GallupJourney

Second Place Short Story

The Pirate Boy 

By Caleb Williams

Little Theodore was a pirate. Nobody else knew, but that’s the way he liked it. Just think of the advantage he had over others if no one suspected. Somebody could just be minding their own business, when SNAP, little Theodore would swoop in and steal their treasure. They probably wouldn’t even notice it missing until it was too late. Another great thing about Theodore was that he was only six years old. Who would suspect a six year old?

Interestingly, Theodore hadn’t even known he was a pirate until earlier that morning. He found out in a dream. He had been sitting in a life raft on a river eating some cotton candy from a carnival, when all of a sudden who should appear but Captain Blackbeard, riding across the waves on a giant catfish. 

“Hello,” said Captain Blackbeard. 

“Hello,” said little Theodore. 

“Meow,” said the catfish. 

“You are to become one of the greatest pirates ever,” said Captain Blackbeard. 

“For real?” asked Theodore, “What do I do”? 

Blackbeard seemed to contemplate this in his mind, mulling over the excruciatingly complicated words Theodore had used. “Well,” he finally replied, “I suppose you should start by becoming an expert swordsman, then perhaps learning to talk like a pirate, then I guess you’ll be ready to steal treasure from innocent bystanders.” Blackbeard then proceeded to perform an ancient Celtic waltz for the education of the catfish (which, if you ask me, was a waste of time considering that the catfish was hopelessly blind).

  Later, when Theodore woke up, he immediately started work on becoming the greatest pirate ever. First, he went out in the backyard and found a good strong stick. He practiced for about two hours until he became the greatest swordsman ever, and then decided to work on his pirate language. He worked on useful pirate words first, like “Arr,” “Scallywag,” and “Ya’ll.” Then he practiced some more advanced pirate language, which, sadly, I cannot write here, otherwise I would be more than happy to share them with you. 

Sometime later, Theodore the pirate’s mother called to him from the window of the house. She was going to the store and Theodore had to come with her, so he did. That is where we found our hero at the outset of this tale.

“Dear,” said Theodore’s mother, “please grab me some of those bananas over there.”

“Certainly,” said Theodore, thinking to himself about how he would feed the bananas to a monkey on some tropical island.  

It was then that Theodore noticed treasure sticking halfway out of some teenage boy’s pocket, almost as if it was begging for some pirate to steal it. And after all, little Theodore was a pirate, wasn’t he?

As Theodore crept up behind the boy, he slowly withdrew a small pirate stick dagger that he had concealed in his pocket for just such an occasion. Little Theodore pulled off the robbery extremely well. Blackbeard would have been proud. Sadly, though, something went wrong. As Theodore wacked the teenager tremendously hard on the back and simultaneously pulled the wallet treasure out of the pocket, he discovered to his dismay that the treasure was attached to a chain. 

Unfortunately, the silly teenager screamed out in pain, as if the whack on the back had actually hurt. Needless to say, this caught everybody’s attention, including Theodore’s mother. Little Theodore felt quite embarrassed as everyone stared at him, considering he was holding a stick dagger and a wallet, which just so happened to be attached to a crying teenager. Please allow me to take this opportunity to say that this whole predicament could have been avoided if not for a silly teenage fad of attaching ones wallet to ones self. Thank you.

The whole way home, Theodore’s mother yelled about how wrong it is to hit people with sticks, while Theodore tried to explain that Blackbeard’s catfish wanted him to. When they got home, his mother asked him one more time why he had done it. In answer, Theodore used one of his wonderful pirate words which cannot be written, and in answer to that, he was promptly sent to bed.

As little Theodore lay there, he could not figure out why mother had been so mad at him. After all, he was a pirate, wasn’t he? After some time, though, Theodore fell asleep.

That night, little Theodore sailed to a tropical island, and fed a monkey a banana.