posted 06-20-2001 08:11 AM            

Lance couldn't believe his eyes. He had never before seen a bolt of lightning strike a garbage dumpster.

Frightened, Lance remained where he was, even after the rain had stopped. >From a distance, he watched the garbage smoldering. He smelled the electricity in the air. It tickled his nose.

"Achoo!" Lance cried out, breaking the silence with a sneeze.

"God bless you!" replied a tiny voice.

Lance searched the playground and found that it was empty.

"Who said that?"

"I did! I did!" The voice was high-pitched and muffled. And it was coming from somewhere inside the smoking dumpster!

Lance jumped to his feet and approached the rusty container. He refrained from touching it because he knew that it would still be extremely hot. Stopping a few feet away, he stood on his toes and peered inside. He saw nothing but trash, charred and wet.

Lance shrugged and was just about to turn away when suddenly, the pile of trash jiggled, rustled around, then thrust upward like a jack-in-the-box, shouting, "Hello!".

Lance gaped in astonishment. The creature before him looked like a boy, and spoke like a boy, but was made entirely of garbage! The boy had bottle cap eyes and noodle hair. His mouth was the open end of a cereal box curved into a warm smile. At the end of one of his arms was a floppy rubber glove, which was missing a few fingers. The glove waved at Lance, cheerfully flapping from side to side.

Lance considered running away, but decided not to. After all, the creature seemed so friendly, so harmless. Instead of fleeing, Lance extended his hand, politely shook the creature's limp rubber glove.

"Hello," he said. "I'm Lance. What's your name?"

The boy made of garbage scratched his head. His eyes blinked - only now they weren't bottle caps anymore, they were pieces of salami. And his hair was now made of banana peels. Lance noticed that all of the boy's features had changed. In fact, they were still changing. Right now, before Lance's eyes, the garbage that comprised the boy was shifting and churning. Continuously, pieces of litter were squeezing up to the surface of the boy's body, only to disappear and be replaced a moment later. This constant state of flux made the boy appear fidgety, chaotic and unresolved.

"You don't know what your name is?" Lance asked, fascinated by his new acquaintance.

The boy made of garbage pouted and shook his head.

Lance smiled. "Well, if you don't have a name, I'm going to name you! I'm going to call you Brian!"

"Brian?" asked the boy with a rubber-band mouth and lollipop wrapper eyes.

"Yes!" exclaimed Lance. "And you know what you are? You're a boy made of garbage! I believe that you were spontaneously generated when lightning struck the dumpster. I bet it was some kind of bio-chemical reaction involving electricity, janitorial cleaning supplies and food waste! Why, it's a miracle! The Miracle of Life!"

"Yippee!" cried the boy made of garbage. "Yippee! The Miracle of Life!"

Joyfully, Brian hopped up and down in the dumpster, sending garbage spilling out in all directions. Exuberantly, he tumbled out onto the grass and danced a jig around Lance. Unfortunately, as he danced, he lost pieces of himself - half-eaten hot dogs and candy wrappers, soiled napkins and crushed milk cartons.

"You should be more careful", advised Lance. "If you keep dancing, there won't be any more of you left!"

Brian gasped. "Yes! Yes! You're right! Life is precious! I must be more careful!"

As he spoke, Brian snatched up the fallen scraps, stuffed them back into place, but for every piece of litter he retrieved, two dropped out of him. He worked harder and harder, losing more and more, until finally, spinning madly in circles, Brian slipped on a dislodged banana peel, and landed in a heap on the ground.

"Life is precious! I must be more careful! I must be more careful!" repeated Brian desperately.

Lance kneeled before the quivering boy. "Don't worry, my friend. I know exactly what to do!"

Then Lance raced home to fetch the old wagon from the garage - the same wagon that he often used to transport his friend, Martin, who spent all of his time with Lance sleeping, and so could not walk on his own.

"Look!" cried Lance, skipping back into the playground, rolling the wagon behind him. "This is just big enough to hold all of you!"

"Yippee!" hollered Brian with a mouth made of orange rinds.

Lance lifted Brian inside and quickly rolled him away. Lance was very excited, eager to show off his new friend to the world. And Brian was every bit as excited as Lance. As the wagon bounced and bucked him, he laughed and cheered.

"Yippee!" Brian shouted, clapping joyfully. "Yippee! The Miracle of Life!" But when Lance took a sharp turn and a group of children came into view, Brian's mood darkened considerably. He stopped laughing, stopped cheering. Eyeing the children with dread, he turned to Lance and whispered, "What if they don't like me?"

"Why wouldn't they like you?" scoffed Lance. "You never did anything to them! Just calm down! Don't worry!"

Despite Lance's reassurances, Brian couldn't calm down. He couldn't stop worrying. As the other children grew near, Brian slouched low in the wagon and hid his face.

"Gather round!" Lance announced to the crowd. "Everyone, gather round!"

"Go away, Lance," grumbled Lance's sister, Mallory, who was among the children. "Can't you see we're playing?"

"Your game will have to wait! I'd like you all to meet my new friend!"

And with that, Lance brought his wagon to an abrupt stop. As the children circled around him, he gently nudged the wagon, jiggling its contents.

"Come on, my friend!" he said. "Sit up! Say hello! Don't be shy!"

"That's your new friend?" asked little Annie Brickhouse, with a snicker.

"Yes!" replied Lance, beaming with pride. "His name's Brian!"

"But that's just a pile of garbage", said Mallory, looking very embarrassed.

"Lance is friends with a pile of garbage!" giggled little Annie. "Lance is friends with a pile of garbage!"

Soon all of the children were chanting along. "Lance is friends with a pile of garbage! LANCE IS FRIENDS WITH A PILE OF GARBAGE!"

"No, you're wrong", insisted Lance. "He was a pile of garbage, but now he's a living, breathing boy made of garbage. You see, Brian was spontaneously generated when a bolt of lightning struck the dumpster near the school playground. I believe it was some kind of bio-chemical reaction involving electricity, janitorial cleaning supplies and food waste!"

By now, all of the children were laughing hysterically. Of course, little Annie Brickhouse was laughing loudest of all.

"A boy made of garbage!" she giggled. "What a silly concept!"

"Get it out of here, Lance!" added Mallory, holding her nose. "It really stinks!"

Disappointed, Lance shuffled away, dragging Brian behind him. As the sound of the children, laughing and taunting, grew faint in the distance, Brian stirred in the wagon. He gazed up at Lance with a wrinkled newspaper brow, and cold, hard meatball eyes.

"You see," he muttered tragically, "I knew they wouldn't like me!"

"If you talked to them, they would have liked you!" replied Lance. "If you sat up and you told jokes! If you clapped and shouted, "Yippee!" Then, surely, they would have liked you! They would have liked you as much as I do!"

Spouting these and other words of encouragement, Lance rolled Brian all over town. Stubbornly, he introduced his new friend to every boy and every girl that he passed. But throughout every encounter, Brian remained silent and still, prompting every child to mistake him for a lifeless pile of garbage. And no matter how fervently Lance insisted that this was not the case, no one believed him.

"Lance is friends with a pile of garbage!" they all giggled as Lance walked away. "Lance is friends with a pile of garbage!"

As the day wore on, Brian grew more and more disheartened.

"You see!" he repeated again and again and again. "You see! I knew they wouldn't like me! I knew they wouldn't like me!"

Finally, unable to take any more, Brian burst into tears.

Heartbroken, Lance kneeled before his sobbing friend. He gently mopped Brian's washrag cheeks, saying "Don't worry, my friend. I know exactly what to do! I'm going to take you home with me!"