Breaking a longstanding refusal, Jerry is finally able to convince his father to attend one of his stand-up gigs. During the show, Jerry makes a couple lighthearted jokes about his father, but makes more self-effacing jokes, and generally puts on a wonderful show. Jerry even gets to try out some new material that means a lot to him – some jokes involving the New York State Motto – and the audience goes wild.
Morty meets Jerry backstage, claps him on the shoulder, and tells him that it was “the funniest damn thing I’ve ever seen. Good job, son.”
Jerry is elated to hear this. “I don’t know what to say! You’re the one critic I always wanted to please the most. I even feel taller!”
Morty eyes his son up and down. “You look it, too.”
The two separate, each heading home. Jerry goes straight to Kramer’s apartment, bubbling over with pride. “He loved it!” he exclaims. “I just can’t believe it. My own dad, he loved my comedy!”
Kramer smiles for his friend. “As well he should, Jerry. Good job.”
“As well he should is right,” says Jerry. “My material is brilliant!”
“Now now, Jerry,” Kramer says. “You deserve to be commended, but don’t let it go to your head.” He pauses. “Did you get new shoes?”
The next day, Jerry is happily eating cereal he had forgotten was on top of his fridge. George stops by, and Jerry can’t stop talking about how content he is that his father finally appreciated his comedic genius, and how it feels like a new chapter in their relationship.
George is amazed that such a breakthrough was even possible, and immediately reflects on his relationship with his own father. “God,” he says. “I wish I could do that with my dad. Not a chance in hell, though. Do you realize how many awkward holiday dinners we’d have to undo?”
“C'mon, George,” Jerry says, putting an arm around him. George is surprised that his head fits right about where Jerry’s chest is. “You ought to give it a shot. You might be surprised.”
George makes a noncommittal noise.
Elaine has no problem seeing Jerry from across the diner. She sits down at his booth and is quickly met with the same pap Jerry had spewed at Kramer and George. “I don’t know what took him so long, honestly,” Jerry says. “I’m just a naturally funny guy, even when I’m not ‘on.’”
Elaine, however, has no patience. “So your dad chuckled at a few of your jokes! What’s the big deal? A dad is the easiest audience a child ever has.”
“I’m pretty sure your father has never laughed in his life,” Jerry says.
Elaine, knowing he’s right, has no response for Jerry, so she tries to change the subject. “Why the heck are you sitting in a booster seat?”
As time goes on, Jerry’s ego does not dissipate. Rather, he acts as though his father’s approval was the last piece of the puzzle he required before becoming utterly unstoppable.
After a particularly good gig, he leaves the stage visibly six inches taller than at the beginning of the evening. As he walks out the comedy club’s back door, he’s approached by a man. Jerry would have called him “smallish,” but then again, everyone seems to be looking “smallish” these days.
“Mr. Seinfeld!” the man shouts. “Mr. Seinfeld, how did you get so big?”
“Well, I put in a lot of hard work, but most of this is just raw talent. I’m just a naturally funny guy.”
“No, no,” the man protests. “How did you get so big? Y'know, biiiiig.” He makes an expanding gesture with his hands.
Jerry gets down on one knee and tousles the guy’s hair. “Hey, don’t worry about it, li'l fella. One day, you’ll be big, too.”
The man scowls, clears his throat. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you, I’m a photographer for Time Magazine. People out there have been noticing what’s been going on, and we want to put you on the cover.”
Jerry agrees, and a few weeks later, he’s on newsstands across the country, towering over NBA player Gheorghe Mureșan. The headline reads, “The BIGGEST Name in Comedy!”
Jerry scoffs at the terrible pun. “I could have come up with something much more clever,” he thinks to himself. “Maybe something involving the state motto.” He tosses the magazine over his shoulder. It lands a block away.
George approaches his father. He’s able to calm his hands by clasping them together, but cannot hide the shakiness in his voice. “So, pop,” he begins. “I started seeing someone new.”
Frank turns the page in his newspaper. He doesn’t look up.
“She’s real nice!” George adds, ending with an upward inflection.
Frank folds down his newspaper and stares at George over the rim of his glasses. “She’s nice, huh?” George smiles hesitantly at this scrap of regard. "You met a nice girl?“ Frank’s voice suddenly doubles in volume. "I met a nice girl once, about forty years ago! For God’s sake, George, your mother and I were half your age now when you were born! You think I’m happy that you convinced some poor girl to meet you for a coffee?”
