“I’m in,” said Matt.
“All right, me too,” said Joe. “But I say we leave Goon alone. His parents will probably be there and everything.”
“Goon has parents?” asked Matt. He screamed in terror.
8.
Gary lay on the floor and looked up at the faces of W. C. Fields, Woody Allen, Jonathan Winters, Robin Williams, and Whoopi Goldberg, almost as if he was waiting for one of them to tell him a joke. They didn’t say a word.
He closed his eyes. “Concentrate!” he said. “Jokes. Funny jokes! Jokes nobody ever heard before.”
Nothing came to him.
He’d never tried to make up jokes before. They always just popped into his head when he was in the middle of talking.
He sat up. “Okay, then I’ll just start talknig.” He looked around. “What should I talk about?
“I need to stand up to think,” he said as he rose to his feet. “I can’t make up jokes sitting down. After all, I’m a stand-up comic!”
He clapped his hands. “That’s one!” he said. “Now I’m cookin’.” He smiled at W. C. Fields. “Now I’m cookin’. What’d the explorer say after he was captured by cannibals and thrown into a pot of boiling water? ‘Now I’m cookin’.’ ”
He turned to Whoopi Goldberg. ?
??All right, that wasn’t funny, I admit it, but I’m just getting warmed up.… Of course, that’s what the explorer said too!”
He walked in circles around his room as he continued to talk to himself.
“Last night we had fish for dinner.” (Pause: One … two … three.) “We fed them worms.”
He clapped his hands together. “My mother made spaghetti for the rest of us. You know the difference between a plate of spaghetti and a plate of worms? Well, you better learn if you’re ever invited to our house for dinner!
“I had bad breath last night. I guess I shouldn’t have put so much garlic on my worms.”
He continued to move around the room. He didn’t just walk the floor. He stepped up onto his bed, and then over to his chair, and up on top of his desk. He opened his closet door, then stood behind it so that he was squished between the door and the wall. He closed the door and walked out into the middle of his room again.
He didn’t seem to be aware that he was doing any of this. His mind was focused on one thing only—making up jokes. His body just moved around on its own, as if separated from his brain.
“I had bad breath once. When I came to school, everybody held their noses. Of course, everyone always does that anyway.
“My breath was so bad, when I said the Pledge of Allegiance, I was arrested for mutilating the flag.
“I don’t know why my breath was so bad. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten a dead skunk for breakfast.
“You want to know why I ate a dead skunk for breakfast?
“We were out of pancakes.
“You want to know why I ate a dead skunk for breakfast?
“I couldn’t wait till lunch.
“You want to know why I ate a dead skunk for breakfast?
“Because they make too much noise when they’re alive.
“Did I tell you I had a girlfriend? Sometimes I’m afraid she thinks I’m ugly. She closes her eyes when she kisses me. I know, lots of people close their eyes when they kiss. It’s supposed to be romantic. But she also holds her nose.”
Gary stopped. Would he really be able to talk about kissing a girl, up on stage, in front of hundreds of people? In front of his parents?