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The McVentures of Me, Morgan McFactoid Page 4


  While drying the dinner dishes, I talked to a true hair expert, the former barber, the cutterologist. He would give me his wisdom and honest opinion.

  “Poppy, I’ve been working on a new invention. It’s a secret.”

  “If it’s a secret, then you better not tell me,” he said.

  “It’s an idea that would save you lots of time.”

  “They already invented the dishwasher.”

  We both laughed. Then, I said in low tones, “I’m going to invent something that will save time, money, and energy. Something that men and women everywhere will use, every day. Something that stops body hair from growing.”

  “I’m afraid, Sparky, that hair grows like weeds, for which barbers are most grateful.”

  “But—”

  “Besides, we need hair. The hair on your head, arms, and legs keeps you warm and dry. Eyelashes keep dirt and sweat from getting in your eyes. The thick hair in your nostrils acts like a filter, keeping you healthy.”

  “But—”

  “Bones. Fingernails. Hair. We need them all and they all grow. You can’t stop Mother Nature from doing her job.” He handed me a saucepan to dry.

  “But, if I could save you from shaving, then you could get some extra sleep every morning,” I said.

  Poppy thought about that for a moment, then said, “There’s a wise, old Irish saying . . .” I turned on the McCorder. “No dreamer is too small; no dream too big,” he said. “You’ve always been a dreamer. Don’t let anybody, including me, discourage any of your ideas—your dreams—no matter how far-fetched or harebrained they seem to be.” He returned to washing the dishes and said, “Who knows, you could be a whisker away from a great discovery.”

  Exactly the feedback I was looking for.

  I worked days and nights trying to develop the exact blend of ingredients to prevent beard growth. I used all my scientific research and personal instincts, testing one mixture after another, experimenting on myself. I tried combination after combination, changing the measurements of each element. I documented each test in my McCorder, listing aloud the different components. I tried bicycle grease, tile caulk, candle wax—anything I could think of that would block beard hair from sprouting. I put some of Mom’s bath oil in, as well, so that my formula would smell good.

  I smeared each lotion on my face every night before going to bed, the theory being that the gooey solution would stop hair from poking up through the skin and by the time I awoke the next morning, I would appear cleanly shaven.

  My product would be known as WhiskAway, an anti-shaving cream that took effect while you slept. Apply in seconds at night, and by morning you can skip shaving and stay in bed a little longer. Who wouldn’t want that?

  But I experienced failure after failure. One morning, I woke up with a green rash all over my face. (That was fun to go to school with.) Another morning, I woke up with a blue rash all over my face. (Another humiliating day at school.) And every morning, red stubble still covered my skin, ready to be sheared. I was losing faith. Maybe Robin was right. If Einstein couldn’t figure this one out, how could I? (In 1952, Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel. He turned it down.)

  I was determined, though. One way or the other, I was going to whip the shaving problem. If I stopped facial hair from growing, maybe some country would offer to make me its clean-shaven head of state. I’d accept.

  President Morgan McCracken. I liked the sound of that.

  But as the days went on, I ran out of ideas. Nothing was working. I had tried every compound and every combination I could think of. I was stumped. I didn’t know what else to do, other than give in . . . give up . . . admit defeat.

  But Poppy always says, “A winner is someone who gets up one more time than he is knocked down.”

  I promised myself I’d get up one more time. After all, the presidency was at stake.

  A PINCH OF THIS, A DASH OF THAT

  On a cold Monday night, dark clouds moved in. I could hear the wind chimes clanging and light rain pelting the garage roof. I had brought Taxi inside the McFactory, out of the approaching storm. I sat on my lab stool in front of a mirror, holding a large magnifying glass, studying my facial hair, and hoping it was the last time I’d ever see it. (Hair on your face and head grows faster than hair on the rest of your body.)

  Having exhausted every idea and seeing every prior experiment fail, on that night I decided to give WhiskAway one last chance, one final test. If it proved successful, I would awake with a smooth face and on the brink of becoming a very important twenty-first century inventor. If I were unsuccessful, I would continue to be known as the freckled-face kid with the red whiskers, doomed to suffer more teasing and taunting.

