Pottymouth and Stoopid Read online

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, doing my dead-on Stoopid voice. “So I guess my five-point shot is really a six-point shot.”

  “Unless you count your fingers and toes,” said Michael. “Then it’s a twenty-one-point shot.”

  I rapped my knuckles against my head the way Stoopid did in the TV show.

  “Too much math.” I moaned in mock agony. “My head hurts.”

  “Just wait,” said Michael, “we haven’t even shoved it through the hicklepickle hoop yet…”

  Yep. We thought we sounded exactly like the cartoon characters, but the other kids didn’t seem to agree.

  “Lame,” groaned Emma. “You suck at being Pottymouth and Stoopid.”

  “You suck at being you!” added Luke Lucas.

  And the whole crowd walked away.

  Michael never even got a chance to shout “Hicklesnicklepox!” or shove me through the hoop and net.

  That was probably a good thing.

  TONY SCUNGILI

  David’s “Ex-Dad”

  The day after Pottymouth & Stoopid debuted, I swung by the offices of the Cartoon Factory.

  They gave me a standing ovation!

  Seriously.

  Everybody stood up at their desks and started clapping.

  Somebody popped open a bottle of bubbly.

  Several attractive young ladies started flirting with me.

  “We just got the numbers for the show,” said the head of the network.

  That meant he’d seen the overnight ratings.

  “Is the show a hit?” I asked, figuring it probably was or the pretty girls would’ve kept the champagne chilling in the back of the fridge.

  “A hit?” said the network bigwig. “It’s a home run!”

  I shouted, “Hicklesnicklepox!”

  Porter Malkiel, the president and chief executive officer of Cartoon Factory Inc., called me a “grizzlegoober genius”!

  I went right out and bought myself a new sports car. A cherry-red convertible.

  This show is the best thing to ever happen to me.

  My new girlfriend agrees.

  She’s totally gorgeous, with great hair that looks amazing blowing in the breeze when I drop the top down on my shiny new convertible.

  I have lots of other friends too.

  They’re all very sincerely happy for me.

  Everyone loves it when we go out and I pay for all the food and drinks they want. We all have a great time!

  I knew that one day, I would smell like Success.

  That’s the name of this new cologne I bought. It costs one thousand dollars an ounce.

  Guess what?

  Thanks to Pottymouth & Stoopid, I can buy it by the gallon!

  Do Pottymouth and Stoopid for Us!

  My ex-dad never followed up on that promise to pay Mom all the child support he owed her. In fact, after the lunch at McDonald’s, we didn’t hear from him again.

  Big surprise.

  So, while we waited for the court to send him another reminder, she hauled Michael and me to school in her old clunker of a car.

  “Remember, guys,” she said every morning when she dropped us off, “what people say about you says more about them than it does about you.”

  Yeah. Right.

  Like we were ever going to believe that.

  After a few weeks’ worth of Pottymouth & Stoopid episodes, everybody at school was imitating us. I mean, they were imitating the cartoon characters who were imitating us. And, like always, they thought they were way better.

  People started wearing T-shirts with Michael’s words printed on the chest: Flufferknuckle. Hicklesnicklepox. Snifflepiggle.

  But when Michael made up a new word, one that wasn’t from the TV show, watch out! Girls laughed at him. Boys called him mental. Teachers pulled out their detention slips.

  “That’s just gross,” said a girl when Michael said flurrzlegerkin for the first time in science class. (He’d just discovered what happened when you mixed three kinds of clear chemicals together—they turned colors!)

  Meanwhile, she was wearing a T-shirt with Snifflepiggle splashed all over the front in a starburst. Guess who made up that word.

  Yeah.

  Stoopid inspired T-shirts too. The big seller was one that said I’m with Stoopid. It had a finger pointing up—at the person wearing it.

  Lunchtime in the cafeteria became feeding time at the zoo for Pottymouth and Stoopid. Everybody came over to either gawk at us or make fun of us.

