I, Funny Read online

  “One… two…”

  I close my eyes. This is really bad. Even for Stevie, this is over the top.

  “Three!”

  They heave me up and over the railing. I sail about ten yards and hit the sand with a hard thud.

  “Let’s get out of here!” I hear Stevie holler.

  Then he and his two buddies—all of them laughing hysterically—take off down the boardwalk, pushing my wheelchair like they’re in some kind of shopping-cart race.

  My nightmare of nightmares has come true. I am officially stranded in the sand.

  But there’s no way I am yelling for help. How embarrassing would that be? “Um, excuse me, I seem to have lost my wheelchair. Would you mind dragging me off this beach before an army of sand crabs invades my undershorts?” No way am I doing that.

  Besides, the boardwalk is empty. There’s nobody for me to scream to.

  So I just lie there, sprawled out on the sand. Nothing I can do about it.

  The night air is cold. In fact, it’s so cold out here, I can’t even think of an “it’s so cold” joke. My brain is frozen.

  And I think I might have broken a bone in my butt. If that’s possible.

  To be perfectly honest with you, I’m scared.

  Chapter 24

  THANK GOODNESS MY DAD HAD A BROTHER

  Maybe twenty minutes later, I hear this ridiculous singing.

  “Shoo-doop ’n’ shooby-doo, shoo-doop ’n’ shooby-doo…”

  It’s the opening doo-wop refrain from a tune called “In the Still of the Night,” as done by the Five Satins (B-14 on Uncle Frankie’s golden-oldies-only jukebox at the diner).

  “In the still of the night…” The off-key voice comes closer. “I-I-I held you, held you ti-i-i-ght.”

  I crane my neck and look over at the boardwalk.

  It’s Uncle Frankie! He’s strolling along, flinging out his yo-yo, making kind of sweet Motown moves.

  He’s basically putting on a private doo-wop show for the seagulls.

  Then he stops, spreads out his arms, and adds in the harmony: “In the still of the ni-i-i-ight!”

  “Uncle Frankie?” I kind of croak the words at first.

  He seems to perk up his ears. Then he definitely looks my way.

  “Down here,” I cry out.

  “Jamie?”

  “Yeah.”

  In a flash, he hops over the railing and comes running toward me, his feet sliding sideways in the sand.

  “Are you okay? What happened to you?”

  “I dunno. I may have broken a bone in my butt.”

  He scoops me up. Uncle Frankie is surprisingly strong. I guess it’s all that yo-yoing. It must pump up his arm muscles.

  “What happened?” he asks again, when I’m safe in his arms.

  “Um, I ran into a little trouble.”

  “Where’s your chair?”

  “I don’t know. I kind of lost it.”

  He looks me in the eye. I swallow back a tear.

  “Okay,” he says. “We’ll worry about that later, kiddo. Come on. Let’s get you home.”

  And then he carries me off the beach and back up to the boardwalk.

  And you know what? I feel just like I used to when I was a little kid and fell asleep in the car. My dad would always pick me up and carry me into the house.

  I feel safe. I know Uncle Frankie will hold on tight.

  Just like he said in that song he was singing.

  Chapter 25

  HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN, JIGGITY-JIG…

  After a half-mile hike, we make it to Smileyville.

  “There you are!” says Aunt Smiley as she comes running out the front door, followed by Uncle Smiley, Ol’ Smiler, and Stevie’s little brother and sister.

  Stevie himself is the last one out the door.

  “We were so worried!” says Aunt Smiley. “I called the diner. You must have already closed up.”

  “Thanks, Frank,” says Uncle Smiley.

  Uncle Frankie just nods.

  “Are you hurt?” my aunt asks. Surprisingly, there is a good deal of kindness in her voice.

  “I’m okay,” I say. “Just a few bruises.”

  “And there are no broken bones in his butt,” adds Uncle Frankie, who’s still holding me in his arms.

  The Smileys stare at Uncle Frankie.

  He shrugs. “What can I say? We were worried about the boy’s butt.”

