Rufus, the Delinquent Dragon

In the furthest back of beyond, there once was a place so poor that no one bothered to go there and so destitute that no one could afford to leave.

It was a barren moonscape of burned rock capable only of producing a single meager crop – horseradish.

The root is what everyone lived on and its pungent aroma permeated everything and left everyone with a perpetual belly-ache. Yet, what choice did they have?

For alas, the poor people of this miserable place were cursed to live under the terrible shadow of a delinquent little dragon named Rufus.

Rufus was not a bully nor for that matter particularly mean.  He was just an exuberant little guy, who like so many adolescents his age just loved to destroy things.  He simply took giddy delight in smashing barns, burning fields and bowling over fences.

You might call him a brat or at least a narcissist, but then most dragons are.

The only thing Rufus would not destroy was horseradish – because he loved the stuff.  He thrived on it.  Horseradish was what metaphorically and literally put fire in his belly.

***

One day while gliding high above the clouds, Rufus caught a whiff of something most unusual for his retched region: the fragrance of fresh timber.  Following the scent, he soon spotted a strange sight: a new barn under construction.

Nothing could be better.

Rufus’s natural urge to smash things overwhelmed him.

He plummeted earthward in a 70 degree power-dive.  With the wind rippling through his scales, he drew a bead on the barn, gauging the exact instant to pull up before delivering a searing blast of dragon breath…

But…

THRONG!

A massive bejewel claw snatched him out of the air.

WHAT THE??

He looked up.

It was mother.

The truth is Rufus had never met his mother.  She had happened to be flying over the region in her last stage of pregnancy and dropped an egg.

That is how dragon parenting works. 

But now she was forced to take some responsibility and so was he.

“We have been receiving complaints,” she snapped. “Time to teach you some manners.”

***

Back at her cave, Mother sat Rufus down for The Talk. 

“You can’t just go around smashing random things,” she said. “That is not how dragons fit into the world. You need purpose.”

“I dunno, I thought smashing things was my purpose.”

“It is – just not around here and not without permission.”

“What’s permission?”

The old girl just shook her head. Dropping eggs was the easy part.

The fact is, mother did not have to tell Rufus not to smash things, at least around the cave. For one, she was a whole lot bigger and more fearsome than he, but for another Rufus was awestruck at her surroundings which appealed to an aesthetic he never knew he had.

Rich tapestries trimmed in gold covered the walls and her furnishings of living wood spoke to Rufus in a language of art, culture and wisdom that touched on the very meaning of being a dragon.

“I know what you are thinking,” she told him, “You like what you see.  It is called taste and it takes time to develop.  But let me tell you something about taste, it is more what you don’t see than what you do.”

She went onto explain, “The greatest tragedy of life is that too much retched stuff lasts too long and that is where dragons come in.  Your natural urge to destroy is your purpose – but you have to know what to smash and what to preserve.  For instance…”

With a wave of her claw, she summoned an elegant but utterly confused-looking chair. In an instant, it vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving Rufus bewildered.

“Danish Modern,” Mother explained with a chuckle, “there are good ideas, so-so ideas, the utterly terrible and then there is Danish Modern.”

“And this,” she continued, clutching a framed canvas with a single blue dot painted on it. “Contemporary art is wonderful, but when the artist has to explain it, burn it.”

POOF!!

And for the remainder of the hour, she stomped about her cave curating all the things she gathered over the last fifty years.

Shag carpeting in the bathroom. 

POOF!!!

Zebra prints.

POOF!!!

Bean bag chairs.

POOF!!!

Avocado green and harvest gold.

POOF!!!

Celebrity autobiographies.

POOF!!!

“Most things from the 1970’s you can burn,” she said, her words dripping with utter disgust, “especially the late 70’s.  It was the era when the world sloughed off some truly bad ideas.  Unfortunately that gave way to the belief that new was worthwhile just for being new.”

Rufus nodded in earnest approval.

“Now it is your turn,” she said. “Somewhere hidden among my possessions is the worst idea humanity ever conceived. See if you can find it.”

Rufus sifted through the stacks of junk that mother had accumulated over the years.  There was all kinds of useless horrible stuff – but what was the worst?

A coffee table book titled Tattoo Concepts?  Bad, but not the worst.

A Segway scooter?  Close.

A Boom Box?  Definitely a contender.

But then Rufus found buried under a half-ton of tax code, a small official looking booklet.

Mother beamed with pride.

It was an HOA agreement.

And with that…..

POOF!!!

“I have only one more thing to teach you,” Mother said, “Handle yourself wisely. Dragons live almost forever which means we outlive just about everything but life itself and the truth is most new ideas are bad ideas and pruning them is our purpose.

But of all the things whose time has expired, you must appreciate what demands the most courage and wisdom to destroy.”

Rufus listened intently.

“Purging the things we hold most dear.”

And with that Rufus’s lessons came to its end.  As he prepared to return to the back of beyond, Mother added just one more nugget of wisdom.

“Speaking of taste, I have here the most inspired thing nature ever conceived.  Now that you have acquired the beginnings of wisdom, you will use this as a source of awesome power.”

Producing a pair of titanium prongs, Mother dipped them deep into a firebrick pot.  As she extracted whatever it was, a furious jet of flame blasted from the mouth of the vessel.

And there, glowing as hot as the sun itself at the tip of the prongs was – a jalapeno.