Dogs Don't Tell Jokes (11 page)

“Huh?” he asked.

“Huh?” she repeated.

“What do you mean?” asked Gary.

“What do you mean, what do I mean?” She slammed the plate of potatoes onto the bed. “Quittin’ the talent show!”

He shrugged.

“No way, Buster!” said Mrs. Snitzberry. “You’ve been making fun of me every day for the last two years.” She jumped off the bed. “Did I ever complain?” She poked him in the
chest with her finger. “Did I?” She poked him again. “Did I?”

He backed up against his dresser. “No!” he shouted. “I didn’t even know you were a real person, or whatever you are.”

“Of course I didn’t complain,” she said. “Because it was humor! Humor—man’s greatest gift! That’s what separates humans from all other animals. That’s why they call it humor. Humans—humor. You never hear dogs telling jokes, do you?”

“No.”

“That’s because dogs have no sense of humor!”

As Gary stared at her, her face began to get blurry and she started to fade, but then he blinked, and she reappeared as sharp as ever.

She pulled Gary’s ears.

“Ow!” he yelled.

“You can’t quit on me now, Buster!” said Mrs. Snitzberry. “You owe me!”

Gary jerked away. “But my jokes aren’t funny!” he shouted. He sat down on his bed.

“So? That never stopped you before,” said Mrs. Snitzberry.

Gary sighed.

“I was kidding!” said Mrs. Snitzberry. “Boy, you are in sorry shape, aren’t you?” She sat down on the bed next to him, right on top of the plate of mashed potatoes and gravy.

“But my jokes aren’t funny!” Gary moped. “I did nothing but make up jokes for two weeks—and they all stink! No wonder I never had any friends. I wouldn’t be my friend either if I had to listen to me all the time. I’ve been making a fool out of myself every minute of every day of my whole life.”

“So, who hasn’t?” asked Mrs. Snitzberry. “Besides, I don’t care what anybody says. I think you’re hilarious. I’ve been listening to your jokes. You crack me up.”

“Really?”

“Oh, sure, some of them stink.” She took her bolero off her head and fanned the foul-smelling air away from her face. “All you have to do is separate the good ones from the stink bombs.”

“Which ones didn’t stink?” Gary asked eagerly.

“That’s for you to figure out,” said Gladys. She stood up and walked across the room. Her backside was dripping with potatoes and gravy.

“I guess Rudolph is kind of funny,” Gary
said. “I was proud of that one. But it’s too late anyway. The talent show is the day after tomorrow. I can’t. I wouldn’t have any time to put it all together. Or practice. I just can’t. Besides, I don’t even know if Miss Langley would let—”

He turned around with a start as his mother entered his room.

“Are you all right?”

He shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“I could hear you shouting all over the house.”

“Uh, I was just working on my act for the talent show.”

“I thought you quit the talent show.”

“I changed my mind.”

He jumped as Mrs. Snitzberry pinched his rear end. “All right, kiddo,” she said. “Now you’re talkin’!”

His mother looked at him oddly. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked.

“Never felt better!” said Gary. “Besides, quitting never solves anything,” he added, trying to sound rational. “You know how you and Dad are always saying that I never follow through on things. Well, this time I’m going to do it. Whatever it takes, one hundred percent!”

He jumped as Mrs. Snitzberry goosed him again.

“O-kay,” his mother said with some hesitation. “Just so long as you keep it
in perspective.
”

Gary gathered the scraps of paper with all of his jokes and read through them. Maybe they didn’t all stink. “In fact, some of them are pretty funny, if I do say so myself.” The funny ones were just hard to notice because they were surrounded by garbage.

“What a goon,” he muttered as he read one of the more stupid ones.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was funny. He just needed to tighten it up a little bit.

He picked out all the other jokes that fit with Rudolph. He could definitely use the dead skunk jokes.

Kissing worms?
Something about it was funny,
but it really didn’t make any sense. “No,” he decided.

“It’s just like life,” he philosophized. “I always say whatever comes into my head. And most of it is stupid. So when I say something funny, nobody notices. It’s too bad when you’re talking to people, you can’t go back later and cross out all the stupid things you said.”

