An Upside-Down Boy
and Other Naughty Stories for Good Boys and Girls
published in 2010 by
Hardie Grant Egmont
Ground Floor, Building 1, 658 Church Street,
Richmond Victoria 3121, Australia
www.hardiegrantegmont.com.au
EISBN 978 1 742733 88 3
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior permission of the publishers and copyright owner.
A CiP record for this title is available from the National Library of Australia.
Text copyright © 2010 Christopher Milne
Illustration and design copyright © 2010 Hardie Grant Egmont
Illustration and design by Simon Swingler
Typesetting by Ektavo
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
An Upside Down Boy
The Boy Who Said Too Many Rude Words
The Mad Gambler
A Very Lonely Boy
The Boy Who Lived in a Dunny
Two Good Girls Decide to Become Naughty
Poor little Jason Grant was born with his face where his bottom should be, and his bottom where his face should be. Which is not the best way to start out in life.
His mum said she still loved him very much and that it didn’t matter what anyone else might think. She thought he had a beautiful little face. Or bottom.
Unfortunately, not everyone felt the same way. Especially Jason’s grandma. She was so embarrassed that she used to hold Jason upside-down, so his face was on top.
Jason’s mum was really angry with her. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she screamed. ‘So what if Jason’s a bit different? None of us is perfect. Some people have big ears, others have bent noses. Jason just happens to have a face that looks a bit like a bottom.’
Poor Grandma. After that she tried to do the right thing. But just as she was getting used to the idea, she turned around quickly to thank Jason for a Christmas present and kissed him right on the butt.
The other kids at kindergarten didn’t care. As long as Jason shared his lollies and was good at playing games, what did it matter how he looked?
Clothes were a bit of a problem. But only for a while. Other mums soon realised that old pairs of pants with holes in the bottom were no good anymore for their own kids, but perfect for Jason.
Unfortunately, as Jason grew older, life started to change. He noticed that kids he didn’t know seemed to stare all the time. Then a whole lot of nasty jokes went around the neighbourhood. And then it was time for him to start school. What would that be like?
Grandma said to his mum, ‘You’re not going to send him to a normal school, are you?’
‘Why not?’ asked Jason’s mum, getting really angry again. ‘He’s a person, isn’t he? He can read and write and run and speak the same as anyone else!’
‘What if he’s standing up,’ said Jason’s grandma, ‘and the teacher asks him to sit down? He won’t be able to see!’
Jason’s mum couldn’t answer that one.
Well, Jason did start school. And although everyone was nice to him, and he handled the schoolwork well enough, he felt lonely. Terribly lonely. It seemed that the other kids were only being nice because they felt sorry for him. And that can be an awful feeling.
Poor Jason. He tried to make proper friends with the kids who played lunch-time footy, but he got too many frees — every tackle was head-high. So Jason played by himself. He felt as if he didn’t have a single friend in the whole world.
One day, a new girl started at school. Her name was Cindy Cooper.
‘What are you sooking about?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sooking,’ said Jason.
‘Yes, you are,’ said Cindy. ‘I’ve watched you. Other kids ask you to play and you say no. Because you think they feel sorry for you. But they don’t. It’s just you feeling sorry for yourself. You’re nothing but a big cry-baby.’
Jason couldn’t believe it. Who did this stupid girl think she was? How dare she speak to him like that!
Jason seriously thought about punching her out. Trouble was, he knew she was right. And much as he hated to admit it, he thought he might like her.
So, what’s the best way to tell a girl you like her? Tell her you don’t like her!
The very next day, Jason looked hard at Cindy to find as many faults as he could. She had rather a large face, he decided, and slightly sticky-out ears.
‘Hey, boofhead,’ he called. ‘You’ve left your doors open.’
‘At least my head points the right way, Bumface,’ replied Cindy.
‘I’m not surprised it points the right way,’ said Jason. ‘It just has to follow that nose of yours. I’ve seen smaller conks on an elephant.’
And so they went, piling it on each other for a full hour. Finally, neither of them could think of another thing to say. Then, just as they went to walk away, Jason called out, ‘Hey, there’s something else…I think I like you.’
‘And I like you, too,’ said Cindy.
After that, Jason and Cindy were never apart. They mucked around together before school, after school and, much to the teacher’s displeasure, during school.
It was as if no-one else in the world existed. As if they could see inside each other.
What they saw on the outside hardly mattered at all. Like plain wrapping around a beautiful present.
And so it was until a terrible, terrible day came. A day Jason tried very hard to forget.
Cindy walked straight up to him and said, ‘Jason, I want you to be strong. You know how my dad works for a bank? Well, he’s been shifted. We’ve all been shifted. Interstate. Jason, I won’t be around anymore.’
For a long time, Jason just looked at her. He didn’t say anything. Then he looked away and began to cry. Hopelessly.
A week later, as Cindy drove away, she called out, ‘I’ll be back, Jason. One day. I promise. I really like you.’
Jason’s world had ended. That was it as far as he was concerned. No Cindy, no nothing. Back to being a loser. A loser with no friends. A freak.
