Ever hear of the story about a little boy who broke all the rules? Have you heard the one about the boy who obeyed all the rules? What about the one where the rules broke the boy?
I haven't heard, read or told any one of these. Until now!
The boy who broke all the rules
Sammy was eight and lived in his treehouse. He built it himself from wood that he stole from the pallet factory not far from his parent's house. He stole his dad's hammer and pulled nails out of the useless furniture he found dumped in skips and dumps. He wasn't supposed to go wandering the way he did and he filled his parent's with worry but he always came back in high spirits.
His treehouse was built without plans but to his credit, it was quite strong even with it's jagged edges and creaky walls. He lived there as long as he could, until he grew out of it's limited space. Against his want he lived back with his parents to take advantage of its size and heat and significantly smaller distance to a shower. Much like the treehouse the boy grew into a quite strong being with jagged edges and creaky walls, in that he didn't react well to a simple telling off and he didn't let people get to know him. He often dismissed orders, not for a lack of respect , although many people saw it as that, but for desire to do his own thing. He lived in his own body and wanted it to move to his own will. Although, he wouldn't dismiss an opportunity to indulge himself in a good idea, regardless of the lips that expressed it. He wasn't daft.
This man had created a blanket of independence and wrapped himself snugly in it. So snug in fact that his independence had manifested a deadly efficiency. The man was a builder, a craftsman, a man of vision and excellent hands. He honed his skills during his years of constant exercise and experience. His curiosity had fueled him into a master. He had developed an ability to maneuver his hands to create any shape, any tool, any object that his world needed or his mind wanted. This had earned him a comfortable living as his skill was in demand. The boy who broke the rules was now a man who made his own.
The boy who obeyed all the rules
The boy who obeyed all the rules was truly adorable. He did what he was told, like you'd expect from a boy with such a title. He was well kept and life was easy. He always knew what he had to do and did it to the best of his ability. School was easy and quiet. He had a couple of close friends, all of which were loyal to each other. They knew this was important in an environment as volatile as school. Their defense was to remain unnoticed to the kids who enjoyed mischief and drama, while quietly nabbing the attention of the authority figures who set the rules they obeyed so well. The close friends hit their late adolescence hard and had developed a need to impress their peers, mainly the ones with pretty eyes and full breasts. But the boy had his rules. One that was ingrained was to not have a girlfriend, for they distract him from his work. The rules, set in place by his family were there to protect him from his life's path (also set by his family) to be a doctor. A credit to society. So the boy did what he was told, achieved the necessary, perfect grades and went to university, where despite living away from his family he followed his rules and kept to himself and achieving his necessary, perfect grades and went on to be a doctor.
It was here that his life was turned upside down. True, there are many rules to follow when you're a doctor. Certain diseases and illness' require certain, specific treatments in order to achieve the desired results. However, patients, a.k.a. people have such different rules of engagement. To deal with this he used one very important rule: Ask Questions.
He asked beyond the necessary questions; "How/why are you not well" or "what happened". He asked about them. Their lives, their stories, their interests and so on. He learned that most of these people were there because they broke a certain rule. He also learned that these same people usually had a reason to break the rules. Through this he learned that rules are useless without your own reason to follow them, which he realised that up until now, he hadn't.
This was a conclusion that changed his life and lead to a new beginning.
The rules that broke the boy
There was this boy who broke the rules deliberately to be "cool". This eventually got him into jail. He changed the way he did things. He followed some rules that lots of people followed. But then he realised that man of the rules that the mass of people were following often contradicted themselves. This put a lot of stress on his mind and he couldn't figure out what to do so he jumped off a cliff. The rules broke the boy.
*****
"I never was one for rules," quoth leRevven, tossing back his caramel locks with a vicious whip of his neck. His hair flowed straight back to its original position, running in the well worn rivulets of his ludicrously flamboyant 8-inch collar which jutted directly to the heavens. Blinking languorously at me and indulging in a sneer which revealed one of his canines, leRevven flumped impolitely into my favourite armchair. Swinging his legs over an arm, and arching himself so as to be looking at me upside down, he continued.
