Once upon a time—now, isn’t that a silly way to start a story? If something happened, it happened in time, or it didn’t happen at all. If I have to tell you it happened in time, don’t I have to tell you it happened in space, too? I should have been one of those people who tell you how the universe works—what do they call that? A cosmetologist. That’s what I should have been. I’ll bet they make more than the couple of dimes I get for one of these videos, not to mention the last one got demonetized for “encouraging dangerous behavior in children,” even though I explicitly said that you should get your parents’ permission before you tie a sheet into a parachute and jump off the balcony. But anyway, at a certain time, and some place in the universe and definitely not outside it, there was this jackrabbit, and his name was John. But, as you probably guessed, everybody called him Johnny. And Johnny Rabbit loved to eat celery. It was like an obsession for him. His therapist tried to put a Freudian interpretation on it, but I don’t want to get demonetized again, so we’ll just leave that alone. Now, I know a lot of you kids don’t like to eat celery. Who does? Well, rabbits do, because rabbits are weird. Aren’t you glad you’re not a rabbit? Anyway, one day Johnny went to his local Metro Mart to pick up some celery, and the greeter told him—this Metro Mart had greeters, who were mostly retired squirrels who worked there because Social Security wasn’t enough for them—and this greeter said, “You might want to check out aisle eighteen, because we’re having a big sale on microwaves.”

And Johnny Rabbit said, “Why would I want an oven? I’m a rabbit. We eat vegetables raw. It’s like our creed.”

And the greeter said, “Oh, we’re not selling microwave ovens. Just the microwaves themselves.”

“Well, that’s even sillier,” said Johnny. “What would I do with a pile of bare microwaves?”

“Lots of things you can do with microwaves,” said the greeter. “They have numerous applications in wireless data communications, for example.”

“Really? I didn’t know that,” said Johnny.

“Honest and truly,” said the greeter. “You can look it up in Wikipedia.”

So Johnny Rabbit got out his phone and looked up “Microwave” in Wikipedia, and he was amazed to discover how useful microwaves really are. So he got a cart and ran over to aisle eighteen and bought all the microwaves in the store. And then he went to another Metro Mart and did the same thing, and then another, and another, and eventually Johnny Rabbit had cornered the market on microwaves, and no one could use a cell phone or open a garage door or operate a particle accelerator without buying their microwaves from him, and he got filthy stinking rich and could buy all the celery he wanted, and he ate so much celery that he got really sick and his doctor told him to go on a high-protein diet, and he ended up becoming the world’s first carnivorous rabbit, and maybe I’ll tell you that story some time if it doesn’t get me demonetized again. So that’s the story of Johnny Rabbit, and it teaches us to watch out for opportunities, because they might make you really sick. There’s your lesson for today, kids. Next time we’ll hear the story of Wally the Wannabe Wallaby, about a kangaroo who thought his life would be perfect if he could just get in with the in crowd. Till then, this is your old pal Mrs. Cheswick saying eat your vegetables, but not too many vegetables.