Life in literalism

There was a classmate of mine named Kenny, and we used to play together while both growing up in Omaha. The most robust memory I have of him consists of his bizarre "house rules" while playing with He-Man figures; the primary rule was that we couldn't make our characters "hop" along the ground, which was the otherwise universally accepted shorthand for making our figures "walk" in the imaginary world. Instead, we had to hold each leg, and make the action figures take one step at a time. I cannot fathom what would make a child so pedantic as to want to recreate, as fully as possible, the gait of character he saw on a cartoon, but demanded exactly such a thing. Many painful seconds were passed trying to get Stinkor or Beast-Man to slowly mosey their way across the carpet as accurately as possible.

I hated playing with that kid. Much laughter ensued when I found out a few months later he burnt most of the contents of his room when he started a house fire by playing with matches under his bed. I genuinely hope he tried to rescue his He-Man figures by trying to walk them out of his burning room one step at a time, and that the pitiable cries of those plastic souls left behind still haunt him to this day.