Dewey Fairchild, Sibling Problem Solver

by Lorri Horn

  This was a disaster of epic proportions. Dewey had to handle this situation delicately, but with his heart pounding in his chest, what he felt like doing was shoving her back up the air ducts.

  How had she discovered their office?

  What did she want?

  She was going to ruin everything.

  She slid off Dewey’s chair, wiping cookie crumbs from her fingers onto her shirt, and began to wander around.

  “I want to slide down again!”

  “Pooh, how did you get here?”

  “Through there!” she pointed at the air ducts.

  “No, I know,” he said, holding onto her shoulders and looking into her eyes. “I mean, how did you get the idea to go in there?”

  “I watched you!”

  Ugh! Dewey had thought he’d always been so careful.

  Wolfie came over and began to lick the flavor of cookies off Pooh’s fingers, making her laugh. She sat down on the carpet to pet him, but he walked away.

  Suddenly, it occurred to Dewey his parents might start to worry and look for her.

  “Pooh. Where do mom and dad think you are?”

  “With you, silly.”

  “Why do they think that?”

  “I told them I was going upstairs to be with you.”

  “Clara? Help me.”

  “Well, sir. I presume they think you are home and up in your room with her. Why don’t you two go do just that until you and I can put our heads together about this, shall we?”

  “Okay. Good. Yeah. That’s good.”

  “Pooh. You can have another cookie, and we’re going back to my room to hang out there. You can sit on my bed and be with me.”

  “Okay. I wanna come back here tomorrow.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Dewey, can I go down the slide again?”

  “Not now. It’s getting late.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I WANT TO GO DOWN THE SLIDE! WHY CAN’T I GO DOWN THE SLIDE!”

  “Okay! Okay! Tomorrow. We’ll find a time.”

  Dewey looked at Clara, his eyes wide.

  They hopped up on the Gator, and Pooh let out a squeal of delight. As it rose Clara said, “You know, we can’t always control what happens, boss.”

  “I can see that,” Dewey grumbled.

  “Sometimes, we can only control how we respond to what does,” she called out.

  On that, Dewey and Pooh made their way out, with Pooh enjoying little matcha-white chocolate sugar cookies along the way, and Dewey’s throat too dry and constricted to even think about popping a cookie in his mouth.

  Reacting

  Dewey and Pooh went upstairs to his room without incident. His dad was either in the garage or not home yet, and his mom was busy on the computer and had not heard him quietly open the door.

  Dewey would have liked to plop down on his bed, but it was occupied territory, invaded by a three-foot-five-inch, forty-one pound, long messy brown-haired almost six-year-old.

  “You wanna color on paper or my iPad?” Anything to keep her busy.

  “iPad!”

  He opened a drawing app for her and sat down at his desk to try and think.

  Impossible. He could not get past the chatter in his head, even with her totally quiet.

  He texted Colin hoping for a distraction.

  how’s it coming?

  Colin sent back the picture of Wolfie in the middle of the pool with Skunky in his mouth, only now, instead of the light blue water with ripples of white light, the water looked ink black and navy blue. Colin had placed Wolfie, smack dab in the middle of it and the caption read, ‘ . . . and all that Jedd could see was water. The lake’s blue looked dark. Black as night. Treading water, he felt a thousand miles out, nothing on which to stand, rest, or lean.’

  Dewey laughed aloud and sent back the cry-laughing emoji.

  “What’s funny?” Pooh asked.

  “Somethin’ for school.”

  “I have something funny,” She held up the iPad. He smiled, nodded, and she went back to work.

  He looked at the meme again and it made him smile for real. Dewey sighed.

  “Guys, dinner,” their mom called.

  “Hey, Pooh. Let’s just keep this slide and office thing between us, and then I’ll let you come back with me tomorrow, k?”

  “Yup,” she said hopping off his bed.

  “Good,” he patted her on the head. “Good.”

  That evening, after he’d cleared the table, he went up to his room and plopped onto his bed. Finally, some time to think. He checked his chats and texts.