Jason couldn’t get Cindy out of his mind. He even thought back to how they’d met. How she had called him a cry-baby for feeling sorry for himself.
Suddenly, it came to him. Isn’t that just what he was doing all over again? Feeling sorry for himself? How stupid. Cindy, who he’d liked and trusted so much, had taught him the best lesson in life and he’d forgotten it already! He felt ashamed.
So from that day on, Jason woke up every morning and told himself, ‘I will not be a cry-baby today.’
And do you know what? He started to feel better. School wasn’t so boring anymore and people were somehow nicer. Jason even made some new friends, too.
The years went by and Jason did well at school and lived the best life he could as an upside-down boy.
Then one day his mother said she wanted to talk to him. She’d met a doctor who said that lots of new things had been discovered over the years, and that it might be possible for Jason to have an operation. That his bottom could be swapped with his face to make him the right way up.
A bumoctomy, it was called.
Jason wasn’t too sure what he wanted. It would be nice to be the right way up, but he’d become used to the way he was. The thought of changing scared him.
The doctor visited Jason the next day and talked to him about the operation. ‘It’s a brand-new procedure,’ said the doctor, ‘and it
would make you famous. It would be in all the papers!’
And so it was. The very next day, the headlines said:
WORLD-FIRST BUMOCTOMY FOR LOCAL BOY.
And Jason hadn’t even said yes yet!
That night Jason tossed and turned and turned and tossed. What should he do?
In the morning, he felt as if he hadn’t had any sleep at all. And then there was a knock at the door.
It’ll be that doctor again, thought Jason.
‘There’s someone to see you,’ said his mum.
‘I know,’ sighed Jason.
As he walked into the lounge room to speak to the doctor, he felt lonelier than he’d ever felt in his whole life. He had to decide about the operation all by himself. Even though his mum and dad had spoken to him heaps about it, they said that in the end, it was up to him.
But it wasn’t the doctor who stood there in the lounge room. It was someone else. Someone he hadn’t seen for six long years.
It was Cindy.
‘Told you I’d be back,’ said Cindy. ‘While I was coming here on the train I read about you in the papers. I don’t want you to change. I love you exactly as you are. I’m back, Jason. And I’m never going to leave you again.’
Simon Kemp was always getting into trouble for swearing. But this time it was serious.
‘Uses far too many rude words,’ said his school report.
Simon’s oldies chucked a mental over his report and told his teachers they could expect an improvement. A BIG one.
Simon did improve. You see, his dad said that unless his swearing stopped completely, he could forget about going to the football for a whole year. And that, for Simon Kemp, a mad St Kilda supporter, was simply unthinkable.
So, every time Simon went to say a rude word, he stopped, took a deep breath and said to himself, ‘St Kilda.’ And it worked. Fantastically well.
Until one very unlucky day.
Simon was doing some jobs for the lady next door, Mrs Forbes. Simon hated working for Mrs Forbes, but he had no choice. His dad made him do it. Every second Sunday. Usually it was weeding, but sometimes stuff like painting or fixing her fence. Simon had to work for six hours and always for free.
‘It’s the neighbourly thing to do,’ said Dad. ‘Especially with Mrs Forbes being so old.’
Doesn’t stop her going to bingo, thought Simon. Wish she’d cark it.
Anyway, if it was so neighbourly, why didn’t his dad help the old hag?
The main reason Simon hated working for Mrs Forbes was that she never, ever said thank you. Not once. And nothing was ever good enough.
‘You’ve missed a bit there,’ she’d say. Or, ‘You’ll have to do that again.’
Maybe if I weed the vegie patch really well, thought Simon, the carrots will grow bigger and she’ll choke on one.
And another thing about Mrs Forbes — she never, ever stopped giving Simon a hard time about his manners.
‘It really is time you started to improve yourself,’ Mrs Forbes would say. ‘Going to church like me would be a good start.’
How can I go to church? thought Simon. I’m stuck here doing your stupid garden.
One particular Sunday, Simon was fixing the fence where it had been broken by one of Mrs Forbes’s dopey trees. It was a hot day and Simon was tired. Just as he banged in the last nail, the hammer slipped from his hand, fell, and landed right on his toe.
OUCH!
The pain was something terrible. But Simon took a deep breath, calmly leant down, held his toe, and said, ‘St Kilda.’
As he stood up, however, he banged his head a ripper on a tree branch. ‘St Kilda,’ said Simon again, gritting his teeth.
And you’ll never guess, as Simon hopped out from under the tree, with one hand on his head, the other holding his toe, he stubbed his other foot on a pointy rock.
This time Simon didn’t look down calmly. Nor did he take a very deep breath.
Instead, he looked to the sky, clenched his fists and screamed, ‘Stuff St Kilda! Crap, poo, wee, snot and BUM!’
Poor Simon couldn’t have chosen a worse time. Walking towards him, having just returned from church, was Mrs Forbes.
When Mrs Forbes heard Simon’s words, she almost fainted. She slumped onto a seat, fanned herself and said, ‘May God have mercy on your soul.’
You can imagine the carry-on after that. Mrs Forbes went straight to Simon’s parents and told them everything.
