by Bill Myers
MY LiFe
as a
Human
Hairball
Books by Bill Myers
Series
SECRET AGENT DINGLEDORF
. . . and his trusty dog, SPLAT
The Case of the . . .
Giggling Geeks • Chewable Worms
• Flying Toenails • Drooling Dinosaurs •
Hiccupping Ears • Yodeling Turtles
The Incredible Worlds of Wally McDoogle
My Life As . . .
a Smashed Burrito with Extra Hot Sauce • Alien Monster Bait • a Broken Bungee Cord • Crocodile Junk Food • Dinosaur Dental Floss • a Torpedo Test Target • a Human Hockey Puck • an Afterthought Astronaut • Reindeer Road Kill • a Toasted Time Traveler • Polluted Pond Scum • a Bigfoot Breath Mint • a Blundering Ballerina • a Screaming Skydiver • a Human Hairball • a Walrus Whoopee Cushion • a Computer Cockroach (Mixed-Up Millennium Bug) • a Beat-Up Basketball Backboard • a Cowboy Cowpie • Invisible Intestines with Intense Indigestion • a Skysurfing Skateboarder • a Tarantula Toe Tickler • a Prickly Porcupine from Pluto • a Splatted-Flat Quarterback • a Belching Baboon • a Stupendously Stomped Soccer Star • a Haunted Hamburger, Hold the Pickles • a Supersized Superhero . . . with Slobber •
The Portal • The Experiment • The Whirlwind • The Tablet
Picture Book
Baseball for Breakfast
www.Billmyers.com
the incredible worlds of Wally McDoogle
MY LiFe
as a
Human
Hairball
BILL MYERS
MY LIFE AS A HUMAN HAIRBALL
© 1998 by Bill Myers
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts in reviews.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail: [email protected].
Scripture quotations are from the International Children’s Bible®, New Century Version®, © 1986, 1988, 1999 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Myers, Bill, 1953–
My life as a human hairball / Bill Myers.
p. cm. — (The incredible worlds of Wally McDoogle ; 15)
Summary: Accidentally miniaturized in a lab, thirteen-year-old Wally and his friend Wall Street travel through the inside of a person’s body, viewing his anatomy and marveling at the wonders of God’s creation.
ISBN 978-0-8499-4024-8
[1. Body, Human—Fiction. 2. Science—Experiments—Fiction.
3. Christian life—Fiction. 4. Humorous stories.] I. Title. II. Series: Myers, Bill, 1953– . Incredible worlds of Wally McDoogle ; #15.
PZ7.M98234M1 1998
[Fic]—dc21 98-7219
CIPP
AC
Printed in the United States of America
09 10 11 12 13 QW 17 16 15 14 13
To Tina Shuman—
for her resourcefulness and commitment.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. . . .
Psalm 139:14 (NIV)
Contents
1. Just for Starters . . .
2. A New Weight-Loss Program
3. Digesting the Facts
4. A Little Swim
5. The Heart of the Matter
6. “Growing UP”
7. Swim!!!
8. Just Like Old Slimes
9. Break Out!
10. Wrapping Up
Chapter 1
Just for Starters . . .
The next time I say God is boring, just tape my mouth shut, throw me off the World Trade Center, or get me a brain transplant (because it’s obvious I’ve lost my mind). What I learned just about His creativity and how He puts the human body together is enough to write an entire book, which— come to think about it—I’m doing.
It all started with another boring field trip, to another boring science place, courtesy of our boring science teacher, Mr. Reptenson. I don’t want to be too hard on the guy, but if you ever have trouble going to sleep, just swing by one of his lectures and you’ll be snoozing away in seconds.
Only instead of listening to Mr. Reptenson, we were listening to some research guy who wore more pocket protectors than our entire chess club put together. At the moment he was droning on about the laboratory we were visiting—how they make those little video cameras that go into the human body to see what’s happening inside. Talk about interesting. It was so exciting that the entire class had broken out into a bad case of the yawns.
But then, just as I was mastering the fine art of sleepwalking, we headed into this giant room with a huge machine that stretched all the way to the ceiling. Directly below it was some sort of minisubmarine mounted on a platform.
“What’s that?” Opera, my best friend, shouted over his Walkman. Opera is always shouting something over his Walkman—usually it’s “Where’s the dip?” (The only thing he likes better than listening to Mozart is scarfing down multiple bags of potato chips.)
“This is our latest experiment,” Mr. Pocket Protector beamed.
I took another swig from my can of soda and actually found myself starting to listen.
“We’re just in the beginning stages,” he explained, “but someday we hope to miniaturize that submarine with the help of this Molecular Compressor Miniaturizer.” He slapped his hand against the giant machine that towered above us. “When that happens, we’ll be able to make the submarine small enough to actually enter the human body. Then we’ll be able to rove about making repairs from the inside.”
