The Ed Who Played with Fire

By the light of the lava lamp, three Eds sat slurping root beer and being glad that it was Friday. Especially Eddy, who saw school as just an obstacle on his path to manhood. Eddy thumped his chest and washed down a handful of pork rinds with a swig of root beer. "Nobody put any hair on his chest learning a tangent about a... uh... hypotony. Yep. But I think those cheerleader babes were checkin' out these angles!" Eddy flexed and leaned forward to make sure his two pals got an eyeful of his six or seven chest hairs.

Double D only sighed, but Ed was fascinated. "Wow! Girls go crazy over werewolves these days! Lucky dickens," gushed Ed, looking longingly down at his hairless chest.

"I thought about doodling some extra ones, but I don't want to shock the chicks with my maturity."

That was too much for Double D. "Maturity? Please. A few hairs on one's chest a man does not make, Eddy."

"And this is coming from a guy in a yellow sleeper," Eddy whispered to Ed, pointing at Double D's pyjamas and trying to hold in his laughter.

Double D ignored this, already engulfed in thoughts of geometry. From his overnight bag, Double D produced his textbook. "The world of sines, cosines, and tangents is ripe for discovery! Knowledge is a necessary stop on the path to maturity."

"Whatever you say goes in one ear and out my nose, Double D," said Ed with a smile and a thumbs-up. He was happy to be anywhere that was void of broccoli and anger.

Eddy reclined and put on a Pink Floyd record. "Yeah, whatever you say." Reaching under his bed, he pulled out a glossy, unopened magazine. "I got the latest issue of the..."

Ed shouted with excitement. "Oh! Oh! Is it the latest Chicks Galore? It comes with a poster of a bunch of little chicks eating seeds." Leaning across Double D for a better view of the magazine, Ed tried to see the cover.

"No, Skunk-Pits." Taking another look at the cover himself, Eddy added, "Though it comes with a poster of chicks eating seeds, too," he said, with a salacious grin.

Double D gasped, "Oh my!" and covered his mouth. Although taken aback, a small part of him felt compelled to get a look. Not that he would say so to Eddy.

Ed let his tongue hang out. "Oh, goody!" Even though he had taped the Chicks Galore poster in a place of honour in his room, being able to see it at Eddy's house was a treat.

"It's the latest issue of Jiggy Jiggy! Available only to VIP members."

Double D raised an eyebrow. "And how, may I ask, did you acquire access to such an 'elite' brotherhood? I believe such a thing typically requires validation that you are of age."

"Pffff," said Eddy. "When you're as manly as I am, people can smell it a mile away!"

Double D whispered to Ed, "It sounds as though Eddy is confusing bromhidrosis and inexpensive cologne with manliness." Ed giggled. He enjoyed being the interceptor of Eddy and Double D's playful joking. Delighted as he was to be friends with both Eddy and Double D, he wished that he could be friends with them the way they seemed to be with each other. The smiles were different. Better.

Maybe it was because he wasn't enough of a man yet. He didn't have any hair on his chest, and he was still held a couple of years back from geometry. Ed thought deeply about how he could show Eddy and Double D that he too was a man. He raised his arm and took a whiff of his one-time white undershirt. "Smell me, for I am a man."

Everything in the room began to yellow and curl, including Eddy's precious new edition of Jiggy Jiggy. Covering his nose, Eddy tried to force Ed's arm down. "Hey, hey, shut it down, Lumpy!" Ed complied, and returned to the bowl of pork rinds.