HONEY BADGER GOES TO HELL — AND HEAVEN By Martina Donna Ramone and David Bruce HONEY BADGER GOES TO HELL — AND HEAVEN For Mature Readers Copyright 2014 by Bruce D. Bruce Cover Photo: DARKHAIR GIRL PORTRAIT © Photographer: Sanja Naumov Agency: Dreamstime.com WORDPRESS EDITION Online reviews are appreciated. If you like this book, try Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Retelling in Prose by David Bruce. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Youth and Education Chapter 2: In Hell Chapter 3: Back in the Land of the Living Chapter 4: The Beginning of an Imaginative Journey Chapter 5: The Sun (Wisdom) Chapter 6: Mercury (Gifts) Chapter 7: Venus (Fighters Against Violence Directed Toward Women) Chapter 8: Moon (Feeding the Hungry and Helping the Homeless) Chapter 9: Mars (Heroes) Chapter 10: Saturn (Abortion) Chapter 11: Jupiter (Police) Chapter 12: Neptune (Philosophy and Theology) Chapter 13: Pluto (Gays and Lesbians) Chapter 14: The Stars (Awesome People and Companies) Chapter 15: The Material Universe (Science and Vaccines) Chapter 16: Outside the Material Universe (Paradise Proper) Chapter 17: On Earth Again 1 Honey Badger Goes to Hell — and Heaven Chapter 1: Youth and Education When Honey Badger was young, she did not like her servings of food to touch each other. Once, her family went to a restaurant, and Honey ordered a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich — “on three plates, please.” On another trip to a restaurant, Honey ordered, “A dozen oysters and a glass of champagne.” On another trip, she ordered, “A bowl of cherries and whipped cream.” When Honey Badger was in kindergarten, her teacher asked the students what was their favorite food. Many kids named healthy foods, but Honey proudly announced, “My favorite food is sugar.” A babysitter once made Honey Badger eat meat when Honey did not want to eat meat. Honey put the meat in one of her cheeks (the one farthest away from the babysitter), excused herself, then went to the bathroom and spit the meat in the toilet. After the meal was over, Honey went outside and wrote a protest song about being forced to eat meat. The song was terrible; after all, Honey was only five years old. Still, it’s a good thing to start creative work early; after all, a journey of 10,000 hours begins with a single minute. Such a journey can lead to knowledge of such things as which musical notes make up a C-seventh. Honey Badger’s parents wanted their children to be original, and so they allowed them to do creative things such as paint cartoon characters on the garage, which was in the back and hidden from the sight of the neighbors. However, Honey’s parents did not allow her and her brother to paint the front of the house. Her parents did not want to unnecessarily upset the neighbors. 2 Honey Badger’s elementary school class once took a trip to an art museum. Honey noticed that a girl classmate stared at a certain spot on a painting of a naked baby Jesus, and Honey realized that her classmate did not have a brother. Honey Badger’s parents had a television set in their home, but they played only Spanish-language Disney DVDs on it so Honey and her brother would learn Spanish. Learning Spanish was easy for them to do because their mother was Hispanic and often spoke to them in Spanish. When Honey and her brother played at a friend’s house one day, they were amazed that the television set spoke English. After Honey had a play date with the friends with the television that spoke English, Honey’s parents asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. She replied, “A Smurf.” When Honey Badger was very young, she believed in fairies, and she talked to them. (Her family did not mind when Honey clapped to keep Tinkerbelle alive in a theatrical production of Peter Pan. They clapped, too.) One day, her mother and her brother heard Honey talking to fairies. She told the fairies that she was going to the kitchen to get a cookie — cookies were a popular treat in her family. Her brother delayed Honey while her mother made a quick exit to and a quick exit from the kitchen. When Honey entered the kitchen, a plate with a few cookies and a glass of milk were waiting for her on a table in the kitchen. Honey ate the cookies and drank the milk, and then she thanked the fairies. (When she was older, Honey overcame a serious addiction to cookies and doughnuts because of an allergy. She thought, I must be allergic to sugar — whenever I eat a dozen doughnuts, my stomach swells up.) The fairies wrote letters to Honey and left them on the stand by her bed so she would find them in the morning. 