Something Random to Satisfy You With

Chapter 3: A Person, Their Plan, and Their Overly Long Back Story

Pongo Pown was a middle aged man with a hunched up back and big round glasses. He had a bald head, and puffy, bloodhound cheeks with select pimples dotted over his face. He wore a striped yellow vest over a black shirt, and he wore over the vest a green chequered jacket. He wore cream coloured pants and brown shoes. His eyes were a dull brown, but that doesn’t matter right now since his eyes were always covered by the dust that stuck to his glasses. Mr. Pown had gotten his hunchback from years of doing inventory work manually at his pawn shop, hunching over for hours at a time just to fill out catalogue numbers. With it, whenever he held his face down (and he usually did), he looked like a convict about to be hanged, with having only 18 minutes to go. He looked like he was ashamed of events that were not his choosing, but what other people chose for him, leading down to a path of bitterness and regret. In fact, that was the situation he was in from the moment he was born.

When Mr. Pown was born, his idiot mother decided it would be a wonderful idea to name her son Pongo, because it was unique and funny, and because she wanted him when he was older to start up a toy company that would be called Pongo Pown’s Pogo Sticks, and that way she wouldn’t have to miss out on Christmas cards from him because of company policy. If she had known how much of a disaster her son’s life would have turned out, then she would have probably named him Harold. But she didn’t, because she was too much of an optimist.

Despite the embarrassing name, Pongo decided to live with it, and in school, his grades were good and he was very popular. He was in several school clubs, the teachers always liked him and his classmates never picked on him. In fact, had it not been for one little thing, Mr. Pown would have become a professional golfer with a fully staffed house that had a bowling alley and a swimming pool. But he didn’t, and the house ended up belonging to Lewis.

You see, the one little thing that ruined Pongo’s life was the mentality drilled into him by his father. His father worked at the local lumberyard, and because of his natural and excusable laziness in getting work done, he didn’t usually fill the order in time, and got yelled at and was docked pay. The only reason why he wasn’t fired was because he was the only one who could chase off birds who kept on pooping on the freshly cut lumber.

Now the way Mr. Pown Sr. saw things, was that you had only one chance in life to do something right and then it was gone, unless it was a pint of whiskey. That type of chance would always come right back, until you had no more money to buy some, at which point you would have to beat up another man in order to get his drink. To reinforce this idea into his children’s heads, if they didn’t finish their homework on time, then they would get no dessert for the next month, and they had to watch their dad eat the dessert instead.

Needless to say, this was very traumatic for Pongo, and he vowed to keep this mentality for the rest of his life. So up until the age of 16, he never wasted a right chance, until...

In the 1972 National Canadian Chess Championship, Pongo Pown of Alberta and Andy Williams of Nova Scotia were both locked in a deep battle of trying to capture the king. Both had put each other in check several times, and now through sheer strategic brilliance, Pongo had put his opponent in a double checkmate.

Then Andy captured Pongo’s king with a pawn on live television.

Pongo couldn’t believe it. Even after everyone cheered and went home, he still couldn’t believe it. He must have sat in that television studio for hours, sitting through an orchestra that was playing select pieces of funeral music, until the TV executives told him to get out, trying to figure out what he did wrong. It just didn’t make sense. How could you capture a king with a pawn, with the queen still on the board? This was like playing Battleship and missing a fleet of ships that were in obvious positions, and then once you’ve finally figured out where the other player’s ships are, they somehow instantly bombard you with hit after hit. How could he have not seen this coming?