Toilet Paper Mummy

by Michael Rex

  We found one little packet of lemonade mix in the kitchen. We mixed it up fast, but didn’t read the directions and put in too much water. It didn’t taste lemony enough, so we searched around and found some lemon cough drops and put them in. They looked like little lemon ice cubes. It tasted better, but not quite right, so we stirred in some sugar. Now it was too thick, and I was like, “Man, making lemonade is hard,” and then I had my best idea of the day. The soda I found in the pond was lemon-lime! I poured it in. It tasted awesome!

  We ran to the garage and found some yellow paint. Samantha made signs and I set up a little table. It looked excellent, but no one bought any lemonade. We were screaming our guts out, like, “Lemonade, lemonade, get your ice-cold lemonade!” But still no one bought any.

  I held one of the signs up high for people to see, and I got some yellow paint on me and that gave me an idea. I grabbed the paint from the garage and started painting all over my face, my arms, my shirt, and my pants. Then I found an old football helmet and painted that yellow, too. Samantha painted a little kid cowboy hat to wear. I was like, “I’ll be the Lemonade Man!” I looked really cool, and then I started dancing around on the sidewalk and shaking my butt and stuff and singing,

  We still sold nothing. Samantha said we had to have a gimmick to sell the lemonade, and I asked, “Like what?” She said maybe we could give away a free straw with each cup. I thought that was a great idea. I ran to the kitchen and looked around. No straws. I was thinking that maybe I could make straws. I needed something thin that I could roll up. Baloney! Yes!

  I ran back to the table with some baloney and showed Samantha how to make a baloney straw. We made a bunch and put them in the cups. We had a few extra slices so I stuck them on my shirt like polka dots. Again, we sold nothing!

  Then I had my second-best idea of the day! “We should sell door to door!” I said, and we grabbed some cups and straws and started ringing people’s doorbells. Everyone was like, “No, thank you,” and then they closed the door in my face before I even did my Lemonade Man dance.

  Finally, the man at the end of the street said “Yes” to the lemonade, but he didn’t want a baloney straw. He was getting his money when all of a sudden his big dog came running to the door, jumped up, and snatched the baloney polka dots. I got knocked down off the stoop, and the lemonade and baloney straws spilled all over me! I was lucky I had my helmet on.

  The dog jumped on top of me and started gobbling up the baloney, and his dog hair was sticking to the paint, and his slobber was flying all over the place!

  “Ricky!” screamed Dean.

  “Ricky!” shouted Ricky’s dad as he came around the corner of the house and saw Ricky, Gus, and Stew. “Why did a hot dog with a mustache fall out of the sky and into my toolbox?”

  “Because it was his birthday wish!” said Ricky.

  “Whose birthday wish?” asked Dad.

  “Harry’s,” said Ricky.

  “Who is Harry?” asked Ricky’s dad.

  “He’s my pet hot dog, and I’m glad you found him!” said Ricky.

  “Ricky,” said his dad quietly, “start from the beginning.”

  “All right …”

  I woke up today and realized it was Harry’s birthday. I looked all over for him, and then I remembered that I left him in the hamper (“H” for “Hamper,” “H” for “Harry”), so I dug around and there he was, under a dirty dish I used for eating a hamburger. It had been so long since I had seen him that he had grown hair!

  The first thing I needed to do for his birthday was give him a haircut. I used Mom’s fancy little makeup scissors to snip away most of the fuzz.

  Part of the hair I couldn’t cut away. It looked like a funky beard. But if you have a funky beard, you need a funky mustache. I reached between my toes and picked some fuzz, then I stuck my finger in my ear to get some earwax. I used the earwax to stick the toe fuzz to his face, like an awesome mustache. Then I redrew his eyes. He looked ready to party.

  Once that was done, I had to figure out what to get Harry for his birthday. I looked around the house for ideas. I’ve lost Harry a few times. Once I lost him in my backpack, once he fell behind the toilet, and once I left him outside overnight. That’s it, I thought. I’ll build him his own house so I can’t ever lose him again.

  I grabbed some old shoe boxes, some scissors, some paints, and some glitter. I cut the box and made a house with two rooms. Then I painted the walls and poured glitter on them. But I didn’t have any glue. How was I going to stick all this together?

  I thought, Mayonnaise looks like glue! I’ll use that. I got some mayonnaise from the fridge and brushed it all over the hot dog house. It began to fall apart. I needed to find something stickier. Maple syrup! I grabbed some from the kitchen and squirted it all over the house. The syrup held Harry’s house together, and it was looking pretty cool.

  The house needed a TV. Somewhere in my room I had a little TV-shaped pencil sharpener. I crawled under my bed and shoved some junk around. Finally, I found it. I also found a cookie that I lost in the first grade. The bad thing was, I was covered with syrup and mayonnaise and paint, and the dust fuzz from under my bed was stuck all over me.

  I sneezed over and over. I tried to cover my mouth, but my hand was all painty and covered with syrup. Dust fuzz is the one thing I don’t like because it makes me sneezy and makes my nose drip boogers like crazy. Now I would have to take a bath before the party.

