Saturday's Storyteller: "How do you benchpress a hippo?" "Start when it's born."

by Belinda Roddie

"How do you benchpress a hippo?"

"Start when it's born."

"Uh-huh."

"Seriously. Work on it while it's a little pup, and once the years go by, voilà!"

"No."

"Master hippo bencher."

"No."

"Think about it. You could make it onto the Guinness Book of World Records! Ooh! Or better! Start the Hippo Olympics!"

"The Hippo Olympics."

"Yep."

"Just when I think you can't get any weirder."

"You're just mad that you didn't come up with it."

"Oh, boy. Now how many times have I heard that line before?"

"I just have so many creative ideas!"

"Yes. For example, the idea that you think I'd be jealous of your random innovations."

"Uh-huh?"

"Very creative."

"I know."

"...That's not a compliment, John."

"I'll take it as one."

"Nope."

"I will!"

"You can't."

"Sure I can! I can do anything. Even take a compliment when you didn't plan to give me one."

"It's not meant to be one."

"What?"

"It's not meant to be a compliment."

"Well, maybe in Aaron's boring little la la land, maybe, but in John's Utopia, everything can be a compliment!"

"Do they have hippo benchpressing stations in John's Utopia?"

"Of course they do. And ice cream stands on every corner."

"Is one of the flavors Bailey's?"

"Aaron. The day I open an ice cream stand where I don't give out alcoholic milkshakes is the day you tie cement blocks onto my feet and drop me off a bridge into a body of water like the mafia."

"...Well."

"Well, what?"

"Well, that got dark fast."

"Oh, really?"

"Yep. John's Utopia's got an evil edge to it."

"No, it doesn't! You know why?"

"Enlighten me."

"I'd be sinking to the body, cursing you for your betrayal, wishing I served liquor-laced shakes, when suddenly, a hippo would save me!"

"...a hippo?"

"One that I've benchpressed! We'd be good friends by that point."

"Aaaaaaand there it is."

This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.