My Life as a Broken Bungee Cord Read online

  “Why not?”

  “If I’m going to be killed by a bear, I at least want to be awake to remember the details!”

  With that, he crawled under the balloon (“for warmth,” he said), lay down (“for comfort,” he insisted), closed his eyes (“to rest them,” he explained), . . . and promptly started to snore.

  Good ol’ Opera . . .

  Wall Street and Miguel were the next to drop off. But not before Wall Street tried to talk more to her brother about God. She didn’t get far.

  “Look, Sis,” he cut her off. “I know what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate it. But it’s like I told Momma, ‘I’m not ready to listen’ . . . not yet.”

  There was kind of a long, uneasy tension. Maybe even a couple of sniffles from Wall Street’s side of the balloon. But eventually they both dozed off.

  It took me a little while longer to get to sleep. Well, if you can call what I did “sleep.” Sure, my eyes were closed, but my imagination was going full throttle. And since I’d left Ol’ Betsy back at the lodge, there was only one place for that imagination to work . . . in my dreams.

  Suddenly, I was watching Ecology-Man clinging to the boulder for his life as Toxoid Breath tried to suck him into the vacuum cleaner. . . .

  Just when our handsome hero is about to lose his grip (in more ways than one), the vacuum cleaner starts sparking and shorting out.

  “What’s going on?” Toxoid Breath bellows.

  Ecology-Man spots one of his beaver friends from the forest gnawing into the electric cord.

  “Beave, don’t!” Ecology-Man shouts. “You’ll be electrocuted!”

  But ol’ Beave doesn’t listen. His brother, Wally, and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver, have already been trapped and shipped off to Rerun-land. Now it’s just him and Eddie Haskel...which is more than the Beave can stand.

  Quicker than you can say, “Look out, here come the puns,” ol’ Beave takes one last bite into the electric cord, and:

  ——He lights up like a Christmas tree.

  ——Talk about a shocking experience.

  ——I mean, the moment is really electrifying.

  ——It is charged with high voltage action.

  Had enough? No? Well here’s a few more...

  ——It is full of power.

  ——In short, it’s a real hot and current moment.

  In other words...

  POOF, ZIT, CRACKLE, POP...The vacuum cleaner shuts down faster than the school building on Friday afternoon.

  Suddenly, Molly the Mole pops up underneath our hero. Suddenlier still, she drags him down into her underground tunnel.

  “Thanks, Molly,” our hero gasps as he glances around the tunnel. “Hey, I like what you’ve done with the place. When did you add the tennis courts?”

  “Zzee zzame time we builtzz zee zzwimming pool,” she says, whistling through her big front teeth.

  RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...

  “What’zz zzat?” Molly whistles.

  Suddenly, a drill bit the size of a Buick crashes through her ceiling.

  RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...

  Then another...and another.

  “Zzomebody muzzt be drilling for oil!”

  “No way,” our hero shouts. “It’s Toxoid Breath, and he’s drilling for me!”

  With a quick good-bye kiss on the cheek from Molly, Ecology-Man scurries out of the mole hole to confront the troublesome tyrant.

  But Toxoid Breath has only begun to terrorize. Quickly, he produces a dozen cans of orange spray paint. And quicklier still he sprays graffiti on everything he can find...rocks, trees, old Ross Perot bumper stickers.

  Now it’s time for Ecology-Man to call upon his super powers of nature. Now it’s time to use what only super-trained superheroes like himself (so don’t try this at home, kids) are qualified to use. He throws back his head and cries to the heavens:

  “Oh, heavenly lights be gone from

  hither,

  Help me make this monster quiver!”

  And, just like that, the sun disappears. (A neat trick for 1:30 in the afternoon, but remember this is my story, so I can do anything I want.) Quickly ol’ bio-boy draws his slide projector from his slide projector holster and fires off a series of pictures. There’s a slide of a rain forest! Then a spotted owl! Then baby seals that haven’t been clobbered!

  “No, stop!” Toxoid Breath screams.

  Our hero continues the attack. He shows streams without pollution. Coastlines without oil spills!

  “It’s too pure to look at! Stop it! Stop it!!”

  It’s time to finish him off. Our hero twists open a bottle of Mountain Spring Drinking Water and starts chugging it down.

