“You know how to tell a girl worm from a boy worm? By kissing them.”
He laughed. He thought that was his funniest joke yet, but then when he stopped and thought about it, he realized it didn’t make any sense.
That was all right. He had almost three weeks. His plan was to make up jokes every day this week and the next. Then the third week, he’d pick out his best jokes and put them together so that one segued into another; then he’d practice over and over again in order to get his timing just right.
He continued moving around his room for over an hour, talking to himself, brainstorming, or, as he called it, “joke storming.” Then he stopped.
It was almost as if an alarm clock rang in his head, telling him it was time to quit. You’re not funny anymore, it buzzed.
That was fine. Maybe he would be funnier tomorrow. Or the next day? Or next week?
He got out a pad of paper and wrote down what he thought were some of his better jokes.
“Don’t bother your father,” said Gary’s mother. “He’s had a very difficult day.”
“I’m just going to tell him some of my new jokes,” said Gary.
“I think he’d rather just be left alone.”
“He’ll laugh,” said Gary.
Gary’s father, still in his suit and tie, was lying on his back on top of his bed and staring at the television. He had managed to take one of his shoes off, but the other was still on his foot, dangling over the side of the bed so as not to get on the bedspread.
“Do you want to hear some of the jokes I made up for the talent show?” asked Gary.
“No.”
“I made them up myself. Don’t you want to hear them?”
“Gary, I’ve had a hard day,” said his father. “I just want to relax.”
He was watching a situation comedy, but he wasn’t laughing. He just lay there, staring blankly at the TV screen, while the studio audience cracked up.
Gary sat at the foot of the bed and watched awhile. Somebody got paid a lot of money, he realized, to write the stupid show. He was only a seventh-grader, but he figured he could write a show that was a lot funnier than the one his father was watching.
His mother stood in the doorway motioning for him to leave. He turned back to his father. “C’mon, don’t you want to hear the jokes I made up? They’re really funny!”
His father let out a heavy sigh.
“Leave your father alone,” said his mother.
“Did you hear about the bald eagle who wore a wig?” Gary asked him.
“No!” snapped his father. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear any of your jokes right now, okay?”
“Too late, I already said it,” said Gary. “That was the whole joke.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” his father repeated. “Do you understand?”
“But I already told it to you.”
“Do you understand?”
“I was only—”
“Your father is very sensitive about his bald spot,” said Gary’s mother.
Gary’s father sighed even louder. “I am not,” he said. He had a bald spot on the back of his head. “I just would like some peace and quiet so I can watch television. Is that too much to ask? Can I just go fifteen minutes without having to listen to one of your idiotic jokes!”
“All right,” said Gary, “I won’t tell you the joke, even though I already told it to you.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” said Gary. “Anytime. Ha. Ha.”
Gary sat in his room.
He wished his parents could be more like Abel and Melissa, who appreciated a good joke when they heard one. At least they’d be willing to listen, after he worked two hours making up jokes for the talent show—the most important day of his life.
If Abel and Melissa were his parents, he realized, then Angeline would be his sister. She was probably more like a sister than a girlfriend anyway.
He’d always wished he had a brother or a sister. Actually, he wanted a sister named Sally. Then he could call her Saloon.
Of course, before Abel and Melissa could be his parents, they’d have to get married. “That’s stupid,” he said. “They can’t be my parents anyway. I already have parents. Unless they got killed in plane crash or something. Ha. Ha.”
His father never used to hate jokes. In fact, his father had told him the first joke he ever heard. Gary still had a picture in his mind of himself taking a bath while his father told him a joke. He probably was only three years old. He still remembered the joke.
Why’d the chicken cross the playground?
To get to the other slide.
The odd thing was, Gary figured now as he thought about it, he must have heard that joke before he ever heard the joke about the chicken crossing the road. So it didn’t make any sense. But that didn’t matter when he was three. He remembered asking his father to tell him that same joke over and over again for months.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” he said.
His mother followed his father into the room. Gary didn’t look at them.
“Your father and I have been talking,” said his mother.
“I understand this talent contest means a lot to you,” said his father.
Gary stared out the window at a streetlight.
“I’d like to make a suggestion,” his father said.
“How can you make a suggestion?” snapped Gary. “You won’t even listen to my jokes.”
“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings,” his father said. “I had a tough day, and I just wanted to sit in front of the TV without having to think.”
“Well, if you had listened to one of my jokes, it might have cheered you up,” said Gary. “Who knows, you might even have laughed. Some people laugh at jokes, you know.”
His father smiled. “Okay, tell me the one about the bald eagle who wears a wig.”
Gary threw up his hands in frustration. “That’s the joke!” he said, trying not to shout. “There isn’t any more.”
“Oh,” said his father. “Well, then how about another one?”
Gary thought a moment. “Why’d the chicken cross the playground?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” his father said, happy to play along. “Why?”
“You really don’t know?”
“No.”
Gary shrugged. “I don’t know either,” he said.
