Guy Fox Day

I wrote the first version of

Guy Fox Day

to be an entry in the February 750-Word Challenge, but the Moderators rejected it for being too short. Three times I submitted it and three times the Moderators--yes, I know their names, but I don't want to call them out and risk alienating them any more than apparently I already have--rejected it, even though Microsoft Word consistently said it was exactly 750 words long. I thought I remembered that Microsoft Word was an accepted authority, but apparently I misremembered because the last time I submitted the bloody story I actually pointed out Microsoft Word's

imprimatur

in the

Note to admin

, but no dice--they still bounced it. So now I've no idea what algorithm our Moderators use to calculate word count, but it seems to me they should let us know--although a lot of entries have been accepted in the Challenge, so I guess I'm just too damn dumb to know what mistake I'm making. I got tired of beating my head against the wall after three futile attempts, so I gave up and padded this version to more than twelve hundred words and just submitted it as a regular story. It'll be interesting to see whether our omnipotent (if not omniscient) Moderators accept it or bounce it again as being too short to be worthy of consideration as an acceptably fleshed-out story.

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I WAS BORN on 5 November during my father's first TDY in England. He, John Fox, was a member of the United States Air Force and possessed of such a warped sense of humor that he managed to persuade my mother to name me Guy. I didn't get the joke until the second time he was TDY in England nine years later+.

That second tour I was markedly smaller than my fellow displaced Yanks--no pre-pubescent growth spurt for me, sad to tell. So, while they romped about the baseball diamond on base I strolled off base to the alternative game of rounders with some British lads more my size. They were the first to clue me in that my name was singularly appropriate to the month and day of my birth. They didn't know anything about a tunnel under Parliament, but they sure had the "Penny for the Guy" routine down pat. I thought that celebrating my birthday with fireworks was a really nice touch.

-- § --

ROUNDERS IS SORT OF like baseball, but with posts instead of bases and without mitts, hot dogs, or Crackerjacks. English folks have been playing rounders since the days of Henry VIII, and not a few of them are wont to claim it's the ancestor of baseball never mind Abner Doubleday (who didn't have anything to do with it, anyway, but that's not important now).

The first recorded reference to rounders was in 1744, but that little chapbook--actually

A Little Pretty Pocket-Book

--called the game

base-ball

, so maybe those Brits knew what they were on about after all. It took almost another hundred years before the first set of rounders rules was published in London in 1828, and another two decades before the first set of baseball rules was published in this country.

The rounders ball is about 2/3 the size of a baseball, and the bat is a whole lot smaller, usually around 18". The ball is pitched underhanded--the Brits call it "bowled", of course, you know, like cricket. If the pitch is between the batter's shoulder and knee, he or she (a lot of British girls play rounders) is required to swing at it. Whether the batter hits the ball or not, he or she runs to touch the posts much like in baseball. A score is called a rounder, not a run; oh yes, and there can be a half-rounder. Needless to say, scoring rules are sort of complicated.

My Brit mates would swing that little bat with one hand, but I was too scrawny for that so I had to use both hands. No way could I have done any damage to that little ball by swinging that little bat one-handed. That earned me no end of teasing, but I'd been such a runt for so long that by that age I'd been teased enough that it didn't bother me.

Well, not much, but sometimes I do wish I'd been a bit bigger.

To my great surprise, I got pretty good at rounders and thoroughly enjoyed playing it. Pretty soon I wasn't always Tail End Charlie when we chose up sides, and occasionally I actually inspired cheers when I scored a rounder. I've got some fairly fond memories of those days in Merrie Olde England.

-- § --

IT WAS ANOTHER 20 years before I needed my rounders kit, but I really wish I hadn't needed it. I'd been married to Charlotte for a few years and thought everything was jake, but hadn't yet learned that rose-colored glasses can make red flags look white. Figuring there was nothing or no one to surrender, I ignored all those flags I saw--a huge mistake I spent the rest of my life regretting.

Yeah, it's a cliché, but I had no idea that I'd made a mistake until I came home early one afternoon and was puzzled to see a strange car in the driveway. Since I didn't recognize it, I didn't shout "Honey! I'm home!" when I went in the front door. I might as well have; there was so much other shouting going on upstairs no one would have heard me.

Dreading what I feared I might find, I tiptoed up the stairs and peeked in the open bedroom door. It will probably come as no surprise to you what I saw: my beloved wife and my soon-to-be-former best friend bumping uglies on our marital bed. I was struck dumb--there's a stupid phrase if there ever was one, I was obviously already as dumb as a sack of jock straps. They were so busy and noisy that they didn't notice me; I was shocked to realize that I'd been doing it wrong all along.

-- § --

THEY WERE GOING at it

Sex scene #9 goes here.

I don't remember stealing down the hall to dig out a ski mask and my old rounders bat, but I made good use of them on the two fornicators. I paid particular attention to his balls, first poking vigorously then swinging for all I was worth. I may have felt I was worthless, but my two-handed swing was definitely on the money.

The only things that could tie me to the scene were the mask and rounders bat. No one knew about my family's stint in England, the rounders bat I'd hung on to all these years, or my talent in using it. I had no siblings--I was an only child, spoiled but never a brat--and my parents were killed in a plane crash several years earlier. If I ditched the ski mask and rounders bat there'd be nothing to link me to the assault, so I drove across town to 7-11and went around behind where the dumpster was so I could toss them in.

Shit! There was a long line. Now what do I do?

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