by Dan Gutman
“Are you tan from the sun?” I asked the man.
“No, I’m Bob, from Earth.”
Earth!
All my life I had heard about Earth, with its vast continents, its abundance of living creatures, its ... underwear. And now I was actually there. I was so excited, I forgot how envious I was that Punch had a special power and I didn’t.
“Do all Earthlings spell their names the same way forward and backward, Bob?” I asked excitedly.
“No,” he laughed, “just a few of us.”
“You must be a very important Earthling,” I said, impressed. “But Bob, how do you know if you’re spelling your name right? I mean, if you spell it B-O-B, how do you know it shouldn’t have been B-O-B with the two Bs reversed?”
“Are you for real?” Bob asked.
“No,” Punch replied. “We’re fictional.”
Bob staggered backward a few steps and looked at Punch, his eyes open wide.
“D-did that dog just say something?” Bob asked.
“Unfortunately, yes,” I replied as Bob helped us out of the ship. “She seems to have developed that ability as we entered Earth’s atmosphere. Now she won’t shut up.”
There was underwear as far as the eye could see. “Why do Earthlings need so much underwear?” I asked.
“We change our underwear every day,” Bob replied.
“Change it into what?” I asked, but Bob just shook his head and laughed.
He carried us down the mountain of underwear. As he placed us on the floor, Bob asked me where I came from.
“My dog Punch and I are from the planet Crouton,” I explained. “It’s in the Magellanic Clouds galaxy.”
He stared at us for a while with his hands on his hips.
“Are you putting me on?” he asked.
“How could I put you on?” I replied. “You’re not clothes.”
Bob stared at us a while longer before asking, “Why are you here?”
“It’s a long story,” Punch replied. “If you want to hear it, go back to page four and start reading. We’ll wait here for you.”
“Page four?” Bob asked. “What are you talking about?”
“You see, we’re all part of a book,” Punch continued. “Kids are going to read this. If you go back a few pages, you can learn how we came from the planet Crouton.”
“Maybe you’re part of a book, doggie,” Bob declared. “I’m real.”
“Oh no, you just think you’re real,” Punch told Bob. “You’re just words on a page. A fictional character like us. We came from the planet Crouton, which is fictional, too.”
“Crouton?” Bob looked at us with an amused expression on his face. “You mean like those little chunks of toasted bread they put on salads? That’s a dumb name for a planet.”
Croutonians are very proud and patriotic people. We don’t like others making fun of our planet.
“Hey, what kind of name is Earth?” Punch asked Bob. “Your planet was named after dirt!”
We could have argued over which planet had the dumbest name, but a loud whistle suddenly blew. The workers in the underwear factory began scurrying in every direction.
“Quittin’ time,” Bob said, waving good-bye to us. “Enjoy your stay on Earth, you two!”
I didn’t know where to go. When Superman arrived on Earth, Ma and Pa Kent discovered his rocket and they became his foster parents. I would need a foster family, too.
“Wait!” I shouted after Bob as he walked out the front gate of the underwear factory.
“Huh?” he said, turning around.
“Can my dog and I come live with you, Bob?”
“Pleeeeeease ... begged Punch.
“What are you, nuts?” Bob said. “Of course you can’t come live with me.”
“But you found us. You’re my foster dad.”
“What are you talking about!?”
“It says so right there,” I said, pointing at the word Foster on his uniform.
“Foster is just my name,” he insisted. “Bob Foster. I’m not your foster father.”
“Anything you say, Dad.”
Punch and I followed Bob to his car. As he got into the driver’s side, Punch and I climbed up on the roof. When Bob turned the engine on, I hung my head down over the windshield and shouted, “Take me home, Daddy!”
“Go away!” Bob shouted. He put the car into gear and started zigzagging around the parking lot, trying to throw us off the roof. But Punch and I were holding on pretty tightly. Finally, Bob stopped the car and got out.
“If you don’t take us home with you,” I informed him, “I will hold my breath until I turn blue.”
(The “hold my breath until I turn blue” trick never worked back home on Crouton, but I figured it might be worth a try on Earth.)
“See if I care,” Bob replied.
I noticed something on the front seat of Bob’s car. It was a newspaper called the National Inspirer. There was a huge headline across the top of the first page:
SPACE ALIENS ARE COMING!
Below that, it said the National Inspirer would pay a million dollars to anyone who captured a real live space alien.
Bob glanced at the newspaper too. Then he looked at me and Punch.
“Are you and your dog really from another planet?” he asked.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Bob.”
“Get in the car,” Bob said.
CHAPTER 4
WHY DO THEY CALL IT FAST FOOD IF IT JUST SITS THERE?
As soon as we got to Bob’s house, he rushed inside and started frantically dialing the telephone.
“I hope you’re ordering a pizza,” Punch said. “I’m starved.”
“Grab something from the kitchen. I’m calling the National Inspirer,” Bob explained excitedly. “When they see I’ve got real space aliens right here in my house, they’ll pay me a million bucks! And then I’ll never have to look at another pair of underwear again!”
