CHAPTER 4

DUCT TAPE

The next morning, I was sitting with my mom and dad at the breakfast table. My parents looked horrible. They had dark circles under their eyes, and their faces were all red and splotchy like someone had smacked them around with a fly swatter.

“Do I have a snoring problem?” I asked, slurping down a spoonful of cereal.

Mom and Dad gave each other a weird look.

“Everybody snores, Andy,” Mom answered. “Why do you ask?”

“My friends told me why Denmark has so many coffee shops and noise reduction stores in town. It’s because my snoring is so loud. Is it true?”

“You snore a little,” Dad said. “But, like your mother said, everybody snores.”

“But not everybody snores so loudly that it causes minor earthquakes,” I said.

“Where did you get such an idea?” Mom asked me.

“I’m not stupid. I know you spent thousands of dollars soundproofing your bedroom and earthquake-proofing our house.”

Mom scooted next to me. “You do snore, Andy,” she said. “And it can be a little loud at times, but we love you and I’m sure you will grow out of it soon.”

“It’s kind of embarrassing,” I said. “I mean, my nose is as big as a mountain, and from what I’m told, I snore as loud as a space shuttle launch.”

“You’re perfect just the way you are,” Dad said, and then they shooed me out the door.

I met Vivian and the Not-Right Brothers inside the Nostril to plan our snoring attack.The list of cures we discovered online ranged from conventional advice—using nasal strips and taking decongestants before bed—to completely wacky things, like sleeping upside down with your feet tied to a tree limb or strengthening your throat muscles by yodeling on a hillside.

“When my dad snores at night,” Mumps said, “Mom gives him a hard elbow to the ribs and then yells for him to go sleep on the couch.”

Vivian rolled her eyes. “Let’s start with the easiest cures,” she said. “Nasal strips just might do the trick. They work by lifting the nasal passages to keep them open for normal airflow.

“Think again,” Jimmy said. “Nasal strips are for people with normal-sized noses. Using one on Schnoz is like sticking a Band-Aid on an elephant’s trunk. It won’t do a thing.”

“Duct tape might work,” TJ mused. “It works for everything else. I read an article about a guy who made a two-story house using nothing but duct tape.”

“Hmmm…” I mumbled. “I guess we could give it a try.”

“Then let’s do it,” Vivian said. “We’ll duct tape our way to a peaceful night’s sleep.”

Twelve-hours and sixteen rolls of duct tape later, the gang had finally managed to duct tape my nose open.

“How does it feel?” Mumps asked.

“Not very comfortable,” I wheezed. “It feels like the time my nose got stuck inside a porthole when we visited the USS Constitution on our field trip to the Boston Navy Yard.”

“There are a lot of things more important than comfort,” Jimmy preached. “Like the town of Denmark getting a good night’s sleep.”

“How will I know if it works?” I asked.

“Simple,” TJ said. “Your snoring routinely causes an earthquake that registers a 4.5 on the Richter scale. We’ve all felt the effects.”

“Dishes break, window panes rattle, furniture topples over,” Vivian added. “There could even be small cracks in the walls and foundations of older buildings. We’ll ask people tomorrow if any of those things happened in the middle of the night. That’s how we’ll know if we cured your snoring.”

“But the most important thing is the coffee shop action in the morning,” TJ said. “If people are lined up down the block to get their caffeine fix, we’ll know the duct tape didn’t work.”

Vivian and the Not-Right Brothers wished me luck and I went to bed.When the morning came, I peeled off my duct tape nasal strips and rushed around the house. I looked for broken dishes, toppled furniture, cracks in the walls. I saw no sign of damage! Hope rose in my chest like a helium balloon as I threw on my clothes, hopped on my bike, and raced downtown.

As soon as I reached Main Street, my hopeful helium balloon deflated into a lump of latex. Hundreds of people lined the streets, their eyes baggy from lack of sleep, waiting patiently for their cup of morning coffee.

I saw Vivian and the Not-Right Brothers pushing their way through the early morning cappuccino crowd. Their faces looked as disappointed as I felt on the inside.

“No big deal,” Vivian said, trying to sound optimistic. “We just go back to square one and try again.”

The next night, the gang talked me into taking a nasal decongestant. They were hoping the medicine would clear my nostrils and make me stop snoring. Since there was enough snot clogging up my nose to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, I needed to slurp down over two gallons of syrupy stuff. The experiment was a complete waste of time, money, and cherry-flavored stuffy nose medicine, because the next morning I awoke to the most damage ever. The bell tower on top of the First Parish Church had toppled over. Broken water pipes in the street spouted like Old Faithful, and even more people lined the streets for their morning coffee.

Over the next week, we tried out even more so-called cures: sleeping on my side rather than my back, sleeping on a tilted bed, exercising the muscle on the roof of my mouth, mouthpieces, homeopathic anti-snoring sprays.

Nothing worked.

The downtown coffee shops grew richer. I became more desperate.

“We’ve tried everything,” Mumps said one day while we were hanging out inside the Nostril. “What do we do now?”

Vivian lifted Mr. Sticky from his habitat, stuck him to the wall, and stared out the window.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked her.

She turned to face me. “I hate to say it, but you may have sleep apnea.”

Just hearing the word apnea sent shivers up my neck. I’m not sure why, but the word sounded scary to me.

“What’s sleep apnea?” Jimmy asked.

Vivian explained, “Sleep apnea is a chronic condition that causes the throat tissues to block your airway, preventing you from breathing for ten seconds or longer.”

“How do we find out if that’s causing Schnoz’s snoring?” TJ asked.

“We do a sleep test,” Vivian replied. “We rig up a camera and film him while he sleeps. The next morning we watch the film. If he has sleep apnea, we’ll know exactly what we are dealing with.”