  “Do something stupid,” they’d say to me.

  “Put a french fry in your ear!”

  “Put a hamburger bun on your head like it’s a hat!”

  “Juggle your Jell-O cubes!”

  One day, I got so mad at the Stoopid ideas that I slammed my fist down on the table to make everyone shut up. I slammed it hard.

  Dumb move.

  My fist hit the handle of my fork, which was sitting in a bowl of macaroni and cheese. The fork became a catapult. The mac and cheese became a projectile that rivaled the flaming catapult missiles they flung in castle sieges. Mine landed with a splat.

  On top of Coach Ball’s head.

  I’m going to be running laps around the gym for the rest of my life.

  Kids tormented Michael whenever he walked down the hall. They’d tip his books out of his arms, throw paper balls at his head, and trip him by stepping on his shoelaces—anything to make him go ballistic and let loose with a string of classic Pottymouth words.

  Luckily for Anna, nobody bothered her too much.

  “She’s just a nerd on the show,” they’d say. “She’s not even funny.”

  By week six, Anna Britannica had stopped showing up on the Pottymouth & Stoopid show. Her catchphrase was Brain power. Use it or lose it, but it hadn’t caught on. It just wasn’t dumb enough.

  Through it all, Michael and I never, ever went whining to anyone. We’re just not whiners. When life throws curveballs at us, we duck.

  But when we were alone, up in our tree house after another day of being the original Pottymouth and Stoopid, we’d let our real feelings bubble up.

  “We didn’t do anything to deserve this,” I said.

  “We didn’t fudging ask for this,” said Michael.

  “Somebody must’ve spied on us and turned our entire lives into one dumb TV show,” I said, because we still didn’t know who had done this to us.

  “This is so wrong,” said Anna, climbing up to join us. “In so many ways.”

  “It’s unfair,” I declared. “School is unfair. TV is unfair. Life is unfair.”

  “And TV used to be our friend,” added Michael. “Sludgepuggle.”

  “Everything in the whole entire universe is unfair!” I said, slamming my fist down hard.

  I have to stop doing that. Because this time, I banged a hole in our tree-house floor. It was pretty wide, so I covered it up with a sheet of cardboard.

  But then, two minutes later, I forgot I had just punched a hole in the floor and I stepped on the cardboard.

  Oops!

  One leg went all the way through. The other didn’t. That’ll hurt.

  Yes, it was a stupid move. But like I said before, doing stupid stuff doesn’t automatically mean I’m Stoopid.

  It just means I’m a kid.

  Principal Blerguson

  After episode seven of Pottymouth & Stoopid aired on the Cartoon Factory channel, Michael and I were summoned to Principal Ferguson’s office.

  “Do you think he wants you to autograph his schnizzleflicking I’m with Stoopid T-shirt?” Michael asked me.

  “I doubt it. He probably wants to hear you say Skifferdeejibberdee.”

  “Pottymouth says it wrong on TV,” said Michael.

  “I know.”

  “The cartoon dude never seems really angry. Skifferdeejibberdee is a level-nine word. I say it only when sludgepuggle just isn’t strong enough.”

  Mrs. Tuttafacio, the school secretary, told us to sit down and wait.

  She
also gave us a super-dirty look. I had a feeling she had seen Mrs. Toothface on the Pottymouth & Stoopid show and probably assumed we were the ones who’d told the cartoonists to draw her that way, since everybody—students, teachers, and the school administrators—called us Pottymouth and Stoopid. They figured Michael and I had some kind of “technical adviser” jobs at the Cartoon Factory, giving the joke writers ideas about people to make fun of.

  We didn’t. If we had, we wouldn’t have let them make so much fun of us. Not that anyone believed us when we said that.

  Anyway, we couldn’t apologize to Mrs. Tuttafacio. If we did, it would be like we were admitting we were the ones who’d called her Toothface.

