Seven swans a' swimming.

Long ago, in a land perfumed once a week with the tang of Skittles manufacturing, a desperately nerdy, ill-dressed youth entered an art contest hosted by a nearby community's public library.

The theme of the contest was simple: draw a picture, freehand, of a scene from your favorite book. As shrewd as I was nerdy, I quickly surmised that many of the entrants would be coached by their loved ones to depict humble, classical Americana - Huck Finn rowing the Mississippi, deleriously happy children being disgorged from a Conestoga wagon - you know, that kind of smarmy, trite crappola. Fortunately, my favorite book at the time did not fit neatly into that framework. It was Helter Skelter.

Haha! No, I'm just kidding. Well, maybe. Anyway, my favorite book at the time was E.B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan, which made sense because a) I'd apparently developed a debilitating interest in non-goose waterfowl and b) I played the trumpet as a child. Actually, I did no such thing, but I wanted to divert attention for all of the Freudians in the audience regarding my childhood obsession with eggs and phallus-necked waterfowl.

At any rate, I developed a color-pencil-on-white-computer-paper sketch of swans doing something - flapping about, perhaps, or dipping their necks into the pond or some crap like that - and sent it in to the contest folks.

A week later, I got a phone call.

So yeah, I'd won. $25, if memory serves. That and some sort of plaque. But we had to go this this creepy ceremony to get it, which, while I was on board, likely served to ruin a perfectly lovely Saturday for my parents.

We'd been at the ceremony center (a small room off of the pathetic little library) for about ten minutes when I realized that my hunch was confirmed: dozens of children had depicted the overdone (yet, of course, vitally important) classics and had neglected lesser-known works. I mean, come on: how many ways can one represent Tom Sawyer tricking his friends into whitewashing that fence?

After the ceremony (during which all of our works were projected onto a largish screen for all to see), a young woman who'd gotten "Honorable Mention" to my "First Prize" came up to shake my hand. As she did so, and as our parents exchanged forced formalities, she leaned in so that I could hear her speak. And by "speak" I mean "hiss, as though she were speaking Parseltongue":

Your drawing is shit it looks like a fat ugly white duck and I know you copied it out of the book and mine was better and you'd better give me that money and I'll cut you faggot yes I will just give it to me now and I won't have to slit your mother's throat with a soup-can lid in front of you and then rape your cat to death with a broomstick just try me I will

I backed away from her slowly, smiling all the while so as to not alarm our families. Then, reconsidering my options, I moved toward her, her fiery eyes nearly incandescent with rage and hatred, and leaned in myself.

I didn't copy those out of a book you pus-filled she-harpy no I didn't I went out to a lake with a machete and waited for those swans waited for hours waited for days and when they came I sketched them and when I was done I hacked them into two thousand bloody pieces and ate some of them raw so I could have them with me for all time and then I buried the rest under your house and the heads are under your pillow oh yes they are so you'd better go home and check also don't feck with me or you'll know what it's like to be skinned like a deer and then decompose in a shallow grave in the Barrens oh yes you will don't test me bitch

From my pocket I withdrew the snow-white feather I'd brought with me for "luck" - yes, I already knew I'd won, but one can never be too careful - and I brushed it lightly over my slick-moistened lips. Slowly. Deliberately. She didn't need to know that it came from one of the hideous white pigeons that the crazy old Polish woman (Mrs. Pzxwycwcki) across the street raised. Her eyes betrayed nothing in terms of the level of sheer, steel-melting hatred, but they'd grown wider in shock. Her father - whom I must assume was a hell-imp of some kind - hugged her and told her that they'd be going out for ice cream. As she left, she looked back at me, and I mouthed "Enjoy your five dollar prize, whore of Satan" to her and she politely, daintily, gave me the finger behind her back.

So, you ask, what was her favorite book?

Would you believe that it was none other than Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret?

Girl was probably on her first rag, uh.

[inappropriate?]

[do I honestly give a fig?]

[because, uh, she threatened to kill my mom and my cat]

And so on this, the seventh day of Christmas, I am reminded of how a depiction of swans, swimming about on a sheet of cheap computer paper, won me $25 - and four Ninja Turtles, subsequently - and of how I nearly got sent to juvie for shanking a fellow ten-year-old in a dank New Jersey public library.

Until later, I remain,

Domonic (no,really,shesaidshe'dcutme) Potorti