  One asking for help had come in from Archie. He hadn’t expected that again so soon.

  Archie: help

  Dewey: your mom?

  A: my sister wants to kill her now HAVE to see you tomorrow

  D: my office right after school

  Archie’s sister? She was in ninth grade. Wonder what that’s about, thought Dewey. Then he began to angst about how to get Pooh Bear her slide time and Archie his meeting time.

  4:30 instead one client before you

  He got the thumbs-up back.

  What was it that Clara had said to him? You can’t always control what happens but how you remix? Recycle? Re-something. The whole thing was feeling re-diculous to him right about now. He still couldn’t figure out how Pooh had even found him out. Argh.

  He rolled over, put the pillow over his head, blindly felt around to turn off the light, and went to sleep without brushing his teeth.

  Same Parent

  Problem Solver

  Turned out, Pooh Bear wasn’t even an issue that afternoon. She had a karate lesson after school. Dewey watched Pooh, all smiles in her little white karate gi, as she and their mom pulled out of the driveway. She waved goodbye to him from the back seat, without so much as peep from her about their previous plans.

  That’s not the only thing that didn’t go as planned that afternoon. At 4:30, Archie did not show up to Dewey’s office. His sister Angelica did.

  Angelica Thomas was a ninth-grade student in high school. He’d never actually met her before, other than for that brief few minutes at Archie’s house. Angelica’s chestnut brown hair was knotted on top of her head in a bun. She wore two round gold hoop earrings and strands of hair fell here and there. She wore a plain white t-shirt and a warm wrap around sweater she’d found at a thrift shop. Her eyes were blue and some days she wore a navy-blue mascara to accentuate them. Today, though, she wasn’t wearing any. She didn’t have the freckles that her brother Archie had. Come to think of it, neither did his mother. She did have a fair number of blemishes that looked especially red against her very fair skin.

  “Angelica! Hi. We were expecting Archie.” Dewey immediately regretted that’d he’d said so.

  “I know. Sorry. When he told me about you, I told him I wanted to come myself. You guys have ruined my life!”

  “Cookie?” Clara offered.

  “This is Clara, and this is our office companion, Wolfie,” Dewey said remembering his professionalism.

  “Nice to meet you,” Angelica said to Clara and Wolfie as if they were both people.

  After Clara had offered the cookies, Angelica sat and her demeanor seemed to soften a bit.

  “Oh, I saw cookies on the way in! I wasn’t sure if it was okay to eat them.”

  “Oh, of course,” Clara said. “Are the notes along the way not there today?”

  “Could be. I’m just so stressed, maybe I missed them.”

  “Understandable,” she assured. “How about having one now, and Dewey will hear all about what’s on your mind.”

  “Well, I don’t know, I—Oh,” she interrupted herself. “These are good!—I don’t know,” she continued, “what you guys did to my mom, but she’s suddenly all over the Internet and up in my business.”

  “Oh. Umm hmm. I se
e. This is an interesting development,” Dewey said, sliding on his fake glasses. “So in fixing his own problem, it seems, Archie may have created one for you?”

  “Yes. Yes, he has. It’s horrendous!!! Now we all have ‘designated family computer time’—including her!”

  Dewey nodded slowly, taking it all in, and slowly adjusting his fake glasses.

  And then, something happened that had never happened to Dewey in all his many, many months of problem solving. Angelica began to cry.

  “It’s just—choke-slobber—sob—so—choke-slobber—sob—beyond—choke-slobber—sob. She ‘likes’ her own posts! She, she comments on all the stuff I post! I, I seriously, I can’t even talk about it. You guys have ruined my life.” She broke down convulsing and sobbing into the crook of her arm on the desk. Thankfully, Wolfie came up under her and began to lick her tears, which made her smile and laugh. Dewey took that as his in.

