Carrot Scruggs

Carrot and his mom.[1]

Carrot Scruggs is the son of Tackleford Cormorant's chief editor Paula Scruggs, and a student of Griswald's Grammar School, where he is the classmate of Eustace Boyce, Esther de Groot, Sarah Grote and Paul Milford. He is a minor recurring character in Scary Go Round.

Concerning his physical appearance, he is sticking out of the crowd due to having a pyramid-shaped hair cut similar to that of his mother's, just with the difference that he has side burns, and that he is a ginger and she a brunette.

Carrot's fight against the school bully Gary Parsons was the subject matter of the first issue of Esther's and Sarah's fanzine Guns for Eyes.[2]

Romance

Even though his classmates got the impression that he was a late-bloomer when it comes to puberty [3], he soon started to notice the attractive women around him, such as Shelley Winters.[4] Later that year, he developed a crush on someone more his own age, namely Sarah Grote.[5] Unfortunately, this was the time when Sarah in turn started her romantic relationship with Ryan Beckwith, which led to a jealous (and completely drunken) Carrot punching Ryan in the face.[6] (And an angry Amy Chilton kicking Carrot's ass.[7])

Career

Though Carrot screwed up his final exams in the last year of school [8], he had the luck to get hired on the spot by Hugo Rodriguez. (He had a vacant position to fill due to Shelley quitting just a minute before.)[9] Carrot's job performance in Hugo's sandwich shop was so good that Hugo even resorted to telling crass lies in order to keep him: A representative of the Potterton Writing Academy entered the shop and asked for Carrot's whereabouts, because he had a scholarship offer for him - and Hugo pretended that Carrot was dead.[10] Hugo felt remorse soon after though, so he decided to fulfill Carrot's dream of driving around in a delivery van.[11] However, Carrot didn't have a driving license yet, and after the inevitable accident happened [12], Carrot felt compelled to follow Hugo's rather questionable advise: "Burn the van, burn your clothes, leave town."[13] Luckily, this situation didn't seem to have been permanent: During her university years, Esther met Carrot again during a party at Milford's (thus back in town), where Carrot told her that he now had a literary agent, which may imply that he did get the Potterton or a similar scholarship after all.