Give Peas a Chance

by Morris Gleitzman

  That’s what happened tonight when Mum walked in all bandaged up.

  I gasped at the sight of her.

  ‘Love,’ says Dad to Mum. ‘Are you OK? You look terrible. Tell Jack you’re OK.’

  What he really means is ‘tell me you’re OK’.

  Dad looks like his insides are ablaze with worry too.

  ‘Relax, both of you,’ says Mum. ‘I’m fine.’

  She doesn’t look fine.

  ‘What is it?’ I say. ‘What happened?’

  I try to prepare myself for really bad news. Like she’s been shot. Or stabbed. Or had her appendix out.

  Mum hesitates. I can see she wishes I was asleep. But I’m not.

  ‘It’s just a tattoo,’ she says.

  My brain must be a bit heat-affected from the burning worry because I don’t get it at first.

  ‘A tattoo?’ I say.

  ‘That’s all,’ she says.

  Then I do get it. Dad’s had a tattoo for years and Mum’s always saying how she’d like one.

  I wasn’t born when Dad got his tattoo, but he’s told me how it hurt a lot and went scabby for the first few days.

  ‘Show me,’ I say to Mum.

  She and Dad look at each other. They know it’s the only way to get me back to bed without a fuss, so Mum shows me.

  ‘Yuk,’ I say as Dad unwinds the bandage. Mum’s back is red and swollen and definitely starting to go scabby.

  Then I see what the tattoo is.

  It’s me and Beth and Charlie and Mum and Dad. We’re all smiling out of the middle of Mum’s back with our arms round each other. I think the tattoo artist must have used the photo from when Dad volunteered to fight the bushfires in Gippsland and we all went with him to keep him company in the motel.

  ‘That’s great,’ I say.

  It is.

  Tattoos are permanent.

  Like families.

  Mum’s tattoo isn’t as action-packed as Dad’s, but not many tattoos are. He’s got flames shooting up out of the back of his undies and a big squirting hose coiled round his shoulders.

  People would be so impressed to have a Prime Minister with a tattoo like that.

  Mum works in a deli, which I think is why she didn’t make her tattoo about her job. When people saw the ham and salami, they might think the tattoo hadn’t healed.

  ‘Why did you say you were going to the movies?’ I ask Mum.

  She looks a bit embarrassed.

  ‘I was worried I might chicken out,’ she says. ‘You know, when I got to the tattoo parlour and saw the needles. That’s why I asked Dad not to tell you where I was going. If I didn’t get it done, I didn’t want you kids to think I was a coward.’

  ‘We’d never think that,’ I say to her.

  It’s true, we wouldn’t. In the motel in Gippsland Mum pulled a huge splinter out of Dad’s armpit with her teeth.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t chicken out,’ says Dad, giving her a kiss.

  That’s another reason why Dad could be Prime Minister. He has total faith in people. You have to when you’re sharing a hose and a ladder. Plus he’s incredibly gentle at putting a bandage back onto a new tattoo. As he does it, Mum doesn’t even wince.

  And he’s generous.

  ‘I like yours even more than mine,’ he says to Mum.

  His truth crinkles are there the whole time.

  I’m not sure if Dad would ever want to be Prime Minister on account of he loves being a firefighter heaps, but if he does give it a crack one day he’ll be really well qualified if he can kick those few little bad habits.

  I used to want Dad to be Prime Minister so we wouldn’t have to worry about him so much. It’s a known fact that very few Prime Ministers have ever perished in fires in other people’s houses.

  But I don’t think I’ll be worrying about Dad quite so much now. If I feel those tummy flames coming on, I’ll just ask Mum to take her shirt off so I can have a squiz at her back.

  Oh, there is one more thing Dad knows how to do that I reckon would make him a brilliant Prime Minister.

  He did it just now.

  I’m back in bed and almost off to sleep, and Dad pokes his head round my bedroom door.

  ‘That bull I told you about Mum being at the movies,’ he whispers.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Dad,’ I murmur.

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘I want to apologise.’

  He doesn’t have to because I understand, but he does anyway.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says.

  I reckon I’d vote for him even if he wasn’t my dad.

  So Unjust

  Samantha loved reading stories.

  The part of each story she liked best was the twist at the end. That funny and unexpected moment when everything is suddenly OK and the main character ends up delighted and relieved and a bit stunned all at the same time.

  ‘Yes,’ chuckled Samantha as she read how the puzzled owner of the giggling limping parrot discovered that the parrot’s previous owner had been very ticklish, specially near his wooden leg.

  ‘Good one,’ laughed Samantha when the forgetful boy who swallowed his iPod found his memory was improving.

  ‘Brilliant,’ she chortled when the airport terminal that had always been jealous of the planes got blown up and discovered it could fly too.

  Samantha loved those twists.

  But each time she read one, sprawled on her bedroom floor, a tiny part of her always ended up feeling sad.

  The truth was, much as she loved her shelf of neatly arranged books packed with twist-enriched stories, they weren’t quite enough.

  What Samantha wanted more than anything was a twist or two in her own life.

  Nothing huge like discovering Mum and Dad, who both loved Mars Bars, were Martians. Or having her teacher Ms Quigly, who could whistle through her teeth, fall in love with her dentist and not be able to stop whistling the ring tone of the dentist’s dead wife’s mobile. Or saying ‘to die for’ a lot and then actually dying.

  Nothing that big. Just a few small fun twists that would make life more interesting.

