Sweet Revenge

0:01 To the restless, the insomniacs, the stressed out, the overwork the doom scrollers, the worried, and the board. This is for you. Good writing is meant to make you think. This is the opposite. Short, funny, and unfortunately true stories that have mostly to do with nothing to help you turn off your brain and turn on your ram. All names have been changed to protect the guilty. These are anxiety addicts, bedtime stories.

0:46 You. Richard searched his brain for words, the phrase, the tone, anything that could convey what he was really thinking. He wanted to have an actual conversation with his son. He wanted to ask Logan if school was too hard or hard enough, if his friends were into interesting activities or up to no good. He wanted to know if you really liked the snoopy shirt that he wore every day, or if Logan was just really uninterested in shopping. Logan looked up at his father, quizzically, waiting for him to finish his sentence. Richard panicked, like toast, good toast. Logan looked down at his breakfast plate. It wasn't a super weird question, despite the obviously jinky delivery. Richard was a chef.

1:33 Food was his love language. He'd made the bread and actually the Buttom asking Logan if he liked his toast was in his own way, asking his son if he was being a good dad. Since kindergarten, Logan will look forward to lunchtime. It wasn't that his dad was packing a six course Thanksgiving feast into his silver lunch tin every day, but there was always a treat. It was a slice of pie that Richard brought home from the restaurant, or a stuff beaked potato carefully inserted into a thermost so it was still warm at noon. Sometimes it was a fancy Asian pair from the bodega around the corner, the only place open at midnight. When Richard would make his way home from the restaurant on Thursdays, it was known as lasagna. It made Logan feel loved, which was important because well, he and his dad hadn't been talking too much lately. As insane as this statement feels to both teenagers and parents of teenagers, it wasn't anything personal.

2:37 It was just life, and life included hormones and performance dress, social shit, and At Woodland Middle School, a bully named chat Chad started out with pretty benign bullying. As far as bullying goes, there was a lot of taunting. Logan belonged to the less than two percent of the world's population with red hair. Some consider this genetic lottery to be a beauty standard. Those people are not thirteen year old boys. It took very little imagination for Chad to hurl insults at Logan, which was important to note because Chad had very little imagination. It started with the usual matchstick and cheetoh and then quickly turned into the name calling of the firecroft genre. Needless to say, Logan hated it.

3:28 It was sometime before winter break when Chad started stealing Logan's deliciousness right out from his lunch tin. Everything He didn't even leave the after dinner mins that Richard always grabbed from the hostess stand on his way out the door. Looking at Chad, you'd never know how many calories he was consuming. The kid was a six foot tall bean pole kind of giving lurch vibes. After missing his midday meal three days in a row, Logan worked up the courage to flag down the frazzled lunch supervisor, mister Flanagan. Logan's voice was barely above a whisper. It wasn't easy to ask a teacher for help in the lunch room when you're a teenage boy. Mister Flanagan didn't look remotely interested.

4:12 I'm sorry to bother you, but while you see Chad keeps on taking my lunch, mister Flanagan just looked at the freckled, hungry eyed boy. Seriously, Logan, just don't let him come on. And with that, Arthur T. Flanagan dashed across the lunch room to interrupt a food fight. It was meat all day. Things were about to get messy. That night, Logan procrastinated his homework at the kitchen table, doodling in the margins, waiting for his father to come home. Around ten thirty, when Logan could barely keep his strawberry eyelashes open, he jerked his head up at the sound of the lock opening. With a metal sigh. He heard Richard take off his clogs and hang his jacket up on the hook. Dad Richard jump back as if he'd seen a ghost. Redheads are used to this. What do you do? He went up, kiddo, did you like your canoli?

5:02 At lunch? Logan looked up at his stubble tattooed and big hearted father. He looked everywhere in his mouth and sold for the words to explain what was happening at school, but they just they didn't come. He looked at his dad. Richard sat down at the kitchen table with the exhale of someone who has been on their feet for ten hours. He had a twinkle in his eye. Logan looked right into it. Then both the young man and the older one looked away. They just couldn't quite get there. Richard reached into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Look what I found in Nonah's cookbook. No. Noah was Richard's grandmother, but had died before Logan was born. Her legacy lived on through Richard's restaurant.

