Writes, Jobe

I Sense Humor

By Jobe Writes

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Jobe Writes
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-1806-1

Contents

Shocking Behavior..........................................1Paper Money................................................11Friends....................................................21The Shot Heard Round the Block.............................33First Camping Trip ... Ever................................43Stubbing Toes..............................................57I Sense Humor..............................................67The Game...................................................75Wrinkles and Floppy Skin...................................81My Friend GBY..............................................91Tweeter....................................................101Things Just Happen.........................................109Editorial..................................................119The Guys' Rules............................................129Family Definitions and Acronyms............................132The Unexpected Dedication of this Book.....................134

Chapter One

Shocking Behavior

Ah, I have good memories of LeRoy Bunkerman, nicknamed Bunker, who was this scrawny kid with no muscles at all. In fact, Bunker was so skinny that when he wore shorts his legs looked like they were hanging from the shorts' legs like clappers inside side by side bells. He had bright red hair and freckles all over his face and arms. Yeah, Bunker was one of my best friends growing up in Holladay Elementary School and it was Bunker that came up with the idea in the first place. Oh, yeah, Bunker always came up with the ideas that got us in the most trouble, but this one turned out to be worth all the yelling and threats to our tender bodies because the end results were so much better than we could have ever hoped for.

We were in the sixth grade at Holladay Elementary, a deceptive name for a school to fool innocent children into thinking that it was a great place to attend, but it was anything but a holiday! Anyway, to overcome the intense boredom, Bunker had become very interested in new inventions and gadgets and was always on the lookout for them, so, naturally, sooner or later he was bound to come across one that would peak his interest.

We lived in a small town outside of Salt Lake City at the base of the Rocky Mountains and there was a lot of hunting going on year around. Elk season was early September; deer and turkey season was late October; duck season in November; and bear season was whenever one tried to eat you. Anyway, because of all the great hunting, a lot of hunters owned dogs and there were all kinds of gadgets that were being invented to help train your dog to be a better hunter, be more obedient, and learn to poop in his own yard, that kind of stuff. Well, sooner or later it was going to happen, the new invention for training your dog was a battery- operated collar that had three different buttons on the end of the leash.

One day Bunker showed up with his dad's favorite hunting dog (which, by the way was pretty well trained as it was) wearing this new training collar with what looked like an extension cord for the leash.

"What are those buttons for, Bunker?"

As if he was a college professor, Bunker explained, "The yellow button is to give a very mild shock to get the dog's attention. The blue button, I guess, is like a line drive baseball to your groin, and the red button works like stopping MacIntosh's prize bull in full charge, dead in his tracks, just before he gores you."

Bunker continued with his lecture, "When you want him to walk right next to you, and he starts to wander away, you push this yellow button like this." The dog (his name was Beast) jumped and whimpered a little. "See, it gives him a small jolt to let him know that he isn't being obedient and to get back here by me," he explained. I noticed the dog hadn't tried to leave Bunker's side and wasn't sure what the heck had just happened. I thought it looked like it was a mean way to train any dog.

"Show me again," I said. Bunker pushed the yellow button again and Beast jumped, but this time he didn't whimper. He showed his teeth and added a rumbling noise that sounded really disobedient to me. Bunker and I looked at Beast and Bunker suggested we try out the collar on a less aggressive animal than this one. I thought that was a great idea, so we took Beast back home and removed the collar.

That's when Bunker's mom's cat, Ms. Pretty, rubbed up against his leg. We never even spoke. We just knew we had found an animal that really needed training. The collar was too big for the darn cat, so Bunker cinched it up around it's middle, the whole time talking sweetly to Ms. Pretty, "Ah, nice kitty, pretty kitty, there you go, nice kitty." Bunker said it might be better to take Ms. Pretty for a walk away from the house, just in case we should be interrupted and ruin the training session.

We walked Ms. Pretty to the back lot behind Bunker's house, a really nice open field where cats liked to go to chase mice or sometimes just to fight, growl, and hiss at each other.

"Well, I think this is as good a place as any to start her training," Bunker said and pushed the yellow button. I was impressed! I never knew any cat could elevate that high, straight up several feet, without a running start.

"Wow that was neat! Do it again." So, for the next couple of minutes, we hopped Ms. Pretty around the field. The whole time Bunker was saying, "Nice kitty, pretty kitty, don't ever rub against my leg again Kitty."

It was getting pretty boring after what must have seemed like a lifetime to Ms. Pretty, so I asked Bunker, "What about the blue button?"

"I'll push it only once. I don't know exactly how Ms Pretty will react." Then Bunker pushed the blue button.

As we were taking the cat back to Bunkers' house I asked him, "What are you going to tell your mom about your pant leg? I never thought a cat could move that fast, or those little paws could shred a pant leg so quickly."