Punch and I shrugged, and went into the kitchen. On the counter was a box of something called Fruit Roll-Ups. Fascinating. Instead of simply eating a piece of fresh fruit, you Earthlings apparently take the trouble to crush the fruit, dry it out, and peel it off a piece of waxed paper. Punch and I ate a dozen each. Then we ate some gummi bears, which, we discovered, were not made from real bears or real gum, either.
Bob got through to the National Inspirer on the phone. He started telling somebody that an alien had crash-landed into the underwear factory and was in his kitchen with a talking dog. A few seconds later, he hung up angrily.
“What did they say?” I asked.
“They said I was a nutcase.”
Bob dialed the phone again. When he got through this time, he immediately said he qualified for the million-dollar reward because he had an alien in his house and could prove it.
“Here, you can talk with the alien yourself,” Bob said into the phone. Then he handed it to me.
“I am from the planet Crouton,” I explained. “It’s about the size of Uranus—”
Click. They hung up.
“Did I say something wrong?” I asked Bob.
Bob made several more calls, but was unable to convince anyone at the National Inspirer that Punch and I were genuine aliens. Every time he tried, they just laughed and said rude things to him. Earthlings, I discovered, like to believe in aliens, but don’t actually want them to exist.
I felt bad for Bob. Here he was, nice enough to take us home with him. And he couldn’t even convince the National Inspirer that we were really aliens so he could collect the reward. Bob was really mad.
We were still hungry, so Bob took us out to what he called a “fast food” restaurant. This, I didn’t understand at all. The food didn’t seem very fast to me. In fact, it just sat on the tray without moving at all. Punch had to stay in the car, but we promised to bring her some food.
Punch says:
Even talking dogs have to stay in the car?
“How much ham is in the ha
mburger?” I asked Bob.
“None,” Bob informed me.
“Well, what kind of dog is in the hot dog?”
“They don’t use dogs! That would be disgusting.”
“So why are they called hamburgers and hot dogs?” I asked.
“Just eat,” Bob said. “It’s good for you.”
“Did the french fries come from France?” I asked.
“No,” Bob said, getting annoyed. “Have a chicken nugget. They have chicken in them, I think. They’re good for you.”
I looked at the nugget and tried to figure out which part of the chicken it came from. I had seen pictures of chickens, and none of them looked even remotely like a nugget. Against my better judgment, I ate it, along with the hamburger and hot dog.
Bob offered me a soda, which at least said what was in it right on the can: carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup and/or sugar, caramel color, phosphoric acid, caffeine, citric acid, and natural flavors.
Punch says:
Phosphoric acid is my favorite food!
“Now this is good for you,” I said happily. “See? It’s got natural flavors.”
On the way out, I stopped off to thank the lady at the cash register who took our order.
“My compliments to the chef!” I told her. “He must have labored for hours preparing this sumptuous feast.”
She started laughing at me and asked, “What planet are you from, Mac?”
“I live on Crouton.”
“Sorry, we don’t have any croutons,” she said. “You want a packet of ketchup?”
I examined the packet she handed me.
“Wow,” I gushed. “This must be my lucky day! There’s enough ketchup in here for another french fry!”
Bob and all the ladies working behind the counter must have thought I had a great sense of humor, because they kept laughing at me no matter what I said or did.
“You know,” Bob said as we got back in the car. “You’re starting to grow on me.”
“Like a fungus?” I asked.
“No,” Bob replied. “What I mean is, you and your dog can stay at my place tonight if you want to.”
When the sun had set at the end of the day, Bob said it was time to go to sleep. He got some sheets, covers, and pillows out of the closet and handed them to me.
“I’ll need a hammer and nails, too,” I told him.
“What for?”
“So I can make my bed,” I explained. “Aren’t Earthlings supposed to make their beds?”
“You’re funny, boy,” Bob said with a yawn. “I gotta hit the sack.”
“I thought you were going to sleep,” I said, puzzled. “It’s kind of late to be hitting a sack. And why would you want to hit a sack anyway? What did the sack ever do to you?”
“Good night.”
“Good night, Dad.”
CHAPTER 5
HOW TO USE DUMB JOKES, BAD PUNS, AND CHEAP LAUGHS TO FIGHT THE FORCES OF EVIL
The next day, when he got home from work at the underwear factory, Bob called the National Inspirer again. He kept trying to convince them I was from another planet so he could collect the million-dollar reward. But everybody just said he was crazy. After a while the telephone operator at the National Inspirer recognized his voice and hung up on him whenever he’d call.
Meanwhile, Punch and I made Bob’s house our headquarters on Earth. I did Bob’s laundry and cleaned the place up for him while he worked at the underwear factory.
Mostly, I watched TV. There is no TV on Crouton, so I found it fascinating. Television was like a window to the world. That is, if you looked out the window and saw car chases, explosions, houses burning down, angry people screaming at each other, and the police leading people to jail.
After watching these things on TV for a week, I became disgusted by the stupidity of it all. So I watched TV for another week just to see if it could possibly get any stupider. It did, and so did I. I felt my brain cells disintegrating more with every hour I watched. Finally, I was about to turn off the set when a public service announcement came on the screen ...
