Once upon a time a young boy named Todd

I already told the official version of this story, the one with the company newspaper clipping and the apron. This is the other version. In late 2007, on the forum, I told the whole thing as a fairy tale, in the third person, like I was narrating someone else’s life. I think it might be better than the newspaper.

Here it is, mostly as I wrote it at nineteen:

Once upon a time a young boy named Todd was broke, jobless and mis-understood. One day a local grocery chain began construction near the young boy’s home. He applied for a job there to be a bagger. He was immediately hired… Finally the store was completed and he was moved to Lake Saint Louis. Then after a few months the boy was promoted to the Bakery department, where he spent a year and a half working and slaving over donuts and bagels. He didn’t really like the Bakery. He almost quit. But soon enough, during his last year of High School, the tale began to unfold.

The part I’d completely forgotten until I dug this up is how much drama I packed into the awards ceremony. I had entered a web development competition, won at districts almost by accident (I submitted the day before it was due), and gone on to state not expecting a thing:

He moved into the 5,000+ seat auditorium where everyone awaited the awards ceremony… They were calling them in alphabetical order, from A to Z, Website Development being almost last. It seemed to take forever… He looked over to his friend and told him he would take anything above 5th so he wouldn’t have to go on stage. His friend looked over and said something he will never forget: Don’t worry, I’m sure you will not have done that well. He felt angry. He wanted to win now.

You can see where this is going. At the time, somehow, I could not:

They announced 10th to 6th in order. He wasn’t there. Why?… “Here is 1st to 5th in random order”… Blah blah blah is all he heard until randomly “Todd Hertzelle” was thrown in the mix… He ran forward, the stage was a million miles away… please 5th, I just want to get off the stage, please 4th, please 3rd, omg please 2nd, holy crap, what, I’m the only one left on the stage.

First place. Then nationals in Tennessee, where the fairy tale has me placing 13th. (The newspaper says 15th, and the newspaper is probably right, but this was my fairy tale.) And then it ends the way these things actually end, back at the bakery counter:

Then one day his Co-Manager told him what she had done. They needed a website done at corporate office. She brought up his name… within a few days he was moved from the bakery to the corporate office as an intern. After working a year as an intern he was finally hired… as an Application Programmer. He has been happy ever since.

I love that I ended it “happy ever since.” At nineteen I had no way of knowing whether that was true. It mostly was.