“Hold the phone,” Wall Street interrupted (she’s my other best friend—even if she is a girl). “You mean this giant machine, this Molecular Whatchamacallit, can actually make things smaller?”
“That’s right.”
“Wow,” Opera exclaimed. “Just like that movie, Honey, I Shrunk My Underwear?” (Opera doesn’t get out all that often.)
“Well, sort of,” the man said. “It’s still very much in the experimental stage, but someday we hope to put it to work. Now, if you’ll step with me into this next room, I’ll show you a fantastic video clip on the latest advances in optical enhancement.” Everyone groaned as we started forward. Well, everyone but Wall Street.
“Pssst,” she whispered. “Hey, Wally?”
I threw a look over my shoulder. She was hanging toward the back of the group motioning for me to join her.
I slowed down. “What’s up?” I asked.
She glanced around and lowered her voice even more. “I don’t know about you, but the last thing in the world I want to do is watch another boring video.”
I nodded. “Tell me about it.”
She continued to slow our walk until we were at the very back of the group.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She motioned for me to keep my voice down. “Let’s stay in here and check out this cool stuff.” “We can’t do that!”
“Says who?” By now most of the class had entered the other room. “It’ll only be for a couple of minutes,” she insisted. “We’ll catch up to them before they’re done. They’ll never miss us.”
I knew we should stay with the group, but when it comes to watching boring videos
or checking out fancy minisubmarines with even fancier sci-fi Miniaturizing Machines . . . well, you can see my problem. Besides, it’s not like we were doing anything wrong. I mean it’s not my fault we just happen to be extra slow walkers—or that we just happened to duck out of sight when Mr. Pocket Protector poked his head in and checked for stragglers. And it’s not my fault that he shut the door behind him with a loud
K-THUD.
But there we were, all alone . . . just the mini-submarine, the machine, and my guilty conscience.
“Come on.” Wall Street motioned for me to hop over the railing and head on down to the submarine. I hesitated, then reluctantly followed. That was my second mistake. Unfortunately, there would be plenty more to come.
The submarine was pretty small, about ten feet long. It was mounted on a wooden cradle that held it a couple of feet off the floor. Wall Street was the first to arrive. She pressed her face against one of the windows and took a look. A moment later I had joined her. Inside, we could see two seats, a whole bunch of video screens, and more wires than the back of our VCR after Dad is done trying to hook it up.
“Cool,” Wall Street half whispered.
I nodded. When she was right, she was right. Unfortunately, she could also be wrong. Before I knew it, she had found the ladder leading up to the open hatch and started climbing it.
“Wall Street,” I said, “what are you doing? Get down!”
“Why? What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is, we shouldn’t even be here.”
“I’m just going to take a peek inside.”
“Wall Street, don’t . . .”
But she had already reached the top and was poking her head down into it. “Wow! You gotta check this out.”
“I’m not checking anything out.” I folded my arms across my chest to prove I meant business. Now, she knew I was mad. Now, she knew I was serious. Now, she turned around and climbed down inside.
“WALL STREET!” I yelled.
She appeared at the inside window and waved to me.
“Get out of there!” I cried. “Wall Street!”
But she refused to take me seriously. (Why should she start now?) Instead, she turned around and began checking out all the cool instruments. “Wall Street!”
Ditto in the no respect department.
I had to do something; I had to get her out of there before we were caught. With the world’s second biggest sigh (the biggest will come up on page 9), I carefully scooted my pop can under the submarine so it wouldn’t get kicked over, and I started up the ladder after her.
The good news was I only slipped and fell a half-dozen times (climbing ladders can be risky to the coordinationally challenged). When I finally got to the top, I stuck my head inside and called, “Let’s go. Come on. Wall Street, don’t make me come down there after you.”
She looked up from a bunch of video screens and grinned. “You’ve got to see this.”
“See what?”
“There’s this cool panel here. Looks like a remote control to that Miniaturizing Machine above us.” I didn’t feel like climbing down to see it, but I didn’t exactly feel like missing out either. So I did the next best thing. I stuck my head down a little farther into the hatch. Unfortunately, a video monitor blocked my view so I stuck it down a little farther. And then a little farther. And then— Suddenly I’d run out of little farthers. Come to think of it, I’d also run out of open hatches.
“AUGH!”
K-Thunk . . . K-Thunk . . . K-Thunk . . .
The “AUGH!” was me falling head first through the hatch. (And you thought I was kidding about being coordinationally challenged.) The K-Thunk . . . K-Thunk . . . K-Thunk was the sound of my head catching every rung of the ladder as I fell.
Unfortunately, those were the good sounds. There were also a few bad ones—like me crashing into Wall Street:
“OAFF!”
“Sorry . . .”
And her screaming as she lost her balance:
“WALLY!”
Stagger . . . stagger . . . stagger. . .
“LET GO OF . . .”
Stumble . . . stumble . . . stumble . . .
“. . . ME!!”