  “Noooo!!” Toxoid Breath shouts as he rolls backward. “There’s no toxins3 in that——no sulfides4, no lead deposits, it’s too healthy——STOP!”

  Our whole-grain good guy raises the bottle high over his head. He approaches the biohazardous5 bad guy. “I think it’s time to clean up your act!” He grins.

  “No, please...” the tearful tyrant begs as he retreats.

  Closer and closer Ecology-Man comes.

  “Please, please——keep it away... anything but that!”

  And then...oh no...Toxoid Breath has one more trick up his corroded sleeve! He produces one hundred cans of aerosol hair spray. He begins spraying each and fluorocarbons every one, which releases tons of6 into the air. Soon a giant hole forms in the ozone layer7.

  Suddenly, sunbathers on beaches are getting tans in thirty seconds. They look like shriveled raisins in forty-five. And in less than a minute, they’re reduced to piles of cancerous ash.

  “Give it up, Ecology-Man,” he hisses. “Become my prisoner, or I’ll turn the earth into such a greenhouse, you’ll be growing orchids in your freezer!”

  Our organically grown hero has no choice. He drops his slide projector and Mountain Spring Water to the ground. The vile villain picks him up. Next, Toxoid Breath opens his iron mouth and poisonous fumes rise from his toxic-waste stomach. Ecology-Man is about to be destroyed.

  Now there is no one to stop the spread of worldwide pollution. Now the earth will be covered in smog and concrete. Now department stores will change their elevator music from Barry Manilow to U-2...(well, I guess every cloud has a silver lining). Still, what will we do? How will we survive?

  And then——

  But there was no “then.” Unfortunately, I woke up. Even more unfortunately, it was morning. I would have kept thinking about my story on saving the world but I had a minor distraction to attend to . . .

  Like saving myself.

  “Okay . . . Sis, Opera—”

  Miguel coughed again. It was hard for him to talk, but he forced himself. He had to. He was a lot weaker than last night, and we had to get him to a hospital . . . soon, real soon.

  “Pull open the mouth,” he ordered. “Spread it out good and wide to catch the wind.”

  Opera and Wall Street obeyed and pulled open the mouth of the deflated balloon. Immediately, the breeze started to rush inside, filling it.

  “Good thing we landed on this ridge,” I shouted to Miguel as I tilted the basket and burner on the ground for him to fire.

  He nodded. “Landings and takeoffs are a bear, but at least this wind will fill the balloon.”

  He was right. The wind quickly shoved air into the balloon. The only thing I’d ever seen fill quicker was Opera’s mouth when he had a bag of corn chips.

  “Have you got that bungee cord tied to the basket good and tight?” Miguel asked.

  I nodded.

  He craned his neck for a better look. “Better knot it a couple more times, just to be sure.”

  He didn’t have to ask twice. I’d already tied the other end to a distant tree. Don’t get me wrong. I was no Boy Scout. I only knew one type of knot. But I figured with enough loops, tangles, overlapping tangles, and more overlapping tangles, something was bound to stick.

  “Now go down to the top of the balloon and hold that crown l
ine steady like last time.” Miguel started coughing again. “It’s going to be rough, so hang on!”

  He wasn’t fooling about the rough part. I ran down, wrapped the rope around my hand, and immediately started getting whipped about. First to the left, then the right. It was like a crazy dance—like the hokey-pokey. But instead of “putting my left arm in and taking my left arm out” the balloon was “throwing my whole body in and my whole body out.”

  Finally, it was inflated. I headed back to the basket where Wall Street and Opera were doing all they could to hold it down.

  “GET IN!” Miguel shouted.

  “BUT HOW DO I—”

  “I’LL TELL YOU EVERYTHING THROUGH THE WALKIE-TALKIE—JUST GET IN AND KEEP FIRING THE BURNER. HURRY!”

  Miguel had brought along an extra walkie-talkie. He kept two in the basket and two in the truck. Once again I showed my athletic abilities by leaping into the basket and landing head first.

  “WALLY! . . . WALLY!”

  “Here,” I shouted as I popped back up wearing my famous McDoogle-the-Idiot grin. And why not? If I was going to die, I was at least going to be pleasant about it.

