My morals in life are equivalent to shoving an older lady out of the way so I can grab a carrot cake in a dessert dash. Perhaps it was the gin. Perhaps it was the tribal influence of my tablemates.

I guess my mind is a very influential jelly box.

Trud is the owner of a very impressionable jelly box. It is surrounded by six good holes which tell him what’s going on outside. It is harbored inside a protective casing so if he falls the jelly won’t spoil someone’s nice rug.

I’ve put Trud in a dessert dash.

Explaining the dessert dash, its social philosophies, its human roots, is important at this point to move on. “Dessert” is human food which does not contribute to the growth and development of the human, in fact it goes so far as to degrade it. That means the only way this malaise can get humans to eat it is by stirring up the chemical soup in their jelly boxes in a way that makes them swim. Dessert is like sexual intercourse, things start off well-intended, but after a while your teeth hurt.

To “dash” is to instantaneously reach the speed of light in one direction until an obstacle says, “Halt there!” To dash for dessert is to race ten other contestants to a table where people have so generously donated various items they have built that degrade the growth and development of those who eat them. These dessert donors are sadists.

I decided Trud would have his best running shoes on for this event. The shoes are blue and there are white lightning bolts on the side, which remind Trud he needs to dash. The shoes are made of something about as squishy as Trud’s jelly box, but they don’t make a mess when smashed against the floor.

And here we are, the lady on the mic is preparing the contestants. She is smashing their minds with figurative lead pipes, smoosh smash smash smoosh, she is saying. The alcohol has already done a good job of this. Jelly seems to wobble far more erratically when you pipe fermented yeast drinks into it. “I am jelly!” you can hear it say, “Wobble wobble! This way that way,” and the jelly will make the body do just that.

The jelly box dance, if you will.

All the contestants of the dessert dash are doing the jelly box dance.

The lady on the mic is doing the jelly box dance.

Everyone seated at the dinner tables, eyes gorged with anticipation, are dancing the jelly box dance, lightly though because they are seated and it is harder to get a good wobble going.

But look! We are off! The lady on the mic has unleashed the hounds, the wobble-wobble hounds of wobbleville. They take a whole two seconds to begin their attack because their jelly boxes are utterly soaked in good London liquor.

Trud, my he is a falcon, he is a gazelle who has just learned his wife is with child, he is a jackrabbit on acid, he is a bee in a daze of pollen. His starting position wasn’t well, so he had a lot of ground to cover from the start. He’s not going to get to the dessert table first.

Let’s pause here and mention the dessert table. Most of the dessert I don’t want to describe, because describing desserts doesn’t sound very interesting to me right now. There is one dessert that I can’t overlook though because it is the object of Trud’s jelly box’s desire: the carrot cake. It’s a worthy carrot cake, one that is nice and tall, a strong two layers of icing between three impressive stacks. No human has ever seen a great wooden lodge and thought, yes, I will build exactly the same lodge on top of this lodge. Twice. Three wooden lodges, doors, front porches, windows, the lot, with a thick layer of frosting to hold all that lodging in place. That’s because human’s lack imagination. The builder of this carrot cake was not human.

The frosting is more squishy than a jelly box.

Trud Lightning is halfway between the carrot cake and where he started. That is say, he isn’t getting there so fast. But I’ve made Trud an anomaly among his competitors. Trud has the curious attribute that he has has lived on his planet about half as long as anyone else racing for the desserts. You might think this gives the contestants the advantage of experience, far more time to indulge in far more dessert dashes. But I’ve also made it so that jelly boxes get more sluggish and sloppy as they age and their corners bend a bit more like the overhangs of those Japanese beach house that don’t exist. This puts Trud in the situation that only one other dasher is between him and a carrot cake conclusion. A stout lady, one of her legs is four of Truds, is the obstacle. She made a good early start, shot off much quicker than the other contestants because she is a mindful drinker and only had a little drink. Her doctor told her that she needed to drink less alcohol if she wanted to lower her blood pressure and she has been rigorous with following that advice. Her doctor never said anything about towers of carrot cake.

Trud shoves her out the way.

A good hard shove, one where you plant a hand right on the gullet of the target and make a gesture like you are a one-swipe window cleaner. Trud, the one-swipe window cleaner floors the lady. Him and carrot cake become one. He lifts his trophy high.

And then a thunder, a great shaking comes from the distance and Trud looks around. The lady on the mic, the dessert dash contestants, the stout lady on the floor, Trud’s tablemates, Trud’s girlfriend, why, even Trud’s whole family has just arrived, and there is an ovation of an applause – they create thunder just for Trud. Yes, there is his little brother and his mother holding hands, his father beaming with unabashed pride for every father must wish they were him right now.

What a phenomenal jelly box this father has reared.