Stu French

***It's a bird. . . It's a plane. . . No, it's Neck Tie the Trash Can!***

Neck Tie is a loser – there’s no two ways about it. How on earth, in a school where everybody wore the same neck tie to class, did he even manage to earn himself that nickname? Not by being a *winner*, that’s for sure.

He was born in the boring, coma-inducing English town of Chipping Campden, where he spent the first 13 years of his life watching sheep graze in open fields behind his cottage (on Sheep Street). He attended a small Catholic school and received a stern Christian education. This seemed, at least to his well-meaning father, a good way to prepare the boy for teenagehood in a boarding school in America.

When he first came to Silver Oak, a bright-eyed boy with an unhealthy disposition to grant everyone access to his lunchbox, he quickly earned the reputation of being a walking foodbank. While many kids his age aspired to work at Google or at NASA, all Neck Tie wanted to be was that fluffy cuddly KitKat-sharing hero-bear-cub who loved everybody, and whom everybody loved. A pretty harmless idea, to be sure! Somehow instead, he quickly rose through the ranks to become the school’s official fluffy cuddly punching bag. *Close enough?*

So you think you’re a bigger loser than Neck Tie? Think again. This sad sack of broken bones earned campus-wide renown when he mistook football for soccer, leading to hilarious if not disastrous results on the pitch. His other hobbies include being tossed as a human bowling ball into a bunch of chairs, and getting his clothes and towel stolen while coming out of the shower -- the details of which latter incident are best left unelaborated.

Neck Tie slept without a pillow for half the year, because someone stole it and made him swear to secrecy. And then, last February, they had to airlift him to a hospital on account of him getting his little face smashed into a sink. This means he’d been a loser 25,000 feet above everyone else – a Guinness world record, according to some criterion of measurement. Although the injury wasn't as bad as it looked, the school did receive a hefty bill for that very scenic flight he took. The headmaster would begrudgingly pay for this out of his own pocket, to reassure other parents of his commitment to student safety, but not after dragging the boy by the ear into his office for a rasping lecture. Even that wasn't the only record Neck Tie ever set. Earlier that same school year, he became the first kid dumb enough to try to down a bottle of Russian vodka, thanks to the encouragement of some older boys. *It’d be alright they said. It’ll wear off by morning they said.*

Despite all this, Neck Tie still hasn’t given in to the dark side of Silver Oak Academy, and he hasn't become the very thing he loathed (not that he'd ever make a convincing bully anyway, what with that scrawny body of his). Still, he will not, never, no sirree, hurt a fly. That's why his locker is a refuge for ants. There, they live in peace and harmony, receiving daily rations of chocolate from their Protector the Almighty Kit Kat God King.

A year later, Neck Tie has finally been promoted to a well-seasoned, Category 5 loser. He's finally decided to give up his role as the school's mascot. He survives by hiding in the boiler room come lunch time and after school. His only friend, Graham Moore, aka. Billy Elliot, is an equal loser on several fronts, who struggles to fight an inexplicable impulse to dance all the time.

To this day, for fear of unfriendly visitors, Neck Tie still locks his room every night by pushing his bed against of the door, and he guards his pillow with his life.

## **A Poem About Nuggets**

*I would not like them*

*Here or there.*

*I would not like them*

*Anywhere.*

*I do not like*

*Chicken Mc Nuggets,*

*I do not like them,*

*Stu-I-am*