Stories I've Been Working on...

Here are some starts to some stories I have been working on. Some of them are a few days old, other a few years old... Just thought I'd try posting something different...

Earl hated gum. To Earl gum was one of life’s great mysteries. He didn’t understand why people chewed it. Mouths moving up and down like cattle grazing in a field. But worse than gum in someone’s mouth was where the gum went when the cattle grazer had finished chewing it. In Earl’s world there were only two types of people: those who didn’t chew gum, and the second the punks who would chomp their gum, blow bubbles making extremely annoying popping sounds, and then dispose of the gum under their seats. Gum chewers were Earl’s mortal enemies.

Today the gum just wouldn’t come off. Earl Shlepper worked feverishly with his chisel and pick in his hands. He recognized this type of gum, it was the crusty tangerine orange gum, either Flavormint or Tangaswirl (it was hard to say) but both were two of the hardest gums to remove from the backsides of chairs. As Earl bent over and forced the gum to cleave from the floor he felt the little trickles of sweat begin to escape from inside the brim of his hat. Next to gum, Earl’s considered his uniform the worst item in the world. From the first day he started his job at the old theatre he had to wear what he considered to be the goofiest, stupidest hat, shirt, and pants in the world. It resembled that of a doorman’s in some posh hotel from the 1920’s, and quite possibly could have actually been from that time period. Earl adjusted the golden lined brim of his hat and wiped his forehead with his wrist and continued back to the laborious chore of chiseling away the tangerine gum.

So, from this, how old do you think Earl is?