Double Negatives and a Perfect Life

School was always awful. People always hated me in school because I was big. And I cried. I always cried. I was really little at the time.

But this school, this type of learning, is fun. My teacher, Dresden, says I have a knack for working with celestial bronze. Apparently, some cyclopes work with other metals because they don't have a high tolerance for celestial bronze. I already made a shield from my brother, Percy.

I like this school. Dresden always pushes me. He always expects the best. And I know who my Daddy is now. I'm not an orphan anymore. No one teases me. And I'm allowed to visit Percy during the summer.

Sometimes, I'm sure I live a perfect life.

I remember living on the streets, fighting for myself. Percy was my only real friend. And he was my first friend. And then came Annabeth and Goat-boy and Daddy and Dresden and Carlton. Oh, right, Carlton is one of the other cyclopes. He's young like me, but he doesn't have family and friends outside of the forges. I told him about Percy and he got jealous.

We're fighting a war now, I can tell. Dresden is always tense, just like the rest of the cyclopes. We're under pressure to produce a lot more weapons. And Daddy's stuck up son - Triton - keeps coming by and demanding we work faster. He's never lifted a hammer in his life.

When Triton comes by, Dresden always says, "That boy needs to work, he'll won't turn out to anything if he doesn't do no work."

Annabeth always told me to not use a double negative. Or somet'ing like that. Carlton used to say that that was stupid; that double negatives were the best thing in world. I disagreed with him. We fought. I bashed his head in. He broke my arm. Dresden came over and told us we were stupid.

Cyclopes call each other stupid a lot. That's just one thing I've noticed.

Anyway, Dresden made me apologize to Carlton and made Carlton apologize to me. Then he said that us cyclopes should be worrying about metal, not grammar. I think I disagree with him, but then I'm just a little cyclops would wouldn't know better. I'll have to ask Annabeth when I see her over the summer.

I'm excited for summer. Carlton thinks I'm batty. He said so. I punched his head in. Carlton and me don't agree on a lot of things. Me? I? I dunno which is the appropriate personal pronoun. Or whatever. Maybe Dresden does, but I don't think he'd tell me. He'd say, "Tyson, Tyson, Tyson, your hammer is your communicator; you have no need for words." That always makes me feel so unimportant.

Anyway, this summer, I'm going to sure that Percy has a good summer. I've got his shield, and I'm making lots of little scrap-metal ponies to hang around the cabin. Most of the ponies are blue. I like ponies and blue, and, best of all, so does Percy!

Percy is a great brother. He didn't want me, at first, I could tell. But then we went on our adventure together and it was all good. I think that he thought that I had died and was really said about it. That's when Rainbow saved me. I like Rainbow; he comes and visits me in the forges sometimes but last time, Carlton threw a rock at him. I bashed Carlton's head in for that, because he hurt Rainbow. Dresden made Carlton apologize, but not me! I won that round.

Anyway, I wonder what this summer will hold. I'm excited. Percy always has the most adventitious life. Adventitious? I don't think that's the right word. Adventurous? Amazing? Astonishing? Astronomical? Huh. Astronomical. I like that.

Excited for summer, that's me.

Huh.

I wrote that 'bout two years ago, maybe three. Time moves weirdly down in the forges. Things have changed. But things have stayed the same, too.

Goat-boy's now one of my best friends. Carlton and I occasionally agree on things, and Percy and Annabeth still luv each other. Luv? Love? Lov? Luff? How do you spell that? Percy's defeated Kronos too, and the war's over. We're still in the process of rebuilding.

It's strange. The other cyclopes come to ME for advice. Dresden doesn't always tell me what to do anymore. He even asked me about this wood nymph named Maya that he fell for but doesn't know what to do about it. Why me? Maya's really sweet, but scary sometimes. She reminds me of a social worker who put me in school a while back. All sugar and honey with a very hard, brittle core inside.

I still live at camp for a few weeks during the summer. I even got Carlton to come for a day, everyone avoided him, but he loved the cabins.

Oh. The cabins! There's so many of them now. I'm leading the team that comes out whenever they need a new one, because Daddy says I know the camp the best out of all the other cyclopes. It's an honor. Dresden says that Carlton shouldn't come out to often, though, "Because he never adjusted to human society like you did, Tyson." Sometimes, I think Dresden is a hypocrite, just because of how smart his language sounds and he still tells me to not worry about grammar!

There's thirty-nine cabins now, with number forty being built for Achelois, one of the goddesses of some phase of the moon. I think the most fun cabin to built was Iris. Hecate was just a nightmare, it was beyond dangerous, those bricks we used. But Iris... Iris was fun AND not dangerous. We built her cabin out of rainbow.

We twisted it, bent it, shaped it with nothing more than prisms and iridescent lightbulbs. We had to do it at night though, because otherwise, the sun would have interfered with how the walls shaped and everything. It took forever to solidify the walls; Dresden even erected this wall that would block out all light besides for that which was cast from the lightbulbs.

Everyone at camp thought that it was a great big headache, but us cyclopes, why, we loved it.

We love a good challenge.

Thinking about Iris, one of my best friends is named Rainbow. He's a fish-pony. Actually, that's what I used to call him, but I still can't spell hipppca-whatever... I'll have to ask Annabeth next time I see her.

I wrote awhile back, questioning if I could possibly have a better life, well, right now I think I do. Brothers, challenges, the flag of peanut butter...

Oh! The flag, right. Carlton just reminded me to write about the flag. I don't know why it's peanut butter, besides for the fact that it was delicious and I couldn't say Poseidon or Percy or whatever. The actually flag is a chocolately-brown color, with lighter brown dots in it, for nuts. We don't use the flag often, it embarrasses me. I didn't ask to be the leader.

You know what would make the world even perfecter? If people would stop using the world "Antidisestablishmentarianism." IT'S A DOUBLE NEGATIVE. YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO USE DOUBLE NEGATIVES. Use if you're so desperate to prove that you're smart.

Yes Percy, talking to you here.

means, by the way, a fear of big words.

Apart from that glaring double negative, my life is pretty much perfect. Family in Percy and the other cyclopes, friends in Goat-boy and Rainbow and lotsa other people, like Percy's chicken ponies, challenges from Iris, and grammar. Lots and lots of grammar.

Could life get any better?

I don't think so.