GLADIATOR

© Greg Vanno and Vannovation LLC 2020

Miss Symes had a rare talent. She knew which student was day dreaming. Okokok, she knew which student was deepest into their daydream.

“Johnny?” she called. “Please use the word, ‘gladiator’ in a sentence.”

Johnny, abruptly postponing a daring sword fight in the Colosseum with two wily Gaulactics, stood and faced the class. He stepped back so everyone had a ringside seat.

You don’t survive a childhood as Little Johnny without stage presence.

“A sentence?” the class held their collective breaths. They had seen that Johnny rise to a challenge before. First, he set the stage, stepping back so he could see all of them in one glance. Self-preservation, in many cases. “OK, there was this emperor and he sent his guards to bring back a fighter from the Colosseum.”

Miss Symes worried that Johnny had missed the point. But before she could interrupt, the story was in full spate: “They dragged the fighter before Emperor Hero –”

Elspeth mouthed ‘Nero’ –

“of the Gaulactic wars, The Hero Emperor.”

After a heartbeat, for effect, Johnny continued, “Emperor Nero, as he was known,”

– nod to Elspeth, who smiled, –

“pointed at two doors. ‘Behind one of these doors is the wicked Princess White Fang’”

– Elspeth frowned. White Fang was too close to the old Pictish words for ‘white smiling teeth’, rendered as ‘Elspeth’. She just knew Johnny was going to zap her. –

“‘and behind the other is just a kitty cat,’ the Emperor said. Then he and all his guards cracked up, which is to say, they crackled in glee.”

Elspeth was torn. It’s difficult to mouth the difference between ‘crackled’ and ‘cackled’. And besides Johnny was bound to zap her. But she tried, ‘Cr’ and shook her head.

But Johnny had the bit between his teeth and charged on. “The emperor shouted, ‘Red Fang! The kitty cat that killed two hundred Schnauzers in the Colosseum last week!’”

Johnny almost paused and went for the cheap thrill of changing the story within a story to be about Miniature Schnauzers but, the game was afoot! “The fighter had been at the Colosseum that day! He had seen that Battle Royale. The fighter knew that Red Fang was a Siberian Tiger, not a kitty cat!”

Miss Symes almost relaxed, remembering Johnny’s unusual ending to the Princess and the Tiger story last month. She had submitted it to a children’s magazine for him but those things take forever. But then she saw Johnny’s eyes grow round and he took a deep breath before continuing his tale. Those were the ‘tells’ the other teachers had warned her about. Too late!

“The fighter pulled free from the guards and raced to the wall, tearing both doors open at the same time. There, on the left, dressed in a purple toga stood Princess Elspeth.”

She knew it! Elspeth could have written a note to her best friend, ‘Johnny is going to make this story humiliate me!’ and taped it shut and open it tomorrow and everyone would know that she could predict the future! Princess White Fang? Princess Elspeth! Oooh! Johnny was so! so! so! going to pay for this!

The class tittered on the brink. Knowing that laughter would spoil his story, Johnny pointed dramatically to his right, “Bounding out of the other door came Red Fang! He knocked the fighter to the floor and glared at the Emperor whose guards ran for their lives. Before the fighter could get up, the tiger leapt thru the other door with Princess Elspeth! The door slammed shut. A shriek ... cut short.”

“The fighter grabbed up a sword that a runaway guard had dropped. He stood between the emperor and the door. Then he opened the door! There sat Red Fang, licking his paw and dabbing at his mouth with a scrap of purple cloth. A smile lit the face of the tiger.”

“Not a grin,” Johnny grinned and the class shrank away from his evil grin.

“Not a sneer,” Johnny curled his lip.

“Just a smile.”

Johnny sat back down in his seat and faced the blackboard.

Oh, Elspeth!

No! Elspeth!

Elspeth, you just know it!

But Elspeth had to ask, “Johnny, why was the tiger smiling?”

Johnny motioned to Miss Symes, “A sentence, right?”

Miss Symes nodded the smallest nod she could nod.

Johnny said, “The tiger was smiling because he was gladiator.”