LOSING THE PICTURE

The worst things can happen suddenly. One moment, Neal was lying on the floor enjoying his favorite cartoon—Whizzbang Troopers in Hyper Space. Then, with no warning, the picture vanished. There was nothing on the screen but blackness and a dim reflection of the living room.

“Hey!” Neal said after he realized that this wasn’t some great new special effect.

“What’s wrong?” his sister Mary asked.

“Teebee gone,” two-year-old Trina said. “No teebee.”

“I’ll take care of this.” Neal knew that, as the oldest, it was his job to fix the problem. He got up and searched for the remote control. The search took several minutes. Somehow, the remote was always sneaking under a couch cushion or hiding behind the bookcase. This time, the remote had burrowed under a pile of magazines on the corner table. Neal tried a different channel. There was no picture. He tried turning the TV off and on. It didn’t help. He tried turning the TV off, counting to ten, then turning the TV on. That didn’t help either.

“Want teebee!” Trina shouted. She started to cry.

“Do something, Neal,” Mary said.

Neal thought about getting his mom. She was studying for her class and had asked them not to disturb her unless there was an emergency. Was this an emergency? It certainly seemed that way to Neal, but he still wanted to see if he could solve the problem himself. He grabbed the first thing he could find. “Trina, here, look at this.” He opened the magazine and flipped past the cover. “Look at all the pretty pictures.”

“Make pictures move,” Trina said.

“Sure,” Neal told her. “I can make them move.” He waved the magazine around and made whooshing sounds. For a moment, Trina just stared at him. Then she smiled. Then she grinned. Then she laughed.

“More,” Trina said.

Neal moved the magazine around some more. “Make pictures talk,” Trina said.

“I can do that.” Mary took the magazine. She held it up for Trina and started telling her a story about the pictures. She just seemed to be making the tale up as she went along. Trina kept smiling and giggling. Each time Mary turned a page, she changed the story to match the picture. No matter what was there—a person, a car, a toothbrush—Mary managed to make it interesting.

Neal sat down. He enjoyed listening to Mary’s story. It was full of surprises. When Mary was finished, even before Trina could shout for more, Neal took the magazine and started telling a story of his own. “This is fun,” he said between stories. He liked the way he could start with nothing but a picture and dream up a whole world of pretend adventures. He also enjoyed knowing that he could make anything he wanted happen, and the story could come out just the way he wished.

“My turn,” Mary said when Neal was finished. She took the magazine, flipped the pages to a picture of a stream, and started telling a story about a mermaid who lived in a creek that flowed through magic woods.

A truck pulled up outside. The screech of its brakes startled Neal. He hadn’t realized how quiet it was in the house.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. His mom had asked him to keep an eye out for a package she was expecting. He went to the porch to get it. As he turned toward the door, he noticed something flapping in the wind. The wire connecting the TV to the antenna had pulled loose. That’s all it was. The antenna had become disconnected. His mom could hook that back up in a second. Neal realized it was almost time for the Adventures of Captain Superblast and his Zany Sidekicks.

He returned to the living room, eager to show his sisters that he had found the problem. As he walked in, Neal heard part of the story Mary was telling about an elf who lived inside a giant detergent box. “Guess what,” he said proudly. He felt great that he’d figured out the trouble all by himself.

“What?” Mary glanced up from the magazine.

Neal looked at the blank TV screen. He listened to the sounds in the room. There weren’t any. It was kind of nice. “Nothing,” he said. There would be plenty of time later for television. Besides, he wanted to learn what happened to the elf. He sat down on the rug and listened to his sister tell a story.