"In all honesty Max, I've come to see rules as things which apply exclusively to women, foreigners and the poor."
Dominic Grothandler leRevven, Viscount Yellowpool, is a man who puts the dick into lack of decorum. Swinging his kinkyboot clad feet playfully over the side of my armchair, I concentrated very hard on the possibility that he in fact was an apparition of my overtired mind, but as much as I willed him away, there he remained. For all his declared disinterest in rules, his face obeyed the edict of gravity, and I was treated to the oddness of having the flab of his face sinking to his forehead. I redoubled my efforts to will him away.
"Nevertheless, dear heart, our good Queen sees things differently, and so here am I, to collect her dues, as per the rue-ells."
In many of the lands of this world who deign to appoint monarchs make the claim that those who reign therein are God's chosen. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, for us, our Queen is actually God's chosen ruler. We know this for certain because of the intriguing and rather colourful goings on which are the meat and potatoes of her Court. Early on in her reign, the voices of dissent were many and varied, as the aristocratic class had become used to the jellyspined rule of her predecessor, King Andreas "Jellyspine" Fondura IV. We perhaps should have foresaw a different approach by taking note of the way in which our current Queen came into power. It will go down in history as the least complex, most direct coup de tat ever witnessed. There was young Jellyspine, giving in to us as usual, in the middle of a hearing, sat in his throne, kinging well and good, when Vicky-Tory Towncharger simply storms in, lofts a mace above and her head and mushes him entirely. Poor bastard.
She was an ageing marauder who'd tired of the constant travel and the limited amenities that brought with it, and she'd seen fit to alter that situation, because she could. Vicky-Tory was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but she'd bloody well got one there now. Her moniker, Towncharger, had been earned as she was avoiding justice in some far flung shanty town, and in the course of her making good her escape, she found she was being blockaded by an entire town, which had slunk from nearby to assist. Not lacking resolve, she'd reared back on her trusty steed Hog and simply charged. Rumours have it that even the taverns dived out of the way.
She was definitely a frightening sort of woman. At least Jellyspine would have been utterly anaesthetised as the mace made pudding of his skull; as she towered over him he would have been eye-level with her thighs, which were the sort of thighs which could grind a horse to dust between them. Legend says that to see her thighs is to leave your mind with no room to think of anything else.
Since taking the throne, Queen Vicky-Tory Thronetaker I had decreed very little, she simply asked that anytime a noble left the country, they are duty-bound to present the Queen with a gift on their return. I had recently visited the Duchy of Bastard, a small stakeholding in which I have an interest, and due to Circumstances whilst there, I found it necessary to beat a hasty retreat. Gifts the last thing on my mind, I returned home, and that explains why I was being graced with the presence of my dear, dear friend Viscount Yellowpool.
"Where's the gift, Max?"
I became slightly irked by his insistent tone. Sat in the corner with his head bowed and hands between his thighs, Tetrahedron, the Duke of Frisbee, was clearly entirely engaged in an attempt to will himself elsewhere. He had accompanied me on my excursion, but since he was a man of a more Bastardly outlook, he had not flown when the situation orgied. As such he had remembered a gift for our dear Queen. He had already handed leRevven the gift, a curious girdle with an ornate statuette of a long mushroom jutting out of it. Quite what the good Duke was thinking I don't know, but not knowing the use of such an accessory, I cannot begin to speculate. As good a friend as Tetrahedron is, he hadn't remembered to pick up a second gift from me, and for that he was in the shithouse, what?
Mercifully, it was at this point that Lady Willoughby cannoned into the room, and like trick photography leRevven vanished from his rude position in my very favourite armchair, and reappeared, stood rigidly to attention, several feet further into the room. His face was glistening with a sheen of what we refer to as the "leRevven Lady Willoughby Sweats". Isabella does have quite the effect on Dominic, childhood friends as they are. She simply smiles and hurries to a task at hand when I bring it up, but through the grapevine I've discovered that his tremulosity around her stems from a youthful hijink where she held him captive for several days at the bottom of a well on her, quite expansive, family estate. Dominic cannot hear the name of Crosshill Quartz without twitching very noticeably.
