Like most of my best stories, this one starts with me jamming a fork into an electrical outlet. I had a new theory I was testing out.
The theory was that if you jam a fork into an outlet, something will happen with the electricity that will allow you to travel through space and time. Nobody really understands electricity, so this seemed like a good hypothesis.
So there I was shoving this fork in and getting shocked, and just when I was about to give up there was a big burst of light. There I was, teleported to ancient China right when they were building the Great Wall.
“Hey, pick up some stones and start building this wall,” some guy said to me.
I know what you’re thinking. “How’d you understand him if he was speaking Chinese? You don’t know Chinese.” Well, all that electricity must have taught it to me. I don’t know. I told you, nobody understands how that stuff works.
Anyways, I wasn’t about to stand around building some stupid wall. I traveled through space and time to do something new, and I’ve already been tricked into building enough giant walls in my life.
So I stood around with the fork until some lightning hit it and was teleported through time and space again. This time I ended up in the Wild West.
I drifted from town to town, and when I was in those towns I moseyed on through them. Always gotta be drifting or moseying, that’s the law of the Wild West. And let me tell you, the Wild West is aptly named. I saw a lot of wild things.
One town had a sheriff who was himself a criminal. One town had a sheriff who was a monkey. And another town had a sheriff who was a monkey criminal. It’s hard to trust the law with sheriffs like that.
The wildest thing though was dueling. At any moment somebody can challenge you to a duel. And you had to accept, or you’ll be laughed out of town. You’ll go from being a joyful moseyer to being a forlorn drifter, just like that.
I found myself getting into a lot of duels. And I lost almost every single one.
Here are some of the best duels that I got into.
—
1. A Gold Panner
This guy came running into town yelling, “There’s gold in them hills!” Alright, I thought. I could use some gold.
So I followed him out to the hills, and when he found some I said, “Let’s split it.”
Then he told me it was his gold, and I shouldn’t have followed him to his secret stash. I said you announced to the whole town that gold was here. That was all it was, he said. An announcement, not an invitation.
Then he challenged me to a duel and shot me in the leg. I should mention that’s how most of these duels ended, me getting shot and all. Because I didn’t have a gun and had to just throw my fork when the guy said “Draw.”
—
2. That Criminal Monkey Sheriff
I’d had enough of a monkey running the town. Maybe that was okay with these simple-minded people from the past, but I knew that an animal shouldn’t control the law. And if one had to, it shouldn’t be a monkey. Maybe a dolphin mayor would be fine, I heard they’re pretty smart. And that sonar could help find criminals.
Anyways, I started this duel myself. I figured I could beat a monkey. I figured wrong.
—
3. A Priest
I was getting a little bored in the Wild West. You can only look at a tumbleweed so long before it’s like, “Alright, do a trick or something you dumb tumbleweed. I’ve watched you roll for hours.”
So I pulled out my phone and started playing some games. I forgot they didn’t have phones back then though, and the local priest saw me and thought I had some sort of devil device.
No, it’s not a devil device, I told him. It’s just a phone. It’s cool, look. I took a picture of him, and he said that I’d trapped his soul in the device. He told me to press the little trash can icon to delete the photo so he wouldn’t go to Hell.
I said how do you even know photos can be deleted, you’ve never even seen a phone. That’s when he challenged me to a duel. I lost and now I don’t have that cool photo of the Wild West priest.
—
4. Another Guy From the Future
I was in the saloon and I saw a guy wearing a Super Bowl LVII shirt. That didn’t make sense, because by my calculations it should have been Super Bowl Negative CLXIII that year.
I asked him where he was from, and he said the future. He’d had the same fork in outlet hypothesis I’d had. I told him I was from the future too, and he said the town wasn’t big enough for two guys from the future.
Then he dueled me. He shot me with this laser gun he’d gotten from the super future. I said the laser gun wasn’t fair, and he said I should have gone to the super future before coming to the Wild West. Fair enough.
—
5. A Guy with Spurs on His Shoes
This one was on me. I was at the saloon and spilled beer all over this guy's boots. Then I went to help clean it off, and I knocked over a canister of oil that was sitting on the bartop. It spilled all over his spurs.
“Don’t worry, that’ll come right off,” I said. “They’re made of stainless steel.”
Only I forgot that stainless steel hadn’t been invented yet. Only stainable steel in the Wild West. So I’d completely ruined his spurs, and there I found myself in yet another duel.
He shot me in the arm and then came over and hit me with his spurs a few times.
—
After all those duels, I decided I’d had enough of the Wild West. I waited around for another thunderstorm and shocked myself back to the present. Next time I’m going to a place with a little less dueling. Maybe I’ll go back to Ancient China and help them finish that wall.
