You Take The Good You Take The Bad You Take Them Both And There You Have The Pony's Life

Alas, our poor Pony had a regular buffet of a day yesterday.

By now, you must realize that The Pony is set in his ways. He does his own thing. He's a creature of habit. Always takes the same items in his lunch every day. Does not stray from a routine. Dislikes fuss and muss. Is as happy sitting at a lunch table all alone as he is sitting with his Smartypants Team colleagues.

Funny I should mention lunch tables.

Yesterday after school, The Pony was a bit perturbed with a little lass who has been a good friend all year. She's a bestie, she's a pesty, she's a midnight textee.

"I'm really kind of mad at her. She put her finger in her gravy, and kept poking at me with it. THEN she got it on me. She SAID it was an accident. I said, 'Really. REALLY?' It got all over the side of my pants, by the pockets."

"Oh, well. Tomorrow I'll tell her, 'Our car smelled like gravy all the way home. Did The Pony eat the pork chop and mashed potatoes for lunch? Because he has never eaten a school lunch before. He must have spilled some gravy. I had to cut off the legs of his pant and make shorts.'"

"Uh. No. Don't do that."

I was only joking. As I was when I told him how one of my students was bragging about being Superman, because he got the lid off a bottle of Dr. Pepper by using his teeth and a T-shirt. "He said he was the only one who could do it. Like he could make a career out of a skill such as that. Except he kind of spilled that Dr. Pepper, and had to change his shirt."

"Uh. Did he tell you that it was in algebra?"

"Yes. The class right before he came to mine."

"Did he tell you that he sits right beside me? And that the Dr. Pepper kid sits behind me, and that he had left the Dr. Pepper in his truck, and it was frozen, and nobody could open it, and Superman's brother tried to open it, and when he couldn't, he shook it up really hard, and when Superman chewed it open, it sprayed out all over everything, including the paper on his desk that he was supposed to be grading at the time. Did he tell you that we pass our papers one desk to the left, and IT WAS MY PAPER?"

"No. Somehow he left that part out."

It was not a red-letter day for The Pony. At least things were looking up today, when he found out he placed first in the English division of the W.Y.S.E. competition held a couple weeks ago, and that he scored a 30 out of a possible 32 on the PLAN test all sophomores took last fall.

But best of all, no food or drink was inflicted upon him against his will.