The Coat That Wouldn't Come Off! by A. A. Augustine

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The old women then came in from the side of the table once again. Now attempting to liftthe back of the jacket over Johnny’s head consoling him. “It’s alright dear, we’ll get you out of thisfakery. Don’t worry.”But the coat wouldn’t budge as she lifted. At one point, she had Johnny at least two inchesoff the ground, shaking the coat upwards with Johnny firmly tucked inside it. The coat wouldn’tmove. Johnny panicked as the old woman set Johnny back onto the ground.“Hey, get me out of this!!! It’s too tight! I don’t want to be in this coat anymore! I don’t!”It seemed like every time Johnny or the old woman tried to remove the coat it wouldtighten up and squeeze Johnny even more. Like a sausage. Pressing the very breath out of his lungs.Resisting with all of it’s will. Like it was alive. This scarred Johnny and made him start to panic evenmore. People began to gather around now all shouting out suggestions to the old woman but nothingworked. The more they tried, the tighter the coat would wrap around Johnny. It was so tight now thatJohnny burst into tears.“Leave me alone! It hurts! Stop touching me! Where is the man! Get me out of this ! Now!I demand you get this off me!”At this point, there must have been at least 50 people crowding the table area all packedbehind the table. Everyone shouting and crying out suggestions. But where was the man? Where wasthe man indeed? He was there a minute ago and now he was gone. Like a snap of a finger.“He’s gone!” said the old woman, he’s probably half way to out of the town by now!Crooked rat! Some kind of trick gone bad I suppose! Like a Chinese finger trap. Poor kid. Out totake us all for a bunch of small town fools!”“Hold still Johnny!” said a man. “I’ll get that off you.” It was Manny Jacks, the strongestman in town and the owner of the local gym. But even he couldn’t budge the coat off Johnny.They were there for at least an hour. At some point, they even smeared grease on Johnny’sarms inside the coat and everyone grabbed hold of everyone else in a chain down the block on bothsides of the Johnny like a giant rope-pulling competition. They figured it would slide off or at leasttear off the Johnny's back and either way, remove him from this devilish material.Eerily, the coat would not give.Much debate ensued among the frustrated and panicky horde as to what to do with thispoor boy with the old lady in the bonnet leading the way.A consensus was soon reached.The best thing they could do was to get Johnny back home and to tell his mother of theevent and let the family take care of the matter. This is a litigious world you know, said many of thedebaters, and one can’t go around fixing other peoples’s burdens without consequence anymore.Best let his family take the matter in their own hands.So the throng washed there hands of the event. After all, this was now a real dilemma andthis meant real problem solving and real work. And again, people are people… and in crowds theyare even worse.“Hey, all we wanted was a little distraction. Some light hearted entertainment!” Let’s notget crazy here.” This is a real problem. The boy could be in trouble. I’ve got enough problems withmy own kids as I’m sure we all do! Let’s get him home and out of our hands!” someone chortled asthe debate meandered to a disappointing close.People...Johnny was taken home that day by the lady in the bonnet and housecoat. As suddenly,everyone else was too busy to bother.Johnny’s life and the lives of his family were never the same after that fateful afternoon.It seems that sometimes, even the simplest of events can have the most profound consequences.Johnny’s parents spent almost a full year and most of their fortune attempting to get thatcoat off Johnny. They hired the most prestigious doctor’s in the most prestigious universities and noone on the planet could help. Johnny was a growing boy after all, and the coat wouldn’t accommodatea young boy’s sprouting girth. But it simply wouldn’t budge. There was even an attempt madeto cut the coat so it could be physically expanded but the material was unlike any anyone had everseen. It couldn’t be cut or moved or melted or smelted. It couldn’t be scrapped or worn out or downor anything.
The doctors feared that the coat would eventually crush and deform Johnny and possiblykill him if nothing is done. But this was all speculation. No one knew what would happened. No onehad ever seen anything like it before. No one could predict what the outcome would be for poorJohnny. But, at that point, it would surely be dire.Theories were put forward and medical journal papers were written and studies done andstudies proposed. Johnny was a human pin cushion. Poked and prodded and prodded some more.There was even a conference held in Helsinki in Johnny’s name. None of the outcomes wereoptimistic. The doctors pressed on for months, rushing against Johnny’s growth and the futile,inevitability of time to find a solution. But in the end, the final word of the brightest medical mindswas that Johnny's family would have to except the fate of the coat or keep attempting to remove thecoat at all costs and they would surely go broke in the process as this was an uninsurable liability atthe least.But this was their only child. Their only heir and there was no choice, of course. And sothey pressed on. Working through the family fortune to try to save their only son. The coat becamean ironic, fatalistic burden.The only upside of this, if there could be any at all, was that Johnny had somehow obtaineda kind of perverse, tabloid celebrity. This, for once, was a good thing. A monetarily, fortuitous goodthing that is.As Johnny’s family began to drain their financial resources attempting to get the coatremoved, the money they gained from merchandising licenses and television and print appearanceshelped finance Johnny’s soaring medical costs. The world wanted to know all about Johnny and theywere willing to pay and pay they did.There were rights sold to a book and movie and even rights sold to a “Johnny” doll. Butthis time...” the coat comes off!... Or so declared the commercial!As word spread of “The Boy Who’s Coat Wouldn’t Come Off” the news media clamoredto get interviews and pictures. Johnny even had a press agent. But eventually, the ever-fickle publicand the fickle media hype flamed out and moved on to the next hot story as they always tend to do.With the money they earned from the sudden interest in Johnny’s plight soon running out,Johnny’s family we’re now using the last of their family fortune to pay for the medical costs andwe’re quickly going broke in the process. Just as the doctors had foretold. Cutting edge medicaltreatment isn’t cheap and the doctors were charging a princely sum for the help.In less than a year, the family sold their businesses, their vacation homes, their cars, theirboats, and their stock and investment holdings. They at least, were able to hold onto the estate untilthe very end. Eventually, their financial situation became so dire, that Johnny and his family had tolive out of one room in the town’s seedy motel and sold everything but a suitcase of clothes each anda few prized family possessions.Of course, Johnny’s family believed that at the least, if no one else, the medical communitywould maintain a high level of interest in his case. After all, there was a small boy’s life in thebalance. Even if they had to somehow seek charity, surely there would be someone, somewhere, whocould lend helping hand.But, people are people. And no one stepped up or forward.Doctors and universities who once donated their time and money so freely to Johnny andhis family were realizing that they had nothing to show for all their research on the immediatehorizon and had much more “interesting” [read profitable] and pressing matters to attend to thankyou! The donations, hospitality and charity soon dried up and interest waned and faded in Johnny’sdesperate plight.His parents still took him to see the last of the top medical doctors that they thought couldhelp, but now, all the doctor’s were charging top dollar for the visits and the families multigenerationalfortune was almost completely depleted.Over and over again, Johnny and his family were told that “This was such an isolated case.There’s really nothing we believe we can do.”This was the consensus. An unacceptable consensus. But a consensus none-the-less.Johnny and his coat had, in less than a years time, become a mere curiosity and novelty forthe medical community. A sideshow and Johnny the sideshow freak. Johnny and his family weresoon left to fend for themselves and had lost almost everything in the process.
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Page 4 and 5: he had ever seen in all of his youn
Page 6 and 7: “Put him down, sir! Put him down!
Page 8 and 9: know what it is my son?! “The man
Page 12 and 13: On one particularly cold, dark day
Page 14 and 15: full of things that Johnny had neve
Page 16 and 17: And this time, there was no blindin
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The Coat That Wouldn't Come Off! by A. A. Augustine

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