  “Somebody dumped this in the alley out back,” says Stevie, pushing my wheelchair across the lawn.

  Uncle Frankie eases me down into the seat.

  The Smileys motion for him to move closer to the stoop so the grown-ups can have a word in private. I hear Aunt Smiley say, “What the heck happened, Frank?” before I feel hot breath in my left ear.

  Stevie.

  “You tell anybody anything, you’re dead meat,” he whispers.

  I nod.

  “And I’ll torture you before I kill you!”

  I nod again.

  He jerks my chair forward and pushes me down the driveway like, all of a sudden, he’s an orderly and I’m an invalid.

  “Let go,” I say. “I can do this myself.”

  “Fine.” He lets go by giving me one last shove.

  “Jamie?” It’s Aunt Smiley. Her whole face is a huge frown. She and Uncle Smiley and Uncle Frankie come over to talk to me. “We were so worried when you didn’t come home. We even called the police. Now, what happened?”

  I glance over at Stevie.

  “I had an accident,” I say. “Trust me, accidents happen.”

  Chapter 26

  NEW YORK, NEW YORK (SO NICE, THEY NAMED IT TWICE)

  On Saturday morning, I hop on the Long Island Rail Road for the hour-long train ride to Penn Station in New York City. I’m making the trip all by myself, and the clueless Smileys don’t even notice. Even Stevie Kosgrov isn’t tagging along to torment me.

  This is sort of a pilgrimage for me. I am journeying to what some people call the comedy capital of the world, the city and comedy clubs where so many stand-ups have gotten their starts.

  They call New York “the city that never sleeps” and, judging from some of the characters I’m stuck behind on the sidewalks, it hardly bathes, either.

  This whole trip might become a new bit. Me, the country kid from Cornwall, rolling around America’s biggest urban jungle. If I’m a fish out of water in Long Beach, I’m a minnow in Manhattan.

  I see a blind guy on the corner of Thirty-Ninth Street. He’s selling pencils and collecting spare change in a tin cup. When I stop to wait for the light to change, he yells, “Hey, wheelchair kid, you can’t beg here. This is my corner. I saw it first.”

  “I thought you were blind,” I say.

  “I’m on my ten-minute break. Beat it.”

  So I roll north, through the mobs of people pushing and shoving. Yes, in New York City it is possible to get run over by a pedestrian. Everybody is eager to tell me where to go, and it isn’t exactly Times Square.

  Man, I love the city.

  Why?

  Because in New York City, no one treats me any differently than they treat everybody else.

  New Yorkers look at me and my wheelchair the same way they look at the guy with the wild eyes and tattered clothes who knows the world is coming to an end next Tuesday because the leprechaun in his pocket just told him so.

  They completely ignore us.

  Yep—there’s very little pity on the streets of the big city. INY!

  Chapter 27

  WELCOME TO THE COMEDY CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!

  I can’t believe I’m sitting on Broadway outside Carolines, one of the most famous comedy clubs in the country. Everybody’s appeared here: Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Colin Quinn, Elayne Boosler, Louis C.K., Chris Rush. The list goes on and on.

  I see a poster for that Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic Contest in the “Coming Attractions” display case.

  I guess Carolines is hosting the local contest for New York City, like
the Comedy Club in Ronkonkoma is hosting the preliminary round out on Long Island. Yes. I checked out the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic website after Uncle Frankie told me about the competition.

  That doesn’t mean that I’m entering it. Far from it. Just that I know how to surf the Web without wiping out. I’m still confident I’d gag if I ever got onstage in front of an audience.

  I roll into a nearby souvenir shop because I want to get Uncle Frankie an INY yo-yo. No luck. INY is on everything from thimbles to pens to boxer shorts, but no yo-yos. Someone needs to write the mayor. “Yo! We need some yo-yos.”

  So I grab a snow globe. Which gives me another idea for a bit: You ever wonder what it would be like to be a tiny person living inside a snow-globe city? The TV weather reports would be interesting: “Chance of an upside-down earthquake followed by a ten-second blizzard and a tsunami.”

