Haughty and Pretentious pretext:

Lucky for you, the esteemed and revered Authoress of all seeing might has sought to gift upon you yet another chapter of the continuing Saga of Howell Jenkins, the normal little boy who grew up to save the world... Or something like that. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you might even get a cheese sandwich (a) . Seriously people. That's just how good we are.

Perfectly Normal – The Continuation

(a)Laughing/crying/presence of Cheese Sandwich not guaranteed. Monotonous and irritating legal subtext, using terms like 'Hitherto' and 'injuriously' or perhaps even 'counter claim'. There is no spoon.

Chapter the Second: Hive Insects and Avians

-Or-

I Still know what you did last Summer

The trouble, young Megan had decided, was that their parents were of the belief that their children could do no wrong, because, well, they were Normal. Even when she pointed out the fact that Howell's paint bombing activities had stained the carpet, they still nodded politely at her and explained that a boy Howell's age was likely to get into a little bit of mischief, and it was all just normal growing pains really. She demanded to know what was to be done about this, and they explained to her that Howell had already been punished.

Yes, Megan had thought, Grounded for a day and sent to bed without dessert. Dire punishment indeed. Visions of great big hammers, splitting fingernails and roasting fires had danced, unbidden before her eyes, but when she had actually got around to implementing any of them, Howell just had to look at her with those wide innocent eyes. They were very good innocent eyes too, just the right proportion of width and wateriness that managed to both set her teeth on edge and mollify her at the same time. She would have to learn how to do that sometime...

Meanwhile, Howell's campaign against normalcy had been taken to new heights- specifically, the roof, where Howell had carefully extricated the holiday Christmas lights and was busy in the process of putting them up in the afternoon damp. He had made a valorous attempt to spell 'wiener' on the roof in lights, but had only gotten as far as 'We-' before running out of the twinkling objects and was forced to trail off disappointingly. As it was May, he was also quite out of snow for snowballs to throw at passerby in an attempt to get them to notice his We. There was no good writing 'we' on the roof in lights if no one was going to look at it. Howell had tried to pull up a pile of rocks, but found that the always managed to spill out of the pouch he had made with his shirt at the last possible moment. Now he was stuck waiting there until Megan came home from football practice or his mother came back from her shopping, or even (though he hoped it wouldn't have to come to that) for his father to arrive back from work , which usually occurred at 6:30, and it was now, by his estimation, only 4:45.

He wished – Well he wished he had some snow really is what he wished, but Howell had never figured that being naughty could be so boring.

It is of course a fact that being bad indeed can be quite boring. Had Howell the presence of mind, and proper historical education, he probably could have recalled several harrowing incidents of history where one opposing army would sneakily and naughtily well, lurk up on the other by spending hours and hours sitting very still and very quietly in the dark. Many a battle has been lost or won because someone got up to go to the bathroom. Howell did not know this however, and when the urge struck (as it often does at inopportune moments) He pattered off to the side of the roof to find a suitable place from which it would be possible to relieve the pressure. Mr Widdles, who was happily romping about in the Jenkin's perfectly average backyard, doing quite normal doggy things, eg. Jumping up and down and yapping repeatedly at the fence, where the dog of Mr. and Mrs. New Neighbour slept peacefully, unconcerned of the most likely dire threats being directed at it from over the fence. The dog's almost painful cries for attention brought young Howell's gaze downward where he saw something miraculous.

In Howell's golden years (Which he would never, under any circumstances admit to having) He could, in fact, Not recall this incident fondly at all. Not as an amusing anecdote with which to entertain his grandchildren, not as a profound memory to later be used as a metaphor for life, and most certainly not as a thought to keep him warm on drafty nights when, poetically of course, the dark destitution of aged loneliness set in to haunt him(1). There was not the slightest recollection remaining in his head of the discovery that had seemed so bizarrely co-incidental, so opportunely provident, so blithely unusual that it defied the laws of rationality and logic. This memory could most likely barely even be stirred by the account of Gwenda Emerson, who had been exactly seven and a half the day that, in the middle of May, she had been hit with a very wet, very dirty snowball from the roof of a house. This seemingly bizarre lack of memory is not due to the unfortunate ravages of some memory destroying disease, or from the simple faults of old age. No, Howell's inability to remember this incident probably came from what happened just a few days later, which was quite life changing enough that it probably exuded a 'no memory' zone extending up to a week before its arrival.

