250=1, Story 11

250=1 is a set of stories, each exactly 250 words in length, including the title. Click here for more of them.

Junior The Third.

Junior the Third isn’t as large as he was supposed to be. 

He’s missing a toe, for one thing. 

The toe was bitten off in a fight in 10^th grade, by a dog that got excited when Junior The Third and Daniel were fighting because Daniel had said “Junior The Third ain’t a Christian name” which implied that Junior would be going to Hell and that might mean that Amy wouldn’t go to Homecoming with him.

His name had kept him off the high school football team, too, as the Coach wasn’t sure what name to put on the jersey, and so Junior joined the drama club and painted trees and had a few lines in The Wizard of Oz.

“Your name’s Junior, and you’re the third one,” is how Mom explained his name. Dad wouldn’t talk about it and Junior got the idea that Dad worked on the oil rig because of his son’s name, which was wrong but Junior thought it anyway.

Now, Junior sort of hunches over and tries to avoid attention on the subway and doesn’t work out as much as he could and he avoids drinking milk because he doesn’t want to be seeable.  A lifetime of attention over something he couldn’t control has given Junior an aversion to people noticing him.

But Amy went to Homecoming with him, and she’d even married him, and they’d had a son, who sometimes went to Junior’s office with him. 

The son’s name was Arthur.