All About Edwin Longwickle (Part 2)

Stop: If you have not already read All About Edwin Longwickle (Part 1), you should do so before reading the present instalment. Failure to comply with these instructions may give rise to confusion, dizziness, vomiting and impotence.

Longwickle always dreamed of becoming an astronomer, but lacked the financial means necessary to pay for his education. However, in an unexpected stroke of luck, Longwickle won a full tuition scholarship to Cambridge for his uncanny ability to chew gum, juggle three bowling balls, and dance the Macarena, all at once.

While at Cambridge, he befriended an Austrian by the name of Hans Landsteiner, who like Longwickle had a childhood full of the kind of hard knocks that gangsta rap lyrics are made of. One day, after his father left for work, young Hans walked in on his mother having sex with a head of broccoli. It was then that his mother divulged the awful truth that Mr. Landsteiner wasn’t his real father. Hans, who already had to deal with being half Jewish in an era plagued by anti-Semitism, was now forced to come to terms with being half vegetable as well.

Perhaps it was Hans Landsteiner’s own intimate acquaintance with being an outsider that initially drew him to the equally reviled Edwin Longwickle. Even after Longwickle was denied entrance into the Royal Society for his outlandish scientific views and his uncompromising stance against bathing and personal hygiene, Landsteiner remained the Robin to his Batman.

TO BE CONTINUED...