Childhood obesity is funny!

When I was 25, truly living on my own for the first time, I decided I was going to kill a kid.

Before you fly off the handle and call the cops, understand this: that fat bastard had it coming.

His name was Darren and he lived next door. Darren’s parents were gone all day, so this porky loser had nothing to do all afternoon but sit on the couch, getting fatter, playing video games and watching TV.

When he would grow bored of that, he would start looking for trouble.

Luckily for Darren, his parents tried to make up for their absence with a lack of discipline and an indulgent attitude. In case you can’t read between the lines, I’m saying he was spoiled.

So Tubbs would roam the neighborhood with his BB gun, shooting cats and younger, smaller children, and no matter how many people complained, this dipshit’s dipshit parents wouldn’t take any action. Usually, they would defend him and start accusing the other kids and parents of being at fault, but sometimes they wouldn’t even do that. They clearly just didn’t care. Someone else might feel sorry for this douchebag, but not me.

Well, the final straw for me is when Fatty figures out that if he calls my house when I’m at work and taunts my hyperactive yellow lab, Ellie, over the speaker, he can make her go nuts and trash the house.

I come home one evening and the place is a wreck. My first thought is that I had been robbed. I’m searching around, trying to see if anything is missing, but all I really see is someone made a mess, there’s dog shit everywhere and no signs of entry.

Then I see my answering machine is blinking and I have 27 messages. I push play and hear that bag of lard’s voice calling Ellie’s name over and over and it all clicks. Apparently, this genius was smart enough to figure out this answering machine prank but not smart enough to realize he’d be leaving behind the evidence to prove he did it.

I should have called the police at this point. I had a house with hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of damage and a tape that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt who was responsible for it.

But, then I thought that he probably wouldn’t be criminally prosecuted. He was only ten or whatever. The cops would most likely leave it up to the parents to discipline their child and I knew what that would lead to. No, it was much better to just take the law into my own hands and murder Tons of Fun, myself.

I had to be patient, though. I couldn’t just run over there and strangle him and expect to get away with it. I had to think this through.

While I shoveled my now-destroyed belongings into a wheelbarrow and out to the curb, I plotted.

The next day, my plan fully sketched out, I went down to the local magic shop and bought what I needed.

I had taken off from work and while I sat on the floor of my barren living room, I laid everything out before me and waited for nightfall.

When the sun had gone down and all the lights were out at Darren’s house, I snuck over there, OJ-style, decked out in black, as quiet as a cat. From my rucksack I produced a satchel which contained 3 pieces of magic chalk I had purchased earlier.

Trying to remember what the store owner had told me, I sketched a small door on the side of the house, maybe 3 feet high. I uttered some magic words which I will not repeat here and then the door lit up and to my amazement, began to open by itself. A door that opens by itself?!? What the F???

So I got on my hands and knees and crawled through the opening into a small tunnel. There were tiny little torches lit along the wall and I could smell something sweet, like cotton candy. I thought I must have lost my mind.

I followed the tunnel for about 30 feet and figured I was directly under the middle of Darren’s house. I marked an ‘X’ so I would be able to remember my location, when I went back, as this was just a scouting mission. Tomorrow night, I would return with some dynamite and blow that family of fat-asses back to Ohio or whatever part of the Midwest “those types” come from.

My friends - or so I thought.

I started the fairly involved process of turning myself around when I heard some faint singing off in the distance. I strained my eyes and ears and concentrated down the dark tunnel and again, thought I was losing it, when 3 or 4 tiny people approached, smiling and waving at me. As they got closer, I realized they weren’t actually tiny people: they were elves.

“What’s up, dude?” the one in front asked me.

“Um, not much. What’s up with you guys?” I replied, not really able to think of anything else to say.

“Just chillin’. You wanna smoke some weed with us?”

Did I! They whipped out their bong and we all got high as shit. I think the cramped quarters of the tunnel served as somewhat of an airlock, trapping us in a cloud of our own second-hand pot smoke.

When the bong was cashed, one of the elves flipped it over and dumped the bong water out onto the tunnel floor. It was instantly absorbed into the dirt and seconds later, a large, bright flower grew from its spot. The flower was taller than the elf people and as my bloodshot eyes struggled to see in the dim torchlight, I realized that it was entirely made out of candy. Which was pretty cool.

I followed the elves back down the tunnel from where they had come. They told me all about the magical land they lived in. They called it “Super Cool Dude Land” and explained that for thousands of years, they had been the source of the world’s candy.

“I thought candy came from England and was made out of sugar and crap like that?” I asked them, naively.

They told me that I was being stupid, which was good enough for me, cuz I was out of my mind, fucked up, at that point.

When they asked what brought me to Super Cool Dude Land, I summarized my situation and they seemed more than eager to help me get rid of this punk.

They laughed at my dynamite idea and explained that a minor cave-in would never produce the catastrophic results I was looking for. No, it would be best if they were to sneak in while Darren’s family slept and just slit all their throats.

Their three hundred and fifty dollar “suggested donation” sounded more than reasonable to me, but I asked to sleep on it. They agreed and said I could meet them back there at the same time tomorrow night with the money if I wanted to go through with it.

I thanked them for the weed and crawled home.

My problems were solved, my prayers had been answered. Darren would be dead and nobody would be able to pin it on me in a million years.

So why did I feel kinda bad about the whole thing? As crazy as it sounds, I was having second thoughts.

The next day, I asked everyone at work what I should do and my friend, Carol, told me that if I’m hearing little voices telling me not to do it, then I should probably give them a listen. I’ve always valued her advice, she’s a smart lady and one hell of an office manager.

By the time I pulled into my driveway, that night, my mind was made up: I was going to tell the elves “thanks, but no thanks”. I hoped it wouldn’t hurt their feelings.

Here's a pretty girl for no reason.

I brought the 350 bucks with me, just in case there were any hard feelings. I figured a week’s pay wasn’t worth losing some really good friends over. I had a hunch they’d be cool with it and tell me to keep the money. If the shoe had been on the other foot and I had been the one offering to murder their neighbor for three hundred and fifty dollars and they had backed out at the last minute, I really would have appreciated the gesture if they had offered to pay me for my trouble anyway. It seemed like the stand up thing to do.

As I reached the spot where I had made my mark the night before, I sensed something wasn’t quite right. Where was the singing?

When the elves from Super Cool Dude Land approached me this time, there were no smiles. As they got closer, I could see the littlest one, who I called “Elve-us”, had been crying. He looked me in the eye and mout