"Maybe she won't notice my pant leg," said Bunker as he looked sideways at the large fur ball he was carrying in his arm.

"You know, I think I'll just wait for you out front by the curb, ok?"

"Sure, I'll just put Ms Pretty in the house and come right back."

I really didn't think he would be back, but felt it would be worth hanging around just to see what his mom and dad would do to him.

To understand what happened next, let me tell you a little bit about Bunker's parents. His mom was a high strung flighty-type person. Whenever I went to their house and she would answer the door, she would be first wearing a smile until she looked down and saw that it was me. Her smile would go crooked and her eyebrows would fall down almost hiding her eyes, "Oh, my, it's you. Well, come on in for a few minutes." She then would rush around from room to room looking for Bunker to quickly escort us out of the house. There are times I worried that she might spontaneously combust.

Bunker's dad seemed to be a nervous wreck from the moment I entered their home. His upper lip would curl and his left eyelid would twitch the whole time he followed me with his eyes, while not turning his head. It was really annoying.

Anyway, Bunker walked into the house through the patio door which went right into the kitchen. That's where his mother met him.

"YEEEEEEEEEEEE! LEROY MERLIN BUNKERMAN, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MS. PRETTY?"

I heard his mom's scream all the way out by the front curb and I really think that it was mean of her to scare me like that.

"WHAT HAPPENED TO MY CAT? WHY IS ALL HER FUR STANDING UP? SHE LOOKS LIKE SHE HAS AN AFRO! WHAT DID YOU DO?"

The whole time her hands were fluttering around her mouth and Bunker was stammering things like, "N-n-nothing, I just f-found her this way, she's just f-fine. I like how her hair l-l-looks. Besides, look what she did to my p-p-pant leg."

That's when Bunker's dad walked in,

"WHAT IN THE BLEEP HAPPENED TO YOUR PANT LEG? WE JUST SPENT FIVE DOLLARS ON THOSE. WHERE IS MY BELT?" His left eyelid was flapping like it was getting ready to take off.

Two weeks later Bunker told me that it took him three days of bathing and brushing to get the "stupid trouble making cat's hair to lie back down," as Bunker put it. He said he had to use a complete can of his mom's hair spray that his mom didn't know about yet. The cat was fine, just like I knew it would be, and the best part is that the training worked. Ms. Pretty didn't rub against Bunker's leg anymore. In fact, Ms. Pretty wouldn't even go near him.

I figured that Bunker was done with the training collar for good until Thomas T. Wrechyourface, the school bully, happened to bump into us, knocking Bunker down. After Big T (as he liked to be called) took his foot off of Bunker's hand and walked away laughing, Bunker stood up smiling.

"Did you enjoy that?" I asked.

"Not really, but it just occurred to me that Big T needs some training."

The first part of Bunker's plan was to visit the science teacher, Miss Edwardson, and put this question to her:

"Miss Edwardson, if we wanted to do an experiment for extra credit, and film it to show to the class, could you help us with some information we will need?"

"Why, I would be delighted to help you boys in any way I can. I'm impressed that you would come up with such a wonderful idea as this. What will your movie be on?"

"Electricity and how to collar it for good use," Bunker replied.

We took our time so we would understand what made the best conductor, which turned out to be a puddle of water, and what limits we should be aware of so we didn't cause too much permanent damage to the collar. We were hoping to get the same results as Ms. Pretty gave us, but were willing to settle for catching Big T's facial expressions on film.

The plan was very simple. We would show Big T that this collar really looked cool to wear, so we enlisted the help from some older women - you know the ones in the seventh grade. We took the leash off the collar, which meant we had no control over the power, and I put it on. Then Bunker and I strolled by Big T and his friends. At first they all starting laughing, until a group of seventh grade women walked by and one of them said, "Wow, that's a cool spiked collar." To our great joy, Big T then thought it looked cool, too.

"Here, let me try it on," he demanded.

"No, better not, it belongs to Bunker's dad and he doesn't even know we have it."

"So? He'll never know. Now give it to me before I squeeze your head small enough so that the collar will just slip over it."

"Okay," I said, and Bunker helped me undo the collar and we gave it to Big T. Once he put it on he started showing it off for his friends and they wanted to take turns wearing it too.

Well, pretty soon Big T wanted to take it off but couldn't figure out how to unbuckle it.

"Here, I'll help you take it off," said Bunker, but instead he plugged in the leash and grabbed the controls while I backed up and turned on the movie camera.

"Hey, what's the camera for? What is that strap for? What ththththth...." was all he stuttered out.

Bunker had pushed the RED "stopping a charging bull" button. He had never pushed the red button before, but later Bunker told me because of the size of our test subject and how mean he has been in the past, he felt like it would take that much training to really have the proper effect.