Simon received a smacked bottom, no tea and, just as his dad had threatened, no football for a year.
When it came time for St Kilda’s first game of the season, Simon sat in his room and cried. He couldn’t even bear to listen to it on the radio.
The next week, he thought to himself, I know what, I’ll pretend I’m there.
He turned the radio up full-blast, put on his St Kilda jumper with number twelve for Nick Riewoldt on the back, microwaved a pie with sauce and waved his flogger.
But it wasn’t the same. Not at all. Even the pie tasted different. Simon Kemp turned off the radio, lay on his bed, whispered, ‘Go Saints,’ and cried into his pillow.
The week following, Simon thought, This is crazy. I’m going to go mad if I don’t stop thinking about footy. I’ll do something else! I’ll read a book.
Trouble was, most of Simon’s books were about football, so, in desperation, he looked at his mum and dad’s bookshelf. The first book he pulled out was called The Joy of Sex.
How disgusting, thought Simon. At their age!
Then one book happened to catch his eye — How to Forget Your Worries.
I’ve got worries, thought Simon.
Some of the words were a bit big but Simon really enjoyed it. It talked about the power of our minds and how we can train ourselves to think only about good stuff, instead of worrying about things we can’t change.
But the bit that really got him was about mind control. That’s when one person can put ideas into someone else’s mind, just by thinking about them. It’s as though the message travels through the air, like a TV signal. Some people believe in it, others don’t. Some people are good at it, others aren’t.
As it turned out, Simon Kemp was very, very good at mind control. In no time, he had his dog and cat doing all sorts of tricks, just by thinking about them.
But Simon had bigger fish in mind. An old flathead called Mrs Forbes.
The very next Sunday, Simon said to his mum and dad that perhaps Mrs Forbes was right after all. That he really did need to improve himself.
If they didn’t mind, he had decided to go to church today.
‘I can’t believe it,’ said his dad.
At church, Simon said hello to Mrs Forbes, but she refused to even speak to him.
Good, thought Simon.
Inside the church, Simon waited for Mrs Forbes to find a seat. Then, without her noticing, he sneaked up and sat right behind her. Staring straight into the back of Mrs Forbes’s head, Simon started thinking some very naughty thoughts.
Terrible thoughts.
And they worked.
Mrs Forbes started shifting in her seat and looking worried. She coughed awkwardly and became quite pink in the cheeks as she suddenly realised she was about to do and say something unthinkable. Which made her even pinker.
Suddenly, in front of one hundred of her best church friends, Mrs Forbes stood up and yelled, ‘Cop this!’
And let go one of the loudest smells you could ever imagine.
Well, do you think that didn’t cause a stir? People just couldn’t believe it. Mrs Forbes! Of course, Mrs Forbes couldn’t believe it herself. But that wasn’t all.
As the new vicar walked in, Mrs Forbes nudged the lady next to her and said, ‘He’s got a nice bum.’
‘Oh, how crude!’ said the lady next to her. ‘Mrs Forbes, I don’t know what’s going on with you today, but I really do believe it’s time you left.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Mrs Forbes, ‘Why don’t you rack off yourself!’
Simon didn�
�t ever use his mind control again. He thought he’d had more than his fair share of fun, just in that one day. Poor Mrs Forbes didn’t go back to church for ages. In fact, she was banned until the doctor said she was well again.
And Simon certainly hasn’t been back to church. No place for a boy like him. Too many rude words.
Claire Troupe loved gambling. Betting on things. To the point where it drove us all mad.
‘I bet I’m taller than you,’ she would say. ‘I bet you two pieces of chocolate I know what’s in your lunchbox. I bet you four pieces of chocolate that my mum and dad earn more than yours do.’
Tell someone who cares, Claire!
Get a life!
We never understood why Claire was so into betting on things. Maybe it was her way of getting attention? Perhaps she was bored? Whatever.
For a long time, Claire’s betting was, as I say, a pain in the butt. But it was never more than that, until suddenly everything changed. Claire started to bet with money. And stupidly — don’t ask me how — the rest of us got sucked in, too.
It all started with Claire’s eleventh birthday, when her parents couldn’t decide what to buy her. Instead they gave her one hundred lovely dollars.
The feel, the smell, the look of the money affected her. It weaved a spell. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. She wanted more. How to get it? Gambling. Gambling with a little bit of cheating! Just enough to win every time.
Well, not every time. Not at first, anyway. You see, for Claire to make money she had to get it out of us and the way she did it was very clever indeed. Guess who was her first target? Dopey me.
Claire walked up at lunchtime during a muck-around game of netball and said, ‘I’ll bet you a dollar that I can beat you shooting goals. Best of ten.’
‘Rack off,’ I replied.
‘Scared you might lose?’ Claire said. ‘Beat me and you’ll have two dollars. Unless you think you’re not good enough.’
Now, it so happened that I knew Claire was useless at netball. Useless at most things, as a matter of fact. And by now, everyone was starting to gather around.
I’d look like a wuss, I supposed, if I said no. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Best out of ten.’
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