Pottymouth and Stoopid Read online

“Frizzlegristle hicklesnicklepox!” said Michael after like two hours of telephone-button pushing that led nowhere.

  I had another idea.

  We Googled the president and CEO of the Cartoon Factory, a guy named Porter Malkiel.

  We found a few video clips of him talking to advertising executives. Michael replayed the clips like a million times so he could get the Cartoon Factory big cheese’s voice down cold. And then we called this other number we found on the business page for the Cartoon Factory.

  “Hello,” said Michael, “this is Porter Malkiel, your president and chief executive officer, speaking.”

  “Yes, sir, sir,” said the eager dude on the other end of the phone. “How may I direct your call, sir?”

  “I want to talk to whoever is in charge of Pottymouth and Stoopid.”

  “You mean the brand-new program that’s the biggest hit this network has had in years?”

  “Yes. Who’s in charge of it?”

  The dude on the other end of the line was silent. For like five seconds. Finally he said, not nearly so eagerly, “That would be you, Mr. Malkiel.”

  I grabbed the phone out of Michael’s hand. “We’re the real Pottymouth and Stoopid!” I shouted into it.

  And the guy at the Cartoon Factory hung up on me.

  The Un-Wanted Posters

  Since we couldn’t call in sick forever, we headed back to school the next day.

  Big mistake.

  The homemade posters didn’t make much sense.

  Until Kaya Kennecky came along and explained them to us. (She also had a fresh stack of posters printed on pink paper tucked under her arm.)

  “You two doofuses are ruining everybody’s favorite TV show!”

  “Oh, really?” I asked. “How does that work?”

  “Pottymouth and Stoopid on TV are funny. You two in real life are just lousy lamebrains.”

  “And you’re a flufferknuckle,” said Michael.

  “See?” screeched Kaya. “You don’t even say it right! It’s fluf-fer-knuck-le! You’re a bad Pottymouth, Pottymouth. Stop pretending to be someone you’re not, Michael.”

  “Wait—you know my name?”

  “We asked at the office. Mrs. Toothface—I mean Tuttafacio—looked it up on the computer. It took her like fifteen minutes.”

  “She didn’t know our real names either?” I asked.

  “Of course not, David. Why should she waste her time on something as unimportant as your lame-o name-o’s? She has bus schedules to organize.”

  “You know I’m David?”

  “No. I know you’re nobodies faking that you’re the real Pottymouth and Stoopid. Well, Michael and David, quit causing trouble. You’re probably trying to sue the Cartoon Factory for stealing your names. I’m not going to stand by and let you ruin the best show on TV!”

  “Uh, you’re the one who stuck us with these nicknames back in preschool, Kaya,” I pointed out. “You’ve been calling us Pottymouth and Stoopid for eight years now. So how are we the fakers when the show just started a few days ago?”

  “Sludgepuggle,” mumbled Michael in agreement.

  Kaya stomped her left foot hard. “Stop! Doing! That! We love Pottymouth and Stoopid, the TV show. It’s you two we can’t stand!”

  She huffed away and started taping up more posters.

  The funny part was, Kaya was on the show too, only she didn’t know it. There was a hilariously bratty character called Kara Kentucky who followed Pottymouth and Stoopid around and tortured them with pranks and name-calling. I guess Kaya didn’t realize that she was the inspiration for Kara, because if she knew, she wouldn’t have loved the show so much.

  Our friend Anna came up behind us.

  “Don’t worry, you guys,” she said. “There are more of us than there are of her.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “There can be only one middle-school princess,” said Anna, gesturing toward Kaya. “But there will always be a million peasants.”

  “So we’re doomed to be pippleskreeking peasants?” said Michael.

  “It’s a metaphor,” said Anna. “Work with me.”

  The class change bell rang. Fred Grabowski and Will Hunt came out of a classroom and headed right for us.

  “There they are!” said Fred.

  “The real deal!” said Will.

  “Huh?” I said again, looking around to see who they were talking about. (For a guy with a super-high IQ, I was having a lot of trouble with my vocabulary words that day.)

