Q5: The Pink Ping Pong Ball Story, Part Five

Okay, I’m going to rush this one because I need to sleep.  Sorry if this enormous ending I’ve been leading up to is a complete disappointment.

After the kid asks for the pink ping balls for the third time in a row, the parents never really let down their guard.  They would try to approach their son casually about what exactly he was doing with all the pink pong balls, but he refused to tell every time.  A very long time passed, and the boy blossomed into a young man.  Soon, he found a girl and popped the question.  She said yes.  Yay.

Anyway, on the night the parents found out their beloved yet slightly misunderstood son was getting married, they embraced him, congratulated him, and tentatively told him,

“Son, we are so proud of you.  You’re very successful, and we love Ping” (the boy’s fiancée was oriental).

 

“Son, we are willing to buy you any house you want, be it a mansion or a box.  Money is not an issue.”

Their son replied, “I have thought long and hard about what I want for myself, and I have come to a decision.”  The parents held their breath.  “All I want is two thousand pink ping pong balls.”

The parents were dumbstruck.  Why?  Why did their son want these and what was he doing with them?  They knew it was useless to ask him though, and they just wanted their son to be happy, so they bought all two thousand pink ping pong balls for him.  They never saw them again after that day.

Years and years went by.  The Child was now happily married, and had four children of his own.  One day, while taking a stroll down the street at night, the Son was hit by a pink van and then abandoned on the side of the road.  Luckily, someone found him, and was hospitalized in critical condition.

The doctors did their tests, and came up with the results that the Son was not going to make it; he had internal bleeding and only hours to live.  The doctors let in the boy’s parents to say a final goodbye. 

“We love you, Son,” they said.  What their son said next made the Mother gasp.

“I have something to tell you,” he wheezed.  “What I’ve been doing with all the pink ping pong balls.”

“What is it, son?  Tell us,” was the Father’s reply.  The son opened his mouth to talk…

And then he died.

Q1: The Pink Ping Pong Ball Story, Part 3

And now, what you’ve all been waiting for: the conclusion of the three blog long epic adventure story tale,

The Pink Ping Pong Ball Story

If you haven’t caught on yet, this is a continuation of my two other blogs, so you should probably read them before you go and find out the ending to the whole story I’ve got going.  Now, where did I leave off?  Ah, yes.  Ahem. 

So another perfectly normal year rolled around, and the Mother and Father never heard anything about any pink pong balls.  They still dreaded their son’s ninth birthday, though, as they were sure he’d ask for more pink ping pong balls (a most odd request).  But to the overjoy of the parents, when they offered him anything he wanted again, he wished for a new red tricycle.  The Father was a little concerned that his son was still riding a tricycle at age nine, but it beat the heck out of buying more pink pong balls and thinking your son was crazy.

Years and years passed, and the kid grew into a teenager.  It had been nearly eight years since the boy had asked for pink ping pong balls, and his parents had almost entirely forgotten the whole incident.  Pretty soon, the boy was graduating from high school with an advanced diploma.  The parents, brimming with pride for their son, and not afraid to ask the following question anymore, said,

“Son, we are so proud of you.  We are willing to buy you any car you want; a Lamborghini, a Porche, a beetle, whatever you want!  Money is not an issue.”

The son replied, much to his parents’ shock, “No thanks.  I just want fifty pink ping pong balls.”

The parents, utterly bewildered, gave their son what he asked.  They never saw the pink ping pong balls again.  I totally lied about this being the end.

Q3: The Best English Book

In my journey through the English language class that we are required to take, I have read many horrible books, but the worst one by FAR was My Darling, My Hamburger, by Paul Zindel.  This book was the most bland, plotless, pointless flop of a sorry excuse for literature I have ever read to this day.  It seemed more like something you’d read as a class in health, as it was all about abstinence.  Who  wants to read about abstinence?

I kind of forget how it goes to be honest with you, but I’m pretty sure it went something like this: There are four kids.  Two of them are good looking and have sex and stuff and the other two are butt ugly, and they all just kind of hang out and go to dances and stuff.  That’s really all I remember about the story, which slightly alarms me because I’m only just halfway done with this blog. 

Oh wait.  This is supposed to be about the BEST book I’ve ever read in English.  Oh.  Well that would have to be Maniac Magee, which I read in fourth grade.  Everybody else who was in school read it in fifth grade, but my fourth grade teacher, Miss Imes, gave me the book to read because she said I reminded her of the main character (Maniac Magee).  Now that I think about it, Maniac Magee was just an all-around weird kid, but I’m sure she meant well. 