His father laughed awkwardly, unsure if that was a joke or not. “Well, your mother and I have talked it over,” he said, “and we’d like to offer a suggestion. We’d like you to try to go the next three weeks without telling any jokes.”
Gary looked at them like they were out of their minds. “I’m going to be in the talent show. I have to make up jokes.”
“We know that,” said his mother. “Just keep them to yourself.”
“First prize is a hundred dollars, right?” asked his father. “We’ll put a hundred dollars in your savings account if you can make it until the talent show without telling anyone a joke.”
Gary laughed. “C’mon,” he said. “My jokes aren’t that bad, are they? Ha. Ha. I’m the first stand-up comic who gets paid for not telling a joke. Ha. Ha.”
“Everything you say is a joke,” said his mother. “It stops being funny after a while.”
“You should want to keep your jokes to yourself anyway,” said his father. “If you tell someone a joke, he’ll tell it to someone else, and pretty soon everyone will know it before you ever get a chance to say it at the talent show.”
Gary laughed again. “I don’t have to worry about that,” he said. “Nobody ever repeats any of my jokes. Ha. Ha.”
“I do,” his father said.
“Really?” asked Gary. “When?”
“Just today,” said his father. “I have a client who likes to fish. So I asked him, ‘Do you know how to keep fish from smelling?’ ”
Gary smiled. “Oh, yeah, that’s a good one,” he said.
; Gary’s father was a stockbroker. He specialized in something called high-yield mutual funds. He’d tried to explain the stock market to Gary, but it bored Gary senseless.
“So?” Gary’s mother asked impatiently. “How do you keep fish from smelling?”
“Cut off their noses,” said Gary’s father.
Gary’s mother cracked up.
“I’ve told you that joke before!” said Gary. “You didn’t laugh when I said it.”
She shrugged. “Sorry. It’s just … I don’t know. Coming from your father …”
“Did your client laugh?” Gary asked his father.
“Yes, as a matter of fact he did.”
“Did he buy lots of stock?”
“No, he didn’t buy any.”
“But if he laughed—”
“One’s got nothing to do with the other,” said his father. “That’s your problem. You seem to think that the way to be successful, or the way to make people like you, is to tell jokes. But people will like you because of who you are, not for the jokes you tell.”
“But that’s who I am,” Gary insisted. “I tell jokes.”
“No, that’s not who you are,” said his mother. “You tell jokes because you’re afraid to let people see who you are. You hide behind a wall of jokes.”
“Not a very strong wall,” said Gary. “It won’t hold up a house. Ha. Ha.”
“When you were little,” his mother said, “and we’d have company over, everyone would always ask you to tell jokes because you knew so many.”
“Really?” asked Gary. “I don’t remember that.”
“It was cute because you were four years old. But you’re not four years old anymore, Gary.”
“You make it sound like I’ve got some kind of disease or something. Joke-itis. Ha. Ha.”
“Just try to go three weeks without telling a joke,” said his father. “See what happens.”
“And you’ll pay me a hundred dollars?”
“That’s right.”
Gary looked at them. In a way it seemed too good to be true. In another, it made him feel like he’d just eaten a dead skunk. “But how would you find out if I told someone a joke at school or someplace?”
“We trust you,” his mother said.
“So, do we have a deal?” asked his father.
“Sure,” said Gary. “I’ll get the cards.”
“What?”
“To deal!” He laughed like a hyena.
9.
Gary crossed the street in front of Floyd Hicks Junior High. He felt like a brand-new person. “The new improved Goon,” he said, then laughed. “No, not Goon.” He didn’t want to be called Goon anymore.
“I don’t have to be funny,” he said.
It was like he was wearing all new clothes. “No, not new clothes,” he said. He still looked the same on the outside. “New underwear! It’s like I’ve been wearing the same pair of underpants for ten years, and now I’ve finally gotten a new pair.”
He’d just say normal things and make some normal friends. And he’d get a hundred dollars from his parents for not telling a joke, and another hundred when he won the talent show.
He tried to figure out what a normal kid would buy with two hundred dollars. Maybe a Nintendo.
“Hey, Joe,” says Gary. “You want to come over after school and play with my Nintendo?”
“Sure, Gary,” says Joe Reed.
“Hi, Gary, how’re you doin’?” asks Ryan Utt.
“Okay.”
“So, Gary,” says Matt Hughes. “You got any plans this weekend?”
“Not really.”
“Good, why don’t you come over to my house? We’re going to … to … to …”
Gary’s daydream had to end there. He didn’t know what normal kids did on weekends.
He and Angeline liked to play croquet.
Ira Feldman was arguing about something with Steve and Michael Higgins. Steve and Michael were twin brothers. All three were holding baseball cards.
Gary joined them. Apparently, Ira was trying to convince one of the Higgins brothers to trade a certain baseball card, while the other Higgins brother was advising against it.
Gary nodded his head several times as he listened to them.
Ira was in the middle of listing all the accomplishments of somebody named Kirby Puckett, when he suddenly turned and asked, “What do you want, Goon?”
