Once upon a time the bear was receiving a parking ticket downtown, as the boy watched with interest. The meter maid was a young woman on her first day on the job, and she wanted to be diligent and aggressive and get all illegal lollygaggers out of the public places as soon as possible, so as to keep traffic moving and keep general order in the village. The bear had now been in this particular parking spot for over twenty minutes, and it clearly said fifteen minutes only.
The bear pointed out that he could eat her in one bite, as a way of refusing to pay the ticket, and if he did, he could claim that she had never given him a ticket in the first place. He could use her little metal pencil as a toothpick and the tickets themselves as a napkin, he said. But the boy said that if you’re polite and friendly you can often get your way much more easily. For that reason he ordered a pizza and insisted that the young lady join him for a picnic right there at that parking spot. Surely she’s tired from working hard on such a hot day?
But just then a hot dog vendor strolled by pushing his cart on his way to the parade, and the bear just reached out and grabbed a hot dog. That was the bear’s way; he wasn’t used to paying money, or asking for food, or even for taking his time and putting mustard and ketchup on it. But he soon realized the error in his ways and grabbed another one, this one for the young woman, and he was about to get a third for the boy when the hot dog vendor started squirting him all over with mustard, using it as a weapon, as if to say, if you aren’t going to pay for it, at least I’ll make your life miserable!
Just then the pizza arrived, and even though it was pepperoni and sausage instead of the plain sausage that the boy had ordered, at least there was an entire pizza for the bear, so it didn’t look like he was going to have to beg or try to wheedle anyone else out of their fair share. The problem was, he was now covered with mustard, and the napkins that came with the pizza were only making it worse, since his fur was oily and the mustard worked its way down into it. Now what animals generally do in this situation is, they lay down on a log and lick themselves all over, but the boy was trying to train him in general etiquette and he wasn’t sure that he could do it downtown on parade day, with all these people standing all over the place, and the hot dog vendor still squirting the mustard all over the place.
In fact, the hot dog vendor was now trying to hit everyone, and had a special passion for getting the young meter woman who was trying to enjoy her pizza, and a librarian who just happened to be passing by and who decided that a piece of pizza might be a good thing on a hot day like this. The librarian was thinking maybe if some of the mustard landed on the pizza it wouldn’t be all bad, but in fact the mustard was landing all over the place, and when it hit a dog the dog shook himself and then it flew all over the place, hitting everyone. Finally the librarian pointed her umbrella at the hot dog vendor and said “Freeze” at which point the vendor, well trained, dropped everything and put his hands up.
Fortunately it started raining, but when the librarian opened up the umbrella it actually had mustard on it and the mustard went flying and hit the dog again. The boy had now made the perfect pizza construction: it had a few extra hot dogs on it, and some mustard, and pieces of a rose that he had torn up and put carefully on it. He didn’t want the pizza to get wet, so he stood under the umbrella, but the librarian got suspicious because the petals of the rose were bright pink and she questioned the boy about where the rose had come from. It was true that, somewhere in the fuss of the last ten minutes, some man had given him the rose and asked him to give it to the librarian, or perhaps it was to the young meter maid, or maybe it was the bear, he couldn’t quite remember. It was just because he was overwhelmed by the excitement of a picnic downtown, that he lost track of certain details. And the bear felt pretty much the same way, though he was now back at the hot dog cart putting one hot dog after another down, and enjoying the view. He had never even realized you could put mustard on a hot dog, but now realized that it tasted pretty good over all, and was trying all the other condiments on the cart, one at a time. The hot dog vendor didn’t seem to mind, since the rain was pretty much going to spoil this batch of food anyway. People were now running toward them from the direction of the parade, trying to get out of the rain or get to their cars, which were all parked downtown not too far from where this story takes place. They weren’t sure if it was going to be a huge downpour or just a sprinkle, but they didn’t want to wait around to find out, since a lot of times there was lightning involved, and last time the lightning struck the firetruck in the parade and caught the hose on fire, and nobody knew what to do, because it couldn’t put itself out.
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