One brave friend of Big T's came running up to help him right at the moment Big T stepped into our puddle of water.

Big T's friends' face made one huge twitch and froze there and he was unable to let go of Big T. Meanwhile, Big T was hitting himself in his own eye, just like he had done to hundreds of smaller kids, who, by the way, had started to gather around and were cheering us on. Big T's friend started to gnaw on Big T's arm like corn on the cob. My guess is that he was trying to break the invisible grip Big T had on him. Both of these guys made more hissing and spitting sounds than Ms. Pretty ever did.

It didn't take long until the teacher on ground duty, Mrs. Barbage, headed in our direction. Mrs. Barbage was the typical strict older grouchy teacher who enjoyed a good standoff with a student. Mrs. Barbage had good reason to be grouchy, her right leg was one inch shorter than her left and she walked with a cane that had a hook top and a rubber cover on the bottom of it. As she approached the two gyrating boys standing in the puddle of water she commenced scolding them. "Stop that indecent dancing around right this minute," and started poking them with her cane. "I want you two boys to head for the office right this minute! We'll see if that sort of behavior will be tolerated at this school."

Bunker pushed the off button and hurried over to remove the collar from Big T. "What's all that you're doing there, LeRoy?" questioned Mrs. Barbage. "Just a science experiment for class, Ma'am. You go ahead and take charge of these two boys who were trying to corrupt all of these young innocent minds," replied Bunker.

Mrs. Barbage, using her cane like a cattle prod, herded the two perverts toward the office.

Word later got back to us that Mrs. Barbage poked the two boys right into the office of the school nurse, Mrs. Peck. Mrs. Peck is another teacher like Mrs. Barbage, but is cranky for different reasons. I heard her say one day, "The little fakers should be sent back to class with a garbage bag tied around their necks. Just in case they weren't faking it, they could ralph in the bags instead of on the floor."

"Why do these two imbeciles look so funny?" said Mrs. Peck. "You with the facial twitch, stop trying to show off. You're annoying me."

"You should have seen the way they were acting in front of the other children. Shameful, it was," complained Mrs. Barbage.

"Well, we will just separate these two and have them both lie down. What is that humming noise I keep hearing?" asked Mrs. Peck. After taking Big T into a room by himself, Mrs. Peck had him lie down and then turned the lights out. When she returned to the office where Mrs. Barbage was, she asked "What in the Sam Hill has that boy been into? Do you know that his ears are glowing in the dark?"

Big T's friend who was attached to him during the filming finally stopped his facial twitching and all the kids were glad, because it had been really hard to look at him for a while. Big T's arm healed nicely from the teeth marks left by his ex-friend who blamed him for the experience. As for Big T, it was hard to stand too close to him for a couple of days because he gave off an annoying humming sound, just like a high voltage power line, but we were nice about it and didn't say anything to him. We didn't want to hurt his feelings.

It turned out that Holladay Elementary lost a bully, but got its first training film for teachers to show to students who were not very obedient - and we got an A+ on our extra credit.

Paper Money

I was introduced to "the brothers" during the time that I had my paper route. They were bizarre boys who were a year apart in age but looked like twins. Their mental qualities were irrational and ungifted, like most boys our age, so we seemed to fit together perfectly. I didn't know it at the time, but I was more of a mascot to them in the beginning of our friendship, yet I must have grown on them as a good friend without any of the three of us knowing it was happening.

All three of us had evening paper routes and every day we picked up our papers at the paper shack, folded them, and loaded them onto our bikes for delivery. Back then all the paperboys used "The Sack" to carry their papers in. It was a bright orange sandwich bag with draw straps. The bags were combined together with a center piece of cloth that had a large hole in it, so you could slip the whole thing over your head. This would result in placing one bag in front and one in back, hence the name sandwich bag, you being the skinny center part. The two draw straps, one for each bag, were pulled across the top of the bag and looped through double rings to pull the bag tight, so your papers would not fall out. Some ingenious paperboy discovered that, once he had cinched the bags tight, he could then hang the whole over-weighted bulk, using the straps, from his handle bars. This made it easier on your shoulders and easy to reach the papers to toss. It also prevented the unfortunate event of being weighted down to the bike when crashing, which happened often enough. It also solved the problem of strangulation while carrying the bag over your shoulders with your head poking up between the two loaded halves. There was this auto adjusting mechanism which kicked in when you took too many papers out of the front of the bag, causing the ones hanging down your back to pull the hole snug against your wind pipe. It let you know that it was time to spin the bag around and relieve the pressure.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from I Sense Humorby Jobe Writes Copyright © 2009 by Jobe Writes. Excerpted by permission.
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