  I was thinking that I would invite Gus and Stew to the party. I could make really fancy invitations with the glitter and stuff. But that was a waste of time. I opened the window and just shouted,

  I only had an hour and a whole ton of stuff to do. I had to wash my clothes, take a bath, make sandwiches, and bake a cake. I didn’t know if I could do it all, but then I saw my cheese sign that said “Ricky is Awesome!” and I knew I could do it!

  When you think about it, it doesn’t make any sense to wash your clothes in one place, and wash your body in another place, and make lunch in another place. Right? So I decided to do them all at once. I grabbed the peanut butter and the jelly and a few slices of bread and potato chips, cookies, and some jelly beans. I brought them into the bathroom. I filled up the tub. Then I jumped in with my clothes on and laid out the food on the side of the tub.

  I didn’t have enough bowls and plates, so I had the great idea of putting everything in a sandwich. Since I forgot to bring a knife to spread the peanut butter and jelly, I used a toy hammerhead shark that I keep in the bathtub. I was kind of splashing around and the bread was getting wet when I knocked the chips into the tub.

  I scooped up the chips. I got some of the dust fuzz that was floating around in the water, too, but I didn’t think anyone would notice. I crumbled the cookies on top of the peanut butter and jelly, put the jelly beans on, and put on another slice of bread. The sandwiches looked awesome.

  A slice of bread fell in the tub and floated around. I stood up, aimed my shark, and dropped my shark on it.

  It tore a perfect hole right through the bread. I splashed around some more in the water to make sure I was clean, and I stepped out of the tub.

  By accident, I knocked the sandwiches onto the floor. Those sandwiches were sure taking a beating! I picked them up and tried to dry them with the toilet paper. It just stuck to them. And to me. Actually it was kind of cool. I stuck some toilet paper to my belly and started spinning around and around. Soon I looked like a mummy. What an awesome way to look for a birthday party. Then I was like,

  I ran to the kitchen. I found a box of cake mix and some icing. The directions on the box said the cake takes forty-five minutes to cook! Forty-five minutes? Yeah, right! I only had five. I had to think fast. I poured the cake-mix powder into a big bowl. Then I scooped the icing into the bowl. I mushed it all up with my hands and made it into a tube shape. It didn’t really look like a cake. It looked like a log. So I called it the cake-log-thing. I tried to write “Happy Birthday” on it with mustard, but I ran out of room
. It only said “Happy Birt.”

  Gus and Stew came over, and they wanted to be toilet paper mummies, too. They ran to the bathroom, jumped in the tub, got soaked, and then got all rolled up. We started jumping around and playing air guitar, mummy-style.

  This was turning into the best party ever. We tried to eat the sandwiches, but they had gotten too soggy and toilet-papery and fell apart. The jelly beans were still good so we picked those out and ate them. We ran around the house as mummies for a while, but then we got thinking about candy and hitting things and wanted to do the piñata. Every party has a piñata!

  We needed to make a piñata. I looked around the house for something strong enough to hold stuff but that would break with a stick. I took one of Mom’s garbage bags. The box says that they are strong and tough, but Mom rolls her eyes and says they’re cheapo and always rip.

  We ran to the kitchen to fill the bag with candy. First we dropped in the few jelly beans that were left, but that hardly filled the bag. We needed something else. We added the leftover cookies.

  The bag still wasn’t full. Gus had some watermelon seeds in his pocket so he put them in. We opened the fridge. What else could go in the piñata?

  Gus was like, “Salami?”

  And I was like, “No.”

  Stew was like, “Frozen waffles?”

  And I was like, “No.”

  Then Gus was like, “Celery?”

  And I was like, “No.”

  And then Stew was like, “Eggs?”

  And I was like,

  We love eggs! Gus loves fried eggs. Stew loves scrambled eggs. I love poached eggs.

  We decided the eggs looked kind of boring and white, so we drew faces and stuff on them with markers. Only three broke, which we thought was pretty good.

  Then we put them in the bag and tied the top. We drew a big face on the bag to make it look more like a piñata. Then I put an old baseball hat on it and some broken sunglasses. He was looking awesome.

  Gus held him up and said, “It’s Señor Piñata Dude!”

  And then Stew said, “¡Buenos dias, Señor!”

  And I said, “¿Dondé esta el Queso-en-una-Lata?” which means “Where is the Cheese-in-a-Can?” I think.

  Then I found some string and tied it to the top of the bag, and we were done. We ran outside and tied one end of the string to a branch, and then we each grabbed a stick.

  We were gonna take turns and be all polite and stuff, but we were having so much fun that we all started swinging and smacking Señor Piñata Dude like crazy. The cheap bag exploded, and the eggs shot out, and the jelly beans flew in the air, and the cookie crumbs and watermelon seeds stuck all over us. We laughed so hard that we rolled in the yard, and the eggy goop picked up leaves and sticks and dirt.

