The Saga of Rodney Toady

[ChimeClock]

Rodney was a sad young man because he was fat and ugly and no one liked him. Children ran up to him in the street and pointed and shouted, "Rodney is a sad young man because he's fat and ugly!", and then they ran away laughing.

Rodney shouted at them, "I will chase you and hit you and make you cry!" But because Rodney was so fat he could not run fast enough and the frustration of complete impotence made him even sadder.

Older people pointed at him as he walked by and whispered to each other, "Rodney is a sad young man because he's fat and ugly," but they whispered loud enough so Rodney could hear, and this made him even sadder. Rodney said, "I can hear what you are whispering because I have extraordinary powers of hearing," and the older people would tell him that his hearing was as poor as his face was grotesque, and that they had whispered as loud as they had on purpose.

Beautiful girls used to come up to Rodney and ask him to dance with them, and when Rodney, happy and pleased, stepped onto the dance floor, the girls would run away and leave Rodney, dancing on his own to make him look even more foolish than nature intended. Rodney was a very sad young man.

Rodney's father was fat and ugly, and Rodney's mother was even... fat and  uglier, and his father used to tell him that one day Rodney would meet a fat and ugly girl, just like Rodney's mother, and they would get married. Rodney's mother told him that there were a lot of fat and ugly girls looking for fat and ugly men, just as she had done before she'd married Rodney's father, who was a road sweeper and cleaned lavatories to earn more money. But Rodney did not want to meet fat and ugly girls, and instead he bought rude books, with rude pictures in them...

"Rodney, your tea's ready!"