In his 2nd grade class, Jeremy was chosen to represent his side of the room in a debate against the opposing side. He was on the left side of the room and his side consisted of his row of 6 people, plus the two columns of 6 people to his right. The remaining schoolchildren in the right-most three rows were designated the opposing side. This side was represented by Sarah. Sarah and Jeremy were instructed to hold their own in a debate against each other in front of the class. The class would then choose to stand on the side of the room whose stance was seemingly more correct. After a ten minute period of debate, whose ever side had more school children standing in it, would be considered the winner.

The rules to choose the debate topic were simple: The first 5 students from each side of the classroom would vote to elect a single child from their group to represent the room as a counter. The counter would stand at the front of the room and would be barred from any decision making from this point going forward. Their job was simply to count. After the counter was chosen, the teacher passed around a hat to each side of the room, in which the students were to take a piece of paper that they had written down a singular debate topic onto, and place it into the hat. The hats would be passed around the room until each student had placed a topic into their assigned hat. The last student to place their topic into the hat would then choose a representative from the other side of the room to take ownership of their hat. Thusly, the two hats would switch sides. The teacher and Jeremy and Sarah would then leave the room, and were not to come back into the room until the group had each arrived onto a singular topic. The hat owner would then pick out 5 topics from the hat and bring them up to their counter, who were to then write them on the board. The counter would notify them when this had occured. In order to select a topic, the whole class would first vote together whether they would like the counter to switch sides of the room. This vote would occur by having all the school-children in the room place their heads down, close their eyes, and hold up a hand if they wanted a switch. The counters would then work together to decide if there were enough votes for them to switch places. The counters then switched if applicable. Keeping their eyes closed and heads down, the students were then to raise their hands for the topic they preffered most. The counter would say each topic aloud to their group, and would then count the amount of hands in favor of that topic. The topic with the most amount of hands would be the group’s winner. When a winning topic was chosen, the counter would erase the choices on the board and knock on the door and notify the teacher to sent in Jeremy and Sarah. Because the counters could not notify either Jeremy or Sarah of their chosen topics, as to not sway the decision making in their favor, they were to relay the topic secretly to the first person in their group. This student would then turn around and relay the topic they had heard to the person directly behind them, in a secret manner. This would continue until the topic had reached the final school-child of each group, who would then directly relay the topic to the debater of the opposing side. Sarah would hear her topic secretly from the last member of Jeremy’s group, and Jeremy would hear his topic from the last member of Sarah’s group. Through this procedure, the debaters would each have their own topic that were chosen completely fairly with no bias from the students in either group. The teacher could then enter back into the class.

Jeremy and Sarah were to debate over which topic should be chosen.

After ten minutes had passed, Jeremy won the debate fair and square. He was awarded $600 dollars from the pockets of the school-children on the opposing side.

On his walk out the door, he took off his cape, crumbling it up into a rag in his hand. He was tired of doing this. The walk to his car was always longer than it should have been. But he had to park down the street in order to prepare his act with no children around. He reached his car and pulled out his keys after fishing them from the bottom of his cluttered pocket. He felt heavy. His trousers and shirt were full of contraptions and hidden objects used in his act. He carefully removed the items from his person, placing them delicately in their respective compartment in the car, after resetting them for his next show in an hour. He resented doing this. He threw his cape into the back seat, driving off to bring wonder and joy to the next group of children for the day.

Every good thief knows that a successful heist should be planned backwards. The planning must start from the desired end result of the heist, and work backwards in stages to the starting act. This ensures that the thief covers every possible outcome in the most streamline way. (I have never officially investigated this theory, I just know it to be true).

Paul was a half-decent thief, but he had only just recently gained this title. Up until his last heist, he was a very bad thief. Paul had been caught over ten times, attempting to carry out heists planned in the forward direction. Only in his last heist had he learned the backwards method of planning, in which he was able to successfully plan a four stage heist of the local hot dog vendor. He had succeeded because no one had cared enough to have stopped him.

He had reached stage 27 of his current heist plan. This was a complicated heist, he was sure it had to work. With the proper backwards planning, any heist would succeed. He had examined in for heist holes at least 20 times at this point, and he had found none. This would be the greatest heist he had ever achieved. Paul’s heist’s end goal was to break into the Sacramento Bank and remove all cash and gold from the inner vault.