  She waddled down the corridor to Principal Ferguson’s office and rapped on the door.

  We heard someone grunt. “Send them in. Now!”

  “Principal Ferguson will see you now,” Mrs. Tuttafacio announced majestically. She had a huge grin on her face, like she was looking forward to seeing our heads chopped off in the village square.

  Michael and I shuffled up the hall and stepped into the principal’s office. It was pretty nice. He had a bookcase and a carpet.

  Principal Ferguson didn’t waste any time letting us know why we were in his office.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, pointing at his computer screen.

  On it was a freeze-frame from the most recent episode of Pottymouth & Stoopid.

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s Principal Blerguson.”

  “I know who he is,” said Principal Ferguson whose name (duh) sounded a lot like the name of the principal in the cartoon show. “What I want to know is why this character’s name is so similar to mine.”

  “We don’t know why they called him that, sir,” said Michael.

  “We had nothing to do with anything on that show,” I added.

  “A likely story,” said Principal Ferguson. “After all, you are Pottymouth and Stoopid.”

  “Don’t call us that!” said Michael, then he bit his tongue to stop himself from telling Principal Ferguson he was a flufferknuckle.

  The principal glared at us and clicked the Play button.

  On-screen, Stoopid said, “When my underpants are too tight, I cut the elastic. No more wedgies!”

  “So you ruin your own underwear?” said Principal Blerguson. “That’s just stupid!”

  “That’s my name,” said Stoopid. “Don’t wear it out!”

  “You’re a bunchybutt swizzlenizzle,” said Pottymouth.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Principal Blerguson.

  “It means you need a new pair of underpants, sir,” said Pottymouth.

  “Would you like to borrow a pair of mine?” said Stoopid. “I have some in my locker. They’re not new, but I wore them for only like a day or two so they’re not too dirty.”

  “Could you be any grosser?” the cartoon principal yelled.

  Stoopid kept going. “I forgot to take them home so my mom could wash them. She puts them in the dishwasher, but only on the bottom rack. Because they’re underpants.”

  The laugh track on the show got really loud; it sounded like the whole audience was cracking up. That’s how they make jokes on TV seem funny even when they’re not.

  Principal Ferguson snapped off the video. “How dare you!” he snarled at us.

  “Um, how dare us what, sir?” I asked.

  “How dare you make fun of me like that on national television?”

  “We didn’t do it,” said Michael.

  “Don’t lie to me, son. Why else would this cartoon principal be called Blerguson?”

  “It wasn’t us!” I said. “We don’t write TV shows. We barely have time to write essays for English class.”

  Principal Ferguson crossed his arms over his chest. “Nonsense. You two reprobates are responsible for sullying my reputation.”

  “No, we’re not,” I said.

  “We don’t even know what reprobates and sullying mean!” said Michael.

  Principal Ferguson stared at us. Then he scowled. Then he pulled out two thick manila folders.

  Uh-oh.

  Our permanent records!

  Blerguson’s Big Surprise

  Ever since first grade, teachers had warned Michael and me that if we did something really bad, it would end up in our permanent records.

  The way they talked about it, your permanent record followed you around your entire life, from pre-K to middle school to high school to college and even after that. If you applied for a job, the guy interviewing you could look at your permanent record and say, “We’d love to hire you, David, but we see that you picked your nose in first grade. Sorry, it’s the unemployment line for you.”

  “Do you boys know what these are?” asked Principal Ferguson, tapping the two folders.

  Michael and I gasped at the same time. We’d never seen our permanent records before.

  “Everything you’ve ever done, the good and the bad—or, in your cases, just the bad—is in here. Until today, I saw no reason to dig any deeper into who you two boys were because, frankly, I already knew who you were: another pair of losers. Let’s face it, neither one of you is ever going to find a cure for cancer or become president of the United States.”

  “I might,” snapped Michael. “I might do both.”

