“You Only Pear Once”

(Narrated by Morgan Freeman)
Never before have we met someone as fruity as Perry. And by fruity, we mean that Perry was obsessed with pears, even from a young age (not that we have anything against the other kind of fruity). When the other kids were making sand-castles, sand-bridges, or some other trivial sand architecture in the sandbox, Perry would make pearsin the sand. Lots and lots of pear shapes. Small pears, large pears, wet pears, and giant pears too. He even had this strange hobby of burying pears in the sand to save them for later, but then forgetting where he buried them. Unfortunately, his memory was no better than that of a common squirrel. For this reason, his elementary school playground had the first ever case of sand-pear trees infestation. Angry flailing pear trees would sprout up from the sand and smack children across the face, but quickly reroot themselves and turn inanimate so as never to be seen by adults. Children would cry their parents, but their parents would just think their child had split personality problems and spent excessive amounts of money taking their children to psychiatrists. And Perry? Perry’s family moved to Wisconsin. So they left. The sandpear trees problem would actually come to severely injure many toddlers, even killing one toddler with a particularly soft head, but hey, that’s not Perry’s problem!
One day, as little Perry was walking home from school in Wisconsin, an old man beckoned him into the alleyway.
“Why hello there young man! I heard you like pears! Is that true?” the old man asked. He had a high-pitched falsetto, as if he really cared about the well-being of kids under the age of ten, because after they hit their pre-teens they start to get sassy. And this old man did not like sassy kids.
“Yes, I love them!” young Perry exclaimed. Then the nice old man reached in his pocket and pulled out an odd-looking pear that seemed to be half robot and half pear.
“I’ve been saving this extra-special pear for you. Make sure you take extra-good care of this pear, okay? Take it with you everywhere. Eat with it, sleep with it, and shower with it too. If you do, it’ll turn grow into a big, strong, magical beanstalk!” And with that, the old man left Perry with a benevolent toothless smile.
Perry’s classmates had teddy bears, imaginary friends, and Xbox’s, but Perry had a robotic pear. They were best friends, and good thing Perry hadn’t reached puberty yet or else he might have wanted to show his love for his pear in a not rated-PG fashion. They ate together, slept together, and showered together too. The pear always received the best care from Perry, except for one night. Perry dreamed that someone’s house was on fire, and that Perry was the heroic firefighter. As he released his hose, a warm liquid awoke Perry and the pear. When Perry checked to see if his friend was ok, he saw that his robotic eye had fizzled and died. Somewhere, an old man swore. But something magical happened. A magical layer of ammonia and friendship coated the pear, which would magically prevent it from rotting. Hence was born, Perry’s Golden Pear. This friendship was strong, powerful, great, unbreakable, extra-sturdy, and waterproof.
Many years have passed. Perry’s relationship with his pear had been such an important part of his life that he wrote his college essay on it, getting him into his first-choice college, an amazing achievement. Perry majored in speech at the University of Phoenix Online. With the support of his best friend, he then went on to earn his Master’s Degree at Bullington State. Only a few years after graduating, Perry successfully became the world’s most articulate man. Boy, he was amazing. He was so convincing when he opened his mouth that he once even convinced the King of England that he was actually an extremely stingy Chinese man. Fortunately, when Chairman Mao sent assassins to kill Perry for blasphemy, ……………………
One day, as grown-up Perry was walking home from college, a young man about his age beckoned him into the alleyway. It was a robber. But Perry, a smooth man, managed to talk the robber into letting Perry rob the robber instead, so that the robber could gain some insight on how to improve his robbing skills. A slightly richer man, Perry walked on home. Oh, you haven’t seen his house before?
My mistake, I meant to say his mansion. Due to religious preferences, everything in the grand house was transparent, even the shower walls. And no, the shower door didn’t even have a blurring tint. After all, Perry had nothing to hide. One perk of this transparency was that he could see visitors from far away, but it’s not like he needed to pre-pear anything, because he could talk his way out of any situation. Yet despite such a strong recurring pear theme (including his PearBook Air), no one has ever managed to call him fruity, because his comebacks instantly turned the insulter into the insulted. Perry was untouchable, like MC-Hammer loitering on grass you’re not supposed to loiter on.
