Prompt and Circumstance

Highly Exaggerated

'height' Apr.1, 2016

From his somewhat lofty position (in his mind, if no-one else's), Height declared himself the supreme winner by dint of his basic meaning of being 'high'. "As in tall; towering above all things; and another totally valid and most excellent reason, too!" he added, "... and none of these has anything to do with that odious other meaning of 'high'." With his nose haughtily uplifted and an embarrassing degree of superiority, Height obviously believed himself to be at the top of his game.

Overweight and Heavyweight had briefly seen themselves as contenders due to their 'eight' spellings, but with much eye-rolling accompanying their useless muscle-flexing, they had to admit defeat.

Weighbridge had given up (almost graciously), early in the competition. He had never been employed to weigh anything lighter than a Mack truck, plus cargo. Mostly he was overloaded with semi-trailers full of all manner of weighty loads.

Eighty had made it through the preliminary rounds, due to his unquestionably 'high' level in the numbers game. Humans called themselves 'octogenarians' when they achieved his admirable record, whereas it took 10 octopuses to equal the task.

Airfreight was on a personal roll, with a sort of frothy, bubbly assuredness – after all, what was lighter than air? Then it struck him, like a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky – his freight was always under dispute, always double and triple checked – always heavy.

And speaking of foul things – Bantamweight and Featherweight gave Height a brief pause in his seemingly impossibly high hopes. That was until Flyweight spoke out and dashed their dreams.

"What is heavier?" he said. "A ton of feathers – or a ton of lead?" To say their hopes were dashed on the rocks at the bottom of a cliff was to state it mildly.

Lightweight and Weightless felt ultra-confident when they met Height in the semi-finals. After all, they were the stuff balloons and dreams are made of, filled with the very air that Airfreight had been ready to boast about.

Deadweight was sure he had it. Good heavens, he thought. If you're dead, all that's left is a soul... isn't it? He nodded sagely in total accord with himself, once again reassuring himself that the best person to speak to is always yourself, mainly because you get so few disagreements. And a soul weighs nothing, right? He found no argument with this.

But... of course, Height had the final answer – as always.

"Deadweight, you dummy? Can't you hear what a weighty problem this is? Have you never noticed what it's like to get out of bed in the morning when the bladder is willing, but the body is weak?" Height smirked. "When will you learn that dead is heavy, in this instance?" And Height actually had the nerve to chortle, quite disdainfully.

Height drew himself up to his tallest and most imposing presence, as he delivered the coup de grace.

"My name alone, amongst all of you 'pretenders'", he said with great aplomb, "is pronounced with a l-o-n-g 'i' – can you hear it? H-i-i-i-i-t." And he smiled a most smarmy-type grin (almost evil, some would say). "Whereas you poor souls are all pronounced with a l-o-n-g 'a' – like w-a-a-a-a-a-t. You see?"

And despite their overwhelming numbers (some 200 in all, we are told), the long 'a' types had no choice but to crumble and grovel somewhat in the face of Height's impeccable (though grossly irritating) logic. And had no choice but to shout in unison, "... and the Winner is... etc. etc." (We won't discuss the muttering behind hands and theatrical coughs, nor the unpleasant and uncomfortably twisted mouths uttering these words of acclaim).