But of course, it comes that it is not at this point in time that Howell's story is to be told. Such breaks are often quite inconvenient, but entirely necessary not only to provide edifying clarification on certain subjects, but of course to distract in a rather irritating manner from the statement made not 54 words ago.

Gwenda Emerson, was in fact, the youngest of three daughters. This was, as mentioned previously, a perfectly storybook kind of number, even in the sleepy little welsh suburb in which Howell lived with his sister and parents. That they lived in a sleepy little place gave it an even more tenacious storybook quality, despite that Gwenda and her parents were not poor woodcutters, or blacksmiths, or even shoemakers. Her mother ran a ladies knitting club, and her father was an investment banker, so far as anyone could tell, or knew what that was at all. It rather appeared that he didn't make anything at all, except perhaps money, which seemed to come into the household in prodigious quantities. It seemed to involve spending lots of time of the telephone and not a lot of time sitting down, unless it was to read the paper, which Mr. Emerson did every evening before going to bed. When Gwenda was only three years old, she had discovered what had appeared to be a bag of gold doubloons buried in her backyard. When they turned out to be made of chocolate, it severely turned of most collectors, but this was alright with Gwenda, because it meant that she got to eat a lot of chocolate, and no seemed to mind much. A year later, Gwenda and her family went on a trip to Belgium, where she managed to get lost in a chocolate factory. Her parents, being the rather laid back sort, and apparently having attended the Jenkins school of parenting, instead of getting angry when they found their daughter an hour and a half later happily dipping into the large vat of special Belgian dark, took pictures that they later had framed and stuck up happily on the wall. They were quite unconcerned that Gwenda had ruined three thousand dollars worth of chocolate stock, or that they were forbidden from ever entering the factory again, though Mrs. Emerson was quite concerned with how to get the dark stains out of little Gwenda's clothes.

In short, Gwenda was destined to be special, or at the very least, very fat from chocolate consumption. Of course, today we know of the special healing properties of chocolate, such as its richness in antioxidants, or the trigger of the release of endorphins, but this event was special for Gwenda's future career in a swiss candy making factory. When Howell flung that particular dirty, damp snowball at her pretty golden curls, she had been happily munching away at her third chocolate bar of the day. The snowball had the amazingly lucky trajectory to replace the bar exactly, so her next bite managed to taste suspiciously of roofing tar. This not only managed to turn little Gwenda off the entire subject of Chocolate for three years, but caused her to inexplicably declare a vendetta on Howell Jenkins, who was soon identified to be the source of her troubles. Howell Jenkins, she vowed that day, would pay.

" Ha I got you Gwenda!" Howell yelled from the rooftop. Gwenda looked up at him with blazing blue/grey eyes.

" You! You... Tadpole! You'll pay for that!" Gwenda cried in anger and frustration. She stomped her white patent leather clad foot for emphasis, and for about five minutes, Howell was in love. He threw another snowball, this one mostly mud at her to express his newfound emotion. Contrary to his intentions, Gwenda was not impressed, and instead opted for stomping off huffily. Howell didn't quite understand: After all, he had wasted an entire second handful of precious snow-mud on her! Girls obviously didn't understand the delicate and complex language of attraction, the vocabulary of which ran the full range of hair pulling, gum sticking (2), and taunts, to poetry, flowers, and mud pies, which could arguably be classified with both the former and the latter.

This, as a matter of fact is mostly true, and many members of the species known as juvenile male never begin to understand why exactly their attentive efforts were never rewarded with the expected spoils of conquest, such as free candy, favors, and, for the open minded who were up to date on their cooties shots, kisses and hugs. Howell was yet to learn of such important life affirming facts, but this was not going to let this stop him by any accounts. Gwenda, unfortunately for the rather narratively pleasant and cutely romantic possibility of the story of childhood love, never fully understood the magnitude of sheer manly attraction that snowball meant, which translated into the terms of serious and thoughtful adults, could probably be considered as a bouquet of fresh flowers, a thoughtful and charming note, or at the very least, a free drink at a posh club or restaurant and bar combination. Or, if one prefers to take in reference the cinematic animal kingdom, the subject of a heavy and impressive chest beating by an oversized monkey(3).

