Harris and Philippe: The Bully Solution

Philippe walked home from school with his shoulders hunched, his new robot pencil sharpener clutched protectively against his chest. It was the third gift his mom had bought him this week to replace something Tommy Martinez had broken.

"You know," came a familiar deep voice from beside him, "your posture suggests either a heavy backpack or a heavy heart. Since I personally enchanted your backpack to weigh as much as a cloud's daydream, I'm guessing it's the latter."

Philippe didn't even jump anymore when Harris appeared out of nowhere, today sporting a tweed professor's jacket with elbow patches and a tiny pair of reading glasses perched impossibly between his eyes.

"It's Tommy again," Philippe sighed. "He broke my other pencil sharpener. Said manual ones are better because they build character."

"Ah yes, character building through office supply destruction. A classic misunderstanding of cause and effect." Harris adjusted his tiny glasses with his horn. "Perhaps we should pay young Tommy a visit?"

"Oh no." Philippe recognized that tone. "We're already there, aren't we?"

"Actually, we're everywhere Tommy has been in the last week," Harris replied cheerfully. They now stood in what looked like a movie theater playing multiple scenes at once on floating screens. "Welcome to the Time-Line Theater! Where every show is a rerun of your own life!"

Each screen showed Tommy in different situations: breaking Philippe's things, pushing other kids, but also helping his little sister with her shoelaces, feeding stray cats behind the school, and looking very small while his parents argued in the background.

"I don't understand," Philippe said, watching Tommy secretly leave half his lunch by a younger student's desk when they didn't have enough to eat.

"Bullies," Harris explained, now wearing a film director's beret and holding a megaphone made of solidified rainbow light, "are often starring in a very different movie than the one everyone else sees."

With a flash from his horn, Harris merged several of the floating screens. Suddenly, they were watching Tommy encounter himself.

"Wait, what's happening?" Philippe asked.

"A little temporal loop I like to call 'Meeting Yourself for Lunch,'" Harris explained. "Watch."

In the scene, Tommy was about to knock books out of a smaller kid's hands when another Tommy — slightly older-looking — stepped in.

"Hey," the second Tommy said. "Maybe don't do that."

"Why not?" the first Tommy challenged.

"Because someone did it to me last week and it really sucked," the second Tommy replied. "Also, your shoelace is untied."

When the first Tommy looked down, the second Tommy used the exact same fake-out move that Tommy himself always used on others. Both Tommies stared at each other in surprise, then started laughing.

"That's... actually pretty funny," the first Tommy admitted.

"Right? Way funnier when both people are laughing," the second Tommy said.

Philippe watched as more scenes played out — Tommy meeting himself in different situations, each time learning how his actions felt from the other side. Sometimes he was the helper, sometimes the one being helped. The time-loop Tommies formed an odd friendship with each other, never quite realizing they were the same person.

"But won't this cause some kind of time paradox?" Philippe asked.

"Oh, absolutely," Harris agreed, now wearing a bow tie that kept changing which way it spun. "I'll have mountains of paperwork to file with the Temporal Authorities. But sometimes a little paradox is worth it for a lot of perspective."

The next day at school, Tommy approached Philippe's desk. Philippe braced himself, but Tommy just placed a brand new electric pencil sharpener on the desk.

"Hey, uh, sorry about yesterday," Tommy mumbled. "Had a weird dream last night. Made me think about some stuff." He paused. "Also, I'm starting a homework help group at lunch. If you want to come. The kid who gave me the idea looks kind of like me, but he's cooler."

After Tommy left, Philippe turned to see Harris floating outside the classroom window, now dressed as a school crossing guard complete with fluorescent vest and stop sign.

"Harris," Philippe whispered, "did you make Tommy the crossing guard too?"

"Time loops are like friendship bracelets," Harris replied cryptically. "They work best when shared." He punctuated this wisdom with a thunder-fart that made all the crossing flags outside wave in salute.

The next month, Tommy was officially appointed junior safety patrol captain. Some say if you look closely, you can sometimes see him giving advice to himself near the bike racks. The other kids just assume they're twins.

And if sometimes the crossing guard schedule shows Tommy being in two places at once? Well, as Harris would say — and frequently does, to anyone who will listen — "Time is just a suggestion, but kindness is always right on schedule."

Philippe kept the new pencil sharpener on his desk. It never needed new batteries, though it did occasionally produce pencil shavings that spelled out "Be excellent to each other" in tiny graphite letters.

And Harris? He finally finished all the temporal paperwork — by hiring another Harris to do it for him.