But that was what was perfect about doing this comedy routine. He could cross out the bad stuff and say only the good stuff. He could say all the funny jokes and none of the stupid ones!

“I should get Abel to help me. Ha. Ha. He could haul all the garbage away in his truck.”

He picked out his best jokes and started putting them in some kind of order. It came easy. The good jokes seemed to fit together naturally, almost as if some part of his brain had planned it that way all along. He made up some new jokes without even trying. And the new ones were funnier than some of the old ones.

“No, I can’t be sure about that,” he said. “Sometimes I think something is funny one day, and then the next day I realize it’s stupid. I’ll have to look at them again tomorrow and see if I still think they’re funny.”

Tomorrow? Tomorrow was Thursday!

He just wished he had more time—even one extra day.

He worked all afternoon, quickly ate his dinner, then stayed up until almost midnight. He didn’t do his homework. There was just no way.

By the time he went to bed, he knew for the most part which jokes he’d use and the order he’d say them. But it all needed to be polished. He also needed a way to end his routine. He wanted a big finish. “Something to go BANG!” he said as he slammed his fist into his hand.

Plus, he still had to memorize it, get his timing down, and rehearse it. “Of course, first I’ll have to hearse,” he said. “I mean, I can’t
rehearse
until I’ve at least
hearsed
one time.”

He stood up on his bed, pounded his chest like Tarzan, then raised his arms in the air and shouted, “The Goon is back!”

He saw Miss Langley first thing Thursday morning and told her he wanted to be back in the talent show.

“Gary, you can’t keep quitting and then signing up, then quitting again,” she said.

“I’m in it,” Gary said. “I’m not going to quit.”

“Well, you’ll have to talk to Brenda Thompson. It may be too late.”

He found Brenda as she was coming up the stairs along with Julie Rose.

It took Brenda a while to figure out what Gary was talking about because she didn’t know he’d ever quit the show.

“So then I’m in?” asked Gary.

“Yes. You were never out,” said Brenda.

Julie Rose stared oddly at him. He wondered what Matt or Paul told her about why he had come to her house the other day. Well, he couldn’t worry about it. He was back in the talent show—that was the most important thing.

“You gonna stick around for some football?” asked Joe.

Gary sighed. “I can’t.”

“What’s with you anyway, Goon?” Zack asked.

“I have to work on my act for the talent show. It’s tomorrow night.”

Joe and Zack looked uneasily at each other.

“C’mon, Goon, we really need you,” said Joe.

“I thought you were going to do a rap,” Gary said.

“I am,” said Joe. “I made it up last week. It took about twenty minutes. No big deal. It’s just a stupid talent show.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Gary.

“So what do you say?” asked Joe.

“No, I really need to go home,” Gary said. “I guess things don’t come as easy for me as they do for you.”

“Personally, Goon, I think you need a change in attitude,” said Joe. “Lighten up. It’s supposed to be fun. Who knows? Anything can happen. Do you hear what I’m saying?
Anything
can happen.”

“I know that,” said Gary.

“So how about it?” asked Zack. “Are you going to play football or not?”

“I can’t.”

“Suit yourself,” said Joe. “But don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

He tried not to think about it. He remembered what Angeline had said: “Don’t think about Friday. Think about Saturday.

“No matter what happens, by Saturday it will all be over—
forever.
”

“How could I think that was funny?” Gary asked as he went over his routine. He shook his head in disbelief.

The jokes he used to think were great now didn’t seem funny at all. Especially the ones he had made up yesterday.

He decided two of the new jokes were kind of funny. He threw away the other three.

“A bad joke is like a rotten fish,” he decided. “You don’t know it’s bad until the next day when it starts to stink.”

He laughed. “That’s good! That’s funny! I don’t think I can use it for my routine, but it’s still funny!”

Suddenly, out of nowhere, he remembered one of the other jokes that he had decided not to use. It
was
funny. “Why didn’t I think it was funny yesterday?” He wondered what made him suddenly remember it. For that matter, he wondered how he ever thought up any of his jokes in the first place.

BANG! Gary flung himself on his bed, as if a bomb had just exploded in his room—or in his head. He rolled over, looked up at the ceiling, and whispered “Perfect.”

