Tina continued doing her Godzilla impression through my little town. All this with plenty of
Hic-hic-hiccuping,
cough-cough-coughing
and
hee-hee-heeing.
Wait a minute, was that a giggle? I looked up and shouted to Junior, “Did you hear that?”
“Yes!” he cried. “I believe it is Tina!”
“But how? Why?” And then I spotted it. She had just stepped on one of the pigeon tail feathers she’d coughed up. “A feather!” I shouted. “It tickled the bottom of her foot!”
“Yes,” he cried. “I was unable to treat the bottom of her feet with the steel formula. They are the only part of her body still sensitive to touch!”
My mind went into overtime. “So maybe we could get her to laugh by tickling her feet. . . .”
Junior saw where I was going. “And perhaps she would roll onto her back as she did in the lab!”
“Yes!” I shouted. “That’s our solution!”
“Except for one minor detail.”
“What’s that?”
“Who is crazy enough to try to tickle her feet?”
I looked around. Not the police. They were too busy
K-pling! K-plang! K-zing!-ing.
Not the crowd. They were too busy shouting:
“OUR TOWN IS BEING DESTROYED!”
There was no one to help. No one to step up to the plate and take responsibility to save our town.
Well, almost no one . . .
Because there, in the midst of all the chaos, it hit me . . . all my problems, from my giant ears, to the falling snail, to terrorizing the town . . . they’d all happened for one reason and one reason only: I hadn’t been responsible enough to tell Mom the truth about the vase.
And Tina’s condition? Wasn’t I just as responsible (at least partially) for what was going on with her?
And if that was the case, then maybe, just maybe, the time had finally come. Maybe it was time for me to step up to the plate. Maybe it was time for me to quit dodging the truth and finally take responsibility.
Unfortunately, it was also time to see two army helicopters and a giant tank coming up over the horizon. Now, you didn’t have to be a genius to know they were about to blast us to smithereens. No problem for me. All I had to do was turn tail and run. A perfect plan, except . . .
“Would you be so kind as to assist me?!”
“Would you be so kind as to assist me?!”
Junior was still atop Tina’s back, crying for help. And if I didn’t do something, he and Tina would both become the army’s latest bull’s-eye in target practice! No, I couldn’t let that happen. Not and be . . . oh, no, there’s that word again . . . responsible.
But I knew what I had to do. So, with a deep breath, and a prayer that God was taking notes, I rushed toward Tina. With a surge of courage, I grabbed the fallen tail feather and raced in front of her to block her path. With a surge of stupidity, I held out the feather like a cross in some sort of vampire movie.
But apparently, Tina wasn’t much of a film buff. Instead of being afraid, she swooped down, grabbed me between her jaws, and
“AUGH!”
threw me on top of her back beside Junior.
“Welcome!” Junior cried. “Do you have further insight as to our next course of action?”
I tell you, the kid’s vocabulary was starting to bug me. But not as much as the helicopters with their pesky
Whop Whop Whop Whop
and that tank with its even peskier artillery that began
K-BLAMB! K-BLAM! K-BLAM!
firing at us!
Terrified by the explosions, Tina again reared up on her hind legs. This allowed me to utilize my incredible gift of clumsiness by accidentally rolling off her back. Luckily, I avoided becoming road kill by grabbing hold of one of her legs. Unluckily, I grabbed hold of it upside down.
The explosions kept getting
K-BLAMB! K-BLAM! K-BLAM!
closer.
Tina panicked and started to run. No problem, except every step she to-oo-ok shook me like the belly of a fat ma-a-an using a jackhamm-er-er-er in the middle of an earthqua-a-ake.
So there I was, becoming the world’s first human milk shake, when I heard Junior’s irritating little voice shout, “Mr. McDoogle! Mr. McDoogle!”
“Wha-a-at?” I yelled.
“You still have possession of the feather!”
“So-o-o?”
“So reach down and tickle her foot with it!”
“A-re-re you nu-u-uts?!”
K-BLAMB! K-BLAM! K-BLAM!
“It appears to be our only solution!!”
With nothing else better to do, I figured I’d give it a shot. I stretched the feather toward Tina’s foot. It didn’t quite reach, so I climbed down even lower, which made my ride even bu-u-umpier. At last I could reach her toe with the feather. I started moving the tip back and forth. And, sure enough, she started
“Tee-hee-hee”-ing . . .
then
“Ho-ho-ho”-ing . . .
and, as she laughed, she began to slow.