  “Taxi,” I said to my tortoise, “tonight’s the night we’re going to McCracken the problem.”

  Taxi took a baby step toward me, which I interpreted as a sign of support.

  “There is a time in every inventor’s life when a miracle must happen. My time is now!”

  “Miracle!” Echo screeched. “Now!”

  There was a flash of lightning, followed by the sound of rolling thunder. The lamps in the lab flickered.

  “Squwaaack!” Echo squealed and flapped her wings.

  “Don’t be scared, Echo. It’s just a storm. You’re safe in here.”

  I studied the chalk notes on my blackboard, reviewing the latest and last version of my secret formula. I lined up all the containers of all my ingredients; each was a common household item. I’ll be honest: at this point I didn’t really know what I was doing or what to expect. I confess—this last shot would be more about guesswork and luck than science and skill.

  As I was about to speak into the McCorder to name each substance and describe each portion, I realized the batteries were dead. I plugged the McCorder in, but I wasn’t about to wait for it to recharge.

  “Remind me, Echo, to always keep my batteries charged,” I said.

  “Always keep my batteries charged,” Echo said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Echo stuck her little head out of one of the holes in the bottom of her cage. She liked watching me work on the lab table below her.

  I picked up my first item, turned to my gallery of pets and said, “Okay, guys. This is it. We start with a smidgen of rubber cement.”

  As I mentioned each element, one by one, I dropped them into a steel blender on my lab table:

  a dash of mud (A “dash” is equal to an eighth of a teaspoon.)

  a dab of comb honey (Honeybees beat their wings 11,400 times per minute. The beating of their wings is what makes the buzzing noise.)

  a pinch of salt (Put a few grains of rice in your salt shaker for easier pouring.)

  a broccoli stem (I hate broccoli.)

  a squirt of maple syrup (I love syrup.)

  a quarter-tube of toothpaste (How do they get toothpaste in the tube? Well, I’m glad you asked. They shoot the tube with paste from the bottom, and then seal the end. The cap is already in place when the tube is filled.)

  a half-cup of buttermilk (Which has no butter in it. Did you know that?)

  a squeeze of kumquat (They are like reverse oranges: the peel is sweet, and the pulp inside is sour.)

  three egg yolks (The average hen lays over 250 eggs a year!)

  four kidney beans (Kidney beans are named that because they are shaped like a human kidney.)

  a two-dollar bill (Hey, why not?)

  an aspirin (Adding aspirin to water in a vase will make cut flowers last longer.)

  three garlic cloves (The smell of garlic can be removed by running your hands under cold water while rubbing a stainless steel object.)

  a tablespoon of olive oil (It takes about forty-four olives to press one tablespoon of olive oil.)

  a drizzle of chocolate sauce (I couldn’t help eating some.)

  a clump of grass (I didn’t eat any. But Taxi did.)

  three marshmallows (Americans buy
90 million pounds of marshmallows each year, about the same weight as 1,286 gray whales.)

  a teaspoon of mouthwash (You can use mouthwash to clean and disinfect germs in your toilet bowl. Better yet, have your sister do it!)

  a small can of tuna (Now you know why the mouthwash.)

  a scoop of bacon bits (A 250-pound pig yields twenty-three pounds of bacon.)

  two peanuts (Peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite. Gee, what if I blew up my lab?)

  a thimble full of Tabasco sauce (I put Tabasco sauce on everything. So why not on my face?)

  a cap full of baby powder (I love the smell. It reminds me of my youth.)

  a slice of candied apple (I ate the rest.)

  one walnut (Walnuts are the oldest known tree food—they date back to 10,000 BC!)

  a half-pack of Milk Duds (I ate the other half. Do you see a sugar theme developing here?)

  a banana peel (You can use the inside of a banana peel to clean and polish leather shoes.)

  a stick of cinnamon (Cinnamon was used in ancient Egypt for the process of mummification and as an ingredient of perfumes.)

  “And that’s it,” I said.

  “And that’s it,” Echo said.

