Never Say Genius (13 page)

“We know, Dad,” Coke said. “But—”

“Don’t you want to see the nation’s capital?” Dr. McDonald continued. “The Lincoln Memorial? The Washington Monument? The White House? The Smithsonian? Believe me, you’re going to remember the things that happened on this trip for the rest of your lives.”

“I’ll say,” Coke agreed.

“But Dad—,” Pep said before her father cut her off.

“Tell me, what do you think would have happened if Thomas Edison had tried just a few filaments for his lightbulb and said, ‘Ah, forget it. It’s not worth the effort. Candles give off enough light’?”

“We’d still be using candles today,” Pep guessed.

“That’s right!” her father said.

Dr. McDonald was using the time-honored “what if” strategy. Kids are suckers for the “what if” strategy. The parent makes outlandish comparisons with the current situation, and the kids don’t realize the two situations are totally different. It works every time.

“What if,” Dr. McDonald asked, “Lewis and Clark had stopped in the middle of Iowa and said, ‘Okay, we get the idea. We’ve seen enough amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties’? And what if Neil Armstrong had stopped halfway to the moon and decided that one small half step for man was good enough? And what if Magellan had turned back when he was halfway around the world?”

“He would have survived, Dad,” Coke said. “Magellan died before he could circle the globe. He was murdered in the Philippines.”

“You know what I mean,” Dr. McDonald said. “The point is that you don’t start a job and quit in the middle. That’s just not right. And it’s not the American way. If you start something, you should finish it.”

Coke had a pained look on his face. This wasn’t going at all as he had planned. He hadn’t counted on his dad pulling the old “what if” strategy right after he played the homesick card. He didn’t know what to say next.

That was the problem with arguing against parents. They had so much more experience at it. Coke had to try something else. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

“Dad,” he said, “I don’t feel very well. It’s my stomach. I didn’t want to ruin the trip for everybody, but I think it’s cancer. I’m probably dying. I need to go home and spend my final days there.”

Yes!
Nothing
tops the old “I’m dying” trick.

“Wait a minute,” Dr. McDonald said, taking his arm off Coke’s shoulder. “First you said you need to go home to do your summer reading, and
now
you say you have to go home because you’re
dying
?”

“I really want to finish my summer reading before I die,” Coke explained. “Like you said, it’s the American way to finish what you started.”

At that point, Mrs. McDonald came ambling over.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “It’s time to get this show on the road. I’m anxious to see Ohio.”

“The kids say they don’t want to go to Washington,” her husband said glumly. “They want to turn around and go home. Oh, and Coke thinks he’s sick and he’s going to die.”

“Out of the question,” Mrs. McDonald said immediately. “We can’t go home now. Aunt Judy is my only sister. When we were little girls, we promised we would be at each other’s wedding. She came to mine fourteen years ago, so I have to be there for hers. We
promised
. I haven’t seen Judy in so long. I barely even remember what she looks like.”

“What if you and Dad went to Aunt Judy’s wedding, and Pep and I caught a flight home?” Coke suggested lamely. He knew he had lost the argument, but it was worth a try anyway.

“We’re not sending you home alone,” Mrs. McDonald said. “You’re too young to be alone. The four of us are going to Washington. We’re a family. That’s all there is to it. End of story. And if you die, you’re in big trouble, mister.”

Mothers have a way of ending debates.

Silently, the twins climbed back into the RV. They would be going all the way to Washington, and they couldn’t do anything about it. They would have to make the best of it.

O
hio is about two hundred fifty miles across. It would be a
long
day. Pep opened her book about circus animals. Coke fiddled with an empty Pez dispenser, which his mother had bought for him at the Museum of Pez Memorabilia back in California. It reminded him of home.

“Where are we going now?” Coke asked glumly as they pulled out of the campground’s parking lot. “The Pencil Sharpener Museum?”

“How did
you
know there was a pencil sharpener museum in Ohio?” asked Mrs. McDonald.