  “SQUEEZE THE BURNER HANDLE,” Miguel shouted. “KEEP THE FLAME GOING. SQUEEZE IT!”

  I reached up to the brass handle, squeezed, and . . .

  K-WOOOSH . . .

  The flame shot up into the balloon. Seconds later the basket started to scrape forward.

  Miguel shouted to Opera and Wall Street. “HOLD IT AS LONG AS YOU CAN!”

  And they did . . . for a whole three seconds. And then, just like that, the basket scooted down the road and took off.

  Being a great man of courage, I did what any great man of courage would do. I yelled my lungs out . . .

  “MICKEY! . . .”

  But it did no good. Suddenly, I was airborne— racing over the road like an airplane taking off. The only problem was my “runway” made a sharp turn to the left. No problem, except the wind didn’t. It just kept going straight! Straight into a giant stand of trees up ahead. That meant only one thing. One of those trees was about to have a little operation. One of them was about to receive a permanent McDoogle implant.

  “KEEP FIRING THE BURNER,” Miguel shouted, “KEEP FIRING THE BURNER!”

  K-WOOOOOSH!

  I followed orders perfectly. Unfortunately, the balloon didn’t. Instead of going up, it kept racing ahead. No way could I clear those trees. I was heading straight for them. And then, just when one of the branches was about to perform Open McDoogle Surgery, the bungee cord reached its end. It started to stretch. As it stretched, it slowed me down. As I slowed down, I shot up!

  “All right, Wally!” Opera and Wall Street cheered from below. “Way to go, McDoogle!”

  The cord continued to stretch and I continued to rise. Soon I was above the treetops, and sooner still the ground wind started to fade. The bucking and bouncing grew less and less. Well, what do you know, I thought, I finally did something right.

  My walkie-talkie hissed and clicked as Miguel’s voice came through. “Nice work, Wally.”

  “Thanks,” I said, grinning.

  “Wally, can you hear me . . . WALLY!”

  “Oh, sorry,” I said, fumbling with the button, “I guess I have to push this thing down to talk, right?”

  “Right. Now all you have to do is stay put, fire that burner when I tell you, and everything will be—”

  Suddenly, the balloon gave a little shudder.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “What was what?”

  It shuddered again.

  “That.” I repeated.

  “Don’t worry,” Miguel replied. “As long as you have that bungee cord tied good and tight you’re perfectly safe.”

  I looked down at the cord tied to the basket.

  Uh-oh.

  “Listen, Miguel, about tying that cord . . . if it should happen to like come undone or anything . . .”

  The balloon gave another shudder as the overlapping tangles that I called a “knot” kept unwinding.

  “Relax,” Miguel assured me.

  “But I mean, if it should like happen to . . .”

  “If that bungee cord breaks,” Miguel chuckled, “you’ll know before any of us if there really is a God.”

  I tried to return the laugh, but it’s hard to laugh when your heart’s stopping . . . when you’re watching a bungee cord finish untangling its last tangle and start slipping away . . . when you feel yourself being shot up into orbit at a billion point eight miles a second.

  “Wally . . . WALLY . . .”

  “It figures,” I muttered. “My whole life reduced to a broken bungee cord . . . a broken bungee cord that isn’t even broken.”

  3. TOXINS: poisons

  4. SULFIDES: a type of pollution

  5. BIOHAZARDOUS: harmful to the environment

  6. FLUOROCARBONS: a type of air pollution that can come from aerosol cans.

  7. OZONE LAYER: the part of the earth’s atmosphere that protects us from the harmful rays of the sun but can be destroyed by fluorocarbons.

  Chapter 9

  Tests of Faith

  “Wally, Wally, can you hear me? Come in, Wally! Come in!”

  I reached down to the walkie-talkie. I knew I had to sound calm. I knew I had to sound relaxed. Maybe a little McDoogle humor would help lighten things up. I pressed the key and screamed:

  “HEEELLLPPP!!!”

  (So much for humor.)

  “It’s okay, Wally, we can handle it, we can handle it.”

  “What do you mean, we?” I shouted. “I’m the one stuck up here!”

  “And I’m the one stuck down here.” He gave a couple of bone-rattling coughs. “And if we don’t work together, we’ll both be stuck for good.”

