Serious George

Sonshine asked me why Curious George is Curious instead of Serious. That got me to writing...

"This is George. He was a good little monkey and always very serious.

"One day, the Man With The Yellow Hat took George to the library. George was excited. Here were loads of books on every subject imaginable! George swung over to the nonfiction section and pulled a few philosophy books off the shelf with his feet. It is so convenient to have hands for feet like George!

"George sat down at the table and started reading. He read Kant and Hegel. He read John Stuart Mill. He read Karl Popper. And when he was done reading philosophy, he found the science section. He got a book on organic chemistry and another on calculus. George was so excited! He had never understood Green's Theorem before!

"The man with the yellow hat took George to the circulation desk and they checked out all the books George wanted to read. Then they carried them home to their 17th floor apartment. George skipped dinner and read until late into the night.

"In the morning, George decided he was going to put his new knowledge to work. He got on the internet and created a website where he could answer people's questions. Hilarity ensued when someone asked him to do a very difficult definite integral, and he was halfway through finding the antiderivative by substitution, parts, and partial fractions before he realized that the limits of integration were equal and therefore the integral's value was zero. What fun, to integrate with the limits of integration being equal!"

You can see why Serious George didn't make the cut.

Here are some others that didn't work out:

Furious George
"This is George. He was a good little monkey and always very furious. The Man With The Yellow Hat took George to the department store to get a gift for The Woman With The Black Stockings. George was jealous because The Man With The Yellow Hat was spending so much time with this woman and not with him. So when they got to the store, he went right over to the jewelry counter and started throwing everything he could get all four of his hands on."

Injurious George
"One day Mrs. Needleman stopped by to drop off some muffins for the Man With The Yellow Hat. George saw that they were not strudel-topped muffins, so he got very angry. He viciously attacked Mrs. Needleman, ripping her hair out of her scalp. Then the Man With The Yellow Hat came to the door and tried to pull George off Mrs. Needleman. But George was too fast! He clawed at the man's eyes, then darted away down the hall..."

Meritorious George
"After he rescued the little boy who had fallen down the well, George decided to take a stroll over to the orphanage to entertain the kids. But on the way there, he saw a kitty up in a tree. George wanted the kitty to come down and play with him, but the kitty could not. She was stuck! George quickly climbed the tree as only little monkeys can, and rescued the kitty. Then he bought doughnuts for all the police officers and firefighters."