That night, like every night before, Perry unhooked the giant portrait of – you guessed it – a pear. Behind it was the super-secret entrance to his super-secret Belkin 3000, the most secure super-secret security vault in the world. But the number 3000 isn’t actually part of the name. It just stands for how many characters the password can hold. For those mathematicians out there (not Perry, he sucks at math), that’s 623000 possible alphanumerical combinations! That’s almost as many brilliant things Perry has said in his life!
pearpearpearpearpearpearpearpearpearpearpearpearpearpearppearpearpearpearpearpearpear… (and so on until 3000 characters have been reached)
It takes about 69 minutes to type in this password every night. Despite its extreme complexity, one person has actually once managed to guess the correct password before. But Perry, a very convincing man, convinced him to promise never to tell anyone the password. Moreover, he also further convinced him to yodel at the top of his lungs anytime a bald man said the phrase “woof woof.” Does 69 minutes seem like a long time? Not at all! Sometimes Perry messes up (there was no backspace button available), so the process could sometimes take up to a few hours.
So Perry walked into the super-secret vault, and proceeded down the long, dark hallway. Unfortunately, there was no light available in this half-mile long corridor. In addition, the hallway wasn’t straight (path-wise). It had zig-zags and curlies and spirals and inclines and declines and isoclines and more. But don’t worry, Perry is a young guy and can quickly recover from minor injuries!
At the end of the long hallway, a majestic staircase lead to a circular pedestal. On it was a long, hollow tube. Perry reached his arm deep inside, groping around until he found his Precious Pear (his PP). He thought back to how this small object has brought him his articulation, and thus so much success and fortune. He caressed it, kissed it goodnight, and went back to his bed to sleep (you also have to enter the password to exit the vault).
That night, when the full moon was at its highest, an eerie metal creak awoke our hero. A dark silhouette quickly dashed out the window, but not before emitting an unmistakable golden flash from his hand. No, it couldn’t be! Perry’s eyes flared like a straw wrapper that you dripped water on. All was dead silent… until he heard in the distance, a raspy laugh. Perry’s Precious had been stolen.
The super-secret vault had been infiltrated, the 3000-character password tossed aside like a used piece of toilet paper. When Perry saw that his Precious, his one and only, his true love, his pear had been stolen, he felt like…
He felt like someone with grubby hands had grabbed Perry’s heart, fondled it, ripped it out, threw it on the ground, stepped on it with soccer cleats, put some salt on it, picked it up and set it on fire, read some bad poetry to it, dried it in an oven, beat it to a pulp with a baseball bat, and then finally put the shriveled remains back into Perry’s mediastinum. But don’t worry folks; the story gets better. Perry knew exactly what to do:
Beep boop boop. “911, what is your emergency?”
“SOMEONE TOOK MY PEAR!!!”
Click. Dial-tone. What? But no one can hang up on Perry, the most articulate man in the world! Perry was heartbroken… as well as heart-burned, heart-salted, heart-oven-dried, and heart-beaten-with-a-baseball-bat.
That thief could have been anyone… he had to let it go. Perry decided that in order to cope with such a traumatizing event, he needed to join the ranks of the mute Buddhist monks in Mongolia. Only there with those pure, shiny heads could Perry once again attain his inner peace. But on his way to the airport, a familiar robber stopped him….
“Hey, you again! I was thinking about last time, and I realized that if I don’t actually rob you this time, that would lower my reputation among my robber-peers.”
Perry had the perfect response. He has talked his way out of situations like these plenty of times before. But for some reason, no sound would come from his mouth. When he tried to utter a word, he felt like a giant pear had been jammed into his throat, blocking any sound from escaping.
“If… but…. *ahem* I…pear….”
But it was too slow. The robber took off his stolen leather jacket, gently laid it out on the rough concrete floor behind Perry, and then shoved Perry down onto the jacket and took his purse and shoes. But the robber accidentally took the left shoe off first, so he stood up and did two jumping jacks before restarting, taking the right shoe off first.
“Sorry, I have OCD.”
The robber then vigorously kicked Perry off the jacket, leaving him in the alleyway with no shoes and no purse. Perry had nothing, except for a pear-shaped tear shimmering down his cheek. His dreams and aspirations of joining the mute Buddhist monks of Mongolia, CRUSHED, like a pear that had been mischievously concealed under the seat cushion of Anita, a very large woman who never looked before she sat down with all of her force. As Perry cried himself to sleep on the cold alleyway, his hairs began to fall out from stress, shock, and some other s-word to complete the alliteration.
