My Life as a Toasted Time Traveler, page 7
“Yes!” I cried. “Anything to stop this! Take me back! Take me back!”
We
squeak, squeak, squeak
love you, . . .
“Are you sure?”
squeak, squeak, squeak
You . . .
“YES!” I screamed. “YES!”
. . . are great.
squeak, squeak, squeak . . .
“Ready!” I heard one of me shout.
squeak, squeak, squeak
“Aim!”
We love
squeak, squeak . . .
“FIRE!”
But instead of the ol’ familiar WOOSSHhhh . . . I felt somebody shaking me.
“Wally,” a voice was saying, “Wally, are you all right? Wally, wake up. . . .”
Chapter 10
Wrapping Up
I opened my eyes and there was Billy Buckleman staring down at me. “Are you all right?” he asked.
I blinked, trying to figure out where I was. There had been no Wooosshhhhing, and no tumbling around in the spin, wash, and dry cycle of some cosmic time machine. One minute I was Wally the econo-sized rat bait. The next I was regular ol’ Wally the dork-oid . . . with a king-size headache.
“What happened?” I mumbled.
“The ball, it hit you on the head.”
“Ball?” I asked.
“Yeah, you stumbled in that gopher hole over there and the ball bounced right off the top of your head.”
“So I’m back at the All-City Championship?” I asked eagerly.
“Of course.”
“And I didn’t catch the ball?” I asked even more hopefully.
“I’m afraid not.”
Now I was practically shouting with enthusiasm. “And we lost?”
“Well, not exactly.” He held out his glove and grinned. “It bounced off your head and right into my mitt!”
I stared at the ball not believing my eyes. He had caught it.
“You caught the ball?” I asked, sitting up in amazement. “You caught the ball, and you’re the hero?”
“Well,” he shrugged, “I don’t know about the hero part, but I caught the ball.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “So you’re not going to quit sports? You’re not going to drop out of school or become a crook or try to blow me up?”
He cocked his head at me in concern. “You sure you’re okay?”
I glanced around for my friends in the flying vacuum cleaners, but there was nobody in sight. Just the hundreds of crowd members swarming onto the field. And instead of my name, they were all chanting somebody else’s: “Bill-y Bill-y Bill-y.”
They joined the rest of the team as they came out and surrounded us, all the time chanting, “Bill-y, Bill-y, Bill-y. . . .”
A moment later they had lifted him onto their shoulders. Coach was right there with them. He was so excited that he almost smiled at me. I smiled back and watched as they carried Billy off the field continuing their chant, “Bill-y, Bill-y, Bill-y. . . .”
“Whay woo woh, Whoaaly!”
I turned around and saw my best friend, Opera, complete with the over-stuffed, chipmunk cheeks and drooling mouth. I was so excited to see him that I threw my arms around him and cried, “Opera, oh Opera, you’re alive, you’re alive . . . and so fat!”
“Hey,” he said between gulps of hot dog number 57, “you don’t have to get personal about it.”
“Tough break, Wally.”
I spun around to see my other best friend, Wall Street.
Of course, I also had to give her my official I’m-glad-you’re-still-alive-and-you-look-a-lot-better-without-the-wrinkles hug.
She pushed me back and scowled, “What’s wrong with you?”
“It’s a long story.”
She shook her head. “Too bad about missing that ball. If you would have caught it, you’d have been the hero, and we could have made some really big bucks.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but maybe there’s more to life than being popular and making big bucks.”
“Really?” she frowned. “Like what?”
“Like being me.”
She looked at me skeptically. “You sure that ball didn’t hit you too hard on the head?”
I grinned and turned as the three of us started toward the parking lot. “Seriously,” I said, “if I had caught that ball, who would be the president of our Dork-oids Anonymous club?”
She gave me a look.
“Or who would replace me as the Human Walking Disaster Area? . . . Or serve as our All-School Catastrophe? . . . Or—”
I stopped as I spotted a bunch of smoke barreling out of the nearby concession stand.
“Hey, Mister,” I shouted. “You all right?”
