3
Richard had a girlfriend, a blue cat named Nicole, during the end of junior high school and throughout high school, something only few could comprehend considering his very nature and hers by contrast. He had met her in seventh grade when he went through a phase in which he thought he was some cape-donning superhero named The Cottontail Cavalier. He had embarrassed himself in front of his peers, but Nicole had stuck up for him, praising his courage to be himself. The happiness and relief he felt at that moment went away when Jojo found out from a call from the principal that through his shenanigans, he had broken a hole through a wooden door with his head. To punish him for such disregard to safety, Jojo kept him out of school for two days.
In high school, Nicole was bothered by his laziness, diet, and academic mediocrity, especially since she was the opposite—regularly one of the Top 10 achieving students in her grade each year, and she was a physically healthy girl, but she was willing to overlook it because he meant well despite his flaws; plus, she was a bit of a social outcast and, therefore, in no position to ditch him. She had anger issues, which sometimes led to the destruction of school property, a lack of friends, and punishment. Of course, when she wasn't in a sour mood, she was as sweet as could be. That was part of the reason why she had originally stuck up for Richard as a preteen.
Following high school, Nicole attended the University of Evergreen in the nearby city of the same name, though with the size and spread of the campus, it could have been a city in its own right. Nicole majored in Business, preparing for a career in the Elmore Rainbow Factory, which Henry Cumus (say cyoo'-mis)*, an entrepreneur cloud, had recently started.
Richard, on the other hand, didn't attend college. He had performed far below any and every college's requirements to obtain scholarships, and all of his applications had been rejected. He was forced to stay at home, watching TV—mostly younger kids' programming—and eating whatever he could get his hands on that he liked, separated from Nicole during much of the day for four years, minus summers. Richard's steadily increasing slothfulness began to cause strife in their relationship, but they married anyway at 26 years of age, and they moved into a house on York Street. Eight years later, they had their first child, Zachary, a blue cat who was ugly at birth for reasons no one knew.
Unlike Richard, Zach had both parents in his life, and even though only one did the heavy lifting in terms of raising him, it was the more responsible Nicole, that same parent, who taught him right from wrong. Of course, that's not to say that Richard didn't have any influence, most of which was counterproductive, on him. After all, it was he who introduced sugary snacks to Zach, such as gum balls, when he was five. In fact, Zach was so famous for bringing a bag of the candy to elementary school all the time that he garnered the nickname "Gumball" to the point that no one referred to him by his real name anymore, and by the time he was twelve, and he had a four-year-old rabbit sister, Anais, and an adoptive brother/pet goldfish, Darwin, no one really remembered it.
The introduction of sugar and lethargy set Gumball down a path similar to his dad, though to a lesser degree. Gumball had a penchant for candy, and laziness became one of his characteristics. by his adolescent years. He was much skinnier than his father at his age, though, but he had gained hips that were unusually wide for a boy. It was the fat within his diet. It made him look a little feminine.
*(') – put stress on the attached syllable.