Anyway, I read the book, and it was alright.  But the main thing that was good about it was the year after that, when my fifth grade class read it as a class, it was really lame and nobody could understand the storyline.  This was because Mrs. PANEK decided it would be a good idea to have each student read one sentence and then pick another student to read another sentence and then read the book like that.  Not even joking.

Q2: Summer Plans

When somebody asks me what my plans are for the summer, or the weekend, or anything really, I usually end up with the response, “Oh,” because I never have plans for anything.  I don’t even have plans for how I’m going to finish this blog.  Hey, speak of the devil, this blog’s prompt is ‘What are your plans for the summer?’.  Great, well guess what?  I don’t have any.

“Oh.”

You see, I like to live life on the edge.  Go where the wind takes me.  I’m a bounty hunter.  Just today, I wore a shirt that was all white, but it had a blue striped pocket; a perfect example about how I don’t play by the rules. 

In other words, I don’t get invited anywhere.  But I don’t look at it that way.

Oh wait; I have my foam Hunger Games.  I do that every year, just because it combines all of my favorite things into one event.  But other than that, yeah, I’m a bounty hunter. 

You might recall, and this just occurred to me, the Foam Hunger Games is what I wrote about for my very first blog ever in the history of Ben Hoy’s blogs.  Let’s take a moment to reflect on what a long way I’ve come from there.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yes.

Anyway, back to me being a bounty hunter, as I realize more and more that my summer this year won’t be as free as it always was.  I’ll have to get a job!  Aw man.  That pretty much means I’ll have to throw in the towel as a bounty hunter who never gets invited to things. 

You know what?  I’ll never stop being a bounty hunter.  I don’t care if I go broke.  I’ll just write blogs so much that someone will be forced to pay me for them.  Like I said, I don’t play by the rules.

Q4: My Least Favorite Pop Icon

The pop icon that I dislike the most is the Pepsi one.  I mean come on; would you just decide what you’re going to look like?  First you’re just ‘PEPSI’ written in cursive, then you’re a red and blue ball with a squiggly through it, and now… what are you now?

That is the thing that makes me dislike Pepsi: what is the logo supposed to mean and why do they keep changing it?  I think I know why, ladies and gentlemen, and I will now present a theory.  Ahem.

First, I would like you to picture the old Pepsi icon (the half blue, half red ball with a white squiggly).  Now picture the new Pepsi icon (the mostly red ball with a smaller blue section and a curved white line separating them).  

Now, picture this: The circle shape that the Pepsi icon is composed of is a depiction of the plant Earth in fifty years in the future.  The red section represents the Communist Army, rising again and attempting to take over the world.  Hear me out.  And the BLUE section represents the Global Alliance, an international military that was formed after the Communists conquered Australia.  Each of the sections on the circle represent the land that each force (the Global Alliance and the Communists) has conquered. The white line separating them represents a toxic, barbed wire ridden No Man’s Land.

Now observe the evolution of the icon over the years.  It started off as a draw between the two forces.  Each of them had conquered half of the planet.  But now the Red section takes up most of the circle.  The Communists are winning.

What’s with that, Pepsi?

In conclusion, the Pepsi icon is just all around a bad pop icon.  It is always changing, and promotes Communism imperialism on the entire world.

P1: What Do I Watch on TV?

A lot of people seem to think I’m joking when I say I didn’t stop watching shows like Sesame Street, Arthur, Veggie Tales, Word Girl, and Super Why until I was in eighth grade. 

Do you see the smile that is not on my face?

Up until I was unusually old, I was not even allowed to watch PG-13 movies, and when I did, it was Star Wars Three: Revenge of the Sith, and I had to fast forward through the part where Anakin fell into the lava.

 

I used to watch the Saturday morning cartoons every Saturday with my brothers.  That was back before the Japanese Invasion, and when the shows were actually good.  You had your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fast Forward, your Xiaolin Showdown, your Eon Kid, your Viva Piñata, and your Coconut Fred’s Fruit Salad Island.  Awesome shows.  But then it changed.  I don’t really know what happened.  All of a sudden, all of those shows that I liked got replaced with Dragonball Z-Kai, ten different versions of Yu-Gi-Oh, and those other Japanese shows where their lips are out of sync and they blast pure energy out of their hands using their soul or whatever.  It’s horrible.  Who watches that crap?

I have two televisions in my house.  Both of them are color.  The one upstairs is really boxy but the one in the basement is from the future.  The one downstairs also has Netflix, but Netflix does not let you watch Coconut Fred’s Fruit Salad Island.  I fear I have lost that show forever.

Some people think it’s weird that I’ve never formally watched Spongebob, but my TV gets around seven channels depending on the weather.  It doesn't really matter though, because Coconut Fred’s Fruit Salad Island was pretty much the Tops brand Honey Wheels to the Honey Comb cereal that is Spongebob.