A tall, skinny guy emerged from the smoke. He was coughing and pushing up a pair of glasses that looked exactly like mine. “It’s okay,” he said. “My toaster just caught fire.”
Something about the glasses and a smoking toaster sent a chill through me.
“Need some help?” Opera asked.
“Naw,” he said, waving the smoke aside, “I just short-circuited everything when I plugged this hand-held vacuum into the same outlet.”
Suddenly, I felt a double chill.
“Hey,” he said, “all the heat melted these Gooey Chewys.” He held out an entire box to us. “You guys want them?”
I was growing a little tired of getting all the chills, so I tried something else . . . like running for my life.
“Hey, Wally,” Wall Street shouted as I dashed out into the parking lot and down the street as fast as I could. “Wally, where you going?”
I didn’t stick around to answer. Of course I was sure it had all been a dream and this was all just a coincidence . . . but I was also sure that I wasn’t taking any chances.
“Hey, Wally, come back!”
Whether everything had been a dream or whether it had actually happened really didn’t make much difference. The point is I’d learned three very important lessons . . .
— Always let someone else repair my home appliances,
— Start cutting back on my Gooey Chewy intake,
— And let God be God.
Well, it had been quite an adventure with more than my daily minimal requirements of mishaps. So when I got home I thought I’d relax and turn on ol’ Betsy. I was a little surprised to see that the Flame Boy story had either been erased or had never been written.
Hmmm . . .
In any case, it didn’t take long to rewrite it. And once I finished that, I began straining my brain to come up with an ending. . . .
When we last left our wannabe hero, he had successfully spread his flames across the entire sky. A neat trick to stop Arctic Guy’s attempt to turn Earth into a giant Popsicle, a lousy way to ruin this year’s school clothes.
But there is still one minor problem... the 734 nuclear missiles the President had fired at the giant blob of Sunscreen #85. The good news is they will wipe out the Sunscreen. The bad news is they will also wipe out any and all life upon the planet.
There is a burst of superhero music as Flame Boy suddenly has a major hot flash. He curls up into another fireball and this time hurdles himself toward the Sunscreen. It’s going to be close. (It has to be, since this is the climax of the story.) But if he can wrap his flames around the Sunscreen and evaporate it before the missiles arrive, then they’ll pass right through it and head into outer space where they won’t harm anybody...(unless you count that giant fleet of UFO’s coming to invade us, but that should probably be left for another story).
Flame Boy arrives and quickly surrounds the Sunscreen, just as Arctic Guy throws open the door to his orbiting refrigerator and shouts, “Hey, what’s all the racket?”
“I’d love to explain,” Flame Boy answers, “but right now, I’m kinda tied up saving the world.” With that he turns back to the Sunscreen and flames up for all he is worth. The music grows louder as the missiles close in.
The Sunscreen begins to evaporate.
The music grows even louder as the missiles really close in.
The Sunscreen continues evaporating.
The music grows even louder as the missiles really, really close in.
But, try as he might, Flame Boy can’t get hot enough to evaporate all of the Sunscreen. And then, just when you’re thinking, “I knew a superhero made out of flame was kinda lame,” Arctic Guy has an idea of his own.
He takes a deep breath and blasts out a blustery blow. Although his breath is as bad as in the previous sections of this story (he’s still eating those garlic and clam sauce toppings on his onion-flavored yogurts) his wind fans up Flame Boy’s flames. Our hero begins heating hotter and hotter. The Sunscreen evaporates faster and faster.
Meanwhile the music is growing really loud and the missiles are really, really, really closing in. Really.
With a final burst of energy, Flame Boy evaporates the last of the Sunscreen...just as the missiles pass through on their way to blow up that UFO fleet we’re not supposed to talk about.
“You did it!” Arctic Guy shouts.
Flame Boy leans back and wipes the sweat from his forehead (a neat trick for someone made of flames). “No,” our hero sighs, “we did it.”
“You’re right!” Arctic Guy beams. “We did! We make quite a team, don’t we? You with your flames, and me with my cold.”
“Hey, maybe we could go into business together or something?” Flame Boy suggests.
“But I thought you wanted to be a superhero.”
