Before you delve into this cautionary tale, it’s very important that you understand that this story is absolutely true in every single way and is completely real and not made up or embellished upon even a little bit and it does not borrow even a single plot detail from any other story, especially any made-up, fictional-type kid stories, because this is an account of real life events that totally happened, which are, therefore, 100% true.
All right, with that understood…
Some years back, we went on a casual group-bonding hike in the Catskill Mountains. ‘Twas a beautiful day with nary a cloud in the sky, yet we heard several grand claps of thunder along our way. We came upon a Dutchman with a key who needed our help getting up a very small mountain. It was a simple, normal-sized key, which he really could’ve just taken up the mountain himself, but we liked the adorable Dutch way he said, “Butter Dan Duh Mush-een,” so we walked up the mountain (it was more of a hill, really) with the Dutchman and his key.
We came upon a valley, where stood a group of enormously tall, daintily clad, bearded Dutchmen rolling boulders at giant bowling pins. The sound of the boulders colliding with the pins was clearly the source of “thunder” we had been hearing. But what was it these giants were doing? Certainly, it slightly resembled ten-pin bowling, something we all knew well, having each won 12 gold medals in the sport (as opposed to helicopter racing, for which we’d only won the nine medals and the World Cup). However, the Dutchmen were only using nine pins, which led us to wonder if they were simply missing a pin. It happens all the time with games (we can never find the ships when we’re trying to play Battleship). But it turned out they weren’t missing a pin–they were playing with only nine bowling pins on purpose! How perverse!
Our eyes quickly took sight of the giants’ very large stock of booze. We waited for their absurd game to end, but we had no idea how someone could win a bowling match with with so few pins, or, for that matter, if there even was a winner. So we took it upon ourselves to drink their delicious Dutch liquor for them. Sadly, we were unable to drink nearly as many of their exotic spirits as we would have liked, as all five of us passed out rather quickly.
Alas, this is where we now find ourselves: in a state of extended hibernation. Sure, every now and then, one or two of us is rousted from our sleep to release a video or write an blog post, but most of the time, we’re all spooning in the fertile Catskill Mountains, until such time as the effects of those giant, bearded, absurd missing-a-pin bowling Dutchmen’s liquor wears off all of us.
Also, what was that key for?
–Reid.