown eyes, with almost no distinguishing features whatsoever, and you’ll have an idea what he looked like. Nor does his appearance matter, for it is completely irrelevant, Mighty Bob Weevil himself actually, should have been completely irrelevant. By all rights, he should have got through school, got good grades, got a job or gone to university, found a pretty girl (who would be, in her own little way, also utterly unremarkable and irrelevant), churned out some kids (also unremarkable and irrelevant), grown old, and died peacefully among his geraniums like every other one of the 6 billion meaningless statistics on this planet.  

Instead of subscribing to the conventional means of riding through life, however, over the course of a few weeks, Mighty Joe Weevil almost turned the intelligentsia of this great country (whichever one you want) upside down.

It is a story rife with intrigue, with suspense, with drama, it will make you laugh, cry and occasionally remark at the utter pointlessness of it all. For Mighty Bob Weevil was very ordinary, it was true, but he had a very quirky mind, and an inability to see when he was wrong.

It began with a small mathematics test….




“Now my lovely pixies” the wholly unremarkable teacher said, smiling a wholly unremarkable smile (with, it should be pointed out, remarkably white teeth), “You’re all going to hate my tiny guts for this, but we have…a test”    

Cue groans from most of the class, apart from the four-eyed geek in the corner who seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in his own mental superiority over everyone else. How wrong he was to gloat like that, however, he would soon learn his lesson, a short and painful one delivered by the local bully, who was now sitting two rows in front crafting up plans to steal the geeks lunch money, suitably duff him in, then leave him a whimpering mess on the floor. Maybe not, however, for creativity’s sake, in that particular order.

“Yes, a test, so get out your pencils and thinking caps” the teacher smiled again, she hated this job, she never wanted to teach immature little 5 year olds, she’d wanted to teach at high school. But her parents had told her it was a bad idea, “What? There’s all sorts of things that go on in that school, people getting beat up, smoking in corners, gangland massacres in the canteen”.

Presumably the teachers Mum had never encountered the warm, fuzzy feeling you got from getting projectile vomit over your favorite dress (the one you were going to wear to that red hot date tonight) courtesy of some snotty nosed, whining little brat, three times in one day. For the teacher, the fun kind of got sucked out of it after that, but here she still was, single, disillusioned, stressed, and, here was the worst bit, utterly dependant on the mob of screaming, pathetic, hateful Receptionists she “taught”, for they were responsible for the little emotional satisfaction she got in her whole miserable existence.      

However, this story is not about that poor teacher, although we should all sympathize with her plight, this is about Mighty Joe Weevil, and the ruckus he was about to kick up…


The test came and went, then it was break, the bell rang, and the Receptionists ran out of the room like the last one out would see their firstborn slaughtered in front of their eyes. The teacher didn’t try to stop them; instead she collected up the test papers, took them to her desk, sat down, took a gulp of double strength vodka from her “water” bottle and started marking.

Mighty Joe Weevil’s test was first; she looked down at the first question, pen ready to strike like a viper…

1+1=3
  
That couldn’t be right, she looked again…

1+1=3

She blinked…

1+1=3

She took another gulp of vodka, suddenly, the room started swaying, she saw a fairy, with a silver dress, blonde hair, wings and a pointy stick (Look, this has a fairy in it, therefore, according to the Oxford Dictionary, it is a fairytale, now stop bugging me). Basically, an utter bimbo…

1+1=3

She laughed out loud…



Six months later…

The presenter of Young Mastermind took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. It should be pointed out that the quiz presenter was also meaningless, however, for some reason people had decided he was very meaningful indeed, so it all got a bit confusing. However, for the sake of clarity, let us assume he is also meaningless and move on with the story.



“In first place, we have, Will Quick, with 15 points, joint second Ingrid Hamilton and Greg Charvis with 8 points, and in fourth place, Joseph Weevil with 0 points”

The teacher frowned slightly, she always assumed that Mighty Joe Weevil was a genius, I mean, it was all there on that piece of paper “1+1=3”, it was so very simple, yet so obvious. It showed an open mind, it showed clarity of vision, a far reaching mind, and the ability to simplify his elegant yet hideously complicated theories down to a level so the rest of the human race, mired in ignorance, could understand the brilliant concepts he was giving them.

They didn’t understand him, none of them did, not his parents, the headmaster, nor any of the other kids, even the quiz presenter, sitting there so smugly in his blindingly purple jacket with shiny sequin shirt and yellow trousers. They were all so close minded, so utterly bigoted, “He’s only 5”, was the constant attack. How dare they, she seethed silently, how they could dare to put him down because of his age? It was racism, it was worse than racism.

Joe Weevil turned to the teacher, his unremarkable brown eyes welling up with tears, “I’m not very clever really, am I Miss?” he asked.

“No Joe” she smiled slightly, “Never say that, you’re clever, you’re a genius”

Joe turned back round, he seemed to feel better for his teacher’s kind words, suddenly, his face scrunched up into thought.

“Gene-knee-us” he said, trying it out in various accents and inflections, like he was savoring a fine wine. Finally, his mind made up, he turned round to the teacher, “I like that word, what does it mean?”

A wave of emotion suddenly swept over the teacher, she couldn’t place it exactly, anger was there, definitely, a bit of grief, regret, probably, and that odd feeling she got as the saw the first volley of putrid, green-grey vomit emerge from Kelly Waterson’s mouth, heading towards its inevitable splattering on the teachers favorite dress, a loss of hope, utter despair, all that kind of bad stuff.

It was in fact, the feeling you get, when, back when you were a kid, you’d got one of those bubble making kits, and you’d spent hours making a fine, beautiful bubble. Almost transparent in its clarity, yet strangely solid, you imagined it floating off into the ether, immortal, unchanging, like a bird free from the dictatorship of the ground, that was, of course, until your little brother poked it, obliterating it from all sight and memory, a young life so tragically snuffed out by a cruel, heartless, peanut butter smeared finger…

She realized that now, the teacher did all right, she realized what it all meant, life, the universe, everything, in all its complex metaphors, and in clarity of thinking that Joe Weevil would have been proud of, she narrowed it down to one, simple thing…

One should never mark test papers while under the influence of alcohol.


(P.S: People may be wondering what the point of this story is, since it has almost nothing to do with Mighty Joe Weevil himself, I even said that this was not the teachers story, however, in my defense, I can offer only this…
…I lied)