“Nah, I’m not really cut out for it. Besides, who wants to put up with all of that noisy superhero music? Actually, I just want to be the best me I can be. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“I know what you mean,” Arctic Guy agrees. “I never really wanted to be the world’s vilest villain, either.”
“What’d you want to be?”
“I always wanted to own a pizza parlor.”
“Hey, I got a keen idea,” Flame Boy says. “Let’s open up a pizza parlor together. I could cook the pizzas, and you could freeze them.”
“Wow, that’s hot,” Arctic Guy cries.
“Not only is it hot, it’s cool,” Flame Boy says. “And I know just who our first customer will be.”
“Who’s that?”
“The President. In fact he’s still waiting for his deluxe pizzas with extra cheese and anchovies.”
And so the two head off into the sunset. Dreaming their dreams, sharing their——
“Hey, can you lower your flames just a little?” Artic Guy asks. “You’re melting my face.”
“Oh sorry,” Flame Boy answers. “Say, would you mind chewing on these breath mints? You’re making my eyes water.”
“No problem. I’m all for bettering myself.”
“Me, too.”
And so the world is once again a cooler, safer, and better-smelling place to live, as the two friends stop trying to be something they aren’t and decide to be the best of who they are.
I looked at the ending and smiled. Sounds like we were all learning a few lessons.
But all this talk about food was making me hungry. So I shut off ol’ Betsy and headed down the stairs to heat up, what else but, a frozen pizza. Not of course without tripping over Collision the cat, tumbling down the steps, and crashing into an end table, which of course knocked over the lamp, which momentarily set our house on fire.
Yes sir, it was nice to know things were definitely getting back to normal.
You’ll want to read them all.
THE INCREDIBLE WORLDS OF
WALLY McDOOGLE
#1—My Life As a Smashed Burrito with Extra Hot Sauce
Twelve-year-old Wally—“The walking disaster area”—is forced to stand up to Camp Wahkah Wahkah’s number one all-American bad guy. One hilarious mishap follows another until, fighting together for their very lives, Wally learns the need for even his worst enemy to receive Jesus Christ. (ISBN 0-8499-3402-8)
#2—My Life As Alien Monster Bait
“Hollyweird” comes to Middletown! Wally’s a superstar! A movie company has chosen our hero to be eaten by their mechanical “Mutant from Mars!” It’s a close race as to which will consume Wally first—the disaster-plagued special effects “monster” or his own out-of-control pride . . . until he learns the cost of true friendship and of God’s command for humility. (ISBN 0-8499-3403-6)
#3—My Life As a Broken Bungee Cord
A hot-air balloon race! What could be more fun? Then again, we’re talking about Wally McDoogle, the “Human Catastrophe.” Calamity builds on calamity until, with his life on the line, Wally learns what it means to FULLY put his trust in God. (ISBN 0-8499-3404-4)
#4—My Life As Crocodile Junk Food
Wally visits missionary friends in the South American rain forest. Here he stumbles onto a whole new set of impossible predicaments . . . until he understands the need and joy of sharing Jesus Christ with others. (ISBN 0-8499-3405-2)
#5—My Life As Dinosaur Dental Floss
It starts with a practical joke that snowballs into near disaster. Risking his life to protect his country, Wally is pursued by a SWAT team, bungling terrorists, photo-snapping tourists, Gary the Gorilla, and a TV news reporter. After prehistoric-size mishaps and a talk with the President, Wally learns that maybe honesty really is the best policy. (ISBN 0-8499-3537-7)
#6—My Life As a Torpedo Test Target
Wally uncovers the mysterious secrets of a sunken submarine. As dreams of fame and glory increase, so do the famous McDoogle mishaps. Besides hostile sea creatures, hostile pirates, and hostile Wally McDoogle clumsiness, there is the war against his own greed and selfishness. It isn’t until Wally finds himself on a wild ride atop a misguided torpedo that he realizes the source of true greatness. (ISBN 0-8499-3538-5)
#7—My Life As a Human Hockey Puck
