CHAPTER 4
Benji
Benji’s crown was decorated with jewels that looked like soccer balls. Some of the kids had to get used to wearing the heavy crowns. But not Benji. As one of the most athletic kids in school, he was familiar with heavy headgear: football helmets, batting helmets, hockey masks, lacrosse headgear, you name it.
You see, Benji loved sports—even if his family didn’t.
If Benji wasn’t playing sports, he was watching them on TV… at least when he could. After all, some sports channels cost extra money, and they aren’t cheap. And his parents refused to pay for them.
“Two hundred dollars to watch guys in tights chase a ball?!” his father shrieked. “I’m not paying for that!”
“Maybe the hockey channel, then?!” Benji begged. “It’s only seventy-nine dollars.” He quietly added: “For the first two months, plus additional fees, then full-season price activates for the low cost of three hundred dollars. Rules and restrictions apply.”
Mr. Bearenstein heard that. “Why do you want to waste money watching ice skaters chase a hamburger patty around?”
“It’s not a hamburger patty, Dad. It’s called a ‘puck,’” Benji explained.
“The answer is no. With so many channels, you wouldn’t know what to watch. It would be like throwing cash down the toilet! When you get a job, you can order any ridiculous sports package you want.”
Well, now Benji did have a job… as king! He wasted no time making his first royal demand: “I want ALL the sports channels!” (Sure, it wasn’t really a law, but it’s what the king wanted.)
That afternoon, a humongous TV satellite was placed in Benji’s royal room. He turned on the TV, grabbed his favorite sports drink, and sat back, ready to enjoy all the fancy sports channels his heart desired.
There was just one little problem… well, more like eight thousand little problems. There are over eight thousand sports being played across the globe every day. (For real, look it up!) And somehow, each had its very own TV channel.
There were the sports everyone knows, like soccer, tennis, and golf. But as the channels got higher, the sports got weirder: competitive tree climbing, gymnastic tuba playing, full-contact ribbon dancing, something called curling.
“I don’t know what curling is, but I’m glad I have the Deluxe Curling Channel!” Benji said. “What else is on?”
Benji couldn’t decide what to watch. For every one sport he could watch, he was missing at least 7,999 other ones. That didn’t seem like such a good deal after all. Certainly not one fit for a king.
So he changed channels constantly. He did this for hours. He flipped through so many new sports channels, his thumb started to hurt. So he hired an assistant just to change the channel for him. This person’s official job title was “Royal Channel Changer.”
But even with help, he couldn’t watch everything. “Ugh!” Benji groaned. “I don’t know what to waaaaaatch!”
Benji didn’t watch the news. But if he had, he would have seen the media joking that King Benji was the star athlete of a new sport: extreme channel surfing.