“It was a lucky guess,” Coke said, slipping the Pez dispenser into his back pocket.

“Well, I have good news for you,” Mrs. McDonald announced. “We are
not
going to the Pencil Sharpener Museum. And we are not going to the Paperweight Museum, or the National Construction Equipment Museum, or the Merry-Go-Round Museum, or the Bicycle Museum of America, or the Annie Oakley museum, or even the Cardboard Boat Museum. Personally, I would love to visit all those wonderful Ohio landmarks.”

“So where
are
we going?” Pep asked.

“Today we’re going someplace just for
you,”
Dr. McDonald told the kids. “We’re going to Cedar Point!”

“Cedar Point?” Pep asked. “What kind of museum is that?”

“It sounds like the name of a mental institution,” Coke remarked.

“Cedar Point happens to be the greatest amusement park in the
world
!” Dr. McDonald replied, grinning broadly. “And it’s in Sandusky, Ohio!”

“Really?” Pep screamed, jumping out of her seat to wrap her arms around her parents. “I love you!”

There are great amusement parks in California, of course. Six Flags. Sea World. Disneyland. But Sandusky, Ohio, is almost sacred ground for roller-coaster fanatics around the world. Its first coaster was built back in 1892. Now Cedar Point is filled with them, and they are among the tallest and fastest in the world. Both of the twins loved thrill rides, the scarier the better.

Dr. McDonald popped a piece of gum into his mouth and an AC/DC disc into the CD player. It always amazed him that one of his favorite rock bands of his youth was also loved by his children.

“Turn it up!” Coke shouted over the music. He liked his music loud. The louder the better.

Dr. McDonald followed the local roads until he reached Route 24 East, which he stayed on for a long fifty-five miles. By that time, stomachs had started growling and it was decided unanimously to stop off for lunch well before they got to Cedar Point. It’s not a good idea to ride a roller coaster on a full stomach.

Dr. McDonald pulled off the road at Toledo, where he saw a truck advertising a hot dog restaurant called Tony Packo’s.
BITE THE BEST
, it said on the side of the truck. He couldn’t resist.

“Holy Toledo!” Coke said as they walked into Tony Packo’s.

The walls of the restaurant were covered with plaques, each one bearing a hot dog bun that had been autographed by a famous person. Jerry Seinfeld. George W. Bush. Bing Crosby. Patti LaBelle. Clint Black. There were five hundred of them.

“This place is like a hot dog bun museum!” Mrs. McDonald said, reaching for her camera. Tony Packo’s would be perfect for
Amazing but True
.

They found an empty table and the waitress, an older woman, came over.

“What’ll it be, folks?” she asked.

“Hot dogs!” all four replied.

“Good choice.”

The kids walked around examining the autographed buns on the wall, but it wasn’t long before their hot dogs arrived, so they rushed back to their table. Coke was about to bite into his hot dog when he decided to put some ketchup on it. As he opened up the bun, this is what he saw burned into it:

“Oh no,” he said to himself. He quickly scanned the restaurant, then glanced over at the other buns on the table. Nobody else’s bun had weird symbols burned into it.

Without saying a word, Coke showed the bun to his sister. She raised her eyebrows.

“Memorize it,” Pep whispered in his ear.

“I already did.”

The cipher committed to memory, Coke doused the dog with ketchup and destroyed the evidence, by eating it.

Back on the road to Cedar Point after lunch, the twins huddled together in the back of the RV as Coke wrote down the symbols he had seen on his hot dog bun.

“It’s indecipherable!” he whispered.

“Every cipher is decipherable,” Pep whispered back. “That’s why they’re called ciphers. And this one, actually, is
easily
decipherable. It uses the Ogham alphabet.”

“The
what
?!”

“It was a medieval alphabet used in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales,” she said, as she began writing it out.

“How can you possibly know that?” Coke asked.

“The same way you know worthless trivia like the four things that were invented in Ohio,” she replied.

Pep finished writing out the Ogham alphabet.