Gary shrugged. “Nothing.”
Ira returned to his negotiations.
“So, baseball cards, huh?” Gary asked.
“Uh-huh,” answered Steve, or maybe Michael. Gary couldn’t tell them apart.
“Look,” Ira said to Michael (or maybe Steve). “If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. Personally, I think I’m doing you a favor, but I’m not going to twist your arm.”
“Some favor,” said the other Higgins twin.
“What are you talking about?” protested Ira. “The only reason I’m even offering the deal is, I already have four Kirby Pucketts.”
Gary laughed.
They all looked at him.
“What’s the matter?” asked Ira. “Don’t you think it’s fair?”
That had nothing to do with it. He just thought Kirby Puckett was a funny name. He thought of a joke about it being foul, not fair, but kept it to himself.
It felt good to not tell a joke, for once.
“What do you think, Goon?” asked Michael (or maybe Steve). “Should I do it?”
Gary shrugged. “Um …”
“You’re not going to listen to Goon, are you?” asked Steve (or maybe Michael).
“Sure. Whatever he says—I’ll do the opposite!”
They all laughed.
“So what do you think, Goon?”
“Um …”
He was saved by the bell.
“Well, gotta go,” said Gary. “See you later.”
He tried hanging out with different groups of people during recess and lunch. He even sat and listened to Janis Carr, Vicki Mathews, and Marsha Posey talk about giving each other permanents. Finally Vicki turned and demanded, “What are you doing here?”
He shrugged. He couldn’t think of anything to say, except a joke—“if you really want your permanents to be permanent, you should use concrete instead of hair spray”—but he kept it to himself.
He might as well have told them a joke because when he walked away, he heard them all laughing at him.
“Hey, Joe!” he shouted as he ran out onto the football field.
Joe was talking to Zack, but turned and smiled at Gary. “Hey, what’s happ’nin’, Goon?”
Gary shrugged and smiled.
Joe continued his conversation with Zack.
“So, how about throwing me a pass today?” said Gary. “No one ever guards me.”
“That’s because center’s not eligible,” said Zack. He and Joe laughed.
Joe patted Gary on the back. “You’re doing a great job hiking the ball. Keep it up.”
“Okay, Joe.”
The game started. After each play, Gary was the first one back in the huddle with Joe. “Good pass, Joe,” he said. Or, “Nice run.” Or, “That would have been a touchdown if he hadn’t tipped it.”
Joe kept having to move around him so he could talk to the other members of the team.
“So what are you going to call this time, pass or run?” asked Gary. “How about a triple reverse?”
“Back off,” said Joe. “I’ll call the plays,”
“Sure, Joe. I understand. I was only trying to help.”
Joe put his hands in front of him, almost as if he was going to push Gary out of the way. “If you really want to help, the best thing you can do is just keep out of my face. Okay?”
“Okay, Joe.”
10.
It got worse as the week wore on.
“I don’t like being called Goon anymore,” he told Matt Hughes.
“What, Goon?” asked Matt.
“Just call me Gary. Not Goon.?
??
“Okay, Goon,” said Matt.
“I said—”
“I heard you, Goon. I won’t call you Goon anymore. Okay, Goon?”
“How about Blubberhead?” asked Paul.
“Lard Butt?” suggested Ryan.
He shrugged and walked away.
He wasn’t exactly surprised. He knew he didn’t have any friends. It was just that he’d never quite realized before that if he didn’t go up to people and tell them a joke, no one ever spoke to him. No one even said “Hi, Goon” to him in the hall.
But he’d made a deal with his parents, and he kept to it. He remembered a poem from a book he’d read when he was a little kid.
I meant what I said
And I said what I meant.…
An elephant’s faithful
One hundred per cent!
He told it to himself whenever he was feeling especially depressed, and it always managed to cheer him up a little bit.
After school, alone in his room, he was happy—making up jokes. It seemed the more miserable he was at school, the funnier the jokes. It was like the jokes were building up inside him all day long, bursting to get out. Like Rumpelstiltskin, that wretched soul who spun straw into gold, every evening Gary Boone spun his misery into humor.
He often made up jokes in the shower. He’d stay in there until all the hot water was gone, and then suddenly have to quickly wash himself under the freezing spray.
He never decided beforehand what his jokes would be about. He’d just start talking, and out they’d pop.
Wednesday was October 31, Halloween. He might have guessed he would make up jokes about ghosts or witches, but instead, on Halloween night he made up a Christmas joke. He thought it was his funniest joke yet, but then again, they were all hilarious.
He had no doubt he would win the talent show.
“Either that, or I’ll totally flip out and turn into some weirdo or something. Just sit in a corner and pick my nose all day.” He laughed. “Or maybe I’ll shave my head, get a machine gun, and blow away half the school. Ha. Ha.”
As they bury the dead the newsmen try to figure out why a young lad, only twelve years old, would do such a horrible thing.
“He seemed harmless,” says a classmate.
“He didn’t have a lot of friends. He kept to himself.”