“It’s been a month since the robbery,” Morgan Freeman narrates. Perry had lost all of his wealth. His mansion, his pear-mobile, and even his PearBook Air was gone. What had happened? All the people that Perry had conned in his younger years had came back and revenge-conned the now-mute Perry. Perry was now a hobo, scorned and frowned upon by all, even by the other hobos. Even worse, he had been banned from the soup kitchen because he was thought to be a lazy bum that looked for government handouts when he should be looking for a job. Little did everyone else know that Perry couldn’t speak, so he couldn’t land any jobs. And it didn’t help that Perry couldn’t read big words. From a broader perspective, it was as if Perry had become a mute Buddhist monk, except he wasn’t Buddhist or a monk. But at least he was poor!
But there was still a chance for Perry to survive. On TV, a young man by the name of Caesar had become the new prominent owner of PetCO. He was quickly becoming the world’s most amazing dog trainer. It was even rumored that he could talk to dogs! But not only that, but he was also known for his generosity; he always feeds any stray dog that shows up at his store. Perry’s clothes were ragged and looked like dog crap so he could easily pass as a dog to get some free dog food! Hey, free food is free food. As Perry turned the corner, he went into dog position and prepared to walk among the other dogs. To further sell his act, he even took a crap on a PetCO tree. Caesar, at the top of the stairs, saw it, and smiled kindly.
“woof woof,” Perry barked up the footsteps.
Just then, Caesar at the top of the steps contorted into a violent yodel, as if a divine force had slapped him with a raw fish and told him to yodel or else he was going to hell. Then Perry stood up from his embarrassing dog pose. But… no one would yodel in reaction to a woof woof from a bald hobo unless… Caesar was the evil man who had stolen Perry’s PP! They made eye contact. They both knew. Caesar dropped his bag of low-quality dog food and sprinted down the street. Thus began the grand chase:
After many hobo hardships, Perry was actually now decently fit, but Caesar was a formidable athlete too. Caesar squeeze between a fence. Then Perry squeezed through the fence. Caesar jumped over a bench, then Perry jumped over the bench. The man hopped over a car, so Perry hopped over the car. Such amazing acrobatics from both men! The man jumped over a building… and then….
Perry was screwed because he couldn’t jump over buildings. But wait! Morgan Freeman made a mistake; he meant to say the man jumped over a building block. That, Perry could do too. As Perry jumped over the building block, he accidentally kicked the face of the child who was playing with them (it was his fault for playing in the middle of the sidewalk anyway. Stupid kids).
Over time, Caesar’s cool front-flips, air-twirls, flash-freezes, and other random parkour moves slowed him down in the long run, and Perry the Hobo finally caught up to him. Thus began the grand fight:
As Perry began to beat the crap out of Caesar, magical things happened. With each Perry Punch, Caesar’s mouth spat out golden sparks, as if some kind of divine enchantment was dispelling. With each Perry Kick, bursts of Perry’s familiar articulate voice was heard. With each Perry Headbutt… nothing really happened but at least they left some bruises on Caesar’s dog-loving forehead. Although Perry had been physically and emotionally exhausted from years of Hobo Hardship, he channeled his tears into haymaker punches and final blows. Finally, Caesar fell. As he fell unconscious on the cold alleyway, the Golden Pear rolled out of his dog-fur jacket. Perry immediately grabbed it. Then to further add insult to injury (and oh my, was Caesar injured), Perry took his shoes and purse too. A golden light flowed out of the unconscious Caesar, and grew so strong that it blinded all the witnesses who were about to report to the police of a malnutritioned hobo beating the crap out of a celebrity.
Then Caesar awoke. They looked at each other. Perry had finally found his inner peace, without the help of any bald men in brown robes. Because finally, he was once again able to fondle his PP with his right hand. Perry was now a changed man, ready to forgive. With the Golden Pear in his hand, he felt the surge of confidence as his speaking skills rushed back. He then proceeded to take Morgan Freeman’s spot and narrate the happy PG-rated ending:
“I… You… My PP…”
But Perry was wrong. He couldn’t speak again for the rest of his miserable life. As Caesar’s hair began to fall out from stress, the Golden Pear sprouted eight hairy legs, hopped out of Perry’s hand, and scurried away into the street before either one of them could gasp. Then the two bald men mouthed inaudibly at each other, their entire lives ruined, worthless, and hopeless.