If there’s one thing that always comes to mind when you mention Little Orphan Annie (aside from showtunes that, when you sing them, will makes all your friends shun you like an Amish man with a cable modem and a zoot suit), it’s the fact that she’s something of an anatomical anomaly, insomuch as she has all white eyes.  Now, this has always seemed kind of creepy to me, but that’s beside the point.  What does matter though, is that this particular affliction of hers is extremely rare, being confined, in fact, to just three different individuals in the course of human history.  They are of course, Little Orphan Annie herself, Raiden the thunder god from Mortal Kombat, and Geordi LaForge, chief engineer of the U.S.S. Enterprise N.C.C. 1701-D (the very fact that I knew all that pretty much brands me as a geek for the rest of my life, but I think I already crossed that particular Rubicon of geekdom when I wrote an entire blog about the secret life of Snarf).  Now, I find it to be frankly incredible that there are only three people and/or thunder gods in the world who suffer from this particular ailment, without there being some kind of a connection.  There are a number of possible explanations for how these three very different people came to be united by a common trait like this, from all of them taking part in an ill-fated experimental contact lens trial to Little Orphan Annie going mad and biting the other two of them in some fevered ragamuffin frenzy (Ragamuffin Frenzy, by the way, would be a totally sweet name for a band).  When all is said and done though, I think that neither of these explanations makes any sense at all, leaving us with but a single option as to the common origin of these fabled and infamous three.

            That of course is this: they’re all siblings who were born to a poor family of Jell-O ranchers on the banks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana.  Every day they’d all gather on the front porch of their plywood gazebo, playing harmonica, eating moonpies, and building a small Thunderdome entirely out of dead squirrels and RC Cola cans.  There in their bastion of domestic bliss, they all grew up together, singing dirt chanties and carving possums into stylish yet modest swimwear.  Indeed, the three of them could have gone on indefinitely like that, dancing with catfish and turning marmots in to marmalade.  Alas, such an idyllic way of life can rarely be expected to endure forever, and this situation was no different.  Bill Cosby Industries bought out the family’s Jell-O farm, and the three children had to go their separate ways and try to make a name for themselves in the world, while sending back all they could spare to their poverty-stricken parents, Mumm-Ra and Imelda Marcos, who were living in a 24 hour pancake emporium with a generous all you can eat deal.

            Little Orphan Annie, who had always wondered why her parents had named her that instead of just “Annie” decided one of the many professional cheese wranglers who were making their way out West at the time, helping to meet the ever-increasing demand for tough and courageous men and women who could drive the vast herds of cheese across the Great Plains from the spawning pits of Nevada to the slicing yards of St. Louis (the patron saint of cheese, particularly Cheeses of Nazareth).  For many seasons Little Orphan Annie (who was getting really tired of trying to explain her most uncalled for name to everyone she met) drove her charge, a snarling horde of Goudas halfway across the nation, and might well have gone on indefinitely, were it not for the Great Cheese Shortage of aught seven, when a terrible blight struck the cheese herds and forced many cheese wranglers to head into the big city in search of other employment.  Unfortunately, there were no jobs to be had for a girl with creepy all white demon eyes and Little Orphan Annie had to start stealing car stereos and selling them on Ebay to get by.  Happily, she eventually met Dick Cheney’s grandfather, Daddy Warbucks, and now rules over a media empire of great snazzitude and awesomosity.

            Geordi LaForge had a much more challenging road ahead of him, for as soon as he left home, he was captured by slavers and forced to take part in an epic miniseries that people still watch today when they feel like they ought to see something important.  This miniseries is of course, Ken Burns’ An American Tragedy: The Disco Era.  After this though, Geordi made his way to public television, where he got a job as the host of Reading Rainbow, while going to night school and taking correspondence courses to become a certified starship engineer.  At last the break he had been waiting for came his way, when his old friend Worf came by for a dramatic reading of “Goodnight Moon” and mentioned in passing that the starship Enterprise needed more weird people on it, and the chief engineer spot was open.  So, donning a big funny looking hair clip to hide the whiteulosity of his eyes, Geordi LaForge was at last living his dream, to be best friends with an android and work on a spaceship run by the leader of the X-Men.

            The youngest of the three, little Raiden, knew all along that if he was going to make anything of himself, he was going to need a good education, so he got a part time job as a human refrigerator magnet, while taking classes at the local community college to earn his two year Be Some Kind of Ancient Japanese Thunder God or Something Degree.  It was the best three dollars he ever spent.  After graduating, Raiden made a name for himself with the publication of his classic book on growing up, “Are you there God, it’s me Raiden?” which told kids absolutely nothing of value, but was made into a Jerry Bruckheimer film some years later anyway.  When he heard about the upcoming video game, Mortal Kombat though, Raiden knew he had to have a part in it, and so, after beating out Matt Damon and Secretary of State Madeline Albright, he got the role, the royalties from which continue to support him to this very day.

            The three of them still keep in touch now and then, and they hold a big family reunion every year back on their ancestral farm, which they got back from Bill Cosby after an epic battle on top of a flaming Nazi dirigible.  For the most part though, they just keep on doing their own thing, although recent rumors suggest that they’ll all be taking part in next year’s big Broadway revival of “Alf!”the musical.