  “I can see you’re upset. Who wouldn’t be? It sounds awful. Try not to worry! You’ve come to the right place! We can fix this, or my name isn’t Dewey Fairchild, PPS. And er, it is. So, I can. So here,” he smiled, looking around for a tissue, but settling for a napkin instead. He handed it to her followed by a cookie. “We just need to tweak this solution a bit to take you into account.”

  “Archie might have done that in the first place.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s a good thing to keep in mind,” he gave Clara a quick smile..

  “It’s not just me, you know—it’s all my friends.”

  “Right,” nodded Dewey. “Social media—the whole world sees it.”

  “YES!” she blurted out.

  “I understand. I need your mom’s social media passwords.”

  “I don’t have those!”

  “Right. Okay. But you follow her and she follows you on all of her stuff, right? So I’ll just shadow you and see what she’s doing that way. Anything extra she does I might not see, just take a snapshot for me.

  At that, Angelica let out a sigh and nodded.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  “I got this! Don’t worry!”

  Angelica nodded again and smiled.

  As Angelica made her way back out through the air ducts, she lifted the little glass domes and ate some more cookies along the way. “Oh!” She thought to herself. “Look at that! Those little notes were here all along!”

  #Don’t #forget

  #to #floss

  Dewey sat on his bed, scrolling through Mrs. Thomas’ Facebook posts in Angelica’s profile. Like most kids their age, Angelica didn’t seem to be using Facebook all that much, but Dewey could see some of the things that might make Angelica not so happy. He chuckled at a #TBT of her where she’d stuck her tongue in the sand and it was covered like a cupcake in sprinkles. The caption read, “A. stuck her tongue in the sand for a boy she was swooning over in kindergarten.” It had seventy-five likes and too many comments for Dewey to read. Another picture had Angelica’s mom dressed in yoga clothes doing a head stand, followed by a video clip of her jumping up on some floor block thing and jazzercizing or something. Dewey cringed.

  He switched to her Instagram. Angelica’s was private, so he sent her a request, but her mom’s was public access, so he started to look through her posts. She had the same exact photos there as she had on Facebook. Evidently, she didn’t get that people would then just see the same thing twice. Then he started to laugh. ‘#Love #my #daughter #so #blessed’, her mom wrote under a picture she’d posted of her. Um, clearly not getting the hashtag thing, he chuckled. He poked around some more.

  “Oh, too good!” he said to his phone as he sat up taller. “She liked her own post here! That’s pretty funny!”

  Dewey yawned, and decided he would shut down his phone off for the night. Just then, Angelica accepted his friend request.

  So, instead, he started poking around. Without fail, every picture Angelica posted, her mother’s comments were now among the first. “That’s my sweetie!” or “Cute!” Sometimes though, and Dewey was pretty sure this must have been even more embarrassing, her comments had nothing at all to do with the pictures. “What time are you coming home from practice?” or “Did you finish your homework?” Dewey sighed. He wished it wasn’t so late and that his eyes weren’t closing on him, because there was a lot more material to sift through. He tried to look at some more but realized the comments began to blur with thoughts in his sleepy head and made no sense, so he called it a night. Just then his dad came in to tuck him in.

  “Did you wash up, Dews?”

  “Tonight?”

  His dad laughed. “Okay. We’ll try it your way. Did you wash up this evening, Dewey?”

  Dewey sighed and hauled his tired body out of bed to go brush his teeth.

  “Don’t forget to floss,” his dad called behind the door from his room.

  Dewey hadn’t forgotten. He had hoped his father had, though.

  As he flossed his teeth, he sat on the toilet wishing he could be watching something while he worked. Flossing and brushing were so boring. He’d like one of those little tv sets in the bathroom mirror like in the fancy hotels. By now, you’d think they’d have computer screens just built right into them with touch screens. They probably already do at some of those really swanky places, he thought.

  He sat back down to brush his teeth again, but this time he lifted the lid up so he could just spit between his legs straight into the bowl. That didn’t go as planned, though, and he hit the lid and had to wipe it up with the toilet paper. Yeah, he thought. Touch screens in the mirrors. And he rinsed and spit.

