Funny Boy Meets the Dumbbell Dentist from Deimos (with Dangerous Dental Decay) (9 page)

This is the big surprise ending! Shhhhh! Don’t tell anybody what happens or you’ll ruin the surprise.

Dr. Denny picked up a clear mask and forced it down on my face.

“TURN ON THE GAS!” he ordered.

“No! Stop!” I yelled, trying to fight him off.

“Don’t let him do it, Funny Boy!” shouted Tupper.

“HOW WOULD YOU LIKE A TASTE OF YOUR OWN MEDICINE?” said Dr. Denny.

As I inhaled the laughing gas, I felt myself slipping into giggling unconsciousness . . . mind . . . fuzzy . . . haha . . . sleepy . . . funny . . .

With my last ounce of energy, I managed to rip the mask off my mouth, turn it around, and slap it on Dr. Denny’s putrid, malodorous face! Right away, he started laughing.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”

“Yes!” shouted Punch. “The laughing gas is working! The tables are turned!”

“What tables?” I asked. “I don’t see any tables.”

“It’s a figure of speech, you dope!” shouted Bob Foster.

Unfortunately, at that moment, Dr. Denny managed to tear the mask off his face. He was still laughing.

“YOUR HUMOR IS TOO STRONG FOR ME, FUNNY BOY!” he shouted. “BUT I EXPECTED THAT, SO I BROUGHT ALONG A BACKUP DENTIST JUST IN CASE. BRING OUT . . . ROBODENT 2000!”

The door to the spaceship opened with another
whoosh
and a huge robot came clanking down the ramp. It was wearing a white dentist’s coat and rubber gloves.

“WHERE IS MY PATIENT . . .” asked RoboDent 2000. “. . . DO YOU BRUSH AFTER EVERY MEAL . . . LET ME SEE YOUR GUMS . . .”

RoboDent 2000 rolled over to us and stopped right in front of me.

“A robotic dentist?” asked Bob Foster.

“YES!” said Dr. Denny. “AND HE HAS NO SENSE OF HUMOR, SO HE IS INVULNERABLE TO FUNNY BOY’S STUPID JOKES.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “We’ll see about that. What’s the messiest sport?”

“WHAT?” asked RoboDent 2000.

“Basketball,” I said, “because the players dribble all over the floor.”

RoboDent 2000 had no reaction at all.

“Not a sports fan, eh?” I said. “Well, how about this one, big guy? What’s the difference between a school teacher and a train?”

“WHAT?” asked RoboDent 2000.

“The teacher tells you to spit out your gum,” I told him, “and the train goes ‘Chew Chew.’ ”

Nothing. Dr. Denny was right. The robot appeared to have no sense of humor at all.

“ENOUGH JOKES!” said RoboDent 2000. “I MUST REMOVE YOUR WISDOM TEETH, IN THE MOST PAINFUL WAY POSSIBLE. HAND ME THE PLIERS.”

“Nooooooooooooo!” I shouted.

“OPEN WIDE.”

“Nooooooooooooo!”

“We’re done for!” shouted Bob Foster.

“We’re all going to die!” shouted Tupper.

“AHAHAHAHA!” shouted Dr. Denny. “I’VE GOT YOU NOW, FUNNY BOY!”

“Wait!” shouted Punch. “Funny Boy, do you know any robot jokes?”

“RoboDent 2000 has no sense of humor,” said Bob Foster. “Even robot jokes will have no effect on him.”

“It’s worth a try!” said Tupper, with a pleading look on her face.

Desperately, I searched my memory for jokes about robots. There weren’t many of them, and they weren’t all that funny, but they were all I had.

“Why did the robot mow his lawn?” I asked.

“TO BLEND IN WITH THE HUMANS SO IT COULD INFILTRATE SOCIETY AND ULTIMATELY DESTROY HUMANITY,” said RoboDent 2000.

“Wow,” I said. “I guess you heard that one already.”

“Try another joke, Funny Boy!” begged Tupper.

“How many robots does it take to screw in a light bulb?” I asked.

“NONE,” said RoboDent 2000. “WE CAN WORK IN THE DARK.”

“Oh, this guy is good,” I said.

“Is that all you have?” asked Punch.

“I have just three jokes left,” I replied. “What do you get when you cross a robot with a tractor?”

“A TRANS-FARMER,” said RoboDent 2000.

“HE KNOWS EVERY ONE OF YOUR STUPID JOKES!” said Dr. Denny. “SOON IT WILL BE ALL OVER FOR YOU, FUNNY BOY!”

“KILL!” said Halitosis gleefully.

“DIE!” hooted Gingivitis.

“Not yet!” I yelled. “I still have two more robot jokes left. Hey RoboDent, did you hear that robots don’t have sisters?”

“THEY HAVE TRANSISTORS,” RoboDent 2000 responded immediately.

“How did he know
that
one?” I yelled. “
Nobody
knows that one!”

