» Why I was late

Saving the world
When I was 13 or so, I used to catch the bus to school with my friend Elizabeth. One morning as I was getting dressed, I found an interesting beetle on my windowsill. Being interested in creepy-crawlies, I took it downstairs to ask my dad what it was. He told me that it put him in mind of the colorado beetle, an insect that was infamous for destroying crops and causing famines.

Cue young Egg dashing to the bus stop with the beetle in a box to tell Elizabeth about this ghastly turn of events, all the while imagining the gratitude we'd receive from the governments of the world for alerting them to what was undoubtedly a plague of famine-causing insects. Elizabeth agreed; we would take the beetle to the headmistress, who would alert the Prime Minister, and we'd be receiving our medals from the Queen while our less heroic classmates were in PE. It occurred to us that the only evidence we had that it actually was a colorado beetle was my dad's word, so we decided to go to the library before registration to check in the encyclopedia.

We spent about twenty minutes in the library looking for the right volume, thanks to which we discovered that the beetle I had found looked absolutely nothing like a colorado beetle, and that my dad was a pillock. Miserably disappointed that we weren't heroes and that PE would be happening as usual, we trudged off to class on the other side of the school grounds.

Our class was leaving the room by the time we arrived. Our teacher spotted us and asked us crossly, "Where have you been?" "Saving the world!" was our earnest, simultaneous reply.

Length? About a centimetre, including antennae.
(Sun 1st Jul 2007, 13:01, More)