Colby’s first stop on her tour of the Mottomon Empire was a town with the motto, “Give the People What They Want.” It was one of her father’s favorite towns, as the rulers really listened to what the people wanted. Colby’s two friends, Jason and Allison, accompanied her.
When the trio entered the town, they found it disheveled. It featured narrow, winding streets full of large potholes and missing shingles on the roofs. They saw no one as they wandered towards the center of the town. Finally, they noticed a woman hurrying along.
“Excuse me,” Colby said, “Where is everyone?”
The woman yelled back, not stopping, “It’s Taco Wednesday, and I’m very late.”
Colby looked at her friends, confused. Everyone knew that taco day was Taco Tuesday.
They followed the woman and came to a packed town square.
In the middle of the square sat a fountain that looked like a hardshell taco and appeared to be flowing with hot sauce. All the people congregated around a taco truck, and on top of the truck stood a frantic-looking man dressed in a taco costume.
“As your mayor, Mayor Taco, I now declare Taco Wednesday has begun!”
The crowd cheered, and the taco truck’s window opened. Everyone mobbed the truck except for Colby and her friends, who followed the mayor as he hopped off and hurried to a building across the square labeled Taco Hall. They caught up to him just as he entered the foyer.
“Mr. Mayor,” Colby said. The man turned around.
“All of the tacos are outside,” the mayor said.
“We’re not here for the tacos. My name’s Colby—I’m King Preacher’s daughter. We’re on a mission to learn the mottos for all of the kingdom’s towns.”
The mayor collapsed on the floor and started to cry out of relief or exhaustion.
“Oh, I’m just so glad someone isn’t here for more tacos,” Mayor Taco said. “Things are even worse here now than when all the filling falls out of your taco.”
“What happened?” Colby asked. “How did you end up with Taco Wednesday?”
“Oh, it’s not just Taco Wednesday,” Mayor Taco said. He pulled out a taco-themed handkerchief and blew his nose. “Everything is tacos. Every day of the week is tacos. The whole budget goes to tacos. I changed my name to Mayor Taco.”
“But I thought your motto was, ‘Give the People What they Want?'” Colby said.
“I like tacos,” her friend Jason piped in.
“Who doesn’t?” Mayor Taco said. “That’s the problem. I did give the people what they wanted. We voted to make decisions, and for every decision, tacos won. Do we want to build a new school? Someone would suggest tacos instead, and everyone would vote for tacos. Did we want to give money to the Christmas Pageant? What if we had a Taco Pageant? Do we want to fix the damage from huge flooding? No, let’s flood the streets with tacos.”
“So you asked everyone what they wanted, and they said tacos?” Colby asked.
“Every time,” Mayor Taco said. “And now we’re almost out of money. No one works, and the system is about to fall apart.”
“You need to go talk to my father,” Colby said. “He’s in charge of this empire. He could help.”
“I’ve tried, but every time I try to get approval to go, the town votes to make more tacos.
Colby and her friends failed to convince Mayor Taco to stop giving the people what they want. It was their motto after all. They could only promise to tell Colby’s father about the taco troubles. They ate some delicious tacos and headed to the next town.