5:48 Logan took a good look at the piece of paper before he picked it up. It was lined, yellowed with age, and both the top and bottom had a row of apples or maybe they were pears. Printed on the pe in perfect script was a recipe for chocolate cupcakes. Logan looked up at his dad with a questioning face. These were incredible, insane, Really, she made them for my birthday one year and I literally dreamed about them for the next three hundred and sixty four days. The recipe was stuck in the soup section. I just saw it today, Richard couldn't stop beating. Logan nodded his dad. Was this conversation really about cupcakes? Maybe we can like? And that was Richard's turn to get quiet. Why this awkwardness? What was happening? When din't they stop being able to talk to each other? I just wanted to say good night, dad, said Logan with a shrug. He couldn't bring himself to confess out loud that Chad Momford had eaten the canoli, so he closed his history book and went to bed, promising himself that that was the last dessert that Chad would steal. He's wrong. Every day for the next week, Logan's lunch found its way from Logan's tin to Chad's mouth every fricking day. Logan tried again to get mister Flanagan to intervene and was again completely ignored. Logan, please, Chad wouldn't steal anyone's lunch. He's skinny as a rail,

7:21 and by Friday afternoon, Logan was so hungry that he managed to work up the nerve to go to the principal's office, both to stop this thievery, but also to visit the vending machine in the teacher's lounge. Pop tarts were not exactly a replacement for known as lasagna, but he was starving. Logan knocked on Principal Flora as his door. Come on in. Principal Flores didn't even look up. You can sit down. What's the trouble. Something's wrong? You know, no one comes in here to tell me what a great job I'm doing. Flora's left at his own joke and Logan forresto the mile. The knot in his chest had tied itself up into an unrecognizable mess, and Logan fell it was blocking his airwaves. He wiped his sweaty palms on the thighs of his jeans. He took a breath. Chad, Mumford steals my lunch every day. Flora's didn't flinch. Insteady batted his eyes. It looks like a struggle to keep them open. Mumford, Come on, the kid's a bean pole.

8:20 Tell him not to really, Logan, this is kid's stuff, and you're not a kid. Logan just stared at the principal He didn't know whether he wanted to curl up in a ball and cry or punch the fifty one year old man in the throat. It was a close race. The silence descended upon the office like a fog rolling into a valley on a sunny day. Flores Coughed said it. Logan nodded, his stomach's still rumbling, and walked home, with his toes dragging on the sidewalk every step of the way. He stayed in his room all Friday night, ignoring both his mom's plea for a movie and the intoxicating smell of popcorn wafting from the kitchen. He stayed in bed Saturday morning and until his mother insisted that he walk over to the park. Saturday night was no better, and neither was Sunday. As the thread of Monday loomed in the near future, Logan couldn't think about anything else other than Chad. That was until Richard came home early with a smile plastered on his face and his arms full of grocery bags known as cupcakes. He announced, as though he were declaring peace on earth. Let's make them together.

9:36 They measured and sifted and promised to never ever tell the secret ingredient. I remember Nona used to hide a cherry in the middle of one of them, and whoever got that one would have good luck for the year. Logan watched his father pull a dessert cherry out of the fridge and carefully fold it into a single cupcake tin ring ring. Richard looked at his phone and his shoulder deflated. Sorry, son, I gotta take this. As Logan watched his father walk into the den, an idea shot through his body like an electric current. Maybe he too could put a surprise in a cupcake. He tiptoed into his parents' bathroom, slipping past his father shouting in the den.

10:21 Then in the cabinet above the toilet, clearly marked in a plastic bin with the words stomach meds, was a bottle of scenta powder with the words for constipation printed across the front. Logan snatched it and sprinted to the kitchen. The adrenaline got in the way of any kind of measurement skills, and he quickly makes the two large spoonfuls into the corner cupcake, and he sprinkled some powdered sugar on the top to identify his Trojan horse. He finished in time to hide the bottle under the sink as his father marched back into the kitchen. Everything okay, asked Logan. It will be sun late deliveries. Richard looked out the wind and squinted his eyes. Sometimes you just have to take things into your own hands. Logan interpreted that statement as a full endorsement of his plan, instead of understanding that his father was now going to make his own mozzarella at the restaurant the next day, Logan packed the powdered sugar covered cupcake into his lunch tin and waited for the belter ring. He walked over to his usual spot with the second Harry Potter book, which he was now totally engrossed in, and he waited. It took no time at all for fucking Chad to saunter a skinny ass over and demand all the goods in Logan's lunch, even though it was part of the plan, the expectation, and the name of the game for almost two months now, It's still hurt to see known A's Lasagna's shovel down the mouth of the greedy bully. I'll be taking this too, said Chad with a shrug as he grabbed the cupcake.

