Johnny

When Johnny first discovered his laser vision, he flattened the rear left tire on his dad’s car. He pretended like he had no idea what happened. His father found the tire half an hour later, and called Johnny out front, asking if he knew anything about it. “But you’re playing out front all day, you had to have seen something,” his father would say, but Johnny only said “Maybe it was aliens,” and his father would stand there puzzled, looking at the melted rubber that couldn’t have resulted from a sharp rock, nail, or screw.

Johnny was afraid that he would hurt somebody, so he researched laser vision one night when his parents were out for dinner. The babysitter sat in the living room watching movies and eating their microwaveable popcorn, like always. Johnny didn’t like microwave popcorn anyways. Plus, it gave him the chance to research laser vision.

Google yielded ads for laser vision correction, which Johnny didn’t need, and about 1000 pages about Cyclops, the field leader of the X-Men. Intrigued, Johnny clicked a promising link and read up on Cyclops. What he found was simple – Cyclops always had a visor, or some special glasses to keep the lasers in. Johnny found a link for laser safety goggles, and ordered a pair with his father’s credit card.

At school, Mrs. Hayes asked why he was wearing the safety goggles, and asked if he was afraid of getting his eyes hurt. “No Mrs. Hayes,” Johnny would say. “I just don’t want to hurt anyone else with my laser vision.” Mrs. Hayes chalked it up to typical childhood fantasy and went about her business, cutting construction paper for the days art project as the children bent over their math books and read pages 17-34.

Johnny’s laser goggles didn’t work, as he found out the hard way when they erupted from his face one day at recess, sending plastic shards in all directions and burning a two foot crater into the ground. He told the duty that it was a meteor, but other kids had seen what happened and they told on him. Mrs. Hayes, at an emergency meeting, confirmed that Johnny believed he had laser vision, and the vote unanimously called for reporting Johnny to a higher authority.

And so it was that Johnny’s family was forced to move to a rural part of Montana, where the collateral damage from their son’s talents would be of no harm to anybody. Johnny’s father was forced to give up his job and look for new work, but finding none, he returned to the agricultural roots of his father’s father.

And Johnny plowed the fields with laser vision.