Why Stink Stinks

By the very cold sea of the Arctic, on a rocky coast, there lives a great stinking walrus that does not think himself stinky. It is not that all walruses stink, either. I know what you're thinking. You are thinking that all walruses stink. But walruses rarely smell bad to other walruses, except for this one. And stink is generally a matter of whose nose you're talking about.

This one started out like his friends, who liked to sit on the shore and roll this way and that, and lick the bits of fish off their tusks, and bathe their leathery brown backs and bellies in the sunlight. But Stink, as that was what everybody called him, loved nothing more than a great chunk... of chocolate. You might wonder, if you are a skeptical child, where a walrus would get chocolate. Or, if you're an imaginative child you might not question it. But either way, I'm going to tell you where Stink gets chocolate, and I'm going to tell you why the other walruses think Stink stinks.

Stink developed the habit as a young walrus of wandering off toward the harbor, and watching the goings-on of men with ships and ladies with large fur hats. He had no idea what any of them were up to, which is why he liked them so much. One day, he watched a great crusty sea captain with a red face and white beard, and a jacket of gold buttons, come out of a shop with a young boy at his side. They sat down on a bench nearby and the captain gave the boy a mesh bag of small golden fish from the little shop. The boy tore at the thin golden flesh of each fish and devoured its smooth brown insides greedily, one after the other, getting some brown at each corner of his mouth all the way up to each deep dimple of his smiling cheeks. Stink watched with great jealousy, salivating all over his tusks, and saw that there were barrels of these golden fish inside the shop. He watched them get up from the bench and walk all the way to the boy's house at the top of the hill, where he was received by a stout smiling lady with dimples matching the boy's, to whom the captain bowed and tipped his hat before making his way back up the harbor, where he disappeared into a pub filled with men escaping the cold by drinking mugs of golden beer and smoking pipes.

Stink just had to have the fish with the golden skin, so he waited by the water and tried to look like a perfectly normal walrus, sunbathing on a rock by the harbor. But you and I know that he felt very mysterious about himself, as anyone who has a plan feels, particularly as the plan grows upon thinking about it, rolling the plan around in your noggin and making alterations or addendums as necessary. After all, planning is what one occupies oneself with, when one must engage in the tortuous process of waiting, to enact the plan. And Stink waited until the shops were beginning to close and the street had emptied out, and slipped closer and closer toward the shop with barrels of the golden fish, until he saw his chance, and slipped into the shop just as the shopkeeper was retrieving a large bucket of soapy water from behind the shop. He hid behind a display toward the back of the shop, grabbing a golden fish on his way, and tried to mask himself in the shadows. The shopkeeper began to mop the floor with the soapy water, and Stink tried to hold his breath to keep from making any noise. But what Stink didn't know was that his walrus odor was suddenly very noticeable in the tiny shop. And the shopkeeper stood in the middle of the shop, holding his nose high in the air, twitching his whiskers, and turning this way and that, to establish the origin of the sudden arrival of Stink's stink. He followed the scent right toward the young walrus and looked at him, then at the golden fish he held in his flipper. The shopkeeper frowned, and shouted "So YOU are what was stinking!" and pointed toward the door, and gave Stink a little kick in that general direction. Stink hurried out of the shop, a little embarrassed, and the shopkeeper followed him out, and poured the bucket of soapy water over Stink to teach him a lesson and clean him off at the same time. He slammed the door after him and returned to his mop. But Stink didn't care, and tore at the golden fish right there in the alley. He tasted the metallic skin of the fish first, and spit it out, disappointed. Then he tried the melting meat in the palm of his flipper and found that it was delicious, if messy. He returned that evening to the other walruses, and everyone shirked away from him, as he reeked of floor-soap and chocolate breath. "You stink!" quickly got shortened to Stink, and it stuck. And every few weeks, Stink would get a craving for the golden fish, and the shopkeeper would secretly look forward to his thief-friend's visit, also addressing him as Stink. And they would have a little tussle that usually resulted in a soapy, chocolatey, satisfied walrus, and a shopkeeper that saw the whole charade as doing a dirty, hungry walrus two favors. Afterwards, Stink quickly learned that a little bath in the ocean would return him almost to normal, and this allowed the other walruses to at least tolerate him. But for Stink, it was worth it, and he reveled in his nickname and kept his secret to himself. After all, what would you endure, for a bit of chocolate?

This was my entry for storytelling week at Classic Play