That Johnny and the Gladiator
Copyright© 2020 by Greg Vanno
GLADIATOR
© Greg Vanno and Vannovation LLC 2020
Miss Symes had a rare talent. She knew which student was day dreaming. Okokok, she knew which student was deepest into their daydream.
“Johnny?” she called. “Please use the word, ‘gladiator’ in a sentence.”
Johnny, abruptly postponing a daring sword fight in the Colosseum with two wily Gaulactics, stood and faced the class. He stepped back so everyone had a ringside seat.
You don’t survive a childhood as Little Johnny without stage presence.
“A sentence?” the class held their collective breaths. They had seen that Johnny rise to a challenge before. First, he set the stage, stepping back so he could see all of them in one glance. Self-preservation, in many cases. “OK, there was this emperor and he sent his guards to bring back a fighter from the Colosseum.”
Miss Symes worried that Johnny had missed the point. But before she could interrupt, the story was in full spate: “They dragged the fighter before Emperor Hero –”
Elspeth mouthed ‘Nero’ –
“of the Gaulactic wars, The Hero Emperor.”
After a heartbeat, for effect, Johnny continued, “Emperor Nero, as he was known,”
– nod to Elspeth, who smiled, –
“pointed at two doors. ‘Behind one of these doors is the wicked Princess White Fang’”
– Elspeth frowned. White Fang was too close to the old Pictish words for ‘white smiling teeth’, rendered as ‘Elspeth’. She just knew Johnny was going to zap her. –
“‘and behind the other is just a kitty cat,’ the Emperor said. Then he and all his guards cracked up, which is to say, they crackled in glee.”
Elspeth was torn. It’s difficult to mouth the difference between ‘crackled’ and ‘cackled’. And besides Johnny was bound to zap her. But she tried, ‘Cr’ and shook her head.
But Johnny had the bit between his teeth and charged on. “The emperor shouted, ‘Red Fang! The kitty cat that killed two hundred Schnauzers in the Colosseum last week!’”
Johnny almost paused and went for the cheap thrill of changing the story within a story to be about Miniature Schnauzers but, the game was afoot! “The fighter had been at the Colosseum that day! He had seen that Battle Royale. The fighter knew that Red Fang was a Siberian Tiger, not a kitty cat!”