  Well, okay, if he wanted to be that way about it . . .

  “You look like you’re up about 900 or 1,000 feet. How fast are you rising?”

  “I’m not rising,” I said. “I’m not moving at all.”

  “Of course you are. Look down at your variometer.” “My what-o-meter?”

  “The gauge to your right.”

  I looked down at the three gauges on the inside of the basket.

  “Which direction is the little arrow pointing,” he asked, “up or down?”

  “Up,” I answered. “It’s on the 300.”

  “That’s too fast; you’re climbing too fast.”

  “No,” I argued, “I’m not moving at all, I don’t feel a thing.”

  “You don’t go by feelings up there, Wally— you go by those gauges.”

  “But—”

  “Trust them.”

  “But if I don’t feel anything . . .”

  “That’s what I’m saying. It’s just like what you were preaching about faith last night. You don’t go by what you feel, you go by what those gauges say. Up there those gauges are your Bible . . . you got to believe them—nothing else.”

  “And what I see, what I feel? . . .”

  “. . . Don’t mean a thing. You just trust those gauges like you’re supposed to trust God.”

  “Now who’s preaching?” I quipped.

  Miguel gave a little laugh. “For the next few hours we better all believe.” He coughed a couple of times and continued. “Now, take that parachute line above your head and give it a little tug. We’re going to let out some air and get you to drift back over here.”

  I gave the rope a tug. The balloon bumped slightly but nothing else seemed to happen. I tried again, holding it down longer this time. Still nothing.

  “It’s not working.”

  “Look at your variometer,” he said. “What does it read?”

  I glanced down at the gauge. “It’s starting to point down, but that can’t be right. Nothing’s happened, I don’t feel—”

  “Don’t trust your feelings, Wally. Trust those gauges.”

  “Okay,” I sighed, “but it doesn’t seem right.”

  “Don’t worry, you’re doing fine .
. . just fine.”

  “This is obviously a new definition of fine,” I cracked.

  “Just hang on, man . . . you can do this.”

  And he was right. Slowly, as I trusted the gauges instead of my feelings, we began to make progress. Not all at once, mind you. After all, we’re still dealing with Wally McDoogle, Dorkoid Extraordinaire (that’s French for extraordinary). But gradually, things started to click. Gradually, Miguel was able to guide me in and out of the right air currents (by firing the burner or letting out the air) until I was able to stay in his general area . . . give or take a few miles.

  “Any sign of a plane yet?” Miguel asked. Several more minutes had passed, and he was sounding a lot weaker.

  I looked around. According to the altimeter I was about 800 feet up. It was like I could see forever. Unfortunately, “forever” didn’t include any planes.

  “Listen,” Miguel said between coughs, “I’m going to have to turn you over to Sis. I need (more coughing), I need to take a break.”

  “You going to be all right?” I asked in concern.

  “Don’t worry about me.” He coughed again. “Just keep an eye on those instruments.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Hey, Wally.” It was Wall Street. For someone who should be bummed, she sounded pretty good. “What’s happening?”

  “Not much,” I answered, “just another typical day in the life of Wally McDoogle.”

  “You’re doing great . . .” she said. “We’re all really proud of you.”

  I gave a shrug, thankful that walkie-talkies don’t show blushing.

  “How’s Opera?” I asked.

  “He’s out in the woods getting more firewood.”

  “By himself!” I practically shouted. “Isn’t he afraid of being attacked by a crazed chipmunk or a herd of slugs or somethin’?”

  She giggled. “I guess your faith is kinda contagious, Wally.”

  More blushing. I tried to change the subject. “How’s your brother?” I asked. “He’s sounding a lot worse.”

  “He is,” she agreed. Her voice had a little quiver to it, but it also had a little strength. “Me and Opera, we’re praying for him, Wally . . . we’re praying real hard.”

  I nodded and said nothing . . . except a quiet prayer of my own.

  Things had really turned around. Here I was, super chicken of heights, up in the air, flying, on my own! There was Opera, super chicken of the woods, actually in them by himself. And Wall Street was back to praying again. I tell you, if God was making a point about trusting Him, He wasn’t doing a half bad job. Now, if He could just do something about—