Johnny McGory

Shall I tell you a story about Johnny McGory?

Shall I begin it?

That’s all that’s in it.

Oh, don’t go pulling such a face on me. That one always made you laugh when you were a kid, and I don’t mean to imply that you’re a goat now. Ahh, there’s a smile.

Now then, Johnny McGory. Tall fellow, the way we measured them back in the day. Maybe a dozen hands tall, though whose hands I never knew when he was alive. But here’s the problem with it, any time they would measure clothes for the man, being very tall as he was, he always needed them custom made, they would use different hands. And different dozens.

You know what I mean by that, a baker’s dozen is thirteen. Except when a few of them lost count and it was fourteen. A few of them were skinflints the rotten buggers, and they went down low as eleven. And one, this was the rottenest bugger of them all, used the full dozen but measured the cloth using her new-born’s hands.

But you see, Johnny McGory wasn’t the sharpest knife in Caesar’s back was he? On account of thinking himself tall at only a dozen hands, but he was used to people not understanding that. So, no matter what he wore, old Johnny McGory was always dressed like a schoolboy late for his appointment with the headmaster. And he looked it too, constantly chagrinned and looking sometimes like he was waiting for the cane to strike his backside.

Indeed, that’s what they used to do way back before we figured out that letting people hit children with sticks isn’t the best way to raise them. Aren’t you feeling lucky now? Considering how many times you were hauled to the masters’ offices for a good talking to. Think, if you’d grown up like poor Johnny McGory, then you’d have a backside so striped we could send you to Africa to live with the zebras. And no one would notice a difference.

I remember this one time, yes, I went to school with him for a few years, we were sat in class listening to the master prattle on and on about some new discovery in Egypt or other. Might have been Mexico, actually now I think about it. Of course, he was speaking Latin, which was just fine as our Latin master had left the school the previous year without anyone noticing so none of us knew a word the old man was saying. Made him a lot easier to ignore and goes a way to explain why I don’t remember what he was talking about. That is, none of us except for Johnny McGory.

See, I been calling him old like this because he was old back then. People would see him in his short pants, that he had always been assured were tailored just for him and send him to the school. Naturally, it’s not possible according to the rules of the school for persons to be sent to them without being students, so they caned him and stuck him in class. Nearly every day this happened, but the result was that he had sat through so many Latin classes he spoke it better than most of the masters.

And old Johnny McGory, thinking himself very tall at only a dozen hands, stood up and said to the master at the front of the room, “you’ve got that wrong! “I learn” is not conjugated like that at all! It's disco!”

Naturally, you see, this incensed the master. Who strode down the line of desks to where Johnny McGory was stood and looked him dead in the eye. His face turned red as he lambasted the poor fellow, which brought all of our attention to him, of course. He ranted and he stormed, swinging his arms about and nearly taking my head off with the cane he brandished like a sword.

All that fuss, a raving lunacy benefiting from allusion to the great god Pan and his powers, caused such a ruckus. Heads appeared in the glass window set into the closed door, watching as the master worked himself up. I swear we could hear his heart thundering behind the rage he directed at Johnny McGory.

Suddenly, the master dropped dead.

Not keeling over, not even sagging to ground in a manner that would dignify such a learned gentleman. Simply, hit the ground. Leaving us all staring at old Johnny McGory.

You might be thinking, how on Earth did we pass our examinations after all that excitement. There were school assemblies, speeches from the board of trusties, everything. And for the rest of the year we watched as Johnny McGory limped through the halls of the school, having been caned repeatedly every day for daring to murder a master.

Not that there was any actual evidence about it. But he had enraged the master, and therefore it was his fault the man was dead. And every day when he walked through the town and passersby saw him, all made up for the day in his clothes that every tailor promised was a perfect dozen hands for him, he was hauled literally by his ear to the school and caned for truancy. As well as what the office thought was a murder.

Hmm? Oh, I don’t know how tall he really was, but when he was growing up he was measured by using the stuffed foot of an elephant his grandfather had purchased in Africa. It was called a hand because it had nails resembling fingernails. And fingernails can only be on a hand, as you know. But that’s not the crux of the tale.

Thanks to the death of that master, I failed every one of my classes that year.

You see, the problem with this story about Johnny McGory is that it contained far too much panic, and nowhere near enough disco.