Goober

Goober
by “pastamanvibration” (Ao)
(Copyright 2008)

Goober is a perfect friend! He never says “It’s mine. Not yours!” He never says, “I’m bored.” Best of all, he’s always ready to play cars with Sean.

But not for one second would Sean’s Mom and Dad call Goober a perfect friend. Goober never says “hello” or “goodbye” to anyone, except to Sean. In fact, Goober never says anything to anybody, except to Sean. And he always hides from everyone, except from Sean. Only Sean knows where Goober hides.

Last year on April 15, Sean and his Mom and Dad celebrated Goober’s 5th birthday. Goober did not blow out the candles. And he did not eat one bite of the birthday cake. All of this did not surprise anyone, because Goober is Sean’s pretend friend.

Exactly one year later, the doorbell rings. Sean runs to see who it is. Flinging the door open, he meets a boy with a smile stretched ear to ear. The boy raises his arms and says, “Howdy, partner! It’s me, Goober.”

“Huh? Goober?” says Sean, scratching his head. “You look like Goober, my pretend friend. He has red hair, big brown eyes, and freckles just like you. And he also wears a red shirt and white pants just like yours. Weird!”

Goober laughs. “I WAS your pretend friend! But now I’m a real boy!” He points at Sean’s untied shoelaces and says, “Don’t tie your shoelaces!”

“Goober! It’s really you!” Sean shouts. “You’re the only person in the whole wide world who tells me, ‘Don’t tie your shoelaces!’ Everybody else says, ‘Tie your shoelaces.’”

Sean’s Mom and Dad hear all this noise. They come to the front door and meet the real Goober. Mom puts her hands on her cheeks. Her mouth is wide open. She says, “Ai Yi Yi!” Dad paces the floor, rubs his chin, and says, “Hmm. Is someone trying to trick us?”

Then Mom touches Goober’s arm and says, “You’re real, all right! Where do you live?”

Goober smiles. His two front teeth are missing. He says, “I live here with you!”

“Here?” Mom asks. “Why don’t you and Sean play in the family room? Dad and I need to talk.”

Sean and Goober play with Sean’s toy cars. They are having lots of fun until Goober crashes Sean’s favorite car. “Hey! You never did that when you were my pretend friend!”

“I’m sorry, Sean. I guess it’s easy to make mistakes when you’re real,” says Goober.

Now Sean’s parents come to the boys. Mom says, “Goober, we’re going to take you to your family. If you don’t know where you live, we’ll take you to the police to help us find your family.”

“But you’re my family, and today’s my birthday!” Goober cries. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll leave now.”

Mom and Dad shake their heads no, because they don’t believe him. Goober’s hands and ears and nose and red hair start to disappear. Sean reaches out to pinch his nose, but it is gone! Watching Goober disappear makes him feel so dizzy, he wobbles to the floor.

Mom pulls her own hair and says, “Ai Yi Yi” again.

Dad has no hair of his own to pull, because he is bald. He pulls his ears and shouts, “Okay, Okay, we believe you! Please come back, Goober!”

Goober’s hands and ears and nose and red hair slowly reappear.

“Yippee!” yells Sean.

Mom’s knees are shaking. She is nervous, but hides this with a fake smile. “Welcome back, Goober. Let’s go celebrate your birthday in the park.”

In the car, Daddy plays the radio. Goober sings every song.

Sean frowns and says, “I wish you would stop singing, Goober. You sound like a penguin.”

Goober giggles and replies, “You should make penguin noises, too.”

For the rest of the trip, Sean and Goober sound like penguins.

At the park, Mom and Dad sit by the lake. The boys race to the swings, but there is only one swing free. Sean reminds Goober how his world ought to be, “Always me first! ”

Goober argues back, “No, me first! It’s my birthday.”

Sean grabs a coin out of his pocket and says, “Life’s most important decisions are made with a toss of a coin.” He tosses the coin, “Heads, I win. Tails, you win.” The coin lands on tails. Sean stomps his foot. “I need a coin with heads on both sides of the coin!”

Next, the boys play catch with a baseball and mitts. Sean can catch well when he keeps his eyes open. But when Goober throws the ball fast, Sean closes his eyes because he is afraid. The ball hits his lip. Sean cries.

“Sorry I gave you a fat lip. I didn’t mean to,” Goober apologizes.

“Hey boys! Let’s go to the movies,” Dad suggests.

In the movie theater, the boys laugh. Goober snorts like a pig when he laughs. Sean doesn’t care, but the lady sitting next to Goober raises her eyebrows every time she hears it.

After the movie, the family goes to the bakery to buy a chocolate cake and six candles. The baker writes on the cake, “Happy 6th Birthday, Goober! Our REAL pretend friend!”

On the way home, Sean asks Goober, “Why did you become a real person?”

Mom and Dad are listening, because they want to know why, too.

Goobers explains, “I just want to play with you — for real.”

For dinner, Mommy serves spaghetti. Goober eats with his mouth open. He stains his shirt with tomato sauce. No one had ever taught him how to eat properly.

After dinner, Mommy brings the cake to the table. Together, they sing the happy birthday song with penguin voices. Goober then makes a secret wish before he blows out the candles and gulps a piece of cake. Then he wipes off a mustache of milk and cake smeared around his face and says, “Thank you! I had so much fun! But now I have to go.”

Sean holds Goober’s arm and says, “Don’t go! Stay forever!”

“I’m sorry, Sean, but I can’t. Please don’t cry,” said Goober.

The family hugs Goober as he waves his hand goodbye and disappears.

“I’ll miss that kid,” says Mom and Dad.

“I hope I see him again someday,” says Sean. “He’s not perfect, but he’s a real friend.”

