I was born believing that I wasn't. I believed then as I do now, I was simply manifested out of "a common need" by mankind.. but this need, I must confess, escapes me from time to time so therefore I find myself adrift in a meaningless toil of frothy buffoonery.

Quite a dreadful place, this world, and the beings with so little in way of constitution of my age, these blank driveling drones at five years of age, my age at the time, I thought, "What sort of nincumpoopery are they up to? Am I one of these too?"

I was confounded.

I always had visions of things tethered...

Like a murder of crows to the cornmeal, my thoughts of innocent boobery were plucked from me by much bigger conceptual thoughts, things of rail and road, things of tall hats, big curly moustaches and cloaks of black, always black. By age ten I had already commenced my career in bounding my sworn foe to train tracks, pasting yarn to my upper lip and twisting, always twisting and bellowing a bravado of laughter that started as faint as a summer breeze, and ended in a wrath of thundering contempt. Suffice it to say, I was dis-owned by age eleven...

Twas at this time that I had encountered a very important mentor to me. He was quite the prolocutor who had a vested interest in things sinister, rather akin to my way of thinking, I must say. His name was Ivan Z. Pewter The III. He was a slight man, thin yet strong as a Romano cheese. I must confess he was of noble ilk but had been graduated to a form more useful and serving to mankind. He was more than a title now, he was the greatest sinister mind I had ever met, for example; he could tie a foe to train track faster than a whip might crack an ass.

A topic unto which he could spin yarns upon yarns upon was the topic of damsels. I had not yet been versed in the dealings of damsels at my young age but I was all too keened to learn.

"The only damsel worth remembering," he would begin a lesson, "the only damsel that any a person harkens back upon fondly with riveted ears in waiting is The Damsel in Distress! After all," he would mention with such delicacy, "that is the only kind of damsel there is, name me another, eEvilyn."

He would ask then, bitingly.

"Well I... I would have to mention...that one, no that was a dowager... hmm. Well I'm afraid, dear sir, you have me at a loss."

"Well yes, yes I think I have for you see, I am right. I am not without my studies, my dear lad."

"Oh kind sir, if you don't dare mind..." I recount saying.

You see I was quite put off by the "lad" comment and I felt I had indeed better nip this in the, oh, what is it... bud, I believe.

Aback Ivan Z. Pewter recoiled in utter paradox, "What has your tongue?"

"Quite simply I prefer not a label such as "lad" to have the better of my being. I would prefer instead to be called upon by my name, my dear Ivan Z. Pewter The III."

"Well," he sparks forth in what I mistook as rage, "Well, I guess we shall skip lesson one." And we began a hum of nearly silent laughter, staccato in form, yet flowing in irony.

To be continued...