Look out . . . Wally McDoogle turns athlete! Jealousy and envy drive Wally from one hilarious calamity to another until, as the team’s mascot, he learns humility while suddenly being thrown in to play goalie for the Middletown Super Chickens! (ISBN 0-8499-3601-2)
#8—My Life As an Afterthought Astronaut
“Just cause I didn’t follow the rules doesn’t make it my fault that the Space Shuttle almost crashed. Well, okay, maybe it was sort of my fault. But not the part when Pilot O’Brien was spacewalking and I accidently knocked him halfway to Jupiter. . . .” So begins another hilarious Wally McDoogle MISadventure as our boy blunder stows aboard the Space Shuttle and learns the importance of: Obeying the Rules! (ISBN 0-8499-3602-0)
#9—My Life As Reindeer Road Kill
Santa on an out-of-control four wheeler? Electrical Rudolph on the rampage? Nothing unusual, just Wally McDoogle doing some last-minute Christmas shopping . . . FOR GOD! Our boy blunder dreams that an angel has invited him to a birthday party for Jesus. Chaos and comedy follow as he turns the town upside down looking for the perfect gift, until he finally bumbles his way into the real reason for the Season. (ISBN 0-8499-3866-X)
#10—My Life As a Toasted Time Traveler
Wally travels back from the future to warn himself of an upcoming accident. But before he knows it, there are more Wallys running around than even Wally himself can handle. Catastrophes reach an all-time high as Wally tries to outthink God and re-write history. (ISBN 0-8499-3867-8)
#11—My Life As Polluted Pond Scum
This laugh-filled Wally disaster includes: a monster lurking in the depths of a mysterious lake . . . a glowing figure with powers to summon the creature to the shore . . . and one Wally McDoogle, who reluctantly stumbles upon the truth. Wally’s entire town is in danger. He must race against the clock, his own fears, and learn to trust God before he has any chance of saving the day. (ISBN 0-8499-3875-9)
#12—My Life As a Bigfoot Breath Mint
Wally gets his big break to star with his uncle Max in the famous Fantasmo World stunt show. Unlike his father, whom Wally secretly suspects to be a major loser, Uncle Max is everything Wally longs to be . . . or so it appears. But Wally soon discovers the truth and learns who the real hero is in his life. (ISBN 0-8499-3876-7)
#13—My Life As a Blundering Ballerina
Wally agrees to switch places with Wall Street. Everyone is in on the act as the two try to survive seventy-two hours in each other’s shoes and learn the importance of respecting other people. (ISBN 0-8499-4022-2)
#14—My Life As a Screaming Skydiver
Master of mayhem Wally turns a game of laser tag into international espionage. From the Swiss Alps to the African plains, Agent 001.7th bumblingly employs such top-secret gizmos as rocket-powered toilet paper, exploding dental floss, and the ever-popular transformer tacos to stop the dreaded and super secret . . . Giggle Gun. (ISBN 0-8499-4023-0)
#15—My Life As a Human Hairball
When Wally and Wall Street visit a local laboratory, they are accidentally miniaturized and swallowed by some unknown stranger. It is a race against the clock as they fly through various parts of the body in a desperate search for a way out while learning how wonderfully we’re made. (ISBN 0-8499-4024-9)
#16—My Life As a Walrus Whoopee Cushion
Wally and his buddies, Opera and Wall Street, win the Gazillion Dollar Lotto! Everything is great, until they realize they lost the ticket at the zoo! Add some bungling bad guys, a zoo break-in, the release of all the animals, a SWAT team or two . . . and you have the usual McDoogle mayhem as Wally learns the dangers of greed. (ISBN 0-8499-4025-7)
#17—My Life As a Mixed-Up Millennium Bug
When Wally accidentally fries the circuits of Ol’ Betsy, his beloved laptop computer, suddenly whatever he types turns into reality! At 11:59, New Year’s Eve, Wally tries retyping the truth into his computer—which shorts out every other computer in the world. By midnight, the entire universe has credited Wally’s mishap to the MILLENNIUM BUG! Panic, chaos, and hilarity start the new century, thanks to our beloved boy blunder. (ISBN 0-8499-4026-5)
