Nicky's dragon

Once upon a time, in a land right round the corner, there lived a boy called Nicky. Nicky loved to ride to school on his pet dragon. It was faster than walking, and the dragon knew lots of good jokes. This is what Nicky’s dragon looked like:

I guess I forgot to mention that Nicky’s dragon was invisible. She was also very small. Actually, she was pocket-sized. Riding Nicky’s dragon was a bit of a challenge, but Nicky had learned to ride her when he was very small, so they just got used to each other early on, and somehow or another Nicky managed to sit on the dragon’s back. When he did, it looked a little odd, a boy floating three feet above the ground. However, that was less strange than seeing a boy riding a dragon, so nobody said anything. Which was just as well, since the dragon didn’t speak English, so she wouldn’t have understood them anyway.

Now, if you had been paying attention, and I hope you have, you might be wondering how Nicky understood the dragon’s jokes since she didn’t speak English. Luckily, since Nicky met her when he was a baby, he couldn’t speak English either, so it wasn’t a problem. They spoke Dragon, which is kind of like parseltongue, but without the hissing. You can hiss if you like, but it is considered very rude in Dragon, so you had better make sure there aren’t any dragons around who might get their feelings hurt. Snakes, on the other hand, like the hissing. This is why dragons and snakes don’t get along.

The problem came when Nicky wanted to tell his friends the dragon’s jokes. The first few times he tried to translate the jokes it didn’t work out so well:

Why did the dragon cross the road? To get to the princess.

The trouble was, what was really funny to a dragon, wasn’t even funny-adjacent to a group of kids. The jokes sounded so much better in Dragon. It didn’t help that little puffs of smoke would come out from Nicky’s pocket when he told the jokes, which was very distracting. Apparently, Nicky’s way of telling the jokes was dragon-funny, even in English.

I guess I forgot to mention that Nicky’s dragon was also a smoke-breathing dragon. She had never quite mastered fire breathing, but she could blow beautiful smoke rings that looked like donuts made out of clouds, or alien spaceships. This has nothing to do with our story, but I thought you should know.

Anyway, Nicky would get very frustrated when his dragon jokes didn’t go down, and the smoke coming out of his pocket would make things worse. He didn’t mean to, but he would get angry with his dragon, and this didn’t improve things either. The dragon would sulk, and Nicky wouldn’t get his ride to school, and this made him unhappy. An unhappy boy is the worst kind of boy to tell jokes.

Why do dragons live in mountain caves? Castles catch fire too easily.

This carried on for a few weeks, and nobody was enjoying themselves. Nicky stopped telling jokes, the dragon stopped telling jokes, Nicky’s classmates wondered what was going on.

One day, Ms K. was reading a story in the class, and Nicky was only half listening. He wasn’t doing much with the other half, but at least half of him was listening, which was just as well, because not listening at all would have been very rude. It was a story about a boy and his dragon. Apparently, the dragon was invisible. And pocket-sized. When Ms Kimberlin read the first joke, Nicky didn’t notice, but a few little puffs of smoke came out of his pocket. Someone in the class sniggered. When the second joke came, three big donut-shaped puffs of smoke rose up into the air, and hovered like alien spaceships above Nicky’s head. When you are in the middle of classtime, and someone has smoke that looks like alien spaceships floating above their heads, there aren’t too many things you can do. You can open your mouth and stare; you can shriek; you can shut your eyes and pretend you’re in Kansas; or you can laugh. Luckily for this story, most everyone laughed. Even the two kids with their eyes shut pretending to be in Kansas ended up laughing once they’d re-opened their eyes.

Shortly after this incident, and after Nicky had finally given up on dragon jokes, he started telling kid jokes, and this worked out a whole lot better. The grown-ups didn’t get the jokes when the kids would retell them later, but the kids didn’t care: grown-ups don’t get a lot of things, especially things with loud noises in them. Or funny smells.

Still, Nicky and his dragon still enjoyed their own private dragon jokes, and that was ok too.

Did you hear the one about the dragon that flew backwards?..