Analysis of My Grade School Lack of Talent, Difficulties with Tenses/Why I Was Not Born to Write: Exhibit C

3) Thinking all it took was two factions coming to the brink of death to realize the irrationality and futility of war.

THE STORY OF THE HORSE AND THE DONKEY

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The Story of the Horse and the Donkey is a 3rd grade tale of two enemies turned friends in the sudden, terrifying realization of their own mortality.

Dixie and Dopey---horse and donkey, respectively---do not get along. The history of their not-getting-along is not explored; their battle sites unknown. What matters only is the magnitude of their not-getting-along, equivalent to that of man's mightiest conflicts: Punks vs. Goths; Creamy vs. Chunky; Us vs. Them. Horse vs. Donkey, it seems, is a hatred with no end.

One day, Dixie and Dopey cross paths. The mere sight of each other sparks hostilities:

Dixie: I, am stronger than you, because I, have stronger hoofs.
Dopey: Well, I can get very mad, because I am very stubborn.

With the age-old weaponry of self-aggrandizing claims, incorrect pluralization, wayward punctuation and conclusive logic in the loose form of threat, the barbs of this simple exchange ignite an all-out, balls-to-the-wall brawl. In short, Dixie and Dopey freak the fuck out.

Their fight ends with neither victory nor defeat but rather a vague, mutually agreed upon cease-fire and a synchronous signature of stuck-out tongues. They then slink away home and plot the other's death.

The next day, Dixie shows up with a machine gun and an army helmet on his head. Whether or not Dixie has a past in some kind of equine military service is unclear; where exactly horses go to procure machine guns we will likely never know.

Dopey---always the more minimalist, sophisticated of the two---shows up with a Rambo-esque cloth tied around his head and a knife.

According to the cover illustration of this story, which I had for a while but somehow lost, the two lean into each other bristling and brandishing their weapons. They're ready to kill.

Or not.

Just seconds later, realizing the beauty and sanctity of that aching ephemera known as life, they both lose their nerve. They're so overcome by this sentiment that they destroy their weapons with the thunderous power of their hooves and in unison—somehow choreographed in the way that small villages in Disney movies suddenly awaken in order to sing about current events—they declare, "Let's be friends!"

We are told that they are friends forever. Fair enough---I too have become good friends with people I previously and for no good reason disliked. But I can't say that I've had the opportunity to say, "Hey, equine friend, remember the time we almost intentionally and quite brutally killed each other?"

The moment of truth.