Once upon a fine time, somewhere around 2008 — around the time when Lady Gaga dropped Poker Face, there lived a Scruffy Bearded Man. Scruffy had the ability to do everything life had to offer, except that it was never made to be offered to him.

He was an excellent cook, except hair from his Scruffy Beard fell into his food every time he cooked. Not only that — his nose smelled all the wrong smells. He was an excellent hair stylist, but had six fingers on his right hand. Scissors just weren’t made keeping him in mind, just like a lot of things aren’t made keeping a lot of people in mind. He was a skilled medic, too, except his patients always got put off by his beard. He seemed to have a haggard appearance — not because he was tired, it was just the way his face was. He scared people off.

He had a love for acquiring useless information, like what the earth would come to if it stopped rotating. He had the most accommodating taste in food; he only hated three things — Spinach, Beetroot, and Bitter Gourd. He was too compassionate, sometimes to the point where he wouldn’t see danger for what it was until it smacked him in the face.

Once, crocodiles had chased him on their short legs and he’d run as fast as he could on his less short legs — except he could never use his legs quite as well after that because his knees wouldn’t agree to help. He once ate a raw goldfish on a dare. He also had a fascination with ponytails which were tied on top of the head.

But for all his eccentricities, Scruffy was a common Everyday Man. He had a friend in his neighbor, a girl of twelve, who often stayed over at his house and pulled her limbs tight around herself at night to keep monsters under the furniture from grabbing them. They were so close you could even call them best friends, or Best Friends.

Scruffy had wanted to become an artist someday. He’d also wanted to become an astronaut, a pilot, a forest ranger and a ninja. He had great memories of traveling on top of elephants with his Even Scruffier Uncle through forests when he was barely three, and he desperately wanted the forests back.

Although he couldn’t do much cooking or much hairstyling and never flew an aircraft or a rocket or rode an elephant again, and didn’t have many friends thanks to his haggard appearance, he never allowed boredom in.

On Saturdays he held a barbecue, on every Sunday he learned a dance routine, and on every Thursday he invited all his neighbors over for a Game. He even taught the neighborhood kids how to row a boat, and how to never Think Too Much. One day he memorized a hundred interesting facts about flags.

He stayed busy, and stayed busy, and stayed busy, and became a man of such limitless skills and tricks that his Best Friend, who grew up to be a film-maker, made a movie on him that came to be called a Cinema for the Ages.