Next up was the ever popular
K-SLAM!
as we smashed into the fancy control panel. This was immediately followed by the
K-RACKLE K-RACKLE K-RACKLE
SIZZLE SIZZLE SIZZLE
POP POP POP
of the control panel shorting out.
There were more sparks than when our cat Collision gnaws on the light cord. More smoke than when it’s my little sister’s night to cook.
But we still weren’t done. That would be too easy. There was still one last little sound.
WOZZA-WOZZA-WOZZA-WOZZA-WOZZA
“What’s that?” Wall Street cried.
“I don’t know!” I said, coughing and waving the smoke out of my face. I staggered to the window to take a look.
“What do you see?” she yelled over the noise.
“Nothing. Just some red beam shooting out of that giant machine above us.”
“What red beam?” She quickly joined me.
“The one coming out of that Miniaturizer Machine and hitting our submarine.”
She let out the world’s loudest sigh (see I told you there was one louder than page 6). I looked at Wall Street and Wall Street looked at me. Then we both said what the other was thinking:
“Uh-oh.”
We glanced back outside.
“Say, Wally? Why is everything around the submarine getting bigger?”
It was true—the walls, the machine, the whole room seemed to be growing bigger. Unfortunately, you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what was really going on. It wasn’t that everything was getting bigger. . . .
It was that we were getting smaller!
Once again we looked at each other and once again we said what the other was thinking. Only this time, it was just a little different and just a little louder:
“AUGHHHHHHHH!”
Chapter 2
A New Weight-Loss Program
But the fun and games weren’t exactly over. As we continued to shrink, the wooden cradle holding the submarine seemed to grow bigger and bigger . . . until we were so small (or it was so big) that we finally slipped through one of the cracks and fell. The good news was we got to do what we did best:
“AUGH!”
The bad news was that by our new standard of smallness the ground was at least a hundred feet below. No problem except for the part of being smashed to smithereens on the lab floor. We braced ourselves, preparing for the worst. But the worst never happened. (That comes a little later.)
Instead of slamming onto the floor, instead of the deafening crash of broken minisubmarines (and broken kids) . . . we were only jarred slightly as we heard a very odd
K-PLOP!
Wall Street looked at me and blinked. “What was that?”
I looked at her and blinked. “Got me.”
We headed over to the window and looked out. To my surprise, the lab was nowhere to be seen. Instead, we were surrounded by some sort of brown, bubbling liquid. And off in the distance was what looked like a wall. But not the lab wall. This one formed a circle around us and was smooth and shiny, almost like it was metal or something.
“Where are we?” I whispered.
Wall Street shook her head. “It’s definitely not Kansas, Toto.”
I’ll spare you the details on how heroically we behaved. Let’s just say that after all the screaming, shouting, and banging on the side of the submarine for help, we finally got a grip and started to check out the place.
Actually, it was pretty cool. I mean, everywhere you looked there was your basic, state-of-the-art, sci-fi stuff—everything from navigation computers with 3-D holographic readouts to diving suits with built-in intercoms to—well, let’s just say that the place was definitely high-tech in a Star Trek sort of way.
It di
dn’t take long for us to get back to the source of our problem: the Miniaturizer Machine’s remote control panel. (Actually, the source of our problem was me! Of course, we haven’t been able to fix that for thirteen years, so why try now?) The point is, there had to be some way to reverse the effects of the machine so we could get back to our normal size (or even a few inches taller so I could finally stop being the school punching bag). Unfortunately, my little crash and burn routine had managed to break all the important switches and dials. (Hey, if a disaster is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.) The only thing that seemed to be working was a digital clock above the control panel. But even that was running backward. At the moment it read
22 MINUTES : 33 SECONDS
“What do you suppose that is?” I asked.
Wall Street squinted at the label underneath the time display and read it: “Total Miniaturization Time .”
With genius-like thinking, I opened my mouth and shared the deep thoughts running through my mind. “Huh?”
“I think that clock tells us how much time we’ve got left being small,” she said. “You know, how much time we’ve got before we grow back to our normal size.”
I glanced at the readout. It now said
22 MINUTES : 25 SECONDS
I felt a wave of relief wash over me. “If that’s true, then we don’t have anything to worry about. All we have to do is wait around for twenty-two minutes, and we’ll be back to normal.”
Wall Street began to nod. “I don’t want this to be a shock, but you just might be right.” (There’s a first time for everything.)
With nothing else to do but wait, I started poking around the submarine again. Pretty soon, I stumbled upon the keyboard to the onboard computer. Normally, to kill time and help me relax, I write stories on my laptop, Ol’ Betsy. But since I didn’t have her with me, and since there was nothing else happening, I plopped down in front of the computer and snapped it on. After finding the word processing program, I began to type. I was in a pretty weird place and could stand a little relaxation. Unfortunately, sometimes the weirder the place is, the weirder my story becomes. . . .