  His dad sat on the foot of his bed waiting for him.

  “It’s kind of late, so I think you should just go straight to bed. Let’s work on getting this show on the road a little earlier so you can read a bit before bed, okay, partner?”

  “Sure, Dad,” agreed Dewey. “I could also save a few minutes if I skipped flossing.”

  “Why do you hate flossing so much?”

  “It’s boring. There’s nothing to do.”

  “A guy named Fritz Perls once described boredom as just a lack of attention. It’s an interesting idea, don’t you think?”

  Dewey wasn’t sure, but he was worried he was going to get bored hearing about it.

  “It means, Mr. Dewey, if you’re bored flossing it’s not because flossing itself is boring. It’s because you’re doing a lousy job paying close attention to the quality of the experience.”

  Dewey rolled his eyes.

  “Mom! Dad’s giving me life lessons again!” he called out.

  His dad laughed.

  “You should think about it.”

  “Think about flossing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now?”

  “No. Not now, son, next time you’re flossing. Pay very close attention to your flossing next time you’re flossing.

  “You’re insane.”

  “Fritz Perls, Dewey. Father of Gestalt psychology. I don’t pull this stuff out of my—” His dad paused searching for the right word.

  “Yeah?” Dewey smiled widely. “I’m paying attention.”

  His dad smiled back, kissed him on his head, and turned out the light.

  “Night Dewey. I love you.”

  “Love you, too, Dad.”

  His covers felt heavy and warm and the sheets felt cool and crisp. Dewey felt too tired to even think and sank into a deep sleep.

  Emoji Fun

  “Listen to this bio,” Dewey said as he leaned back in his office chair with his socked feet up on his desk. ‘Hi! I’m the mother of beautiful ninth and sixth graders—that also makes me the mother of last year’s honor roll student, this year’s volleyball star player, and our school’s basketball point guard. When I’m not driving carpools or at work, my husband and I still like to hold hands and take a walk on the beach. #Momdaze, #rockstarkids #nevertoooldforlove.’

  “Holy moly guacamo
le! This is on her Facebook page, her Instagram, and . . . hold on, yup, same bio on her Twitter account, too.”

  “She’s enthusiastic,” Clara said.

  “Oh, she’s enthusiastic, alright. She’s also totally clueless!” Dewey said, laughing hard now. “Look at this!”

  Dewey got up out of his chair and showed Clara a picture of a text exchange Angelica had sent him.

  Mom: :-] (Draw image here)

  Angelica: what?

  M: What do you mean what?

  A: why did you send me a grimace?

  M: That’s not a grimace, that’s a big smile!!!

  “But wait! Oh, no. This is terrible, but it’s so good! Look at this one!”

  M: Grandma called this morning to say they had to take Molly to the vet. [Picture of cry-laughing emoji]

  A: what’s going on with Molly?

  M: She’s in a better world now.

  “Oh, dear,” Clara said. “Well, that’s unfortunate.”

  “Unfortunate, but hilarious!” Dewey laughed so hard he had tears coming down his own face, just like the emoji. “Right. We need to solve the problem, of course. Still!” He laughed again. “She texted about the dog dying and put the laughing emoji! Ha-ha!”

  “Sir? Do you think it’s because she can’t see them? They are awfully small? Or do you think she can’t figure out what they mean?”

  “That’s a good question. She likes her own posts. She writes her own status on someone else’s wall. She thinks she’s messaging privately and posts publicly. So, who knows. How can such a smart person suddenly sound so . . .” Dewey struggled for a word that wouldn’t sound unkind.

  “Dopey?”

  “Okay, dopey.”

  “So where are you going to start?” Clara asked.

  Dewey shrugged. “Stumped. I guess I should start by telling Archie I’m sorry his grandma’s dog died.”

  Just then a text came in from Archie.

  It was a selfie of him drenched.

  A. just dumped a glass of water on my head.

  hope you figure this out soon.

  drying off to play on my ’puter tho so #stillworthit!

  Dewey showed Clara the picture and text.