DAY 3: Monday
My skims: 14
Wriggler’s skims: 7
Days to becoming world champion: 36 (Easy-peasy.)
Excellent day. I got 14 skims. Wriggler reckons it was only 13.
Money made for tinnie: $0 ($735 to go—we already have $15.)
It says in the laws of Guinness World Records that you need video evidence to prove you’ve broken a record. So whenever Wriggler and I go skimming we take it in turns to film each other’s throws. That way when we break the record we’ll be able to prove it. When I say we break the record I’m being polite. What I really mean is, when I break the record.
Video evidence is not perfect though. Wriggler is pretty hopeless on the camera and he missed my throw when I got the new record of fourteen. He reckons it was only thirteen so it’s his word against mine. Fourteen it is.
I would have got more but I accidentally pegged a kayaker with a rock. One thing I’ve learnt in life is that kayakers don’t have a sense of humour. It wasn’t like I was aiming at him. I didn’t even notice him until I let go of the rock. It was such a good throw I reckon if the kayaker’s head hadn’t got in the way I would have got twenty skims.
The other thing I learnt was how quickly a kayaker can move when he’s angry. Well, at least how quickly this huge, sandy-haired bloke could. We had to run and hide in the old falling-down house until he went away.
The old house stands next to the vacant lot where we go to skim. It’s a deserted sandstone place that no one has lived in for hundreds of years. It’s just a shell of a house really.
All the windows have been broken and most of the roof is missing. The floorboards are rotten and most are cracked. Some of them are missing completely. You need to be careful where you step. The whole place is covered in dirt and dried mud.
Everyone I know reckons the house is haunted. All the locals tell horror stories about what happened to the boy that lived there. Some say he was killed by robbers, others reckon his grandfather went mad and strangled him because he thought the boy was the devil. Wriggler reckons that the kid was ripped apart by feral dogs. The only thing everyone agrees on is that the kid’s ghost still hangs around. If you listen closely you can hear weird noises, like water dripping when it isn’t even raining, or wind howling even though it’s a still day.
Wrigs didn’t want to hang around by the river in case the kayaker came looking for us, so we headed back to my house. When we got there we realised we had the whole day ahead of us and nothing to do.
Until I came up with the most excellent money-making plan ever. Everyone knows the best way to get famous is by posting something on YouTube. All you need to do is get a video camera, push someone over and make it look like an accident.
Wrigs and I did some research on the internet. One of the most successful clips ever is two brothers sitting in a bath. One looks about four years old and the other is about one. The four-year-old splashes the baby with some bathwater. Then the baby jumps on the four-year-old and bites him on the shoulder. Really hard. The older brother screams. The baby watches his brother crying for a moment, then laughs evilly and says, ‘More.’
Two hundred and fifty million people have watched the clip and the family made a fortune out of it. They sell t-shirts with a photo of the baby laughing and the word ‘More’ on it. They sell fridge magnets, baseball caps and school lunchboxes. Anything they can jam the baby’s evil face on. The baby gets paid to go on TV ads and just look at the camera and say, ‘More.’ How brilliant is that?
It got me thinking about a clip we could make to become rich and famous so we’d be able to buy the tinnie.
As I mentioned before, everyone reckons Squid is really cute, even though he has a huge head and talks like a baby.
My idea was to film Squid kicking a ball against the garage wall in our front yard. Then Wriggler would walk in the front gate and say, ‘Kick it to me.’ Squid would kick the ball to Wriggler. Wrigs would completely miss it and the ball would hit him in the nuts.
At that point Wrigs would scream and collapse onto the ground in pain. Squid would walk over, look at him for a moment, then pick up the ball and say, ‘Again.’ Gold.
I started videoing and it was going well. Wriggler came through the front gate and said to Squid, ‘Kick it to me,’ just like we planned.
But I hadn’t reckoned on what a good shot Squid was. He timed the kick as though he was scoring the winning goal in the World Cup final.
The ball lifted off the ground and flew towards Wriggler like a heat-seeking missile. Wrigs tried to get away from it, but it smashed right into his jugglies, at about a hundred kilometres an hour. He screamed, clutched himself, then collapsed onto the ground. He was bawling his eyes out.
Squid walked over and looked at him for a moment. Then he laughed, picked up the ball and said, ‘Again.’
I was laughing so hard I was worried I was shaking the camera. Wriggler just stayed on the ground, crying. It was the funniest thing ever. Way funnier than I’d planned. When Wrigs finally got up, he grabbed the camera and stormed off.
I waited a couple of hours for him to cool down. Then I rang him to see if we could post the video on YouTube. He was still angry. He said he didn’t think there was anything funny about the film at all. Then he told me he’d deleted it.
Wrigs needs to get a sense of humour. That clip was rolled gold. We’ll never get the tinnie if Wrigs keeps stuffing up my money-making ideas like that.
When Mum came home I told her she should enrol Squid in the Pensdale Juniors Soccer Team.