Kansas Obsession

          There was a man named Thomas Hope who lived in Provo Utah. He had long black hair and a mustache. One day he was at Best Buy in Orem, and was looking around. He wanted to buy a CD, but didn’t know which one to buy. As he was looking through the CDs he saw a Kansas CD called “Point of Know Return”. He thought the design was brilliant, so he bought it.

            When he got into his car, he put it in, and started listening to it. By the time he got home, he was hooked. He listened to it consistently, and then decided it was time to buy more Kansas CDs. He ended up buying “Kansas”, “Song for America”, “Masque”, “Leftoverture”, “Monolith”, and “Audio Visions”. He listened to them whenever he drove, and enjoyed every minute of it. After about a month’s listening, when he was very familiar with them, he could barely think of anything else.

One day he stumbled upon an old box in his attic, which still had remains from the previous owners. He had never seen it before, so he decided to open it. It was a magic wand. He picked it up, and started waving it around. He said, “The world will now be converted to a fully Kansas oriented world! Everything Kansas!” After that, he put the wand down, and went downstairs to make dinner.

When he opened his food cupboard, the first thing he saw was “Audio Visions Cereal”. It was a box of cereal shaped like CDs and musical notes, and the box had the images on the front and back of the Kansas CD “Audio Visions”. Thomas shook his head, and wondered where it came from. He then remembered the magic wand, and realized that maybe it was real. He thought to himself, “I was just kidding, but this is pretty cool!”

He decided to eat the Audio Visions cereal. It tasted just like Captain Crunch, which is was he figured it was before the transformation. After he ate, he went to his bedroom to go to bed. He noticed he had “Point of Know Return” bed sheets, and a “Leftoverture” pillow. He laughed really hard, and thought this was really weird.

The next day he prepared for school. He grabbed his back pack and got in his car. When he started his car, he remembered he left all his Kansas CDs inside. As soon as he was about to go back in and get them, he heard “Opus Insert” playing on the radio. Again, he remembered the magic wand, and realized maybe the world was now fully everything Kansas.

He changed every station, and found that every station was playing Kansas all the time. He was laughing extremely hard, and thought this was really funny. He opened his CD container, and saw it was filled with Kansas CDs, even though he knew they were originally CDs by other bands.

On his way to school, he noticed that everybody was wearing a Kansas T-shirt. He had never laughed so hard in his entire life. Every restaurant, gas station, grocery store, and license plate was relevant to Kansas in some way. He was loving every minute of it, and knew the whole world would have to deal with it.

When he got to school, he noticed the students were talking more than usual before class started. He overheard a conversation.

“What is going on?! I woke up this morning, and everything is different! My bed sheets have a different design, my clothes are all different, and the stores are all different! I wanted to watch TV, but every channel had this band ‘Kansas’ on it!”

“I know what you mean. My IPOD is completely filled with Kansas songs, and there is nothing else! It is so annoying!”

Mrs. Parker, the biology teacher walked in.

“Okay class, today we are going to watch a video. I have prepared a worksheet for you to take notes on, so please pay attention.”

As soon as Thomas received his worksheet, he burst out laughing. The questions were all about Kansas. For example, “What is the fifth track on Leftoverture? Who wrote ‘All I Wanted’? What year was Point of Know Return released?”

Mrs. Parker pressed play. Rather than being a biology video, it was a documentary on Kansas. Mrs. Parker was very confused. She kept saying, “I prepared this video last night, and put it in this case! This is not what it is supposed to be!”

Meanwhile, Thomas was more amused than he had ever been in his entire life. The students were agonizing over the worksheet, and Mrs. Parker kept taking out the video and checking it. Eventually one of the students handed her the worksheet, and she freaked out.

“Somebody replaced my worksheet! Never mind! We are going to read from the textbook!”

Everyone in the class searched their backpacks for their biology book, but couldn’t find it. Instead, they all noticed there was a book as thick as their biology book, called “The History of Kansas”. Nobody knew how it got in there, and were all extremely confused.

Mrs. Parker was furious. She yelled, “Just take out a sheet of paper! I am going to write biology notes on the board, and I want you to copy them down!”

            Mrs. Parker started writing on the board. The words, “The first Kansas album is entitled ‘Kansas’”. Mrs. Parker erased it, shook her head, and wrote again. Now the board read, “Jon Elefante replaced Steve Walsh for the album ‘Vinyl Confessions’”. Mrs. Parker moaned, and the class was laughing hysterically.

            Eventually Mrs. Parker said, “Never mind! I will tell you what to write! Write this down first. The fourth song on the Kansas album…I mean, the song ‘Lonely Wind’…What is going on?!”

            She went to her desk, slammed her fists on the table and started crying. The whole class was silent, and felt very awkward. They didn’t know whether to laugh their heads off, or feel extremely afraid.

            Mrs. Parker stood up, smiled and said, “Let’s play ‘Two truths and a lie!’ Write down two things that are true, and one thing that is a lie! Then I will have everyone in the class read theirs, and we will vote on which one is the lie!”

            The faces of the classmates lit up. They were relieved, because they hated biology, and were much more welcome to games. After ten minutes, Mrs. Parker picked on someone to read theirs.

            Suzanne read, “Okay! The second song on the Kansas album ‘Leftoverture’ is ‘The Wall’, Phil Ehart is the name of the drummer of Kansas, and the name of the fourth Kansas album is ‘Audio Visions’”.

            The class was silent, including Mrs. Parker. Ten seconds later, Mrs. Parker said, “Who votes for number one?” Seven students try as they can to raise their hands, but are unable to. “Who votes for number two?” Eleven students try to raise their hands, but are unable to. “Who votes for number three?” Everyone raises their hands, whether they wanted to or not.

            Immediately, everybody agreed that the game was going extremely lame, and they didn’t want to play it anymore. Class was over, so Thomas headed over to his next class, Symphonic Band.

            When he entered the band room, he heard several people playing Kansas songs on their instruments. This was too funny for Thomas. He had been laughing consistently all day, and this was causing him to laugh even harder. Those who weren’t playing their instruments were looking through their music folders extremely confused. All the music had been transformed into Kansas sheet music.

            The band director cut everyone, and announced what piece they would warm up with. “Okay everyone, let’s start of today with ‘Peaceful and Warm’”. Immediately, everyone had a confused look on their face. They all found a copy of it in their folders, and decided to go ahead. The band director was just as confused as everyone else, but decided not to let it bother him.

            The strange Kansas transformation events occurred the rest of the day, and everyone was unable be successful in their classes, because everything was Kansas oriented. The funniest thing that happened was Thomas’s A Cappella class tried to sing the National Anthem. They kept singing Kansas songs instead.