Megan took this opportunity to discover Howell sitting dreamily on the roof, staring up at the clouds as they drifted past, happily snuggled up in the corner of his oversized ' E'. She was dressed in jersey, shin guards and football shorts, and looked particularly fierce with her bushy curls secured tightly back against her head, exposing rather a lot of forehead and slightly pointed eyebrow that were turned down in a vicious and hawk like scowl. Howl's blissful daydream was interrupted by her bird of prey shriek.

"Howell Jenkins! What are you doing on that roof! Get down from there! "

This was not exactly the world's most original comment. Howell, had he developed the kind of sophisticated points system common to random writers of fictional stories based upon the characters written by other people, probably would have given it a 2.3 on the scale of witty comments about children on rooftops. A better comment might have been " You git down boy, or I'll give yew a whoopin' " though it might have been considered slightly too regional for the Megan's linguistic tastes, which ran more towards 'snobby intellectual' than 'raging hillbilly'. A more sophisticated exclamation , rating perhaps a three or four could have been "Young man! What could one such as yourself be doing endangering your precious young life by cloistering yourself on a dangerously slopped rooftop!" A ten out of ten for originality could have been a cleverly phrased Haiku, or perhaps even a short quatrain:

Howell on rooftop way up high

you'll be in trouble unless you fly

down from there and we shall see

just what I shall make of thee

Though this type of thing is generally discouraged for being too planned and lacking in spontaneity, or realism of any kind.

" I don't see why I should. You can't get me" Howell said smugly, surreptitiously making another dirty, muddy snowball with the last of his remaining patch. It was more dirt than snow now, but that served his purposes just fine.

" Because the Neighbours will see and tell Mother, and then you'll be in real trouble!" Megan cried back, glancing about for the boy's potential route to the rooftop, " Or I'll go get you and you won't like that at all!"

" Can not!" Howell shouted back cleverly. The Christmas lights began to flash on and off behind him in an irregular pattern that is probably meant to be cheerful and festive, but really is just offensive and irritating to the eyes, " You're too big!" This was true. Megan could not have possibly used Howell's route to the roof, which involved squeezing out of the tiny attic window and onto a ledge, then the roof. Now that Howell thought about it, he wasn't sure exactly how he was going to get down. Not, of course that he would let Megan know this.

Suddenly, their spirited, and highly original dialog was interrupted by a third party, who shouted out, in a friendly and hearty voice, if the participants needed any help. This enormously helpful young man was none other than the son of the new neighbours.

"No we don't need any..." Megan began, before trailing off when she realized who exactly it was who was speaking to her, " I mean, No, I don't think I can get him down by myself." She smiled sweetly at him, and Howell was not sure if he should be laughing or emptying the contents of his stomach, but before he knew it, a tall metal ladder had been dragged over to the roof from the next door's garage, and was now shaking with the footsteps of someone very heavy, or very strong coming up the ladder. A shaggy bronzed brown head of hair then appeared, immediately followed by an open, kind sort of face that probably made young girls giggle and old ones whisper in appreciation. He had honest brown eyes and the lightest dusting of freckles, that, on a lesser man would have looked childish, but somehow conspired to look handsome and charming. Howell did not like him already, and shuffled to the other side of the roof. That he turned out to also posses a near six foot frame did not help poor Howell, who was still looking forward to breaking the five feet mark .

" Hey little guy!'"

The hate was solidified.

(1) This, we may assure you, probably won't ever happen anyway. You may put down the chainsaws and comically oversized hammers now.

(2) These actions could also be interpreted as: " lets try to annoy the stupid girl, because it's funny to see them get angry". However, the politics of seven year old hair pulling is a discussion best left for a more serious forum where it can get the full treatment it so justly deserves.

(3) Ape! Sorry! Ape! No offence intended! Really sir, you can put down the taxicab and come down off that building.

Apologies for the short, late chapter, however I'm leaving on a jet plane tomorrow, and would rather not have you wait for another week when I had this much written. Reviews are always appreciated of course, and I love them to death ittywitty bits and pieces. Thank you, and Good night/evening/afternoon/morning