George doesn’t meet his father’s gaze. He bends over a bit in shame, he starts shuffling toward the door. Frank stops him.
“You think your mother and I are happy that we’re never gonna have grandkids? What is it we did to you that you couldn’t find yourself a 'nice girl’ a couple decades ago!”
“P-please,” George begs, delicately trying to move around his father.
A blood vessel bursts in Frank’s eye. He does not relent.
Jerry gathers with Elaine and Kramer in Central Park. He finds the rocks to be the perfect size and shape in which to recline. Kramer sits over his right shoulder, Elaine over his left.
“So you’re tall!” shouts Elaine, directly into an ear as tall as her. “What’s so great about being tall? That doesn’t make you special. You know what I did yesterday? I donated $20 to the Save-the-Whales campaign. I’m saving endangered species over here, Jerry! Where’s my magazine cover!”
“That’s admirable, Elaine,” Jerry says in a cloying tone, “but it’s nothing remarkable. Anyone can donate money to charity. This,” he continues, gesturing at his long body, “is remarkable.”
Elaine stares at him, her eyes like embers. She shouts some incomprehensible exclamation before giving Jerry a good kick in the neck and storming off.
“You know, Jerry, she might have a point,” says Kramer. “I know you’re enjoying all this, but you gotta watch out. If you get much bigger, your bones are gonna snap under their own weight!”
Kramer then notices something, a person walking along a nearby pathway. He squints at the figure, a man who seems older than he should, his back clearly scoliotic. “Is that George?”
“Who?” asks Jerry. “Oh– George!” Jerry leans down, his eye level with the man. “Why, it is George!” He scoops George up in his massive palms and brings him back up to eye level with him and Kramer. “George, my God, how have you been! Things have been going great for me, but I’m sure you already knew that.”
George tries to shield his eyes with his hand, like a man being forced to stare at the sun. He mutters the beginnings of some words, none of which are realized to completion.
“Did you ever get a chance to talk to your dad? I was really excited to hear if it went as well for you as it went for me!” Jerry is shouting, like an American tourist in Rome might while asking a local for directions.
George can only respond in sobs. He continues to try to twist and turn his body away from Jerry. Jerry responds by turning his hand so he can better look George in the eye. Slobber dribbles out of George’s quivering mouth.
“All right, all right, buddy. Let me know if you want me to do anything.” He cups his hands around George and prepares to release him back on the pathway. When he opens his hands, however, they are empty. One last guttural sob seems to permeate the air, but George is no more.
Kramer and Jerry sit in a brief, awkward silence. Two birds angrily chirp at each other over a crumb of bread.
“Well Jerry, I gotta get going,” Kramer says. “Think about what I said, all right?” He gently tugs on a great strand of hair to help himself up, and he leaves.
Jerry sits for a moment with his thoughts, but not for long. Soon, he too rises and walks away, toward no destination in particular. Besides, his rock-seat had started to grow uncomfortable.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Seinfeld. We hope we can count on you.”
“Yeah, no problem, whatever.”
The Director of the FAA had spent the past 30 minutes shouting up at Jerry through a megaphone. He wanted Jerry to put on a bright pink hat with a blinking light on top of it. Something about preventing airplanes from crashing into his head.
Jerry turns around and mutters under his breath, “What do they think I am, some kind of clown?”
Unfortunately, “under his breath” had become a relative term. He hears the click of the megaphone behind him. “Mr. Seinfeld, we can still hear you.”
Jerry throws his hands in the air. “All riiiight, all riiiight, I’ll wear the hat. Jeez, Louise!”
Far away, he sees another person with a megaphone, but this one’s not aimed at him. Elaine is riling up another crowd. She had been doing this in recent weeks. Fueled by envy, she decided that, rather than pretend Jerry didn’t exist, she would set herself up as his adversary.
“And what do you think he’s going to do when he gets so big that bullets bounce off his skin?” she shouts. “When we’re under the reign of King Jerry, you won’t be able to fight back. The time is now!”
“How silly,” Jerry thinks. “Why would I want to become king when I now have the world as audience for my clever jokes?”
He rubs his knees and grimaces. They had certainly been aching lately. Somewhere in his enormous skull, a lone neuron suggests that perhaps Kramer had been right – the thing about the bones.
“Perhaps I was right,” Jerry says to himself, “when I told Kramer that thing about the bones.”