The day of the heist had arrived. Paul was surprisingly calm. He never each and every step of his 34 stage plan like the back of his hands, it couldn’t go wrong. He began carrying out the heist at 2am that morning, and reached the vault by 8am, just before opening. He had succeeded. He could now be considered a quite decent thief. Paul left the bank with his well earned cash and gold in hand and his head held high. Upon exit of the bank, he was immediately arrested and his cash and gold was confiscated back from him.

About 50 years ago, there was a chicken named Henriette that decided she would no longer lay eggs. She had been laying eggs her entire life. She was tired of laying eggs. She didn’t want to be known as just one of those egg laying chicken anymore. She wanted to be different. Her act of defiance soon became well known across her local chicken community. Surprisingly, many of her fellow chickens were roused by her change of attitude. Her refusal to no longer lay eggs opened their eyes to the unrelieved egg-laying lives they had been living. They also wanted to be different. One by one, chickens across the globe began refusing to lay eggs in protest against their previously monotonous and menial lives. They were happy to be doing something different for a change. Being different was cool.

The humans were very unhappy for a relatively short amount of time. They missed their eggs, but soon created substitutes that worked just as well, if not better. The humans also, were glad to be doing something different for a change. Until this point, they hadn’t realized how dull egg eating had become. Egg eating was no longer cool. However, their appetite for chicken had increased. Thankfully for the humans, the lack of egg laying chickens allowed for a significant increase of chickens to be slaughtered.

After many years of this new normalcy, Josephine the chicken began to get bored of not laying eggs. Not laying eggs was no longer cool, and Josephine wanted to be different.

There was a quick tap on her shoulder. Initially, it had felt like more than just a tap. Like a finger was pressing into her collar bone, seeking depth in the void of her shoulder anatomy. But really, it was just a small tap. She quickly turned around, startled. It was 4:00am. She would never have expected anyone to confront her this early in the morning. After taking a quick peek at her watch, the time read 9:00am. This made more sense, as she was expecting to meet him at this time. “Him” was a 6′ 7″ man that towered over her small frame. She did her best to hide her cowering as she turned around to face him. A man of his stature can be intimidating at first glance. She raised her head to meet his glare. Surprisingly, taking much less effort than she originally assumed. She happened to be practically eye level with him. They turned out to be roughly the same height, what a relief. Realizing this, she loosened herself from the tense position she had put herself in. He waved, saying “Good morning”. She waved back, saying “Good morning to you, too”.

“It just doesn’t make any sense!” exclaimed Margaret. “If Mordor ate the destiny fruit in the correct sequence, shouldn’t he at least live to level 5?”. She was correct, this conundrum was the result of a logical inconsistency that the game developers had chosen to overlook at final release. Henry assured her, “sure, it doesn’t make much sense, but that’s just how the game is set up”. Henry was also correct, if Margaret wanted to get any farther in the game, she would have to feed Mordor the destiny fruit correctly, and come to terms with his death in level 5. She would never unlock the Key of Hesdeth if she didn’t. “Sometimes things in the game don’t make sense, but that’s just the way they are. While we may never understand them, we know that if we choose to never accept them, we’ll get hung up on the gritty details and never beat the game”, said Henry. Henry had been playing this game for a long time, he was very wise.

Mr. Mouse was feeling good. It seemed that everything in his little mouse life was going just as a mouse could have hoped. Sure, he got caught up in some of the mental roadblocks of navigating his mouse life, but altogether, he was in a pretty good spot. Mr. Mouse always had good cheeses to eat, plenty of energy and health, and a sum of mouse wealth that allowed him to do most of the simple things in life he aspired to do. Mr. Mouse hadn’t always been this way. In fact, it was only recently that he had learned how to put life on easy mode and cruise almost frictionless through day to day existence. He used to navigate life by squeezing himself through a seemingly never-ending tunnel that was so tight he had no room to wiggle. That’s how his life had felt. Now Mr. Mouse only wiggles through tunnels for his own entertainment, knowing full well that regardless of whether the tunnel ends or does not, he is capable of navigating through it for as long as necessary. Knowing this, is enough to alleviate the friction that his mouse society expects him to be beaten down by. He feels free from the constraints that seem to hold back many other mice.