  But you know what? I was a horrible party thrower. We never gave Harry his cake, and he never even got a shot at his piñata. So I went inside and got him and the cake-log-thing. We sang “Happy Birt” to Harry, and we ate the cake-log-thing. It wasn’t that bad, unless you bit into a big chunk of powder mix. Then I asked Harry what his birthday wish was. Stew and Gus were like, “Dude, hot dogs can’t talk.”

  And I was like,

  Then we were cracking up again, and we decided that since all of us wished we could fly, then Harry must want to fly, too!

  We tied him to the piñata string and started swinging him around and around and around. It’s really hard to tie a string to a hot dog, and he slipped out of the knot and shot off over the house.

  “See, Dad? It makes total sense,” Ricky said.

  “I’m very disappointed, Ricky,” his father said.

  “I’m sorry I made such a mess in the bathroom,” said Ricky.

  “It’s not that,” said his father.

  “I’m sorry I made such a mess in the kitchen,” said Ricky.

  “It’s not that, either, Ricky,” said his father.

  “I’m sorry I made such a mess in the backyard,” said Ricky.

  “It’s not that, either, Ricky,” said his father. “I’m disappointed that you threw this wonderful party for Harry, and you didn’t even invite Pete.”

  ICKY RICKY’S TIME-SAVING TIP #3

  Kids need to brush their teeth, but we don’t always have the time. Kids are busy people. Between school, homework, and playing, who has time to brush three times a day?

  That’s why I put a little toothpaste into every meal. I mix a tiny bit in with my cereal in the morning. Just a smidge works as a tasty sandwich spread at lunch, and a pea-sized glob as a treat at dinner!

  When I’m done with my meal, my teeth are clean, and my breath is fresh!

  Not only that, but I’m not wasting water by brushing. And I’m not polluting the environment by throwing away old toothbrushes!

  It leaves me lots of time to work on my new cookbook, too:

  101 Awesome Dishes to Make with Cheese-in-a-Can!

  “Well,” Ricky told Mean Dean, “we don’t have your car. But the man gave us five dollars for the lemonade and all the baloney his dog ate. It’s yours now.” Ricky handed the money to Dean.

  “RC cars cost way more than five dollars!” said Dean as his face grew red.

  “I’m sorry for losing your car,” said Samantha.

  Dean was furious! “I told you not to borrow it! I knew you’d ruin it or mess it up. I didn’t think you’d crash it into a pond!”

  “I said I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lose it,” said Samantha, and she started to cry.

  “I don’t care!” Dean yelled. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go up to your room, get your dolls, and throw them in Black Pond.”

  “What?” cried Samantha.

  “If I can’t have my car, you can’t have your dolls! Mr. Monkey and Mr. Donkey are going in the pond!” He turned to go back to his house.

  “No! No! No! I’m sorry! You can’t!”

  Samantha grabbed his shirt and tried to stop him.

  “I’m doing it!” shouted Dean.

  “Wait!” Ricky broke in.

  Dean looked back. “Huh?”

  “I was driving it when it went in the pond … not Samantha,” said Ricky.

  Samantha looked at Ricky. He talked so fast she couldn’t get a word in.

  “It’s my fault,” said Ricky. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I can’t believe you made my sister lie to me!” said Dean. “She’s just a little kid, jerk!” He hugged Samantha. “Don’t worry, Samantha, I won’t chuck out your dolls.” He looked at Ricky. “You’re a real creep, Ricky!”

  Ricky put on his best guilty face. “Yeah, well, I’m a creep,” he said. “I’m the creep who lost your RC car, and I’m the creep covered with dog slobber and yellow paint. I don’t know what you’re going to do to me, Dean. I really don’t. I don’t know if you’re going to beat me up, throw my stuff in Black Pond, or say mean things about me in school. I just don’t know.”

  Ricky got down on his knees.

  “Dude, you shouldn’t have said that!” said Dean as he ran back to his house.

  “Thanks,” said Samantha. She smiled a great big smile at Ricky.

  Dean ran back from the house with a can of Cheese-in-a-Can!

  “Oh no! Not Cheese-in-a-Can!” shouted Ricky. He covered his head. Dean started spraying the stuff all over him.

  “Stop! Stop! I can’t stand it!” cried Ricky. “I’m gagging! I’m gagging! I’m getting sick! My skin is burning! Stop! Stop!” He rolled on the ground, and Dean kept showering him with the cheese. Ricky turned his head from Dean and looked at Samantha. Dean couldn’t see Ricky laughing!

  101 AWESOME DISHES TO MAKE

  WITH CHEESE-IN-A-CAN!

  FEATURING …

  Cheese-in-a-Can Sandwich

  Cheese-in-a-Can Stew

  Cheese-in-a-Can Sushi

  Grilled Cheese-in-a-Can

  Cheese-in-a-Can Cupcakes (the Cheese-in-a-Can is inside!)

  and

  Cheese-in-a-Can-Covered
Honey-Mustard,

  Chocolate-Syrup Hot Wings!