  “Pottymouth and Stoopid,” said Fred. “They’re just like us. Kind of dorky, kind of klutzy.”

  “Kind of awesometastic!” said Will.

  Then I noticed he was wearing an Awesometastic T-shirt. Pottymouth and Stoopid said that on TV all the time.

  “Way to stick up for the underdogs, guys!” said Fred, fist-bumping us. “Way to represent!”

  “But,” said Michael, “we didn’t represent anything.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Fred.

  “You guys are like heroes,” said Will.

  Then they wanted to take selfies with us. So did about twenty kids who lined up behind them.

  We’re Going Global!

  That evening, Mom called me into the living room to check out the nightly news. “Quick!” she shouted.

  “What is it?” I asked, zooming over.

  “You won’t believe this,” she said, pointing at the screen.

  “It has quickly become one of the biggest hits in cable-TV history,” said the anchorman, who had bouffy hair that looked like a hat. “Not just here in America, where teenagers mimic everything Pottymouth and Stoopid say or do, but all across the globe. In China, millions tune in every night to catch the antics of Biànpén Ko˘u Bèn. In Germany, they’re Potty Mund und Dumm. And in France, kids love Bouche Fétide et Stupide.

  “With us tonight, the brains behind the number-one hit on TV.”

  The camera angle shifted and there he was.

  Ex-Dad.

  His black hair (what little he had left) was slicked back and gelled into place. He was dressed in a slick black suit and wore an even slicker diamond-encrusted black watch on his wrist. Everything about him was slick and black. He looked like a well-dressed oil spill.

  “It was him,” Mom and I muttered at exactly the same time.

  “This explains everything,” said Mom.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Remind me never to go to the McDonald’s with Ex-Dad again.”

  “So, Tony,” said the anchorman, “how’d you come up with this incredibly fresh and original idea to make two lovable losers the stars of a cartoon?”

  “Hard to say, Biff,” said Ex-Dad, pretending to be modest. “But I’ve been an idea guy my whole life. I used to work in advertising and I have a couple novels being bid on by major New York City publishers. Hollywood’s even calling me about doing a Pottymouth and Stoopid movie deal. For me, Biff, ideas are like lightning bolts. You just have to know how to catch them before they disappear.” He mimed snagging something out of the air. “It also helps if you’re wearing rubber-soled shoes so you don’t get electrocuted.”

  “Was there an inspiration for your two main characters?” asked Biff. “Are Pottymouth and Stoopid based on people you remember from your own days in middle school?”

  “Nope. They’re based on two modern-day middle-schoolers. My son, David, is Stoopid. His best friend, Michael, is Pottymouth.”

  The anchorman’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?” he said. “You’re making fun of your own son on TV?”

  Ex-Dad smirked. “We’re not making fun of him, Biff. We’re making him famous!”

  “Do your son and his best friend receive any kind of financial compensation from you or the Cartoon Factory?”

  “You mean, are they being paid?”

  “That’s right.”

  Ex-Dad blinked. Several times. “Next question, Biff.”

  Mom snapped off the TV.

  “The answer is no, Biff!” she said to the blank scre
en. “They haven’t gotten anything from Pottymouth and Stoopid!”

  That wasn’t completely correct. So far, the show had given us a whole lot of grief.

  Pottymouth and Stoopid Make the News!

  “It’s not true!” Kaya Kennecky screamed in our faces the next day at school. “What that guy said on TV last night was a total lie!”

  “You’re probably right,” I told her. “No way has my ex-dad ever written a whole novel.”

  “Novels have a ton of wooflewacking words in them,” added Michael.

  “That’s not what I meant!” screeched Kaya, stomping her foot. “He’s probably not even your dad. No way are Pottymouth and Stoopid based on you two losers.”

  “David and Michael were merely the prototypes, Kaya,” said our biggest fan, Fred Grabowski, who was sort of following us around everywhere like a puppy dog. “Stand-ins, if you will, for the invisible multitude who make up the vast majority of middle-schoolers. In a way, we are all Pottymouth and Stoopid.”

