Dogs Don't Tell Jokes (Someday Angeline 2)

Gary had a girlfriend.

He never told Angeline (that’s her name) she was his girlfriend. He never kissed her, except one time on the cheek when she was asleep. Angeline was only ten years old.

But she laughed at his jokes. She didn’t just laugh. She howled. Sometimes she rolled around on the floor in hysterics.

“You’re the funniest person in the world,” she once told him.

“You can’t know that,” Gary said modestly. “There might be somebody in New Zealand who’s funnier.”

“No, there isn’t,” said Angeline. “You’re the funniest. I know.”

When Angeline spoke like that, Gary believed her. Angeline knew things. Everyone called her a genius—except Gary, because he knew she didn’t like to be called that.

He first met Angeline when he was in the fifth grade. She was only eight years old then, but she was put in the sixth grade. She was the smartest person in his elementary school. She was smarter than the teachers.

So if Angeline Persopolis (that’s her last name) said he was the funniest person in the world, that meant he was the funniest person in the world. It didn’t matter if nobody else laughed at his jokes.

Now Angeline was going to the Manusec School in Nebraska, where she studied astrophysics and nuclear chemistry, then played kickball at recess.

But sometimes, when Gary told his jokes at school, he could hear Angeline laugh a thousand miles away.

He had gone with her to the airport. He remembered standing in the gate area along with Gus, Mr. Bone, and Angeline’s father, Abel Persopolis. Everyone was sad. Gary was afraid that Angeline’s father was going to cry.

Gary told a joke. “Did you hear about the man who fell out of an airplane—and lived?”

“Did he have a parachute?” asked Angeline.

“Nope,” said Gary.

“Did he land in a haystack or something?” asked Angeline.

“Nope,” said Gary. “The airplane was on the ground!”

Angeline laughed.

“No, really,” Gary said. “There was a guy who fell out of an airplane thirty thousand feet up in the air, without a parachute, and the fall didn’t hurt him at all.”

“Really?” asked Angeline.

“Really,” said Gary. “He was fine the whole time he was falling. But when he stopped falling, boy, that hurt!”

Angeline cracked up.

Angeline’s father pointed out to Gary that it wasn’t an appropriate time and place to tell jokes about people falling out of airplanes.

“Yes, it is,” said Gary. “That’s how you keep accidents from happening. You know how to make sure the plane doesn’t crash?”

“How?” asked Angeline.

“I don’t want to hear this,” said Angeline’s father.

“It’s not a joke,” said Gary. “You just think about it crashing. You try to imagine it crashing. You daydream about it crashing. Because,” Gary concluded, “daydreams never come true.”

As a child traveling alone, Angeline was the first to board the airplane. She started crying as soon as she went through the gateway. She heard her father calling “ ’Bye, Angelini,” but she couldn’t bear to turn around and look at him.

It would be her first time away from her father. Her mother had died when she was only three.

A stewardess took her hand and led her to her seat.