11:53 You don't want to do that, Logan said earnestly, his stomach dropping. Yeah I do, said Chad, in a that would make any one of you want to kick him in the crotch. So Logan watched Chad devour the cupcake. This kid had the metabolism of a hummingbird on cocaine. Food went right through him. It shouldn't have been a surprise that by the time the bell rang to end lunch period, Chad was in the bathroom. The screams that echoed through the stall door and out into the hallway would haunt the dreams of those eighth graders for years to come. Chad shit himself all through History class. He clutched and cramped and caterwalled throughout the entire afternoon, first from the boys room, then to the hallway, then was carried to the nurse's office by mister Flanagan himself. Before the bell rang, ending the school day, Logan heard his name called to Principal Floras' office. This could not be good.

12:55 Logan got up from his desk, both his heart and stomach dropping to the linoleum floor, and he dragged his feet down the hallway in the office was the last thing that he expected to see. Sitting on the floor drenched in sweat was Chad. He looks like he'd been crying or maybe even dying, also like he'd somehow lost weight in aged ten years. Perched on the chair directly across from the principal was a severe and uncompromising looking woman in her forties. A man who looked exactly like Chad minus the close to dying part sat next to her, playing some kind of video game on his phone. And on the third chair, still wearing his white jacket and covered with known as lasagna, was his father, Richard. Come in, Principal Flora's called to Logan, you obviously know why you're here.

13:50 Logan stared at the floor, sitting down in a metal folding chair, which had clearly been set up just for him. Him. That's the one he poisoned me, grunted Chad. Both his parents turned to face. Logan, you little shit. Chest's fothersh that out. Let's avoid name calling, mister Floras quickly retorted, but clearly, for whatever reason, mister and missus, Chad's parents were not people whom he wanted to upset, but he followed up immediately, I do understand where your anger is coming from. How dare you do this to my son? Chad's mother began a crimson hue began to creep up Richard's neck and settle into his cheeks. He exhaled loudly enough for everyone to notice. May I have a moment.

14:42 The other adults in the room nodded Logan what happened, and of course it all came tumbling out. There was the name calling, the humiliation, the stolen lunches and snacks and known as special asagna. There were the adults ignoring his pleas for help. When Logan finished, he noticed his father's cheeks getting redder and redder. That's just kids being kids, Chad's father broared, you can't poison someone. We could take you to court. Logan looked at Richard. He thought he was going to throw up. With all the stress his dad had with the restaurant, now his son was going to need a lawyer too. Logan would have given every limb on his body to have been able to have dug a hole and disappear into the ground, But it would turn out he didn't need a lawyer because he had his Dad. So let's just get this straight. Logan, did you give Chad the cupcake? Logan shook his head.

15:47 Did you offer chat the cupcake? Logan shook his head. Is there any reason on God's green earth that Chad should have this cupcake in his possession other than him ruthlessly stealing your food and the administration ignoring your pleas for help. And with that, Richard stood up and took over. This is how Logan remembers his hero slash Dad in his memory. It's reminiscent of the final argument in a courtroom drama, the music swelling, the jury wide eyed, and even the judge stunned into silence. He remembers his father, commanding every ounce of the room's attention, standing in front of the principal's desk, and delivering a speech that could have been written by Aaron Sorkin. In his head, this is how it goes when you call Principal Flores. I assumed Logan had made fart sounds during a test, or stuck a frog in someone's backpack. But no, I walk in here and learned that my son is in trouble because a boy who's been stealing his lunch for months, finally stole the wrong baked good and spent the rest of the day well learning about consequences in a very personal manner. Logan didn't handed to him, he didn't encourage him.

17:02 Chad stole the cupcake just like he stole every bit of food that wasn't nailed down, and now Logan's the bad guy. Sorry, but this logic is flimsier than a cafeteria pizza. Here's the part you're skipping. Logan told people. He asked for help, he followed the rules, and when none of the grown up stepped in, Yeah he got creative. Yeah he baked a cupcake with a lax at a minute, but he didn't give it to anyone, So we won't be apologizing today. If anything, I think someone owes Logan a thank you for doing your job with better presentation and a fraction of the budget. The imaginary music came to a crescendo. Even Chad looked impressed, and because Richard could have been a stage actor in another life, he didn't even wait for a response. He took Logan's hand and marched him out at the office, and then they drove to In and Out. Burger sat in a booth and relived the moment went over and over an over while drinking chocolate shakes and dunking their fries and animal sauce.

18:08 Needless to say, Logan never got bullied for his lunch again for the rest of his school years. He did get a shit ton of flak for the mullet haircut he tried to get ironically, but that one he deserved. If you like this story, please rate and review us on iTunes, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts, and send us stories. We love to play with them. Good Night and sweet dreams. Thanks for listening. If you still can't sleep, why not do some shopping on the small business links at anxiety Addicts, bedtime stories dot com and support some really cool people, and don't forget to subscribe and to send us your stories.

18:53 Sweet dreams.