  Fred can get pretty goofy when he makes his grand pronouncements. He even sticks his finger in the air like he’s the Jebediah Springfield statue on The Simpsons.

  When we got home from school, there were all sorts of TV trucks with satellite dishes mounted on their roofs parked outside our house. There was also an army of camera crews and TV reporters camped out on our lawn.

  “There they are!” shouted one as we started walking to the front door. “The real Pottymouth and Stoopid!”

  “Bouche Fétide et Stupide!” screamed a reporter wearing a beret. “Bouche Fétide et Stupide!”

  Three dozen cameras were aimed at us. Three dozen microphones were thrust in our faces.

  “David and Michael?” said the man with the bouffy hair who had interviewed Ex-Dad the night before. “Biff Bilgewater here. How does it feel to have the whole world laughing at you?”

  “W-well, uh,” I stammered. “I guess everybody needs a good laugh now and then. They say laughter is the best medicine. Except it doesn’t really work on zits.”

  Okay, that was dumb. But I was nervous.

  I’d also just made a big mistake. Since I was the one who’d actually spoken, all the cameras and microphones zoomed in on me.

  “David?” asked a female reporter. “What’s it like being called stupid in dozens of foreign languages?”

  “I dunno…”

  “In Czech, you’re Hloupý. In the Philippines, you’re Tanga. In Mexico, you’re Estúpido.”

  “And here in America,” said Biff Bilgewater, “you’re just plain Stoopid.”

  And that’s when Michael exploded—the same way he did when Mr. Chaffapopoulos was our substitute teacher.

  “Rrrrrggghhh, hicklesnicklepox! David isn’t stupid, you flufferknuckles. He’s my friend, and he’s a genius, so stick your grizzlenoogies in your boomboolies and leave him alone.”

  Mom came racing out of the house with a huge golf umbrella. “Hide behind this, boys.”

  She used that umbrella like a shield to block the TV cameras so they couldn’t get any more video footage of us. Then she turned it into a battering ram to part the crowd. Michael and I followed her up our cracked-concrete path and into the house.

  When the front door closed behind us, we were finally safe.

  Mom lowered the huge umbrella.

  “Uh-oh,” said Michael. “Who are all these flufferknuckles?”

  Yep. The living room was even more crowded than the front lawn.

  Fan Club Fail

  The house was filled with relatives (most of whom I didn’t even know we had), Mom’s friends from work, and a few neighbors (I didn’t know we had those either).

  Anna, Fred, and Will were there too. So was a kid named Katherine Kelly who didn’t even go to our school but who was friends with Fred Grabowski from chess camp.

  “They kept bugging me to bring them,” Anna explained.

  “So this is where you guys come up with your awesometastic ideas,” said Will, looking around.

  “Nice wallpaper,” added Fred.

  “I don’t know you guys, but I love you,” said Katherine.

  “Hicklesnicklepox,” grumbled Michael.

  “Yeah,” said Fred. “I know what you mean. It’s a circus out there.”

  “It sort of looks like one in here too,” I said.

  “What’s everybody doing here?” I finally asked Mom.

  “They all heard the news. That you-know-who and you-know-who-else are based on Michael and you. They’re your friends and supporters.”

  “And there’s a new episode on tonight!” said a guy in a grease-spattered apron who, I guess, was a cook at the restaurant where Mom waitressed. “Eight o’clock.” He pulled out his phone and scrolled down the screen. “It’s called ‘Science Fair or Unfair?’ Sounds hysterical. Do you guys know what happens in it?”

  I had a hunch but I played dumb because, well, that’s what Stoopid is supposed to do, right?

  “We don’t have a clue,” I said.

  “I bet it’s about when you guys did those awesome chili-cheese corn dogs and the Zip Tray!” said Fred.

  “That was so cool!” said Will. “Best science project ever!”

  “It was a disaster,” I reminded them.

  “A megagloppolis mess,” added Michael.