  But they never happened.

  Samantha’s life was twistless.

  Then one Saturday morning she read a story and understood why.

  It wasn’t the best story she’d ever read, and the twist was a bit ordinary. It was about a boy who swallowed a tea bag and then had to do a parachute jump. The boy was terrified he’d land in a tree and hang there jiggling and never be rescued. So he swallowed some coffee beans, ones that had been ground because that’s where he wanted to land. But when he jumped out of the plane his parachute didn’t open, so he quickly swallowed another tea bag and his fall was broken by the shade cloth over the staff BBQ area of a teapot factory.

  Wow, thought Samantha. So that’s how it works. You have to make twists happen.

  For the rest of that day, Samantha worked hard to make twists happen in her own life.

  Instead of trying to have a conversation with Dad, which she did every Saturday morning, and instead of getting frustrated while Dad read his paper and only replied in grunts, which he did every Saturday morning, Samantha went down to the shopping centre and juggled half-litre milk cartons outside Officeworks.

  She hoped that a newspaper photographer would notice her. And that her photo would be in the paper the following Saturday morning. And that Dad would see it just as he was in the middle of not paying her very much attention.

  That, she was pretty sure, would be a twist.

  But unfortunately the photographer from the local paper was doing his first parachute jump that day and wasn’t around.

  Passers-by were impressed, though. They’d never seen a girl juggling half-litre milk cartons before. They thought Samantha was busking, and dropped money at her feet, over $150 in total. But Samantha knew that didn’t count as a twist because she’d put the plastic bucket there herself.

  After lunch, while Mum was sewing, which she did every Saturday afternoon, Samantha asked if Mum would t
each her to sew, which she did every Saturday afternoon, and Mum, as usual, said not until Samantha was older because the sewing machine was a very expensive one, and dangerous.

  So Samantha went back down to the shops and spent her busking money on a chainsaw.

  She hid it under her bed and spent a happy few hours looking forward to next Saturday. At which time, when Mum said that the sewing machine was dangerous, Samantha planned to show her the chainsaw and say, ‘No, Mum, this is dangerous.’

  It would be a satisfying moment, but it still wouldn’t be a twist because Dad’s birthday was the week after and he’d been saying he wanted a chainsaw for ages.

  Samantha sighed. It was Saturday evening now and she still hadn’t made a twist happen.

  Mum and Dad were watching TV, which they did every Saturday night, and only replying with vague murmurs when she spoke to them.

  Samantha thought about going next door and strangling the elderly couple who lived there, Mr and Mrs Kemp.

  That would be a twist, because Mum and Dad were watching Midsomer Murders.

  But she didn’t. Strangling elderly neighbours wasn’t a good thing to do, even though they were grouchy and threw pill bottles at her when she went into their garden to get her ball.

  Samantha decided to call it a day.

  ‘Night, Mum,’ she said. ‘Night, Dad.’

  They both murmured something vague.

  Samantha got into bed and re-read the story about the boy and the tea bag. Had she missed something? Some important clue about how to make twists happen? She didn’t think so.

  As her eyelids got heavy, she had a hopeful thought. That even as she was closing the book, a local parachutist, making his or her first night jump, would lose control of the parachute and crash through the roof of the house and dent Mum’s sewing machine and Mum would be sad she hadn’t let Samantha have a go while it still worked.

  But nothing like that happened.

  Samantha slid the book under her pillow and her last thought before she drifted off was that perhaps she would never find a way to make a twist happen.

  Unless, she thought dreamily, an author who’s looking for a story idea with a twist at the end finds out about me. And is fascinated by a girl who loves twists in stories but never has them in her own life.

  Now that would be a twist, thought Samantha, if I ended up in a story myself.

  A Word From Morris

  G’day. I hope you enjoy these stories. I had fun writing lots of new characters. I also had a great time going on new adventures with some of my old friends.

  In case you haven’t met those old friends before, here’s where they first appeared in my previous books.

  Ro and her dad from ‘101 Text Messages You Must Read Before You Die’ can be found looking out for each other and sometimes exasperating each other in Blabber Mouth, Sticky Beak and Gift Of The Gab.

  In Second Childhood, Mark from ‘Ashes To Ashes’ gets into even more strife than he does in this book.

  If you think Jake’s mission is impossible in ‘Mission Impossible’, wait till you see what he’s faced with in Adults Only.

  Ginger from ‘Good Dog’ has some other interesting animal friends in Teacher’s Pet. So does Ned from ‘My First Ever Go At Bomb Disposal’.

  ‘Give Peas A Chance’ isn’t Ben’s only attempt to save the world. He’s at it again in The Other Facts Of Life.

  In Misery Guts, Worry Warts and Puppy Fat, Tracy from ‘Think Big’ is just as outspoken and gutsy, even though her friend Keith sometimes wishes she wasn’t.

  Kevin from ‘Paparazzi’ fails to be cool once again in Doubting Thomas.

  If you’d like to spend more time in the microbiological world of ‘Germ Meets Worm’, you can join Wilton and Algy on an epic journey in Worm Story, and share a very surprising visit next door with Aristotle and Blob in Aristotle’s Nostril.

  And finally, although Dougie’s dad doesn’t appear much in ‘Greenhouse Gas’, you can get to know him as a kid in Belly Flop, and see that Dougie and Grandpa aren’t the only ones in that family who’ll try to change the weather to solve a problem.

  Happy reading, and thanks for sharing my stories,