Shoot 'em While They're Happy

Pretend this came out Monday. Also pretend it's good.

EB White thought he was some grammar hotshot who could tell us all what to do, and to prove his authority he wrote a flawless children’s tragedy about a rasher of bacon who was denied existence by an over-educated villainous spider.

“Obey my grammar commandments,” White would say through his megaphone, “just as everyone obeyed Debbie Reynolds I mean Charlotte in denying that bacon the chance to exist.”

So he partnered with his friend Strunk and they created Zuckerman’s Famous Rules, a writing guide first published word-by-word in spiderwebs across the country. But as we all know, the very first rule of grammar is: don’t be named Strunk. It tops the no-no’s with classics like coveting thy neighbor’s subjunctive or dishonoring thy colon and semicolon.

To atone, Strunk was exiled to the wilderness, where an angel told him to eat only Ezekiel bread cooked over his own flaming dung. Remember when you go pay thousands for a loaf at the local Sprouts that they’re neglecting to mention the your-own-dung part of the recipe. This is not bread to be eaten for taste or health. It’s punishment.

Strunk’s replacement was a rat named Templeton, voiced by Bewitched’s own Paul Lynde. Templeton loved the ladies, despite his voice actor’s inclination toward gentlemen, and he would accompany White on his weekly Ladies Night excursions to writing mechanics-themed nightclubs. He didn’t care a farthing for grammar, but, unlike Strunk, his name was grammatically correct, and that was enough to get them past the bouncers.

“But once inside, the ladies are still slapping you,” said White through his megaphone, inches from Templeton’s ear. “They’re slapping you even before you approach them. You need to demonstrate value by wearing a top hat and tails like mine.”

So the pair entered a tailor’s shop that catered to the diminutive. Wee Elements of Style on the corner of Barthfourth and Foote Streete was run by a regular-sized tailor with tiny hands, shrunken when he accidentally dried them on the Easy Care / Permanent Press setting. He quickly whipped Templeton up a little suit of white formal wear to match EB White’s, itself sewn by a tiny tailor with regular-sized hands.

Later at the Split Infinitive discotheque, the pair resumed their quest to pick up ladies.

“I co-authored Zuckerman’s Famous Rules,” said EB White’s megaphone to the brunette directly in front of him.

The brunette perked up. “The rat?”

“No, sorry, the other one. But here, allow me to demonstrate value by continuing to wear this outfit.”

Meanwhile, Templeton’s voice actor kept breaking character, just as he was about to score.

“Sure, I’ll come back to your apartment for a nightcap,” said the tall blonde at the bar, “even though you’re an animated rat, Paul Lynde is clearly just off-camera doing your voice, and you’re dressed like Ringo coming down the staircase in the Your Mother Should Know video. Why, there’s nothing suspicious about any of those things.”

Templeton opened his mouth to say, “Check please,” but could scarcely believe the words that came out instead.

“Not tonight, toots. Got a brother?”

Slap.

And just like that she was gone.

And so it goes, thought Templeton, when a rat’s own voice doesn’t share his sexual preference.

As he threw back a Jameson, Templeton heard the shrill crackle of his co-author’s megaphone snap to life from the next stool over.

“There there,” said EB White, pinky-patting him on the back.

“Pardon me, friend,” came a weathered voice.

All eyes darted to the saloon-style swinging doors, where the backlit visage of Strunk, unshaven, covered in Ezekiel crumbs, the blonde on one arm and the brunette on the other, stood wreaking of burnt poo.

He went all Clint Eastwood steely. “…but aren’t you omitting a comma there?”

EB White made several long strides toward Strunk and raised the megaphone up to the man’s face.

“Who cares?” he said. “The whole utterance wasn’t even classifiable. Just a repeated adverb: too gentle to be an interjection, too few parts of speech to be a sentence. The missing comma is the least of its problems.”

Yeah, take that, comma pedant! Both ladies rolled their eyes and walked out. What a loser.

Strunk shrunk.

“Oh.”