“He had it coming, that Bob. He shoul’n’t to have bumped into my arm like the fat whale that he is, walking round with that greedy stomach of his hangi’n out, with it leading him instead of him leadin’ it.” said Oliver Olby. Oliver was no small child himself, he scarcely fit through the classroom door that was four feet wide, though he was not one to ever suppose himself to be unfit. It is this brood of malicious child who sees the fat boy next to him, over his own ripples of fat, but does not seem to take any notice of those that he owns. “You are right! You are sir! That little creep ought to be taught a lesson. Let’s walk over to him during break and have a word” was the reply which Todd Nugget, Oliver’s closest and only friend gave him. Todd’s brain was smaller than a pea, but his muscles were the largest any eight year old of his form had ever seen. Todd paused; he spat and made a hit on the face of the class gerbil that was the nearest living creature he could find. “We oughta be the ones to teach him that lesson he’s needin’.”
“Agreed. Now let’s see if we can tack that old hag’s chair ‘fore she walks in here for the first lesson. We’ll take care of him later.” And they placed a big thumbtack on the teacher’s chair. It smelled like fertilizer.
Bob was a very kind boy. He might have been plump, might have had a big rump, but his heart was equally large. He never hurt a fly. Bob was also very bright; he knew all the multiplication tables by heart and could tell you how to calculate the volume of a porcupine if you asked him to. This made Todd especially angry, as he had trouble counting till fifteen on his fingers: he said it was because he only had ten. It was after the fifth lesson when Bob was just getting out his lunch bag when he saw two boys with a scissors, some string, and a lot of white cotton approaching. Bob knew better than to stay where he was as they came closer. He was going to speed out of the room as fast as his little legs could carry him when he felt a firm hand (Todd’s hand) slam him against the wall. He dropped his lunch.
“How you doin’ there ya oversized sheep?” asked Oliver. “Yer tubby belly keepin’ you warm this winter? For us humans, it’s pretty cold out there in the snow, now it’s December.”
Bob didn’t answer. Instead he tried to look away but Todd’s hand was relentless. It now forced his face in perfect view of these hideous brats. Bob knew trouble when trouble was what he was in. He was used to Oliver and Todd’s bullying him; but he never told anybody: not after Oliver told him he kept a blade in his backpack that he used for cutting off the bills of geese that quacked to much or looked to large. Oliver did in fact hunt geese whenever he could go to the lake without anybody watching. He shot them with his bee-bee gun to stun them and then cut off their bills. The noisy ones were his targets. But only the very fat noisy ones got their bills cut off. Bob was fat. Bob stared cautiously into the beady eyes of this pig-faced boy. He never liked Oliver, Todd he absolutely detested. The look he saw on the face of these twits scared him. He could easily smell the body odor flowing from their greasy pits into his nostrils, and he tried to press himself closer to the wall so as to avoid the stench they so effortlessly attained.
Oliver didn’t like it when he spoke to somebody and wasn’t answered.
“We just came over here to make sure you, our little lamb, didn’t forget your winter coat. We came to give it to ya, runt.’’ Oliver paused a moment and stuck his filthy finger up his nose. Then, “Todd, you hold him while I wrap the cotton round ‘im” he demanded. Presently Oliver proceeded to tie the cotton to his victim in patches over his body. It is not nice to say, but Bob really did look like a sheep when they finished with him. If there was anything Oliver was good at, it was art; and he had just completed his piece, “Bob the sheep”.
“There ya go little sheep” said Todd. “You’ll stay warm now. Maybe even boil to death.”
And with that Todd produced a large phlegm ball on Bob’s head. The two exited the room and shut the lights on the way out leaving Bob tied up in the dark. He began to cry. He cried so fiercely that he gained some strength and broke the knot that bound him. He fled the building running in the cold snow like a little lamb. He gained speed and soon he looked very much as Oliver intended: covered all in white cotton and running in the white snow leaving all things behind him. Bob ran far and long and he did not stop.
It has been reported by many who found themselves outside on the very same day, that a young joyful lamb was seen trotting through the white snow with grace and beauty as has never before been seen in any regular sheep. This one wasn’t any regular sheep. It was a special one.