King Jerry’s legs tingled. The sharks were back, biting mouthfuls of flesh out of his massive thighs. Jerry paid them no mind. He had grown to such a size that even the great whites were like mosquitoes to him.
Besides, it was a minor price to pay. The water, he had reminded Vizier Kramer on several occasions, provided the buoyancy necessary to keep him upright, relieving his bones from the immense weight of his flesh.
The Vizier climbed a ladder up to Jerry’s ear. “I’m afraid my time here has been ill spent, my Lord,” he says. “I thought that perhaps, through compassionate advice, I could get you to see the error of your ways.”
“What are you talkin’ about, Kramer?” Jerry’s voice echoes across all five boroughs.
“I have only one more piece of advice for you before I leave. It’s something I’ve told you before, but I assure you, it is more important now than it ever has been in the past.”
Jerry yawns. A gargoyle crumbles from the Chrysler Building in response.
“Listen, Jerry, you can’t keep growing. You have to exhibit a little humility! You can’t sustain this. Nothing has ever been as big as you!”
Kramer quickly scrambles back down the ladder, then jumps in the helicopter waiting for him at the end of Jerry’s shoulder. Jerry barely notices the buzzing sound as the chopper flies into the distance.
“I think you’re right, Kramer,” Jerry says, unaware that his last companion has abandoned him. “Nothing has ever been as big as me.”
Elaine leans off the bow of her ship, the U.S.S. Heckler, hurling her bloodcurdling war cry toward Jerry like a whiff of grapeshot. “Ready the artillery!” she shouts to her men.
The ship chugs forward into firing position. The gunners stand bravely behind their cannons, but are quickly flattened against the deck of the ship. They hadn’t been expecting to rise out of the ocean at such a speed.
Jerry holds the ship in the palm of his hand at eye level. He watches amusedly as a single artillery shell whizzes miles over his head. “Elaine, when will you learn? Why don’t you come over here.” It is not a question.
Elaine walks off the ship, onto his index finger, then slides down into his palm. He holds her in his right palm while cradling the ship in his left.
She grumbles at him through clenched teeth. “No one respects you! These people are my followers, and I am their leader.” She spits in Jerry’s hand while staring him in the eye. “You… you’re just big.”
“These people that respect you, who are they?” Before she can respond, he crushes the ship and everyone aboard into a tiny ball. He drops the crumpled metal right into the ocean. They sink straight to the bottom.
He smiles at Elaine’s horrified look. “Don’t worry Elaine, I could never do the same to you.”
She tries to gain any sort of advantage. “Uh… yeah! Of course not! We go waaaay back, you and me. Waaaaaaaaaaaay back!”
“Exactly. So I know that a simple burial at sea could never be enough for you. You want to be famous, like me. You want to make history, like me.” Elaine’s eyes widen.
“It’s a good thing I fired Kramer,” Jerry muses. “He probably would have wanted me to reason with you, or something silly like that.”
He squints at the sky, then positions Elaine on his thumb-pad. She tries to protest, to bargain, anything to get out of her current situation, but her noises are like a mouse’s squeaks to Jerry now. He pulls his index finger back, and flick! He watches her body fly higher and higher.
Elaine Benes is the first human to leave the solar system.
Jerry looks out over his world, or at least, what he can see of it. His new station, nestled within the Mariana Trench, is a bit farther away from his peons than he would prefer. He remembers the good old days, when he could watch his great home city prosper under his benevolent rule.
Just imagining it, he swells with pride – quite literally, although he scarcely notices his growth anymore. His chest seems to push back a little when he tries to take a breath.
“I’ve always loved New York,” he thinks. “I’ve always taken the state’s motto to heart. I’ve been a good native son.”
He grows taller, and cannot bring his body any closer to the Earth. In fact, instead of being drawn toward the ground, he feels himself being tugged ever skyward. His lungs wheeze as he struggles for air. His body rises out of the ocean, away from the Earth.
Kramer walks past Monk’s Cafe. It wasn’t that long ago that he would spend his hours in pleasant conversation here with his friends, Jerry, Elaine, and… hm. Greg, perhaps? He pauses for a moment of silence. They had each had their flaws, but he tries to focus on the good they did. He doesn’t need to pause very long.
Kramer heads home, the sun on his face, the wind to his back.
jacobvanloon
yousharknotpass
titsay
dailybridgerton
janainaart
areudirty