“Keep it up, Mr. McDoogle! Keep it up!”
I did. And so did she . . . louder and
“Har-har-har . . .”
harder, until she couldn’t take any more and—
“LOOK OUT! SHE’S ROLLING!”
Junior and I leaped off just as she flipped onto her back. Then, I quickly moved in to continue my attack as she kept right on
“Hee-hee, ho-ho, har-har!”-ing.
Spotting what had happened, the helicopters quickly swooped down and landed. Thankfully, the tank quit firing. And soon, both the army and the police were racing toward us. They brought in a veterinarian to give Tina a shot to knock her out. Actually, lots of shots . . . until she finally drifted off into tarantula tranquilizer land.
Meanwhile, all of those guys from the TV news closed in around me, demanding to know what it felt like to be a hero. I would have been happy to tell them, but I didn’t have a clue. It was just me doing the same ol’ same ol’! Just me going through another insane and absurd McDoogle mishap.
With Junior’s careful instructions, they started building a crate to cart Tina back to his lab where he would repair the G.O.O.F. and shrink her back to normal size.
Yes sir, everything was getting back to normal— a wonderful storybook ending where everybody would live happily ever after.
Well, almost everybody . . .
“Wally?”
I turned to see Mom and Dad making their way through the crowd. I could tell by the tone of Dad’s voice that he wasn’t happy. But at least he didn’t use my full name. Whenever that happens, I’m really in trouble.
“Wallace Ulysses McDoogle, you’ve got some explaining to do!”
Okay, now I’m in trouble.
I opened my mouth. I wanted to make up an excuse, but nothing came. I guess I knew it was time. It was time to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And it was time to take . . . here’s that word again . . . responsibility for my actions. Granted, it wasn’t one of my favorite words, but it looked like it was definitely becoming one of the most important ones.
When we last left Burping Boy he’d become just so much smudge on the highway of life. Covered in hundreds of pounds of BBs, he’d fallen faster than a kid’s smile when he learns he has to go to summer school. But, of course, it isn’t the falling that hurts, but the
K-SPLAT-ting.
Still, with all those BBs attached, there’s one other sound effect I forgot to mention. Since BBs tend to bounce, Burping Boy also tends to
K-Bounce.
“All right!” the hero shouts. “I knew you’d think of a way to save me!”
“Thanks,” I type. “Now let’s get on with the story.”
“Cool.”
In fact, he bounces so hard and high that soon he is shooting right back toward the helicopter—— “Oh, that’s good! Real goo——”
“Please.”
“Sorry.”
He shoots right back toward Hair Spray Dude’s helicopter. And with a few midcourse
burpa-burpa-burpas
he is able to fly through the open door and land on top of Hair Spray Dude!
“Hey!” Our villian shouts. “How did you get back up here?”
But this is no time to explain the author’s great genius. Instead, it is time for the obligatory (there’s an impressive word for your English teacher) fight to the finish. That’s right, soon they are punching and wrestling one another, rolling back and forth, and forth and back. Yes sir, it’s a battle to the end (or at least until one of them sprains a pinky), when suddenly—
K-Bump
“What’s AH-CHOO! that?” Hair Spray Dude cries.
K-Bump, K-Bump
Looking out the doorway, Burping Boy cries, “It’s the dust bunny. He’s grown so big he’s knocking into the helicopter.”
“AH-CHOO!” Hair Spray Dude shouts.
“What?” our hero yells.
“AH-CHOO! AH-CHOO!”
“Don’t tell me you’re allergic to dust?”
“AH-CHOO! AH-CHOO! AH-CHOO!”
“You can’t be creating dust bunnies to take over the world if you’re allergic to their dust!”
“You’re right,” Hair Spray Dude says, suddenly seeing the flaw in his plan——while trying to sniff-sniff back a stream flowing like the Amazon from his nose. “What shall I, snort-snort, do?”
“Well, first you have to find a tissue for that nose.”
“All I got is, sniff-sniff, my shirt.”
“That’s disgusting, but if that’s all you got...”
“Okay, hang on. HOOOOONK!
Our hero swallows back a wave of revulsion, then continues. “Next, you have to be truthful and take responsibility for your actions.”
“Truth and responsibility? Are you, AH-CHOO, sure?”