Ribbit

Ribbit

by “pastamanvibration” (Ao)

(Copyright 2008)

“Rocket. Rabbit. Rodent,” croaked Abbott the frog.

“No. No. No!” cried his father. “It’s ribbit. Not rocket! Not rabbit. And certainly not rodent! Ribbit. R-I-B-B-I-T. Ribbit! No other croak will do!”

“But I can’t croak r-r-readit,” Abbott said meekly, his head bent down.

“Practice. Practice. Practice!” his father advised. “Practice until you cannot croak anything but ribbit. It is very strange for a frog to croak anything but ribbit.”

All night long Abbott croaked. He croaked, “Midget.” He croaked, “Widget.” He croaked, “Fidget”. And he croaked “ Fixit” and “Mixit”. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not croak ribbit.

Abbott’s croaks annoyed the frogs tremendously. The next morning not one frog mouth smiled. They gathered together, each sitting comfortably on their own lily pad. Frankie the big bullfrog pointed his fat frog finger at Abbott and yelped, “Who can sleep with HIM croaking nonsense all night? It hurts my frog ears. I say Abbott must go!” At once all the frogs but Abbott’s best friends and family croaked, “Ribbit!” But this ribbit was not a friendly ribbit. It was grunt. And it made Abbott shiver.

The frog king of the pond flung out his sticky tongue to catch a fly. The fly disappeared into his mouth as though being flushed down a toilet. Then the king cleared his frog throat and said, “Only the hiss of a snake sounds worse than Abbott’s croaks.” Then he turned to Abbott and barked, “Croak ribbit this instant or leave this pond.”

Abbott the frog jumped on center stage, a lily pad in the middle of the pond. His skinny frog legs trembled. His small frog heart beat as fast as a hummingbird’s. He took a deep breath to calm down. Air swelled his throat in the shape of a ball. His eyes bulged and gazed at the crowd. Then in the loudest croak he could muster he croaked, “Racket!”

Now tears began to fall from his eyes, like leaves falling off a tree in a rushing wind. He murmured, “As you wish, I will leave.” And his mother wiped his tears with her frog belly.

Before he could say, “Farewell, my fellow frogs,” his mother tied a sack with all his belongings to the end of a twig. She handed it to him and said, “Go west young frog! Hop west until you come upon a dragonfly. When you see the dragonfly, follow it wherever she leads. Do not fear. You are a big frog who can go off on his own. Someday you will become known as a great frog, Abbott. In every pond frog folk will tell your story for a thousand moons to come.”

But Abbott did not feel like a great frog. Instead, he felt like a forsaken frog from his first long leap away from the home pond. He leaped westward over grass and weeds and dirt and rocks. For seven days he leaped westward. His limbs grew weary, and his frog feet blistered. He felt he could not leap another inch even if chased by an alligator. He rested under the shade of a weeping willow tree. It was there he saw a dragonfly circle above his frog head. Suddenly, Abbott forgot about his weary legs and blistered feet and sad frog heart. He jumped blissfully over bushes to follow the dragonfly. And the dragonfly led him to a shimmering waterfall cascading into a pond.

“Home!” he said with much relief.

Night after night, Abbott croaked alone all sorts of sounds. He croaked joyfully new sounds like “exhibit” and “inhibit”. No frog was there to complain – that is until one night a young frog lady from some unknown place introduced herself with a toothless smile, “Hello. I’m Bridget.”

Abbott the frog’s face blushed. A frog’s face could blush no more, which – by the way – isn’t very much. He stared at his frog knees and introduced himself. Then in a low voice he said, “I cannot croak r-r-rip-it.”

Bridget laughed, but not at him. She replied, “That’s okay. I can’t say r-r-rip-it, either!”

In that very moment Abbott and Bridget became frog soul mates. Abbott had not been this happy since he was a tadpole. And it was not long before he himself became a father of dozens of tadpoles.

However, during this happy and hot summertime, not a drop of rain fell from the clouds. By the last days of summer the pond shrunk to half its size, while Abbott ballooned into a giant bullfrog, even bigger than Frankie the bullfrog. So loud was Abbott’s croak, little frog ears could hear it hundreds of frog leaps away.

One night as Abbott and Bridget were croaking “inhabit”, familiar frog faces appeared. Among these frog faces were those of Abbott’s mother and father, which glowed in seeing their beloved son. Other frog faces were the king’s and Frankie the bullfrog’s, which showed shame.

Now Abbott was very happy to see his family and old friends. He was even happy to see Frankie and the king. He jumped high off his lily pad and splashed into the water in a belly flop. This hurt his belly, but he did not care. He said, “What brings you here?”

Abbott’s father replied, “Our pond has become dry as a dead bone. First we dug burrows with our webbed feet and hid in the mud from the hot sun. But no rain ever poured and the mud turned hard as a turtle shell. We have been leaping for days to search for a new home pond. But everywhere we leaped was on dry land.

His mother finished the story, “Last night from a great distance, we heard a frog croak loudly, ‘Drink-it’. I shouted, ‘Abbott! Only my boy Abbott croaks ‘drink-it’! Follow his sweet sound!’ And so here we are.”

The frogs bowed to Francis and Bridget and pleaded, “May we live in your pond?”

Now Abbott and Bridget took a giant leap toward them. The frogs flinched, afraid Abbott’s heavy belly might land on them.

Bridget said with open frog arms, “Welcome!”

Abbott added, “Here you are free to croak anyway you please.”

From then on, frogs throughout the world croak many sounds besides ribbit. Some even croak “Abbott” and “Bridget”.

(While rewriting the story I was listening to Ziggy Marley’s “Dragonfly”, which you can hear by clicking below.)