"Ehurghahahaha, Isabella, bella!" released leRevven, a gatling staccato of nerves escaping his vocal aperture. Lady Willoughby swept across the room, her skirts trailing out behind her dramatically, giving the impression of a swimming octopus entangled in drapes.
"Domma! Why didn't you tell me you'd come!? Here you are hiding away with Maxi and Ian, when you could have the pleasure of my company! Surely you've become unstable to have chosen them over me?"
Making a noise like a plug being pulled out of a bath of golden syrup, leRevven swallowed and, gesturing slightly too energetically, whined
"It is on business I'm afraid, Bella, in and out."
"You're being run ragged by that Vicky!" declared Lady Willoughby stridently, a cartoonish pout swelling on her.
"Yes, indeed," I quickly interjected, so as not to appear sidelined by my better half.
"Ehurghno, no," he assured us, "it's an honour to serve her Majesty. Collecting gifts for her is a joy!"
The dawn of false realisation broke over Lady Willoughby's face with the subtlety of nuclear holocaust. Fortunately, in his state of jitters, her thespianic efforts slipped past leRevven unnoticed. Delving wholehandedly into her expansive pockets, Lady Willoughby extracted a vial which contained a vivid electric blue substance of jam-like consistency.
"Here's Maxi's gift from Bastard, he offered it to my protection when he returned. You know how absentminded he can be!" she whinnied, releasing a full bellywobbler of a guffaw afterwards.
"Ha." I rejoined, to show game.
"It's a salve, Dommy. It's possibly the most exciting thing that Maxi could have brought back. It is said to heighten all the senses. I know that Vicky's days of adventuring are behind her, but should she ever take it upon herself to embark on some grand effort, she is sure to enjoy herself far more should she utilise this lotion."
Understanding well her meaning, Dominic leRevven had the vial in his gloved hands and quickly exeunt, ever eager to escape Isabella. As Lady Willoughby shook her head at Tetrahedron, I thought of how I owed so much to my darling life companion. I had so very nearly come acropper of our Queen who, while not a vicious tyrant, enjoyed gifts to a frankly excessive degree. Her eyes then fell on me, and as I offered a silent thankyou by way of a nod, I wondered which would have been the worse for me, bearing the scorn and whispers which would have accompanied my lack of gift, or missing out on whatever use my dear wife had originally intended when she'd purchased that vial.
Curtly goodbyeing Tetrahedron, we retired to the bedroom.
*****
The act of completing this piece causes me to both flout and conform to rules. I flout it by completing it passed the agreed upon deadline, it conforms to them by having me actually complete it.
I have always had a strange relationship with rules, being someone who both respects and gates them. I loathe being told what to do, and am often the sort of person who is a reverse psychologists' nocturnal emission. But the, I respect the boundaries which are imposed by them.
I think this has a great deal to do with my being a person who is easily irked. I can also have a certain rigidity about me which I actively try to work against.
But rules are important, like it or not.
I like to imagine a game of chess. The amount of patterns and combinations that can be created is phenomenal, as is the fact that you could spend a lifetime studying the game in order to attempt to master it. But this is only made possible by rules, because without rules, the pawn would swamp the board, the queens would terrorise the board and the knights would trample everyone.
Equally, if we had chaos and no rules, then society would be like this game.
But rules are a touchy subject in society, because depending on what rules you like and what rules you don't can dictate how acceptable you are and by whom you are accepted. Political rules, social rules, sexual rules, behavioural rules. They're all complex issues that are decided upon by the majority and is often decided upon unofficially, unspoken. And when were we given the choice?
We are almost certainly living the life decided upon by our ancestors. We are reaping the rewards and the chastisements of our forebears.
To sign off from this unfunny and, to be honest, hastily written piece, I leave you with this thought;
Rules are only as valuable as the people who abide by them.
*****
Dafydd Evans
Adam Gilder
Gethin Down
