Descendant Dearest

Alligator pie, alligator pie,

If I don’t get some I think I’m gonna die.

Give away the green grass, give away the sky,

But don’t give away my alligator pie.

-Dennis Lee

Ever since you were little, you've been asking questions of purpose, questions of your existence, to all the wrong people, for all the wrong reasons. Your father and I are extremely disappointed in you, but we talked, and we came to a decision. It's time for you to know the truth about where you came from. So listen up.
Your greatest grandparents are named Bud and Margie, did you know? They were alligators and they've known each other since forever. And boy are they perfect together-- know-it-alls in the truest sense of the word. I mean it-- they know everything! No, they don't live in Florida. No, you haven't met them. Will you let me talk? Thank you. I'm not making this up.
They live in a different world, in fact, it's not even this universe. Do you know about worlds and universes? Good. Well, they live with stars and swamp bears, but not like any stars or swamp bears you know. The bears live off of scrambled eggs with lots and lots of pepper; the stars are assholes. They're all made of mud, and they aren't famous, and they HATE how ordinary they are. This is why nowadays they exact revenge on us, the spawn of our greatest grandparents, by penetrating our minds, making us wonder about our purpose instead of just knowing it.

I'm getting off track. So Bud and Margie took acting classes together, and it was during Margie's performance as Lady Macbeth that Bud knew she was "the one." Plus she is the only other alligator in their world, so it works out nicely. They ended up dropping out of the class and moving to the outskirts of town. I should mention that they live in a land of only two dimensions with the colors brown, blue and green, and everything looks similar to the texture of construction paper. No, that's not stupid. Simpler is better. The stars just do that to confuse you! I'll get to that; let me finish.


So naturally, they laid an egg together, because they were in love and wanted a child to share all this love with. It was going to be a boy (like I said, they know everything) and they decided the name Gregory would suit this fine baby gator.

Seriously? You're texting right now? Who are you texting? Look at this text message I got just an hour ago. Yeah, space texted me "Let's kick it." Who's cooler now? Pay attention.

Where was I? Gregory. Sadly, Greg was never born. You see, the stars there (and everywhere, for that matter) are evil and malicious, mad at how madly in love Bud and Margie are. So they concocted a plot. One day, your great gators decided to pick up some eggs at the local market for these neighbor swamp bear friends of theirs. As they waltzed claw in claw down the dairy aisle, a group of bandit stars broke into their cave and stole the Greg egg. But that's not all they did.. they scrambled it! They scrambled it at a diner their daddy owned! Not only that, they fed it to the very same bears that Bud and Margie were shopping for! Margie instantly knew that something was askew when Jack and Linda (the bears) told them that the stars had brought them supper. She fled home, saw the egg was gone, and cried the biggest ol' alligator tears you've ever seen in your whole life. She cried for exactly 40 days, and during those 40 days, their world only contained brown and green, because Margie was holding on to all the blue, holed up inside her cave. They did hold a funeral type service, which involved scraping the leftover scrambled Gregory into the abyss at the edge of their world, because they don't have dogs there to feed scraps to. Bud, Margie, Jack, and Linda all had a big group hug at the end of it, and of course everyone involved was forgiven-- the bears because they knew not what they did, and the stars because it is not in a gator's nature to begrudge anything. 
What's that about the abyss, sweetie? Well, like I said before, their world is 2-D and so it's flat, and it just kinda ends at a certain point. Past its boundary has no color whatsoever-- not black, not white, but something we cannot even fathom, basically because the stars are such jerks.

I'll get to that. So, something really significant happened when the Greg egg came off that plate. There was so much love behind it that it couldn't just stop at that point. There was just too much! So it exploded out of confusion, and BAM! all this nonsense got created. I mean the world we live in. But those stars just don't give up, Sally. An army of them hopped off the edge of their world after they heard about what Gregory did, and now they're still here messing with us. Like the colors. Instead of just leaving it at three, they had this brilliant idea to make an entire spectrum to confuse us even more and make us even more miserable. And they're constantly spying on us and making us dream and terrorizing the ocean. Yeah I know. So your father and I just want you to know that it's really not all that bad, because Bud and Margie are waiting for you after you "die". 

What happens? You wake up in an elevator that's going up, and you get to the top floor and swamp bears are waiting for you, a kind of meet and greet thing, and they fill you in on the details I left out. And I think I heard you can try some of their peppered eggs if you want to, but they don't take it personally if you don't. And then you go and live with Bud and Margie inside the most wonderful feeling of love you've ever felt before. I know Mommy's crying, but I can't help it. It's the grandest thing! So don't be afraid of a gosh darn thing, Sally. It always works out perfect. 

Anyway, now that you know what's really happened and happening, your father and I wrote out some pointers to help you along the way. Basically how to live a wholesome life, until you return to our gator family, by fighting against the stars' collective sinister plot against us.

#1) Wear sunglasses as often as possible, though not those Blublocker ones-- essentially those are just propaganda.

#2) Please realize that geese are not mean, they are just bummed in how we've been acting lately. In fact, they all speak fluent English, but are so flustered by our ignorance that emotion overwhelms them and when they try to tell us the truth it comes out as a "HONK!" They want whats best for us, and perhaps the best proof of this is that they shit on sidewalks, which leads us to....

#3) Avoid sidewalks. They usually run alongside shops, and petty consumption is what the stars want us to buy into. This is why we live in New Orleans: because it is swamp and because the sidewalks are messed up, the city organically displaces the stars' hogwash from the ground up, and it is the closest thing to our natural source we can get to at the moment.

#4) Be wary of the moon, but don't completely blow it off. Although it harbors light from the Bastard Star, most the time it doesn't completely. I just consider it a mixed-up kid, same as the rest of us.

#5) Don't commit suicide. They take an automatic 30 points off of your test score (out of 100), and you need an 80 or higher to get in. Jesus only made it because all the extra credit he did.

Now what do you want for breakfast, Sally?

-by Isis Loveshine

xoxo