  With all my ingredients inside Mom’s old blender, I turned it to the “puree” setting for thirty-three seconds—not thirty-two, not thirty-four, but exactly thirty-three seconds—mixing the solution all together. (Thirty-three, because the longest professional baseball game in history went thirty-three innings.)

  Now I was ready to try my experiment. With two fingers I scooped some of my concoction out of the blender. It smelled like double mint gum. The pudding-like substance was warm, sticky, and deep purple. (No word in the English language rhymes with “purple” or “silver.” Or “month,” for that matter.) There, in my hand, was my final attempt for WhiskAway.

  I slathered and sealed my face with the purple gunk, then turned to my pets and announced, “Shaving robs us of time—time that we can never get back. Unwanted facial hair is a time killer. So it’s time for unwanted facial hair to be destroyed! Down with beards!”

  “Aye, aye, Matey!” Echo said. That was her favorite expression. I think she wanted to be a pirate’s parrot.

  Again, lightning lit up the lab. Again, a clap of thunder rattled the windows, and Echo’s nerves.

  “Aye, aye, aye, aye, AYE!” Echo screamed. “Scared!”

  “Calm down, Echo. Don’t poop your feathers. It’s just thunder,” I said.

  For safekeeping, I placed my laptop computer inside the waterproof backpack I had invented and prepared to leave the McFactory. Even though Taxi had his protective shell (his waterproof backpack!), I decided to let him stay inside the attic that night. I didn’t want him to be out in the rain. He would be warm and dry in the lab. And I was sure my petrified parrot could use his company.

  I climbed down the attic steps, locked the trapdoor behind me, and sprinted through the driving rain across the backyard to the house, into my cozy underground bedroom. (“Underground” is the only word that begins and ends with “und.”)

  Wind whistled through the trees as the rainstorm pounded the roof. (Every minute, 907 tons of precipitation falls on earth.) I changed into my pajamas and crawled into bed, eager to feel my face the next morning. I thought the teeth-rattling bursts of thunder would keep me up all night, but I soon fell into a deep sleep.

  I dreamt of hair that night. (“Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt.”) I dreamt that I never cut my red locks or shaved my red beard. I looked like a Neanderthal in striped boxers. There were large, purple insects living in my hair . . . I tripped over my beard and my head became too heavy with facial hair to hold itself upright . . . I was forced to walk stooped over. I dragged my knuckles along the ground . . . I grunted like an ape . . . the National Guard captured me with a net. They put me on display in the zoo . . . small children pointed and laughed at me . . . old lady Dewberry threw snakes, mice, and rats at me . . . Buckholtz spit Tabasco sauce on me. I caught mononucleosis . . . Bozo the Clown called me “Hairy” . . . the newspaper called me a freak . . . and my own parrot called me a dummy.

  The nightmare ended when a pretty princess named Robin opened my wooden cage and helped me escape inside a giant marshmallow . . . which floated to Antarctica. Lady Robin waited every night in her bedroom . . . looking out her upstairs window . . . hoping that someday the Duke of Morgan would return . . . as president . . . and kiss her.

  A FLOOD, A FLOP, AND A FIRST-CLASS FIASCO

  An earsplitting crack of thunder startled me awake as the rare Southern California thunderstorm raged outside my basement window. I sat straight up in bed. My alarm clock read 1:00 a.m. I quickly grabbed my flashlight and a hand mirror next to my bed and examined my face.

  The purple chemical mask was plastered firmly in place with no signs of any beard growth. I knew it was still early, but I was feeling confident that a cosmetic first was in the making and that, in just a few more hours, I would awake to a whiskerless face. Very soon, fame and fortune would be mine!

  I was so excited I couldn’t fall back to sleep, so I decided to distract myself by seeing how the neighborhood was holding up in the monster storm. I lowered my periscope. I looked in the eyeshade and out at our cul-de-sac. A torrential rain continued to pour, and a wild wind whipped the telephone wires. I noticed that the streetlights flickered on and off, as did all the houselights on the block. I deduced that the storm was repeatedly knocking out electricity in our area. I saw a candle flame shimmering through the drapes in Robin’s room.

  “I wonder if she’s awake,” I said to myself. “I wonder if she’s afraid of the storm. I wonder if she’s thinking of our conversation. Or if she ever thinks of me.”

