Cultivating Eggcellence

“Freshman year is clucking hard,” Johnny thought as a half-smile graced his face below his glare toward his English assignment. They were studying puns and he was to write a story containing a series of themed puns. Growing up on a farm, Johnny knew his would be farm themed. As he sat in the old rugged barn for inspiration, all he could think of was that his paper needed to be eggcellent.

He thought of bale-ing on the assignment except he needed an A to keep a C average. His mother would be udderly angered if his grade dropped below that. He herd a noise that distracted him, but it was just the newborn calf in the back of the barn. “This assignment is lofty!” Johnny sighed as he struggled to cultivate a good pun. “Alright, time to saddle up and get this done” he said with determination.

Johnny didn’t know eggactly what type of plot to propagate but time was running out. He just needed a good idea to take root.

Just then, Johnny’s little sister Beatrice walked in and announced her presence with “Hay Johnny!” He explained his task to her to which she exclaimed, “Well, shucks, that shouldn’t be too hard! Lettuce work on it together!” The two brainstormed ideas but their time was cut short because Beatrice was recovering from a virus which left her voice a little horse. Beatrice left the barn and went inside as Johnny sank down a ridiculous rabbit hole of a story. She took a fence to Johnny pointing out her fading voice.

Again, Johnny wanted to give up but instead decided to plow through. He wadded up the paper and foraged for new ideas. This assignment was no yoke; Johnny was determined to get it right although progress certainly was not flying by. He knew he couldn’t cheat because Sami had ratted him out last time. They still had beef over the incident. Plus, how would he cheat on farm puns? Irrigate an idea? He chuckled.

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Farm puns are hard

This is horse s#%t

It was fowl; it was b-a-a-a-a-a-d (although it accurately described his feelings of the assignment). Another crumpled paper flew across the barn as he could barley garner the motivation to continue. He took a break and went outside to take a gander at the fields for inspiration. He wrote what he saw on his paper as a way to photo-synthesize what he was seeing. He continued pond-ering and soon enough a great story started transpiring. He galloped back to the barn with ideas in tow.

He would write about a boy who liked a girl; he had tried to a tractor many times. However, he had not gone so far as to stalk her and he certainly was too young to have their wagons hitched. Naturally, the boy in the story would be named Barnie and the girl named Hayley. The puns fell onto the pages like pigeon poop fell onto everything in the old, rugged barn (which he had to duck quite frequently). His brain was eventually milked of all ideas and, with the last proofreading completed, he went inside for the night. He was late to dinner and he gobbled it up with haste. After he pigged out, he ran upstairs to his bedroom for some much-needed rest. He felt as though a barn were lifted off of him as he slowly counted sheep into dreamland.

The next morning, he rose for school, kissed his momma goodbye, and trotted off with his story in his backpack.

In the end, he churned out a good, punny story which was quite mooving despite being a bit corny (neigh, a lot corny).