A whimsical children’s tale to help explain the wonders and audacious logic of tariffs.
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Tank Thompson, wild-eyed and grinning, cut off his own ear at recess.
Nobody knew why.
Maybe it was a dare no one heard … or just a storm inside him finally breaking loose.
Blood slicked his neck. He held the ear high like a twisted prize, daring anyone to look away.
Billy didn’t. He couldn’t.
Their eyes locked across the playground.
Tank was the school bully. He was Billy’s arch rival. Billy HATED Tank with every fiber of his being. He didn’t play fair. He was mean. He kept all the best toys for himself.
Tank’s gaze was wild, burning, hungry for fear. And then he saw what he wasn’t expecting, flickering in Billy’s eyes — fear, yes, but also something else. Something colder. Calculating.
Billy’s heart hammered as he stared down his enemy, but his mind felt sharp, clear, terrible. He couldn’t let Tank win. And … somehow he felt Tank was winning by playing this new game; he just knew it!
“If he wants to play mad,” Billy thought with frenzied fervor, “then I’ll play madder!”
Billy ran inside the school and picked up the dull scissors from the art cart, rusted at the hinge. He came back outside and resumed staring into Tank’s cold eyes.
Without a word, without a flinch, Billy then sawed at HIS own ear.
He would level the playing field!! It wasn’t fair for Tank to have fewer ears than him!!
The action wasn’t quick. It wasn’t clean.
But it was done.
He held the torn ear aloft, his breath ragged, his face pale as paper. Blood crept down his neck like red ink from a broken pen.
“Now we’re even!” he screamed at Tank, voice hoarse with pain.
Tank’s grin faltered, then faded.
The playground was silent. Even the wind had stopped.
From that day on, the slide rusted faster, the swings swayed empty, and the children played quieter.
The playground never quite felt safe again.
The End.