“GIVE UP, FUNNY BOY,” said Dr. Denny. “YOU CAN’T BEAT HIM. YOU AND YOUR PATHETIC WORLD ARE FINISHED.”

Tupper, Punch, and Bob Foster were sobbing uncontrollably. It was the end of the line. I had just
one
robot joke left. If it didn’t work, Dr. Denny would drill a hole in the Earth and split it in half like a giant pistachio nut. The tension was so unbearable that I wasn’t even able to make a joke about bears. I gathered up my courage, took a deep breath, and did a few other stalling tactics to build even more suspense.

Okay, finally it was time to let loose the last joke I had.

“What’s silver,” I asked, “and lays in the grass?”

There was a long pause. RoboDent 2000 didn’t move, but it looked like he was thinking.

“He doesn’t know the answer!” yelled Tupper.

Smoke started coming out of the robot’s ears. It started flailing its arms around.

“I GIVE UP,” admitted RoboDent 2000. “WHAT IS SILVER AND LAYS IN THE GRASS?”

“R2 Doo Doo!” I shouted triumphantly.

“HA!” said RoboDent 2000. “HA HA! HAHAHA! HAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“You did it, Funny Boy!” Tupper shouted. “He never heard that one before!”

RoboDent 2000 was laughing uncontrollably, slapping itself on its metallic knees, and wiping away the oil that was dripping from the video cameras that functioned as its eyes.

Dr. Denny, Halitosis, and Gingivitis frantically started scooping up the dental equipment and running to put it back inside their spaceship.

“THE POWER OF FUNNY BOY’S HUMOR IS JUST TOO STRONG!” yelled Dr. Denny. “WE MUST LEAVE EARTH IMMEDIATELY!”

“Put an egg in your shoe and beat it!” I hollered after them. “And don’t come back!”

“Hooray!” Tupper shouted. “Hooray for Funny Boy! You are my hero!”

Well, that’s the story. Thanks to my incredibly immature toilet humor, I had driven the evil aliens away. I had saved the world and made it safe for A lists and B movies, X games and J-walking, iPads and D cups, L trains and G ratings, C biscuits and E books, T parties and . . .

“See?” said Punch. “I
told
you there would be a happy ending.”

“Some folks just can’t take a joke,” I said.

WELL, YOU HAVE WASTED COUNTLESS HOURS READING THIS NONSENSE WHEN YOU COULD HAVE USED THAT TIME TO CURE A DISEASE, SOLVE THE ENERGY CRISIS, OR DO SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE WITH YOUR LIFE.

Stay tuned for Funny Boy’s
next
amazing and hilarious adventure . . .

Funny Boy Meets the Evil-Smelling Eggs from Europa (Who Erase Emails)

Dan Gutman was born in a log cabin in Illinois and used to write by candlelight with a piece of chalk on a shovel. Oh, wait a minute, that was Abraham Lincoln. Actually, Dan Gutman grew up in New Jersey and, for some reason, still lives there.

Somehow, Dan survived his bland and uneventful childhood, and then attended Rutgers University, where he majored in psychology for reasons he can’t explain. After a few years of graduate studies, he disappointed his mother by moving to New York City to become a starving writer.

In the 1980s, after several penniless years writing untrue newspaper articles, unread magazine articles, and unsold screenplays, Gutman supported himself by writing about video games and selling unnecessary body parts. He edited
Video Games Player
magazine for four years. And, although he knew virtually nothing about computers, he spent the late 1980s writing a syndicated column on the subject.

In 1990, Gutman got the opportunity to write about something that had interested him since childhood: baseball. Beginning with
It Ain’t Cheatin’ If You Don’t Get Caught
(1990), Gutman wrote several nonfiction books about the sport, covering subjects such as the game’s greatest scandals and the history of its equipment.

The birth of his son, Sam, inspired Gutman to write for kids, beginning with
Baseball’s Biggest Bloopers
(1993). In 1996, Gutman published
The Kid Who Ran for President
, a runaway hit about a twelve-year-old who (duh!) runs for president. He also continued writing about baseball, and the following year published
Honus & Me
, a story about a young boy who finds a rare baseball card that magically takes him back to 1909 to play with Honus Wagner, one of the game’s early greats. This title stemmed a series about time-travel encounters with other baseball stars such as Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, and, in
Ted & Me
(2012), Ted Williams.

In his insatiable quest for world domination, Dan also wrote
Miss Daisy Is Crazy
(2004) and launched the My Weird School series, which now spans more than forty books, most recently
Mayor Hubble Is in Trouble!
(2012).

As if he didn’t have enough work to do, Gutman published
Mission Unstoppable
(2011), the first adventure novel in the Genius Files series, starring fraternal twins Coke and Pepsi McDonald. There will be six books in the series, in which the twins are terrorized by lunatic assassins while traveling cross-country during their summer vacation. These books are totally inappropriate for children, or anybody else for that matter.

Gutman lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey, with his wife and two children. But please don’t stalk him.