  “Only because Kaya Kennecky and all the popular kids sabotaged you guys,” said Fred.

  “Seriously,” said Anna, who’d been part of that project too.

  “If only the school had implemented your suggested reforms.” Fred sighed. “You three were simply ahead of your time.”

  “Someday,” said Katherine, “maybe the rest of the world will catch up with you.”

  Wow. I had never thought about it like that.

  So we went ahead and enjoyed the party, the pizza, and the soda (after lowering all the window shades so the TV people out on the lawn couldn’t snoop).

  At eight o’clock on the dot, we heard the familiar theme song bubbling out of the TV.

  In the first scene, Pottymouth whipped up a batch of “chilitastic, cheese-o-mastic, corn-dog dookle sticks” and Stoopid tried to jam one up his nose because it smelled so good.

  The crowd in front of the TV were laughing their heads off. Well, everyone except me and Michael.

  I didn’t know what was weirder—our fans, or the fact that we had any.

  Taking Out the Trash

  The next morning, the phone started ringing around six.

  Every Wake Up America–and Have a Good Day Today–type TV show had producers calling to see if Michael and I would do interviews.

  “If you have a camera in your laptop,” said one, “we could put you on the air, live, right now!”

  “Um, I don’t have a laptop.”

  “No problem. We could do it over your cell phone.”

  “My cell phone doesn’t have a camera in it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s an antique.”

  “You’re the star of the TV show that’s number one in half the world and you can’t afford a laptop or an iPhone?”

  “I’m not the…oh, never mind.”

  One thing I could do perfectly with my old-fashioned phone was hang up on people. Which I did. Repeatedly. For like an hour.

  Meanwhile, Mom kept hanging up on people on the landline. Finally, she just yanked the wire out of the wall. I slid the battery out of my cell phone. Amazingly, we didn’t get any more calls from the TV producers after that.

  “Let’s hustle, hon,” she said, checking her watch. “You need to be at school and I need to open the restaurant. Can you haul out the recycling and grab the newspaper?”

  “On it.”

  I headed for the front door lugging a clear plastic bag loaded with soda cans and brown bottles from our Pottymouth & Stoopid viewing party.

  When I stepped out on the front porch, I smiled.

  All the TV people were gone. Thanks to them, our grass wouldn’t need to be mowed for weeks. They
had trampled it flat.

  I went to the curb, tossed my recycling bag into the green bin, and then bent down to pick up the newspaper.

  I froze in mid-bend.

  There was a banner headline screaming across the front page. Beneath it was a pair of photographs. The ones Michael and I had taken last year for the middle-school yearbook. We both had our eyes closed but nobody had cared enough to do a reshoot.

  Good thing we have a paper-recycling bin too.

  I picked up the newspaper and tossed it on top of the stack of crumpled cardboard and junk mail.

  An elderly lady walking her froufrou dog down the sidewalk didn’t like that.

  “What do you think you’re doing? The printed word is precious. Words are not to be casually discarded, young man. You probably don’t even know how to read. All you know how to do is play those video games. Mark my words, video games will make you stupid.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So will everything else around here.”

  School’s Out…Forever

  Mom and I swung by Michael’s house to pick him up like we did most mornings. His front lawn was trampled too.

  For the first time since forever, Michael’s foster parents, Mr. and Mrs. Brawley, were waiting with him at the end of the driveway.

  “There she is!” screamed Mrs. Brawley. “The stupid #$%^* who married that @#$%£ thief Scungili! Your ex-husband is making a %$#@ ton of money off our #%$^#@ beloved foster son.”

  “We want our #$%& cut!” shouted Mr. Brawley. “We demand a %^#$ royalty. Fifteen £¢&% percent!”

  “Don’t be an &#$%, Morris!” shrieked Mrs. Brawley. “You’re leaving money on the table. We want fifty #$¢%& percent!”

  Michael’s face turned purple. “Grrrrrr, would you two please shut your fizzledripping flufferknuckle faces.”

  Then things got worse.

  TV vans pulled up behind us.