P2: Ms. Chrzanowski

Ms. Chrzanowski is not fit to become a teacher.  She proved to be absolutely no asset in the Online Publishing classroom environment.  If Ms. Chrzanowski wants to run a newspaper, there’s some stuff she needs to learn before she can do it professionally.

One thing she needs to do is be aware of her surroundings.  Probably eighty percent of the time I saw Ms. Chrzanowski, she was sitting in her chair reading some book while reporters didn’t get it done around her.  Is your book really that good, Ms. Chrzanowski?  Because I have your LIFE book right here, and oh, whoops, I skipped to the end, and oh, it ends with YOU NOT BEING A TEACHER.  Surprising?  NOPE.

Another thing Ms. Chrzanowski needs to do is treat all of her students equally, and establish appropriate student-teacher relationships with each one.  Of course, I am going to use Matt Lamb as an example.  Whenever Ms. Chrzanowski got tired of her BOOK, she would mozie on over to Matt’s workplace.  She would then start talking about Matt’s sister, Maggie, who she is apparently best friends with.  Even a regular conversation between Matt and Ms. Chrzanowski would always find its way back to Matt’s sister, which is weird by any means, but when it’s a student and a teacher talking?  That is just plain wrong.

Of course, I must shift some of the blame over to Mr. Currin, who did absolutely nothing to educate Ms. Chrzanowski on how to run a newspaper.  Mr. Currin, this woman wants to become an editor in chief.  Don’t you think you should maybe, I don’t know, tell her how to be one before you send her off into the real world?  She’s probably teaching an Online Publishing class right now, and her newspaper is probably only getting half as many views as The Bulldog.  That’s right, only half a person is viewing her newspaper.

P3: Did I Accomplish My Goals?

A couple minutes ago I delved into the past and looked up my A2 blog, which was supposed to be about the accomplishments I hope to reach during the school year.  Now I have to write an entire three hundred words on whether or not I accomplished what I wrote I hoped to.

Well, unfortunately my past self is a rebellious little punk, and decided to go through the entire blog not naming ONE accomplishment other than “not failing.”

What a punk.

Well, I am not failing.  And thanks to smart aleck little Past Ben that is all I can write.  I still have two hundred words yet, and I got nothing. 

Matt Lamb had three goals, and he didn’t accomplish any of them.  I’m not going to lie, that’s pretty pathetic, but at least his past self had good intentions.  Mine didn’t.  I literally just stalled the entire time trying to squeeze out three hundred words from something I wasn’t even writing about.

I’m a little ticked at my past self right now.  He totally screwed me over with this blog.  If time travel ever gets invented, I’m going back to when we had a reasonable amount of blogs to write each week, and slapping that little punk in the FACE.

Ninety two words left.  That’s not so bad, especially since I keep taking up space by writing really long sentences that just explain the actual sentence itself, and involve at least three commas, all of which lead on to another sentence, and usually take up about fifty words, depending how long the thing actually is, which depends on how desperate I am for words, which I currently am because as I said, my past self left me with jack squat. 

Well, it looks like I’m at three hundred words.  I hope I don’t have to look back at this in the future and write another blog on it.

P5: The Pink Ping Pong Ball Story, Part 2

“A pink ping pong ball?” repeated the mother and father incredulously, “Why would you want that out of everything?”

But the child just walked away and didn’t respond.  By the way, this is sort of a continuation of my other choice blog, so unless you read that one this won’t make any sense.

Anyway, the kid’s birthday rolled around, and his mother and father, still confused, gave him a regular pink ping pong ball.  Their son seemed happy to receive the pink ping pong ball, but the mother and father never saw that ping pong ball again after that day.

The days rolled on, and life went back to normal for the family.  In fact, things were so normal that the mother and the father completely forgot about the curious incident in which their son, out of anything in the world, chose to receive a pink ping pong ball for his birthday. 

But next year, the child turned eight, and his father kneeled down next to him and asked, “Son, we barely spent any money on your birthday present last year.  This year your mother and I want to give you a very expensive present.  Name anything, and it’s yours.  Money is not an issue.”

His son thought for a minute, and then decided, “This year, I want five pink ping pong balls for my birthday.”

The father stayed there, stunned, as the child walked away.  He called after his son asking why he chose five pink ping pong balls, but the son did not reply.  That day, the child received five regular pink ping pong balls, and the parents never saw them again after that day. 

After their child’s eighth birthday passed, his parents did not forget his odd request.  They asked their son why he wanted pink ping pong balls so badly, but he would just walk away and not tell.  I’m over three hundred words, so to be continued I guess.