“It seems to me we’re thinking about this problem in the opposite way we should,” Mutt began as he paced around the edge of the hole slowly. “You see, we’ve been trying to bring Karen up and out of the hole. I think we should turn that around.”
“What do you mean?” asked Stick Dog.
“Instead of bringing her out of the top, we bring her out of the bottom,” Mutt explained.
“We dig up to her from the other side.”
Stick Dog asked, “The other side of what?”
“Well, the Earth, of course,” Mutt answered simply. “Then Karen drops out. We don’t need balloons or drool or anything! She just drops out!”
Poo-Poo said, “Sounds great!”
Stripes agreed.
And Karen yelled up out of the hole. “I’ll start digging down right now! Then you guys dig up. And we’ll meet!”
Brown clumps of dirt started to spray from the hole as Karen began to dig.
Stick Dog had to act quickly.
“Karen, stop digging!” he called, looking down the hole at Karen’s frenzied activity. Some dirt hit him in the face when he did. He didn’t want that hole—and Karen—to get any deeper. “It’s a great plan, Mutt. And I’m glad everyone likes it. But there’s no way we can go to the other side of the Earth. It would take years.”
“What if we ran really fast?” Poo-Poo asked. “I’m a pretty good runner, you know.”
“You are a good runner,” Stick Dog said. “But it’s thousands of miles.”
Mutt asked, “What if we flew a great big plane? You know, like one of those supersonic jet thingamajigs?”
“Yeah, Stick Dog,” Stripes chimed in. She liked Mutt’s idea. “Why don’t we fly a supersonic jet thingamajig?”
“We don’t have a supersonic jet, umm, thingamajig.”
Poo-Poo asked, “We don’t?”
“No,” Stick Dog said.
Karen had been listening to all of this from the bottom of the hole and wanted to participate. She called out, “Maybe you have a supersonic jet thingamajig in your pipe, Stick Dog!”
“I don’t.”
Stripes asked, “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“I think I know what happened,” Poo-Poo said then. “Stick Dog, I bet you forgot where you parked your supersonic jet thingamajig!”
Stick Dog stopped responding then. He took a deep breath and looked down at the ground. There was a single dandelion there close to his left front paw. He took several calm, soothing breaths and stared at that dandelion. He watched it sway ever so slowly in the gentle spring breeze.
It swayed back and forth.
So slowly.
So calmly.
Back and forth.
So slowly.
So calmly.
Back and forth.
So slowly.
So calmly.
Poo-Poo whispered, “What do you guys think Stick Dog is doing?”
Mutt shrugged his shoulders. He had no idea.
But Stripes did.
“I know what he’s doing,” she whispered to Poo-Poo and Mutt. “I think he’s trying to remember where he parked his supersonic jet thingamajig.”
Stick Dog raised his head to look at Mutt, Stripes, and Poo-Poo. He had successfully relaxed.
“So?” Stripes asked when her and Stick Dog’s eyes met.
Stick Dog asked, “So what?”
“So did you remember where you parked your supersonic jet thingamajig?”
“No, I didn’t. I don’t—”
“So, what you’re saying is,” Poo-Poo interrupted. “You have a supersonic jet thingamajig, you just don’t remember where you parked it.”
“No, umm. No,” Stick Dog said, resisting the urge to lower his head and look at that dandelion again. “And can we stop saying ‘supersonic jet thingamajig’?”
Stripes asked, “Why?”
“Because you only say ‘thingamajig’ when you don’t know the name of something,” Stick Dog said. “But we do know the name of this thing. It’s called a supersonic jet. It’s big and fast and flies in the air. It’s a supersonic jet. It’s not a supersonic jet thingamajig.”
“Stick Dog?” Stripes said, and squinted one eye. She was suspicious about something, you could tell. “You seem to know an awful lot about supersonic jet thingamajigs.”
“No, it’s just that—”
“I think maybe you’re hiding something from us!” Stripes exclaimed. “You really do have a supersonic jet thingamajig, don’t you?!”
Before Stick Dog could even answer, Poo-Poo exclaimed, “Do you really, Stick Dog!?”
“Where have you been hiding it?” Mutt asked. “In your pipe? Did you hide it underneath that old couch cushion that you sleep on? Is that where it is, you tricky devil? Did you hide the supersonic jet thingamajig under your couch cushion?!”
Stick Dog made a very important decision right then.
He decided he would not be frustrated anymore.
Or aggravated.
Or bothered.
Or exasperated.
Or annoyed.
He decided, instead, to be amused.
And he decided it might be easier just to play along with his friends.
“Okay, okay,” Stick Dog said, and nodded his head and smiled broadly. “You guys got me. I thought I could fool you, but I can’t. It’s true. I do have a supersonic jet. And it’s true I’ve been hiding it from you all these years.”
“I knew it!” Stripes exclaimed.
“You can’t fool us!” Poo-Poo added, equally delighted.
From down in the hole, Karen yelled, “Yes!”
“Where have you been hiding it, you sneaky fella?” Mutt asked.
“Umm,” Stick Dog said, and thought quickly. “I hid it out at that big airport way down Highway 16. It’s about fifty miles from here. You can go see it anytime. It’s big and silver.”
“You hid it at the airport?” Poo-Poo asked. “Well, how about that? Who in the world would ever think of looking for a supersonic jet thingamajig at an airport? That’s just crazy!”
Everybody else thought it was crazy too.
“Yeah, you guys totally busted me this time,” Stick Dog said, and smiled a little to himself. “But, unfortunately, since my supersonic jet is fifty miles down Highway 16, I think we better come up with a different way to get Karen out of the hole.”
“How are we going to do that, Stick Dog?” called Karen.
“I happen to have an idea myself,” Stick Dog replied.