  I turned the periscope lens on the roof around 180 degrees to look through the large window of my lab above the garage. I could see Echo’s cage swaying in the wind. Taxi was sleeping peacefully on the floor. He had crawled under my lab stool, which was under Pt (platinum, element #78) and on top of Sweden. (Swedes have the longest life expectancy of all Europeans.)

  I reeled the periscope back to the ceiling. The storm was growing even stronger and the wind howling even louder. In order to safeguard our belongings in the garage, I was going to get out of my warm and cozy bed, run outside, and close the garage door. But I lay there too long thinking about it and fell back to sleep.

  I awoke abruptly the next morning. I could see through my basement window that it was a bright, sunny California day again without a cloud in the sky. I rubbed my eyes and excitedly fumbled around for the hand mirror.

  The time had come. This was the critical morning-after stubble check. In the very next instant, I would either be a celebrity inventor or a kid in need of a shave.

  I took a deep breath, opened my eyes, hoped for a miracle, and looked at my reflection in the mirror. The result? I was a kid in need of a shave.

  To my great disappointment, red stubble had grown overnight on my purple face and was waiting patiently to be cut.

  WhiskAway was a failure. A flop. A first-class fiasco.

  So much for changing my life with one fantastic formula, one incredible discovery. So much for being rich and famous. So much for becoming president. I buried my head in the pillows and just rested there until the motion detector alarm went off, indicating someone had approached my door, breaching the perimeter. I checked the small TV monitor on my bedside table and saw Dad staring into the surveillance camera, which I had embedded on the outside of my door. I said, “Admit,” and the voice-activated Mastermind 5000 automatically unlocked and swung open my bedroom door.

  “Get dressed. We have some work to do,” Dad said, stepping into my room.

  “What kind of work?”

  “Cleaning up. Last night’s storm made a real mess.” He moved closer. “What’s that on your face?”

  “Uh, uh, pimple cream. Purple pimple paste.”

  “Oh. Anyway, I’ve been straightening up
the garage. Seems someone left the door open. Haven’t had a chance to check out your lab, but—”

  I immediately forgot about my beard-growth defeat as all thoughts went to my pets. Still in my pajamas, I slipped on my flip-flops, scooted passed my father, and ran up the basement stairs, out of the house, and through the puddles in the backyard. Mud splattered all over me.

  On the ground in the backyard, I saw evidence of the storm’s damage: shingles from the roof, bricks from the chimney, and downed branches from our elm tree. The concrete birdbath had toppled over and crushed Taxi’s cage. I was grateful that I had left him safe inside the lab. That is, I hoped he was safe.

  I raced into the garage. All the stuff inside was soaked and strewn about. On my way to the attic door, I had to step over old paint cans, trophies, skis, suitcases, bikes, tennis racquets, rakes, canned goods, Dad’s fishing poles, Mom’s bookkeeping files, Chloe’s teddy bear collection, boxes of worn clothing, photo albums, and gardening equipment. Everything was a mess. I would have to “Morganize” it all later.

  “I’m coming, guys!” I yelled to the animals. Then, I saw something that made my eyes pop. There was water gushing out the sides of the trapdoor onto the garage floor. I opened the combination lock to the door and pulled on the rope handle. The door was jammed!

  I snatched our extension ladder, lugged it to the side of the garage, and leaned it against the wall, under the side window. I scrambled up. The window glass was completely shattered. Probably by a branch or some flying object. Being careful not to cut myself on shards of glass still clinging to the window frame, I stepped off the ladder into the attic. My mouth fell open as I took in the sight.

  The McFactory was in ruins. All my posters were ripped to shreds. Light bulbs had blown out. Everything that had been on shelves had come down. Everything that had been stored in cabinets had come out. My furniture was tossed over, and on my lab table, beakers had been knocked over and broken. My reference books were floating among other debris in four inches of water. My blackboard was washed clean of all my computations. Fortunately, my waterproof backpack had protected my laptop from any water damage. More fortunately, the cages of Nixon the snake, Mickey the mouse, and Madoff the rat were high enough off the floor so that none of them had drowned.