"I will never understand my dad's obsession with making me somebody...(Curly pauses for a moment, and considers his words)...I mean, yeah, you're given life and you must do something with it. But isn't there a world, nay a GALAXY of difference between wanting your son to straighten out his sugar-honey-iced-tea, and borderline living vicariously through your progeny because your dreams shriveled up like a worm on a July sidewalk?"

"Yes." Dr. Bliss said as she intensely stared at her notebook.

"The thing was, unlike the Larry-Monica-Wanda triangle, there was no paper trail; no journals, film cannisters or photo albums rotting away in a trunk somewhere in the attic that would give me a handle on what made dad tick. All I had to go on was the man's psychotic obsessions and a vigilant eye for when to strike."

"Just a moment there though." Dr. Bliss asked. "What about the Madame Bovary classes?"

The boy looked up at his psychiatrist.

"I mean, yes as much as they were foisted on you through your dad trying to forge business connections, wasn't that an avenue to become someone?"

"Perhaps." Curly coldly commented. "And years of practice has kept me limber and agile enough to get me out of some scraps…but what's the quickest way to be somebody...(Silence from Dr. Bliss)…Power. And a little thing I learned about power watching dad all these years is that the quickest way to get it is having the will to do what the other guy won't. And as we established, it took a big ol' check from Buckley before dad finally got off his dreams off their duffs. Oh, but before that stroke of luck Lawrence talked, and talked, and talked. Yet he never did. Never found it in himself to think outside the box and look for other opportunities to dump unwanted ice cream on a demographic who'd literally eat up what he was laying down. Especially one's thirsting for leadership-"

"Which I assume bought us to your attempt at Class President."

"BINGO!" Curly exclaimed with a wily grin.

(Flashback)

Curly: [You see Doc, power is the pivot on which everything hinges. And should some position of power somehow show it's head, one must go for the jugular at once before someone else does. So, to answer your question, piddling around in Madame Bovary's dance classes wasn't going to cut the mustard. Class elections on the other hand…those are easy, especially when up against opponents which are as two dimensional as they come: idealist do-gooder types, entitled snobs, and class bullies looking to expand their avenues of avarice. Still, that's only a small pittance as you remember that like any prize, one must play games and best those competing beside you before claiming what's rightfully yours.]

Curly: [The best strategy is brand differentiation; while you let your opponents burn each other out, your objective is to calculatingly seek a distinctive niche among the field. Of course, being the resident loose canon means you don't have to work all that hard to stand out from the rabble.]

["I demand to be your president! If elected, I will endeavor to get us all new hats and also promise to turn this school into a moose preserve!"]

[[While the class burst out laughing, Mr. Simmons half-heartedly applauded the warped vision of the Gammelthorpe boy before asking him to get down from his desk…an order which he obeyed with a satisfied grin.]

Curly: [Were my positions recklessly irresponsible? Sure! Did I really mean any of them? You bet your sweet patoot I didn't! But that didn't matter as their laughter filled the classroom. Oh how they laughed that day. That day they laughed because I allowed it. Through their mirth they failed to see that the joke was on them once I sprung the trap.]

["Hello my fellow Martians! As you know we have the entire lunch period to vote, so please drop by the little information booth I've opened outside the Cafeteria. And remember, vote for me. Curly 'My Dad owns an Ice Cream Company' Gammelthorpe."]

(Present)

Nestled somewhere within Curly's file was one of the infamous and obviously home-made coupons he created for the occasion; clearly having drawn much inspiration from US currency, a grinning caricature of him in a Lady Liberty crown holding up an ice cream cone in place of a torch with the words 'Good for One Free Ice Cream at Gammelthorpe's' at the bottom of the portrait. The numbers 1018 occupied each corner, no doubt the building number on Lexington Ave where his dad's business was located.

"Like I said, Dad almost blew a blood vessel or seven when he found out." Curly said. "Especially when Stinkaroo came by with ten of 'em."

"I could imagine." Dr. Bliss said. "A promotion I had no hand in, and knowing I'd be eating the cost for? I'd be pretty mad too."

"But at least it was something. Or…or maybe if he moped a teeeeeeensy bit harder something would have gone his way right?"

"And how exactly did your term go?" Dr. Bliss asked in hopes of changing the subject.

"Well between having little if any power and dad voiding my promises of ice cream for all, I was Class President for all of a week before Mr. Simmons decided to abolish the position altogether. After that I decided to take a more orthodox approach to staking my claim among the great unwashed of PS 118; the drama club. First I played a vegetable in some dinky nutrition/food-group ensemble Helga wrote, then Mercutio in our class's production of Romeo and Juliet. Not exactly filling Olivier's shoes with those roles, amirite?"

"Not necessarily." Dr. Bliss replied. "But did you at least enjoy it?"

"I…" Curly began before catching himself going into a thousand-yard stare. "It reminded me too much of Bovary's so…no."

"I see." Dr. Bliss said catching her charge's hesitation. "Then came the dodgeballs-"

"Ah yes." Curly began bitterly. "Ball Monitor. The power. The respect. That one week of the school year where a lad ascends the social ladder to heights reserved for only a god! That one week where your whim is the deciding factor for a man and all the hopes and dreams he holds within his heart….(Curly's mood suddenly darkens)…all of it…all of it DASHED IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE because Mr. Simmons was too STUPID to carry over my name from the week long break."

"But you did get it in the end didn't you?"

"It's not the position itself Doc, but the principle of it all." He clarified. "It took having to hole myself up in Wartz's office, making those fools dodge, dip, duck, dive and dodge my balls of wrath, and that's nothing to say of the detention I got after the dust settled-"

"Or having to take poor Arnold hostage?"

Curly suddenly froze. Beneath the opaque lenses, a tremor seized his eye.

"Curly?" Dr. Bliss asked after a pregnant pause.

"Oh, um…look at the time." The bowl-cut boy said quickly as he gestured to the clock. "Our session seems to almost be over. And…(he dashes to the window)…yep! That is indeed the Gammelthorpe Dry Cleaners laundry truck."

Once Monica had claimed her son for the rest of the day, Dr. Bliss looks at the note she took detailing Curly's about face in the last moments. Even for him, this was a rather odd and abrupt turn. Shuffling through his folder again, she looked at the notes pertaining to everything they had discussed this session and found an odd coincidental factor threading them together: Arnold Philip Shortman.

It was Arnold whose chance at ball monitor went unmolested.

It was Arnold whose absence with Gerald and big kiss with Helga proved to be the talk of the respective performances they shared.

It was the drama that came with Arnold's promise being called into question which became the talk during election cycle.

Digging further into Curly's other behavioral folders (yes, folders plural) a wider 'Goofus and Galant' style dynamic appeared to have been fomenting all these years in the background between the two boys; a dynamic culminating in the boy's odd little novella known simply as The Mitigators which had been written (in Curly's own words via a self-aggrandizing dedication) 'to tell the tale of a lad so bold, who restored a lost tradition of old.'

Later that evening as she sat in her recliner with a mug of chamomile tea, Dr. Bliss pulled out this embellished epic detailing the restoration of that horrid tradition known as Trashcan Day…the final red flag that crossed their paths.

"As Sunday afternoon gradually faded into evening, the setting sun marked the end of yet another weekend for the schoolchildren of Hillwood." Dr. Bliss read aloud to herself. "More than the end of a weekend, today marked the beginning of the end of an era for many kids who would now begin their final week of elementary school…"