Robert and the Dragon

There once was a little boy who liked to extinguish fires. Robert was his name. Even as a baby he emptied his feeding bottle in his daddies ashtray when the pipe caught fire. "You are a real fireman," his daddy said proudly. "I'll give you a fireman's outfit tomorrow." Then his father read stories about dragons who breathed fire until Robert became so frightened that he had to be tickled.

Robert had just learned to walk when the oven caught fire in the kitchen. The cake burned and the smoke oozed out of the oven door. Robert pulled his fireman's helmet over his head, opened the oven door and extinguished the fire with his fire extinguisher. His mother gave Robert a big hug. "You aren't afraid of anything," she said and tickled him the way he liked to be tickled.

As soon as Robert had his own bicycle he set off on inspection rounds with his fire extinguisher. Once he discovered a dangerous grass fire. The wind blew the flames towards a barn full of cows. Robert pedaled as fast as he could and extinguished the flames just outside the barn door.

For this he became known to the journalists. They made him stand beside his bicycle holding his fire extinguisher for the photographers. He than told the journalists what he had felt when he extinguished the flames, and that he planned to be a fireman for the rest of his life.

In his adolescence he extinguished a fire in the school's boiler room. Once he crept into a burning car and saved a baby. Another time he extinguished a fire at the amusement park. Finally he was portrayed on TV and cheered as the most daring fireman of all times.

But Robert knew that was not true. He was still afraid of firebreathing dragons. When he read stories about dragons he became so frightened that he started to sweat in his fireman's outfit. Nobody must know that I am afraid, he thought and closed his eyes. Not now when everybody thinks I can extinguish everything that burns.

One day he was asked to extinguish an erupting volcano. It had set fire to the woods and the lava was heading towards a town. This was the most dangerous assignment Robert had ever had, but he was not afraid.

The news that Robert were trying to extinguish a vulcano spread to all countries from the North pole to the South pole. Everybody in the world sat round their TV sets and saw how Robert saved the town by hosing water on the lava to make it hard. Then he extinguished the fires in the woods and finally he aproached the top of the volcano. It was so hot that the buttons in his uniform started to melt. Nevertheless he managed to throw a huge fire extinguisher into it.

The volcano started to rumble, then it caught hiccups with white clouds of powder coming out of the top. Finally it died and the people shouted with joy. Robert waved proudly to the camera teams while he climbed down from the volcano mountain, but then he heard a sound behind him. He turned and saw a huge dragon close by. "You have destroyed my home," the dragon said angrily. "Now I will grill you, you tiny match-stick."

The dragon was so angry that it's face was red instead of green. Its black eyes stared at him and its nostrils blew out white glowing flames. Robert became stiff as a board and completely cold. He knew that everyone in the entire world was looking at him, still he couldn't move. He was so frightened that he started to shake and his teeth chattered. His knees collapsed under him and Robert fell to the ground in front of the dragon.

At that moment he wished he was a child again. That he was in the arms of his mother and father and that they tickled him to make him feel safe. People held their breath in front of the TV sets. "Is Robert afraid of the dragon?" one remarked. "Why is he down on his knees, he who can extinguish a volcano?"

The dragon came closer to Robert. It smiled and thought that this little manikin in fireman's outfit would be easy to burn. A few puffs, and there would only be smoke and ashes left of him. Robert saw the dragon braw its breath, deep and long to make an inferno of flames. But as the dragon was about to blow Robert jumped up and started to tickle the dragon under its arms.

The dragon rose on two legs and started to scream with laughter. "No, no, no, ho, ho, ho, don't doooo it." It fell over on its back so that the ground shook while Robert continued to tickle it as hard as he could. Meantime he wrapped hoses round the dragons feet. Finally Robert pushed two big lava stones into the dragons nostrils.

Everyone who had followed the drama sighed with relief. Definitely, Robert wasn't afraid of anything - at least not for firebreathing dragons. And Robert himself was happier than he had ever been. This time he had not only extinguished a fire, he had also conquered his own fears.

© Martin Nygaard