Legacy

In the little rural town of Saint Mary’s which is south west of Dublin about forty miles or so there is a high school.  It is Kilkarney High.  There are about eighty students, as it is a small town school.

There are three students that are central to this tale.  A couple of nice boy’s by the name of Patrick Mahoney and Timothy Mulligan.  They are not real big fellows, just average size, and of a fairly mild nature.  They are good students who have a mutually shared hobby of photography, and especially good at trick and special effects.

The third lad in this tale is one Mike Gilligan, a huge, tough kid from a poor family.  Mikes not the smartest person, in fact he’s near stupid.  But big, mean, and a bully thief.  Mike takes the lunches from Patrick and Timothy every chance he gets.  Sometimes Patrick and Timothy try and eat real fast so it will be gone by the time Mike comes along to demand them.  This can make Mike very angry, so it was a hit and miss proposition, sometimes they got hit.

Actually everyone in school was afraid of Mike.  Among the classes Patrick and Timothy were in, was a Psychology class.  From studying Psychology Patrick and Timothy concluded that if there were a way to make a fool out of Mike in front of the whole school, it would defuse him through loss of face and he’d no longer have the gumption to bother or bully anyone.

Patrick and Timothy figured that Mike was just stupid enough to believe a real Leprechaun had been sighted with a pot of gold.  Especially, if there was photographic proof.  So Patrick dressed up like a Leprechaun and put on a fake red beard.  Then while in that get up he got another prop, namely a old iron pot that had been rigged to look like it was overflowing with gold coin’s.  The coins were plastic of course, but one couldn’t tell that from a picture.

On an abandoned farm just a few hundred feet from the school and fairly near the road was an old outhouse.  It was still pretty soupy in the bottom four feet.

Timothy took Patrick’s picture three times. The first near the outhouse carrying a pot of gold, the second going into the outhouse with a pot of gold, and the third, coming out of the outhouse carrying nothing.  Then using tricks, Timothy reduced Patrick’s size in comparison to the outhouse as to create the illusion that Patrick was only three feet tall.  Looked just like what a Leprechaun was thought to look like.

Then off camera of course, those two suspended that phony pot of gold about two feet below seat level in the outhouse.  The near invisible line holding the phony pot of gold had one end tied to a stick that would pull free the minute someone reached for the pot as their hand would hit the line and trip the release with ever so little pressure required.

Then Patrick took the pictures that Timothy took and doctored and put them in his lunch sack.  Sure enough bully Mike took both lunches.  Patrick and Timothy were close by watching.  Sure enough Mike spotted the three pictures. He looked and looked, and looked again.  He was hooked, Mike was sure he’d found out where a Leprechaun was hiding his gold.

After school Mike made a bee line for that old outhouse.  Patrick and Timothy and the rest of the school followed discreetly behind; you see Patrick and Timothy had passed the word about Mike.

Mike went in and looked down and saw the pot of gold, he was so happy he was about to be rich beyond belief he thought.  He reached for it and tripped the release and the pot of phony gold fell into all that, you know stuff that’s in the bottom of an outhouse.

Now Mike was very strong, not to bright, but very willful and determined.  Before the pot completely sank Mike bare handedly ripped off the outhouse seat and jumped in after the pot.  Needless to say landing on the pot finished sinking it.  Mike was in it almost up to his chest and he fished around a lot trying to find the pot of gold.  No luck, he finally gave up on the idea of finding it.

Then he realized he couldn’t get out.  Mike hollered and hollered for help.  The students about had conniptions they were laughing so hard.  Finally Patrick and Timothy decided there was no choice but to help Mike out.  They found a rope and lowered it to him.  Mike held on and they hoisted him up to where he could grab the edge and finish getting himself out.  Of course no one would give him a hand, as his hands were a little covered in something as was the biggest part of the rest of him.

As Mike came out of the outhouse he was greeted by the entire student body who were now laughing twice as hard as before.  After that Mike maintained a real low profile and never again bothered anyone.