Decoding disappointment

11454297503_e27946e4ff_h It was snack time. Every day X has a Slim Jim. Every day he announces the flavor with great fanfare. On this particular day X pulled the Slim Jim from his lunchbox, looked at it, looked at it again, then held it aloft.
“Oh!” he announced with great enthusiasm, “It’s a new flavor! I’ve never had this one!” He paused and then said slowly and dramatically, “I can’t even read what it’s called!”
A friend rushed over, “I’ll help.” They bent their heads together trying to decipher the small print of the unknown word.
Curious, I approached, and the boys handed it to me.
“What does it say? What does it say?” they asked.
I looked, smiled, and then said, “Oh, I’m sure you can figure this out.” I wrote the letters of the unknown flavor in larger letters on the board. “Come on, give it a try.”

They stumbled through for a moment, trying a few possibilities, and then X called out, “Original! It says Original!” He danced about in place, triumphantly waving his Slim Jim in the air, chanting, “Original! Original!”

Then suddenly, he stopped, “Wait a minute… ”
His smile faded. His face fell.
“That means it’s just regular!”

Sometimes it’s better to just preserve the mystery.

7 thoughts on “Decoding disappointment”

Amy says:

April 12, 2016 at 5:05 am

I have to admit that I’m happy to hear that the disappointment was in X’s reaction to the flavor of his Slim Jim. As I was reading your slice I was thinking perhaps X wasn’t going to decode his mystery word. Here’s to hoping that X has a more enjoyable flavor today!

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mbhmaine says:

April 13, 2016 at 4:18 am

Amy, I think X would have sacrificed successful word decoding for a more exciting flavor. 😉

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