Apocalypsis 01 - Kahayatle

atmired her.   No matter what, she always did the best she could.   Efen when my fadder left, she always worked very hard to make sure dat I could do thingks.   Like come to the Unitet States for example.”
    I lifted an eyebrow.   “Well, that sure worked out well for you.”
    “It did.”   He shrugged, ignoring my sarcasm.   “The worlt that we knew is ofer.   Not just here, but efreywhere.   Apart from my mom, dare was no one dare in Chermany dat I cared about so much.   I’m okay with being stuck here.   With you and Peter and da little doggy.”
    I was impressed with his positive outlook.   Germans were tough, there was no doubt about that.
    “Bodo, what’s your last name?”
    “Ruster.”
    I giggled.   “Your last name is Rooster?   As in cock-a-doodle-doo?”
    He smiled.   “What dit you just say?   Cock-a- … what?”
    We were both grinning like idiots at each other.   “I said, ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’.   That’s what roosters say.   You know?   Male chickens?”   I put my hands in my armpits and did a few chicken wing-flaps for effect.
    “Ohhhh, I ssee.   No, not a rooster.   Spelled like R-U-S-T-E-R.   See?”
    I laughed some more.   “Okay.   I would have pronounced that ruster , like the word ‘rust’.”
    “You can say it however you want.   I don’t care, really.   It’s not a problem.”
    “No, I like rooster.   That’s cool.   I can see that,” I said, pretending to look him over.
    “What do you mean?   Like I am a proud bird who walks around a bunch of girl chickens and tells all de udder boy chickens to go away?”
    “Maybe.”   He did seem to be perfectly at ease around me.   Either that meant he was supremely confident or he didn’t consider me to be a member of his henhouse.
    “No.   I am not dat proud.   Plus I am a one-chicken kindt of guy.   I don’t think I could manatch more den one chicken at a time.”
    I don’t know why that made me so happy, but it did.   It’s not like there was a lot of competition around here or that I’d decided that I wanted him to be my boyfriend.   But still … he was funny and cute and didn’t seem stuck-up at all.
    “Is it possible to be conceited anymore?”   I voiced my thoughts aloud without even realizing I was doing it.   But it was out there now and I was curious to know what Bodo thought, so I waited for his answer.
    Peter spoke up before he did, though.   “No.”
    “Oh, it’s possible, I think, but it wouldn’t do any good,” disagreed Bodo.   “Not unless dare was a group of guys around and just a few girlss.”
    “Does it ever do any good?” I asked.
    “Sure.   Women go for dat.”
    I frowned at him.   “Whaaat?   You’re nuts.   Girls don’t like conceited guys.”
    “Yes they do,” agreed Peter.
    “You guys are nuts.”
    “Then why do all the conceited guys have girlfriends and all the nice ones don’t?”
    He had a point there.   Maybe .   “But which came first?   The girlfriend or the conceit?”
    Peter sat up slowly and tried to reach around to brush his back off.   I leaned in to help him as he explained himself.
    “Try to imagine back to when you were in like third or fourth grade.   Which boys did you have a crush on?”
    “None of them.”
    “Come on.   Don’t lie.   Okay, which ones stood out to you, then?”
    Bodo was watching us intensely, looking very interested in our discussion.
    “I guess the ones who stood out were the ones looking for the most attention.”
    “Were they just loud or showing off.”
    “Showing off, mostly.”
    “And when they did that, did they get positive reinforcement or negative?”
    “It depended.”
    “On what?”
    I tried to think of the few boys I could recall from my much younger days as being kind of loud and in-your-face types, and remembered three of them.   Two cute ones and one not so cute.   I realized that the cute ones were seen as cocky, as if they had something to crow about, and the not so cute one just seemed obnoxious.
    I sighed.   “It depended on what they looked like.”
    “Explain dat part,” said Bodo, leaning in and studying my face.
    “Well, I hate to say it because it sounds so shallow, but the ones that were good-looking were encouraged, and the ones who weren’t, were looked at as obnoxious and shunned.”
    “So you encouraged the conceit of the good-looking guys and told the ugly ones to stay in the background, essentially,” said Peter.
    “God, that’s