3 Her parents read those letters to her during breakfast. Fairies like telling knock-knock jokes: • Knock knock. Who’s there? Doris. Doris who? Doris locked, that’s why I’m knocking! • Knock knock. Who’s there? Banana. Banana who? Knock knock. Who’s there? Banana. Banana who? Knock knock. Who’s there? Banana. Banana who? Knock knock. Who’s there? Orange. Orange who? Orange you glad I didn’t say ‘banana’? 4 • Knock knock. Who’s there? Cows go. Cows go who? No, cows go moo! When Honey Badger was very young, she wanted to fly. She had seen Peter Pan, and she knew that in order to fly, you needed to think happy thoughts and you needed fairy dust. She asked her mother, “Do we have any fairy dust?” Her mother, who did not know what Honey was planning to do, said, “Yes, we do.” Then she got some glitter and sprinkled it over Honey, who went out on the porch, stood at the top of the stairs, thought happy thoughts, and launched herself into space. Honey got a black eye and stopped believing in fairies. When Honey Badger was in elementary school, she had a female doll that said such things as “Math is hard.” The doll was not a gift from her parents — her father was a mathematician, and her mother used math as a nurse. Her father taught Honey that whenever the doll said, “Math is hard,” Honey should reply, “Yeah, math is hard — except for arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, algebra, and calculus.” At the time, Honey was studying arithmetic, and she was proud of her ability to do long division. When Honey Badger was about 10 years old, she saw a scary-looking man with tattoos and body piercings. She was wary, but all the man did was smile at her and say, “I like your purse.” Much later, she realized that the scary- looking man was gay. At about the same thing, she realized that Aunt Kate was gay. She didn’t quite know yet what being gay was, but it seemed to involve a lot of dancing and appreciation of such things as a pretty decorated purse. 5 When she was older, Honey Badger and her classmates attended a presentation at school about being tolerant of gay people. Afterward, Honey and her classmates asked each other, “What’s the big deal? I know gay people. In fact, I’m related to gay people.” After the presentation, Honey requested of Aunt Kate, “Please explain something to me because I don’t understand. Why do some non-gay people not like gay people?” Aunt Kate joked that it was because they were afraid that gay people were going to make 20-minute dance versions of traditional folksongs, but then she got serious and tried to answer the question honestly. Unfortunately, the honest answer was this: “I don’t know. I don’t understand it, either.” Honey Badger wanted a television set of her own for her 13th birthday, so her parents bought her a television set. For three days, Honey did nothing but go to school and the bathroom, complete her homework, eat and sleep, and watch TV. After three days of watching the TV sitcoms her friends talked about at school, Honey turned off the TV and told her brother and her parents, “People aren’t like that,” and she never turned on the TV again. After a couple of weeks, Honey donated the TV to a nursing home. She thought, When I’m very old and I have had a debilitating stroke and I can’t do anything but watch TV, then I’ll watch TV. Everyone else will be watching re-runs, but every show and every episode will be new to me. In the meantime, life is for living, not for watching people on TV pretend to live. Later, Honey boasted that she had killed her TV when she was 13. Still, Honey read reviews, and she knew that some television shows were worth watching. But she reflected, The trouble with watching TV is that while you are watching TV you aren’t doing something else. TV is for people who don’t want to live their life. Honey Badger’s parents often did charitable acts. For example, at the grocery store, her parents always bought a 6 few items to drop off at a food bank on their way home. One day, Honey told her father not to buy oatmeal but instead to buy sugar-frosted flakes because “kids are hungry, too, and kids like sugar-frosted flakes.” When Honey Badger was a teenager, she saw her mother do something that Honey never forgot. Her family was on a picnic, and a homeless man was going through some trashcans.