He had come up with the big finish for his act.

There was just one question: Would he really have the guts to do it?

“Sure. Why not?”

It meant he’d have to reorganize his whole routine to make the ending work just right. He’d have to change the beginning and the middle to fit the ending, and have the whole thing memorized by tomorrow night.

He hoped the thrift store still had the hat. If not, he could always use one of his other hats, but the one at the thrift store was better because it was a little too tight.

He’d need help, too. His parents wouldn’t
help him, that was for sure. He didn’t dare tell his parents.

Before he changed his mind, he went to the kitchen and called Gus on the telephone.

Then he called the thrift store and told the woman to save the hat for him. He’d pick it up tomorrow on the way home from school.

Gary went through his routine, from beginning to end, for the third time. It was still too choppy. It needed to be smoother. The timing was all wrong.

He set his notes aside and tried doing it from memory. He was surprised by how much he had memorized. He only had to look at his notes a couple of times.

Then he went through it again, and this time he didn’t have to look at his notes at all. He sighed in disgust. “It sounds like I’m reciting the Gettysburg Address or something.”

He didn’t want it to sound like he was reciting something he had memorized. It had to sound natural, like he was making it up as he went along.

“Okay, one more time.”

Timing was the most important thing. He didn’t want to pause too long, or too short.
The pause had to be perfect. The pause was all-important.

Or was it? Should he pause at all? When? How long? Why?

“AAAAAAHHHHHH!” he shouted.

He stared at his blank walls. He didn’t know. He just didn’t know. He had gone over the jokes so many times he didn’t even know what was a joke and what wasn’t.

There was a knock on his door.

“What!” he shouted.

His mother peeked around the door. “I know you said you didn’t want to be disturbed for
anything …
”

He glared at her. Actually, he was grateful for the interruption, but he didn’t let on.

“Angeline’s on the phone,” his mother said. “She said it was urgent. Do you want me to tell her you’ll call her back?”

“No, I’ll talk to her,” said Gary.

Gary’s mother seemed a little insulted that while she, his own mother, wasn’t allowed to interrupt him, he was perfectly willing to leave his room to talk to Angeline.

He took the call in the kitchen. Maybe Angeline’d get to come to the talent show after all.

“Hi. What’s up?”

Angeline came straight to the point. “Don’t do your act in the show tomorrow.”

“What?”

“Something terrible is going to happen,” she said. “A disaster.”

“Aw, c’mon,” said Gary. “I know my jokes may not be funny, but no one’s ever called them a disaster. Ha. Ha.”

Angeline didn’t laugh. “I’m serious, Gary. I started feeling it right after dinner, and then I started crying and couldn’t stop. I can still feel it.”

Gary could hear her fighting back tears now.

“Please don’t do it,” she begged. “Just quit the talent show.”

“Why? What’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Angeline. “I’ve never felt something like this before.”

“Are you sure it’s bad?” he asked. “If you’ve never felt anything like it before, then how do you know it will be a disaster?”

“I know,” said Angeline. “If you break your leg, you don’t need a doctor to tell you you can’t walk.”

Gary took a breath. “It’s all memorized,” he said.

They stayed on the line for another minute or so without speaking. Then each said goodbye.

Gary gently hung up the phone. He took a breath and turned to see Mrs. Snitzberry, in her green pajamas, sitting cross-legged on the counter, between the sink and the stove.

“Who was that?” Mrs. Snitzberry asked Gary.

“Angeline,” said Gary.

“What’d she want?”

Gary thought a moment. “Nothing,” he muttered.

“Who are you talking to?” asked Gary’s father.

Startled, Gary turned. He hadn’t noticed his father reading the paper at the kitchen counter. He looked back at Mrs. Snitzberry, who slowly faded away before his eyes.

“Nobody,” he said.

There was still time to quit. There was always time to quit. Right up to the last minute. He didn’t have to tell anyone he was quitting. Just not show up.

“Well, if it’s a disaster, then it’s a disaster,” said Gary as he walked across the schoolyard. “Like Miss Longlegs said, I can’t keep signing
up and quitting, and signing up and quitting. Besides, I already called Gus.