  I pick up a foam rubber Statue of Liberty crown for myself. I’m thinking I might use it in my act. I could pretend I’m going to take over for her. “Poor lady, she’s been standing in the harbor since 1886, holding up that torch. Her arm has got to be tired. This is why the woman never smiles. And that gown… whose idea was that? There’s no shade, and she’s standing out there in the hot sun in a toga made out of sheet metal?”

  Yeah. New York is treating me the way it’s always treated comedians. It’s giving me a ton of material!

  Too bad nobody except the folks at Uncle Frankie’s diner will ever get to hear any of it.

  Chapter 28

  RUDE AND CRUDE, WITH MY KIND OF ’TUDE

  My next stop is the Ed Sullivan Theater, up on Broadway and Fifty-Fourth Street, where David Letterman tapes his show.

  I’m kind of in total awe, just thinking about all the great comics who have appeared on this stage. Some of them probably even used this very same sidewalk to get to that stage.

  You know, people will tell you that New Yorkers are so rude they don’t even get along with each other. But Letterman says that’s not true: “I saw two New Yorkers, complete strangers, sharing a cab. One guy took the tires and the radio; the other guy took the engine.”

  In New York, they say people go to hockey games for the fighting. In the stands. To participate.

  So during my entire visit, not one single New Yorker acts extra nice to me because I’m in a wheelchair.

  And I love every minute of it!

  Check it out:

  A taxi splashes me because I stop too close to the gutter.

  A tour bus nearly runs me down in a crosswalk because I don’t realize that the traffic signals in the city are just “suggestions.”

  I learn you should never, ever travel behind a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park.

  While I’m waiting for the subway to head back to Penn Station, a rat the size of an otter scampers up from the tracks just so it can pee on my shoe.

  This whole city is hilarious.

  Including the subway ride to Penn Station. A guy mugs me, armed only with a finger pistol under his hoodie. I give him my last two bucks. He hops off at the next stop. I just smile and wave as he runs away.

  “Go with God,” I say.

  Because he robbed me just like he’d rob anybody else!

  Chapter 29

  A NEW WEEK, A NEW ME (EVEN THOUGH I LOOK A LOT LIKE THE OLD ME!)

  Refreshed from my weekend trip to the city, I start the new week at school with a renewed sense of purpose. I promise myself I will persistently pursue perfecting the three Ps! (Try saying that three times fast in front of a mirror without splattering it with spit!)

  I will also follow Uncle Frankie’s advice and try to finally figure out how to stop choking.

  I will practice my act (in the privacy of my bedroom).

  I will prepare new material (thanks again, NYC).

  I will perform. In front of people. (Maybe.)

  That last P is the hardest one. Where am I supposed to try out my material before I take it to the comedy club in Ronkonkoma?

  If I decide to enter. That’s a huge IF. About twice the size of one of those billboards in Times Square. Instead of a giant Abercrombie & Fitch “A” and “F,” picture a humongous “I-F.”

  But if I maybe, possibly (weather permitting) do enter, I need to perform somewhere else first.

  Suddenly, the obvious answer hits me: Why not at school?

  Talk about your captive audience. These people are glued to their seats for fifty minutes at a time. I could become the class clown. And since my pals Gilda, Gaynor, and Pierce are in my math class, I decide to make math my first show of the day.

  Okay, here goes nothing—or should I say everything?

  I raise my hand.

  “Yes, Mr. Grimm?” says the teacher, Ms. Zick. “Do you have a question?”

  “No. I’m just auditioning to be the new Statue of Liberty.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Have you seen the statue lately? She’s not looking good. In fact, she looks kind of green.”

  People (the teacher not included) start chuckling.

  “I think it’s because she’s been holding up her arm for over a century. Her fingers have got to be tingling. And what about that BO?” I fan my free hand under my armpit for emphasis. “Whoo! Somebody sign this poor lady up for a new deodorant.”