Wiping the spray from his face, our hero nods. “Absolutely. Just take a look at this new My Life As . . . book.” With one swift move our hero whips out Book #22 and opens it. “You see right here, on page 3, where Wally falls down the stairs and breaks his mom’s vase?”
“Yeah, sniff-sniff. ”
“And then, over here on page 4, where he tries to cover it up?”
“Not real smart, snort-snort, is he?”
“You can say that again. And check this out here: where he tries all those moneymaking schemes to buy another vase so his mom doesn’t find out.”
“Man, this guy’s really, sniff-snort, clueless, isn’t he?”
“All right,” I type. “I think we get the point!”
But they do not hear, as they continue reviewing my latest adven-ture... as the dust bunny continues
K-Bump, K-Bumping
into the helicopter, and as Hair Spray Dude continues
“AH-CHOO! AH-CHOO!”-ing.
Fortunately, it doesn’t last forever. As Hair Spray Dude keeps reading, he begins to realize the need to always tell the truth and take responsibility for his actions. Soon, the two of them are planning a way to save the world through a massive dust-sweeping campaign——something involving super-brooms. But the details aren’t important. What’s important is that Hair Spray Dude has learned the need to always tell the truth and take responsibility for his actions!
And so, as the two fly off into the sunset,
(begin sappy credit music here)
we can rest assured, knowing that the world will be a safer, saner, and–— “AH-CHOO!”–—slightly less damp place for each of us to live. All because someone has learned a very important lesson about...responsibility.
“Cool ending,” Burping Boy says.
“Thanks,” I type. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“And we couldn’t have done it without, sniff, you,” Hair Spray Dude says. “Well, at least not without all those incredibly ignorant mistakes you made these last couple of weeks.”
“Don’t you have an awards banquet to attend?”
“Oh, yeah, snort, that’s right.” With that, Hair Spray Dude turns and starts to exit the story. “It was fun,” he calls. “Wish me luck!”
“Good luck!” I type.
“See ya!” Burping Boy shouts.
“AH-CHOO!” Hair Spray Dude cries as he finally disappears from the page.
I sat looking at the screen a moment. It wasn’t a bad story, but now what? I suppose I could go downtown and attend the parade everyone was throwing in my honor. The parade that the rest of the town, even Tina, was celebrating at this very moment.
But it’s hard attending a parade in your honor when you’ve been grounded for life.
Yes, that was my folks’ discipline (though I suspect they’ll go easy on me in a decade or two). Still, their punishment was nothing compared to what I’d been through with my own lying and dodging of responsibility. Actually, I figured I got off pretty easy. And, if just sitting at home with Mom and Dad for the afternoon was what I had to do, then that was fine with—
Ding-Dong.
Who could that be? I got up and headed for the door. Wasn’t everyone at the parade? I reached the door, opened it, and saw— “Hello, giggle-giggle, Wallace.”
“Megan??” My voice went up ten octaves. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard about your having to stay home and figured, snap-snap, you might want some company. So I came over,” she said, then snapped her gum again.
“Oh,” I swallowed hard, “you didn’t have to do that.”
“Oh, but I wanted to,” she said, batting her eyes.
I stood frozen, unsure what to do.
“So, pop-pop, can I come in?”
“Uh. . . .” I searched for an excuse, but nothing came to mind.
“I won’t be a bother,” she said, stepping past me and heading toward a chair.
I followed. “So, uh . . . what do you want to do?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh,” I said. “So, uh . . . what do you like to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh,” I said. (As far as conversations go, this one wasn’t.)
She continued to stare. I continued to fidget.
“Well, you must like doing something?” I asked.
“I like to read.”
“No kidding?” I asked, brightening a little.
“Yes. Especially superhero stories.”
“No kidding?” I repeated, my voice kinda cracking in excitement as I glanced over at Ol’ Betsy.
“Yes, but there aren’t that many superhero stories around.”
“Oh, really,” I said. I walked over and snapped on Ol’ Betsy. “I bet we might be able to find one or two you’d be interested in.” (Actually, at last count I had 3,542—enough to keep her happy for hours.) And me? Well, finding somebody who actually liked reading what I wrote . . . well, maybe hanging with Megan Melkner wouldn’t be so bad after all.
“Really?” She giggled. “That would, snap-snap, pop-pop, be like (sigh-sigh, bat-bat) so cool.”
“Yeah,” I said, passing Ol’ Betsy over to her. “One can only hope (twitch, twitch), one can only (twitch, twitch) hope. . . .”