  “Riiiight,” said Principal Ferguson, who was reminding me more and more of Principal Blerguson from the cartoon. “Like that’s ever going to happen.”

  “It could,” said Michael.

  “When pigs fly,” muttered the principal as he flipped through the pages stuffed into our folders.

  “They do,” I said. “There’s a movie coming out—”

  “Life isn’t a movie, young man. Or a cartoon show.”

  One of the papers in my folder seemed to stop him in his tracks.

  “Which one of you is David?” he asked, sounding sort of shocked.

  “Me,” I said. “I’m the one they call Stoopid.”

  “Well, they’re wrong.”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you remember taking an IQ test, Mr. Scungili?”

  “Vaguely,” I said. “When I was little. It was supposed to measure our intelligence quotients.”

  “That’s right,” said Principal Ferguson, still sounding like he was astounded by something in my permanent record. He even forgot to be mean and nasty to us. “Did you know you have an IQ of 159?”

  “No,” I said. “Is that good?”

  “It’s better than good, David,” a shocked Principal Ferguson said, “an IQ of 150 or above means you are highly intelligent. A genius.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “I’m not stupid?”

  The principal shook his head. “No, you’re not, David. Neither is Michael.”

  “Seriously?” said Michael.

  “Your IQ is 160.”

  “Whoa. I’m smarter than David?”

  “Slightly.”

  “I guess that’s why he comes up with all those cool new words,” I said. “He’s too smart to stick with the ordinary ones.”

  Principal Ferguson leaned back in his chair. Studied us.

  “So, tell me, boys: What’s up with this Pottymouth and Stoopid act? Is this something you two cooked up years ago to hide your true potential?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “They’re not really nicknames we’d pick out for ourselves.”

  “In fact,” said Michael, “we had nothing to do with it. Other flufferknuckles came up with those names for us when we were in preschool, and they just stuck.”

  We just didn’t know which one of those flufferknuckles had put us on TV!

  Our New Homework Assignment

  Do you know how often the Cartoon Factory plays reruns of Pottymouth & Stoopid?

  Every day. All day.

  Michael and I could watch our cartoon twins smash into walls, sit on wet paint, and say “Sludgepuggle!” at least six or seven times a day—more if we stayed up past one o’clock in the mornin
g.

  Instead of making us cooler, the show made us even more miserable than before. Mom told the school we were sick and let us stay home, and she even called in sick herself so she could try to make us feel better.

  “I baked you boys some chocolate chip cookies,” she announced. “I used your grandpa’s recipe, David.”

  That was really sweet. So were the cookies. She used way too much sugar. (I don’t think Grandpa ever actually followed a recipe; he just sort of tossed the right amounts of ingredients into the bowl out of instinct.)

  Michael and I pretended to enjoy Mom’s cookies, but when she wasn’t looking, we slid them off the table so the dog could eat them—even though we don’t have a dog.

  “I have an idea,” said Mom later as she vacuumed cookie crumbs off the floor. “Why don’t you boys do some research? Find out who’s making fun of you on national TV.”

  She might not have baked good cookies, but Mom had come up with an excellent idea.

  And so began our biggest homework assignment ever.

  The first thing we did was pause the end credits of the Pottymouth & Stoopid show.

  There were two problems.

  One, the list of names of people who worked on the show was super-small and sort of shoved over to one side of the screen.

  The other problem?

  When we finally dug up a magnifying glass and read the created by and written by credits, they didn’t even sound real. They said the show was created by Charles D. Chucklepuss and written by the usual gang of knuckleheads.

  That’s just how the Cartoon Factory rolls. Everything is a joke to them, including our lives.

  So we tried a more direct approach.

  We Googled like maniacs and finally found the phone number for the Cartoon Factory headquarters in Chicago.

  At first, we couldn’t get through. Our call was answered by one of those robo-machines that asks you to keep pushing buttons until your fingers bleed.