I wrote these stories during middle school, and every time I look back on them, I like them. That's what really counts with your own writing.

I submitted the first of them (The Arch-Chief of Red Hats) to my high school literary magazine. There, everyone analyzed it as a political commentary, reading the red hats as republicans, blue hats as democrats, and the struggle between them as a metaphor for the political situation. That's always served as a lesson to me when I'm analyzing other literature, because I certainly didn't intend any meaning to any of the stories than exactly what they say. I thought it was funny, so I wrote it.

Found only in a remote corner of the globe, which has no corners, the arch-chief of red hats rules a land of skeptical billboard ads, and, clearly, many red hats. There are some blue hats, but they lack an arch-chief (along with a legion of billboard ads).

The Arch-chief has absolute power over all red hats. He doesn't have power over blue hats, but they let him do most of what he wants to them because if he doesn't, he'll order the red hats to attack them. Since they are weak and stupid, the blue hats are afraid, and follow his orders.

Hats, however, aren't very powerful. It is only because of that that the Arch-chief does not rule the world (or at least australia). In his own domain, though, beware, because the red hats are very brightly red, and the sky really isn't blue at all.

It's just hats, you see.

Jack's entire life is quite short, maybe for the sole reason that he was a bubble, and the lives of bubbles are notoriously short, increasingly so since the invention of jabbing by nearly every living creature (except fish, who happen to enjoy the company of bubbles).

Jack would have liked to be one of the ocean bubbles. He had heard tales of them. Remarkably short tales, like "Being an ocean bubble has got to be better tha-". As it was, though, Jack was one of those pathetic little coca-cola bubbles, the kinds of emancipated bubbles that get help groups.

Jack didn't get a help group, because Jack's life went by in half a second. the first quarter was going up, and the second quarter of the second was spent in a long excruciating POP that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the invention of jabbing by nearly every creature except fish.

In essence, Jack was gone before he knew what hit him, and before he knew that something could hit him.

To most kids, Paula's life was great. No school, no rules, all fun, no work, can say whatever she wants. She could eat that double fudge dipped three layer ice cream cone if she wanted, because nobody was going to stop her.

But paula didn't agree with the kids. Why?

Because she was a cloud.

If you asked her what it was like, being a cloud and all, she would say: "It's puffy, and I don't like it."

If you asked her why she didn't like it, she would tell you something mean, like: "Because idiots like you stare at me all day and they think I'm a penguin ballancing on a ball when I'm really trying to be a rocketship. And it's puffy."

If you asked what the deal was with the puffyness, she would tell you, knowingly: "Well, I'm a cloud, aren't I? You think clouds aren't puffy? What kind of idiot parents raised you?"

Then, because she had a mean streak from the puffyness, she would add, "Oh, right, the same that never told you that you can't talk to clouds."