Funny Boy Takes on the Chit-Chatting Cheeses from Chattanooga (4 page)

“Me, too.”

At that moment, this girl walked by. Not just any old girl. This girl was, without a doubt, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD!

Let me try to describe her for you. She had long blond hair, which was curly and dark. She was tall, on the short side. Her body was thin, and just a little overweight. I had never seen anyone like her before.

“I hate girls, too,” I agreed. “Who’s
that
?”

“It’s the new girl. Tupper Camembert,” Sal told me. “She just moved in around the corner from me. She’s in the other fourth-grade class. This is her first day in school.”

“Tupper?” somebody asked. “What kind of a dumb name is Tupper?”

“Who cares? I’m in love!”

“I’m in love!”

“I’m in love!”

“I’m in love!”

“I’m in love!”

“I’m in love!” I proclaimed.

“Forget it,” Sal snickered. “Tupper Camembert wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “We’ll see about that!”

I quickly caught up with Tupper and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Excuse me,” I said as charmingly as possible. “Can you please tell me what time it is?”

“No,” Tupper replied. “Why don’t you go jump in a lake?”

I jogged back over to Sal and the group of boys.

“You were right,” I huffed to Sal. “She wouldn’t give me the time of day. But she did invite me to go swimming.”

“What?” the boys all asked, their mouths open.

“She asked me to jump in a lake,” I replied, which for some reason the boys found amusing.

“That means she thinks you’re a dork, dork,” said Sal.

“Go ahead and laugh,” I told them. “1 love Tupper Camembert and none of you will be invited to our eventual wedding. I have seen the girl I will spend the rest of my life with, er, I mean the girl with whom I will spend the rest of my life.”

“Huh?”

“Let me shout it from the mountaintops. I’m in love with Tupper Camembert! I will follow her to the ends of the earth. I will follow her until the stars cease to shine. Until the oceans stop waving and the moon stops mooning. I will follow her until Bill Gates runs out of money. Until the Chicago Cubs win the World Series. I love her as no man has ever loved a woman.”

“What a dork!” Sal replied as the bell rang.

IF YOU’VE READ ALL THE OTHER CHAPTERS, YOU SHOULD BE TOTALLY HOOKED BY NOW AND WILL WANT TO READ THIS ONE, TOO. OR NOT.

It was raining and cold when I got up the next morning. But as you very well know, that had nothing to do with the story. So there was no good reason to bring it up.

The news about the giant alien cheeses wasn’t in the papers that day. But it was the
next
day. There was a small item in the food section about these “cute” cheeses that were nice enough to travel 40 million light-years to provide Earth with all the cheese we’d need until the cheese shortage was over.

I thought that would be the end of it, but the next evening Bob Foster and I were watching the
The Tonight Show,
and who should be on as a guest but Monterey Jack, the leader of the cheeses! They had to build a huge chair for him to “sit” in while Jay Leno interviewed him.

“I must say,” Jay Leno said, “Jack, you’re the first enormous talking cheese we’ve had on the show. You certainly are ugly.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Jay. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“So, do you have a wife or a girlfriend, Jack? What’s her name, Velveeta?”

“My lips are sealed.”

“I notice you use a lot of clichés when you talk, Jack. You know, tired, overused expressions that have lost their originality and impact because we’ve heard them so many times.”

“I make no bones about it,” Jack replied. “If the shoe fits, wear it.”

“Don’t you ever talk without using clichés?”

“Once in a blue moon.”

“When were you born?”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, Jay.”

“Tell me, what does a cheese eat?”

“You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”

“So you’re basically a chitchatting, cliché-cracking cheese from Chattanooga.”

The audience thought Monterey Jack was a witty and engaging guest. The next week, there was a feature story in
People
magazine about the Wisconsin mailman and the four cheeses that fell on top of him.

The Guinness Book of World Records
sent a representative to verify that what had fallen out of the Wisconsin sky was in fact the “largest cheese in the world.”

On TV,
60 Minutes
devoted a segment to the alien cheeses. They appeared on an episode of
Modern Family.
A parade was held in their honor, and they were hailed as the heroes who had saved America from a real cheese crisis.

It wasn’t long before “cheesemania” was sweeping the nation. Sales of all cheese products tripled. Cheese-themed trading cards, T-shirts, and lunch boxes appeared on store shelves. Somebody came out with a rap song about cheese. There was talk of a major motion picture starring Monterey Jack, Romano, Fontina, and Mozzarella.
People
said they could be the hottest thing since Silly Bandz.

Young girls argued about which of the four cheeses was the cutest. Grown women found them to be attractive, too. Monterey Jack received several marriage proposals. There were rumors that he was seen at a nightclub with those tennis-playing Williams sisters.

Everybody, it seemed, loved Monterey Jack, Romano, Fontina, and Mozzarella.

Everybody but my foster father, Bob Foster, the cheese hobbyist and knower of all things about cheese.

“Something tells me,” he whispered, shaking his head, “those cheeses are up to no good.”

[Imagine increasingly scary music here.]

MORE LOVE STUFF HERE. BOYS MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS CHAPTER AND MOVE ON TO CHAPTER 7, WHERE THERE’S A LOT OF VIOLENCE AND DESTRUCTION AND DEATH. COOL!

Despite the scary music that ended the last chapter, I didn’t concern myself with the enormous cheeses that had landed in Wisconsin and become worldwide celebrities. Monterey Jack, Romano, Fontina, and Mozzarella seemed like happy, harmless cheeses that just happened to have come from outer space. It wasn’t like they were evil aliens that were going to take over Earth or anything. Nothing to worry my little head about.

Besides, I had something else on my mind. Tupper Camembert.

I was in love! I let the sound of her name roll around in my mouth. Tup-per Cam-em-bert. Tup-per Cam-em-bert. Say it loud and there’s music playing! Say it soft and it’s almost like praying.

I had never had this feeling in my life. Tupper was so beautiful! I couldn’t get the picture of her out of my mind. I thought about her day and night. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I dreamed about her.

Tup-per Cam-em-bert. Tup-per Cam-em-bert.

“Will you stop it?” my dog, Punch, snapped as I was writing Tupper’s name over and over again on my hand with indelible marker. “That stupid name is giving me a headache.”

“How dare you call the girl I love stupid!”

“It’s
you
who’s stupid!” Punch barked.

I tackled Punch, and she began biting me on the leg. We rolled around on the floor for a few minutes before Bob Foster came in to see what all the fuss was about.

“I think we should have a little talk,” Bob Foster told me after he had broken up the fight. Punch stormed out of my room in a huff.

Bob Foster sat on my bed with me. “It’s time you learned about the birds and the bees.”

“I’m not interested in animals,” I replied. “I want to know about girls.”

“No, what I mean is, it’s time I told you the facts of life.”

“Huh?”

“You see, Funny Boy, the purpose of a man is to love a woman. You follow me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And the purpose of a woman is to love a man.”

“Okay ...

I didn’t quite catch the rest, because Bob got up and started singing and dancing around my bedroom like a lunatic.