Scott Kellert

5/27/08

Mrs. Wilsco

Short Stories

Zooto From Pluto

I don’t know if you know; I don’t know if you care,

But there are people who live on the ninth planet from there.

Some call it a planet and some call it a rock,

It is of the people of Pluto that we will now talk.

Now the planet of Pluto is ever so cold,

And your blood will freeze instantly, that’s what I’m told.

So the Plutonians must wear jackets to keep themselves warm.

What is important about these jackets is really the form.

See all the Plutonians have to wear the coolest of parkas.

And the coolest of parkas are made from the finest of Plutonian Larkas.

But Larka is rare and cost lots Plunny

This is of course the Plutonian money.

Now this is where we will meet our friend Zooto.

He is the poorest Plutonian on the planet of Pluto.

Now Zooto is not his actual name.

It’s what all of the kids would call him for being lame.

Poor little Zooto couldn’t afford to buy a parka.

Definitely not one made of fine Plutonian Larka.

When got his jacket he had to look through the suits,

And that’s when he found one made of the nicest of Zoots.

He thought “This old Zoot suit doesn’t look half bad.”

The next day he’d think different, and be quite sad.

All the young Plutonians who went to his school,

Made fun of little Zooto, they laughed and were cruel.

This is when he became known as Zooto,

The saddest Plutonian on the planet of Pluto.

Zooto ran home and cried and cried and cried,

“Why’d I get this dumb Zoot suit,” he finally sighed.

He went back to the store to return his new suit,

But the lady just pointed to the receipt “NO REFUNDS ON ZOOTS.”

So poor little Zooto moped all the way back,

He thought of an idea, a way to escape the attack.

Zooto hid in the garage, waiting for his dad.

When he finally came home he did something quite bad.

He stole the keys to his dad’s old space cruiser,

And in it he went flying in circles, he was an unlicensed user.

Finally when he got used to the ship’s great girth,

He set his course for the mysterious planet of Earth.

It felt like a lifetime before Zooto arrived.

It was amazing, he thought, that he even survived.

As he approached Earth he was going frightfully fast.

He was headed straight for Chicago; it was quite a blast.

The landing gear came out and the space cruiser landed.

Zooto was scared and he felt like he was stranded.

No Plutonian had ever been spotted by Earth people.

Except for that one time they saw Edward O’Reeple.

No one had seen that his skin was really blue,

but Zooto wasn’t prepared and he didn’t know what to do.

He walked out of the cruiser and on to the street.

There were the strangest people he’d ever meet.

Their skin was tan or black, a strange hue,

In stead of a healthy beautiful blue.

They had weird flaps of skin on the sides of their heads,

Rather than the usual antenna, in various reds.

As Zooto stared at these people wide-eyed,

They stared right back equally terrified.

Zooto kept walking through Chicago’s downtown.

This is when he ran in to a man wearing brown.

It wasn’t the brown that caught little Zooto’s eye.

It was the Zoot suit he was wearing, it looked so fly.

The man stopped in front of Zooto so they were boot to boot.

The man said “Hey, kid, that sure is one nice suit.”

He asked “Where did you get it, what store?”

Zooto said “I got it from Pluto at Zoots and More.”

Then Zooto said “Your suit’s much nicer, what kind of Zoot?”

The man replied “I don’t know but it is my favorite suit.”

Then he said “Hey kid what is your name?”

“Zooto,” he said with a great look of shame.

“Alright then Zooto, please come with me,

I have a vision that I would like you to see.”

The two walked together to the tallest sky scraper,

It was owned by the Chicago Sun-Times a world famous paper.

They stepped into the elevator and the man pressed seventy-seven

They going so high, Zooto thought they were in heaven.

“See, Zooto, my name is Michael Cook,

And all of this is mine, every last book.

Now, I want to make you a humongous star,

Because I really do like who you are.

I want your picture on the front page of every paper in the city,

With a caption that says ‘Zooto, Best Dressed and Most Witty.”

Zooto did not know what to say,

No one had ever been nice to him in such a way.

That night Zooto stayed in a huge luxury hotel

He had never seen an earth bed and didn’t use it, oh well.

And sure enough when Zooto woke up,

His face was on the paper under his cup.

The article raved about his class and style,

And Zooto could not help but have an enormous smile.

Zooto was now filled with confidence and pride.

There was nothing now that he wanted to hide.

He thanked Michael Cook again and again,

But realized that the time to leave was then.

Zooto packed up his things and boarded the cruiser.

He felt like a winner now, not a loser.

He zipped back home to the planet of Pluto.

His father rejoiced at the sight of Zooto.

Now when kids joked and tried to make him wail,

Zooto just laughed and told them his great tale.

Quite quickly Zooto was no longer ignored,

And strangely the sale of Zoot Suits soared.

The End.