“My name is Ryan McCaffrey of Channel 4 News. If you see a crime in progress, don’t just sit there and do nothing. You can help! Channel 4 is interested in car chases, explosions, houses burning down, angry people screaming at each other, and the police leading people to jail. It is our duty to bring these things into your living room. So if you witness a crime, call us. Call the police. Call somebody, for heaven’s sake! It’s your responsibility as a law-
abiding American.”
“He’s right!” I exclaimed. “I’ve got to do my part!”
At that moment I looked out Bob’s window and I noticed an old lady with a cane crossing the street. I rushed over to do my duty as a citizen.
“Halt, elderly jaywalker!” I hollered. “Put your hands in the air and drop your weapon.”
“What weapon?” she asked.
“That cane,” I explained. “I saw you try to hit me with it.”
“But you told me to put my hands in the air!”
“Quiet, lawbreaker!” I announced. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.”
“Leave me alone, you creep!” the lady shouted. “I’ve never broken the law in my life.”
“You’ve got a lot of hostility, lady,” I said. “Maybe if I told you a joke, you would not be so angry. What lies shaking at the bottom of the ocean?”
“What?”
“A nervous wreck,” I said.
“That’s stupid,” the old lady said as she started walking away. “And so are you.”
“Well, since this is your first offense, I’ll let you go this time,” I told her. “But if I catch you jaywalking again, you’ll get the couch.”
“The couch?” she asked, turning around. “Do you mean I’ll get the chair?”
“That’s right, lady,” I said. “You’ll get the chair and the couch. It will be curtains for you, too. In fact, I may have to give you an entire living room set.”
“You’re a moron,” she said, laughing as she walked away.
Just like back home, Earth people seemed to think I was funny. In fact, they laughed at me even more than Croutonians. Slowly, I began to suspect that I did have a superpower after all. Something about the atmosphere here made me even funnier than I was back on Crouton.
On Earth, everything I did was funny. Bob said I looked funny. He said I walked funny. After a few days on Earth, he told me I smelled funny, and told me I should take a shower. Then, after I took the shower, he made me give it back.
“You are funny, boy,” Bob said as he reinstalled the shower in the bathroom. “You ought to be a comedian.”
I considered it. After Punch and I had been on Earth for a few weeks, I was getting tired of sitting around Bob’s house doing chores and watching television. Perhaps I could become a famous comedian and Earth people would watch me on television.
But I wanted to do more than simply make people laugh. I had already developed a fondness for my adopted planet. I wanted to do something that would serve the people here.
I couldn’t see through walls. I couldn’t stop bullets. I couldn’t fly, and I had no super strength. When I punched something, it didn’t go flying. I tried to kick a big rock once. I almost broke my foot.
I didn’t have any of the usual superpowers, but no matter what I did, people laughed. This was my superpower, I realized. I could use my enhanced sense of humor to fight evil and injustice, to promote goodness and niceness throughout the world.
“You are funny, boy,” Bob kept telling me.
That’s when it hit me. Funny Boy! I had found my name. I took the yellow tablecloth off Bob’s kitchen table and made it into a superhero cape. I looked at myself in the mirror and liked what I saw. But something still wasn’t right. I needed to disguise myself even more.
I grabbed Bob’s fake nose and glasses and put them on. Perfect! I was ready. I had found my cause
in life.
CHAPTER 6
FUNNY BOY VERSUS THE LIBRARY LOONY
“What’s with the tablecloth?” Punch asked when she saw me the next morning.
“It’s not a tablecloth,” I replied. “It’s a cape.”
“You can’t fly. What do you need a cape for?”
“All superheroes have capes.”
“Capes are stupid.”
“They are not.”
“Take my advice. Lose the cape.”
“I like the cape. What do you know? You’re a dog,” I said. “Now it’s time to go searching for bad guys so I can rid the world of them.”
After I finished doing Bob’s housework for the day, Punch and I patrolled the streets. We patrolled the East Side. We patrolled the West Side. We patrolled all around the town. We couldn’t find any bad guys anywhere. There were lots of bad guys on TV, but hardly any in the real world.
After a few days of this, I began to feel depressed. How could we rid the world of bad guys if there were no bad guys to rid the world of? Without bad guys there was no need for a Funny Boy, just as without cavities there is no need for dentists.
It got me thinking. Without diseases, there would be no need for doctors or hospitals. Without traffic accidents, there would be no need for auto repair shops. Without bad breath, there would be no need for Tic-Tacs. So thank goodness for cavities, diseases, traffic accidents, and bad breath. That thought made me even more depressed.
Then one day, I saw a big commotion outside the public library. Punch and I dashed over. I asked a lady what was going on.
“Some lunatic is holding up the library!” she said excitedly.
“He must be very strong to hold up a library,” I marveled.
“He’s robbing it,” she said, looking at me as if I was from another planet, which I was. “The lunatic is robbing the library!”
“Why would he do that?” I asked. “Isn’t the library free?”