  Everybody is laughing like crazy—except, of course, Ms. Zick. She’s basically scowling.

  “Mr. Grimm?” she says, extremely grimly.

  But I can’t stop. I’m performing! My audience is laughing.

  “That smell in Bayonne? It isn’t New Jersey. It’s her.”

  Pierce, Gaynor, and Gilda actually applaud.

  The teacher does not. She goes to her desk, finds the dreaded pink pad, and writes me up.

  Yep. I just earned my first detention ever.

  I know I should feel ashamed, but actually I’m kind of proud of myself.

  Pierce, Gaynor, and Gilda? They’re definitely proud of me.

  Chapter 30

  DOING HARD TIME

  When school ends, I head with my fellow felons to detention hall.

  Stevie Kosgrov is already in the room. I think he’s a detention regular. Rumor has it that the principal herself gave Kosgrov a life sentence without parole. Stevie’s two thuggish friends from that night on the boardwalk (when I learned I could fly, if properly flung) are in detention, too. Zits and Useless, if I remember right, which I do. I’m wondering if we’re all going to make license plates, like they do in prison movies.

  “Congratulations,” says Stevie. “You made it to the Big House. Maybe you’re not a total weenie.”

  I guess I should feel proud that I was funny enough to cause a disturbance. But I don’t. I feel terrible. Like when you let your parents down. Or get caught cheating at Monopoly. Or both.

  There’s not much for me to do in detention hall except watch time tick by. Have you ever noticed that school clocks are the slowest clocks in the world? It’s like the principal has a secret space-time continuum warper hidden in her office that turns school days into dog years.

  “Mr. Grimm?” says Mrs. Kanai. She’s a nice lady. Good teacher, too. Guess she drew the short straw in the faculty lounge today and got detention duty. “Can I see you at my desk?” She gestures for me to come to the front of the room.

  All the hard-core convicts in the room have their beady eyes trained on me as I roll up the aisle.

  “Yes, ma’am?” I whisper.

  “What are you doing in detention, Jamie?” she whispers back.

  I shrug my shoulders. “I cracked a couple of jokes in math class.”

  “Well, how will you get home?”

  “The usual way, I guess.”

  “Is there a special bus you take?”

  “No. I live pretty close by.”

  “Still, it must take you a long time to…” She catches herself. I can tell she wanted to say “walk home.” So I help her out.

  “It’s not so bad. I do it every day.”

  “Well
, I don’t like the idea of you out there on the street this late. It’s getting dark earlier and earlier. I think you’ve learned your lesson.”

  I look down at my lap because I can tell that Mrs. Kanai is feeling sorry for me. She can’t help herself. Like I said, she’s nice.

  But I hate when that happens.

  I earned my detention the old-fashioned way. I shouldn’t be given a “Get Out of Jail Free” card just because I’m in this chair.

  “I’m going to let you go early,” says Mrs. Kanai.

  I check out the clock. I have served exactly twelve minutes of my one-hour sentence.

  I take a quick glance at my fellow detainees. From the looks on their faces, they hate me as much as I hate being given any kind of special treatment.

  “Can Steve Kosgrov be excused early, too?” I ask.

  “Kosgrov?” Mrs. Kanai checks her warden sheet. Stevie is scheduled for detention from now until some time after he finishes junior college.

  “He’s my”—I fight my gag reflex—“adoptive brother.”

  “Oh, will he help you get home safely?”

  I go ahead and fib. Actually, this is definitely a lie. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, I think that will be okay. Just this one time.”

  And Stevie gets sprung, too.

  Chapter 31

  SAYING THANKS UNTIL IT HURTS

  To say thanks for his early release, Stevie punches me in the shoulder.

  To add a muchas gracias, he wallops me in the other shoulder.

  At least I’ll have matching bruises. Purple, I hope. It’s one of my favorite colors.

  “You’re welcome,” I say when Stevie is finished expressing his gratitude with his fists.