I think it's about time you hear the story of Orville, son of Wilbur from Charlotte's Web—though he's not really the son of Wilbur. Their stories are similar and that's why we called him that. Orville was a pig that lived on my grandpa's farm.
Now, this farm recurs in my dreams more than any other setting. It's one of my favorite places in the world. This is the farm house. This is the barn. That's a pile of old shit. This is a one-room schoolhouse. Next to it, the pigpen where Orville lived. Not five miles away is where Neil Gaiman declared as the furthest place from anywhere anyone would want to be: the continental center of the United States. Thanks Neil!
Orville was a runt. Now, Charlotte's Web is great and all, but quite frankly, pork is pork. You don't just kill the runt. You pick on the runt. Beat him up. Steal his lunch money. But you don't kill him or where are you gonna get lunch money tomorrow?
Orville would come home with a black eye. His father, whose name was actually Wilbur, but not Wilbur from Charlotte's Web—we just call him that because their stories are similar—asked how Orville got the black eye. Orville told him, and his father made his other eye black. He did this for two reasons: first, he didn't like sissy-boy-pigs that don't fight back, and second, having one black eye made Orville look asymmetrical, and that's just annoying.
Orville took a good look at his predicament. He wanted to be well-liked, so he tried finding a spider that could write advertisements for him in their webs. There were a few candidates, but they all turned down the job. What are they gonna write? “Some pig”? Not that advertisers don't lie. They do. All the time. They never tell the truth. But this was too much of a stretch.
So Orville decided the only thing to do about his runtism is stop being a runt. Get big and fat. Hell, you might even do what Wilbur did and win a prize at the state fair. That's Wilbur from Charlotte's Web, not his father. Then everyone would like him.
So he did it, and that's what I had for lunch today. Hey, he got his wish. We killed him. And you don't kill runts.
