A Tale of Two Tails (8 page)

I stared at Mason for a long time.

“Mason, my friend,” I said, throwing my arm around his shoulder. “You're not going to believe this. I was just thinking about you!”

We were over in the kindergarten area of the playground, where there's a sandbox and a jungle gym and a red plastic slide. Mason jumped into the sand, turned around so I couldn't see his face, and then suddenly spun around.

“Gggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,” he said, lunging across the sand and putting his face right up next to mine.

“What are you doing, Mason?”

“I'm a T. rex,” he said. “I'm growling. Gggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”

He put his hands in front of his chest so they looked like little T. rex claws and pounced on me. I lost my balance and fell over into the sand. He pounced on me again, and growled right into my ear. My eardrum started to bang itself silly, like it was going to pop out of my ear and march in a parade.

“Ease up, little guy,” I said.

“I'm not a little guy. I'm a T. rex,” Mason reminded me.

“Right, T. rex. Back off, will you?”

“T. rexes don't back off. They attack. And they never give up. Ggggrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

“Cool, Mason. That's the attitude I'm looking for. The never give up part, that is. Not the growling part.”

“T. rex is hungry,” Mason said. Just then, another kindergarten girl with bright red ribbons in her pigtails walked by. Mason jumped out at her, with his little claw hands pointed in her direction, and let loose another monster growl. She screamed.

“Stop doing that,” she shouted as she ran off. “I'm telling Mrs. McMurray on you!”

Mason laughed, pretty satisfied with his little self.

“Come with me, buddy,” I said, leading him by the hand over to an empty area of the sandbox.

I picked up one of the blue plastic shovels and used it to draw a square in the sand.

“Stand in there,” I said to him.

“Why?” Mason wanted to know.

“Because it's T. rex Land,” I said.

“Hank, it's just a stupid square.”

“That's if you have no imagination. But my imagination says that whenever you stand in that square, you will turn into a T. rex and you can roar from now until the next Ice Age.”

“Really?” Mason said. I could see his little eyes light up.

“Yeah, and when you're with your friends, you don't have to scare them. You can save all your scary stuff for Dinosaur Land.”

That made Mason really happy. He stood in that square and let out five or six powerful roars.

“Okay, I'm done for now,” he said. “Let's play something else.”

“That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about, Mason. I have a great game. It's called Let's Teach Cheerio a Trick
.
”

“How can you teach a piece of cereal a trick?” he asked. “Oh, I know. You mean like floating on its back in milk.”

“Wrong Cheerio, Mase. I'm talking about my dog. Remember him?”

“Oh yeah. The little wiener dog. He's short and funny.”

“Just like you.”

“I'm not short. I'm five.”

“Good point,” I said. “So are you in?”

“Okay, I'll play,” Mason agreed. “Can we start now?”

“You have to go back to class now. We can start later.”

“I don't want to go back to class,” Mason sulked, “because it's alphabet time and I hate the alphabet. I can't keep all those letters in order in my brain.”

“I know exactly how you feel,” I said. “But here's the deal. We can't get going until after school. Then we'll take Cheerio to the park and start teaching him.”

“Can my mom come? Because it's Tuesday and that's our park day.”

“Sure, she can come. See how perfect this is working out, Mase? Finally, Team Cheerio is moving full steam ahead.”

I know what you're thinking. Recruiting one five-year-old who thinks he's a T. rex is not exactly full steam ahead. But I was determined to make the best of this. Like my mom always says, if life gives you a lemon, make lemonade. Just be sure to leave out the white sugar because it's very bad for your dental health.

Just at the moment when I was finally starting to feel better about Team Cheerio and my hopes for the mascot contest, who walked by but Nick the Tick. I could hear his big lumbering feet pounding the playground as he stomped up to us. He was the real T. rex.

“You're pathetic, Zipperbutt,” he said. “Hanging out with a kindergartner.”

“I'm on Team Cheerio,” Mason said to him, putting his hands on his hips.

McKelty laughed, spitting out a few chocolate crumbs that were left over in his teeth from lunch.

“What is he?” McKelty said to me. “The pet you're entering?”

“Very classy, McKelty,” I said. “Picking on little kids takes a lot of guts. Why don't you wander off and steal somebody's lunch.”

“Hey, I'm glad I thought of that,” the big oaf said. “I'm still really hungry.”

With that, he left to go rummage through the trash can and find someone's leftover dessert.

“I don't like him,” Mason said.

“Don't worry about it, buddy. We're going to show him. Just wait until Team Cheerio struts its stuff. Guys like him are going to wish they were us.”

Boy, oh boy. I wished I believed that.

Holy mackerel! By the time we got to Riverside Park, there was hardly any room left on the grass area to train Cheerio on.

In one section, over by the chain-link fence that separates the basketball courts from the rest of the park, Nick McKelty was working with his annoying little Chihuahua, Fang. He was actually trying to teach his dog how to ride his bicycle. Fang's legs were about as long as a human thumb, and if you know anything about thumbs, you know that they can't reach the pedals on a two-wheeler. I guess old McKelty hadn't figured that out yet.

In another section, Ryan Shimozato and his crew were working with his dog, a Great Dane who looked like a small horse. Correction, make that a big horse. They were trying to teach him to roll over, but he seemed to prefer sniffing under the park benches for old chewing gum. It took all four guys on Ryan's team pulling on his leash to get that horse-dog away from the bench slats.

And taking up all the concrete space in the middle of the park area was none other than my little sister Emily and her posse, which consisted of Robert, and my two supposed-to-be best friends, Frankie and Ashley. Or as I like to call them, traitors.

They had Katherine on a homemade leash, which I very soon recognized as the belt I wore to my Aunt Maxine's birthday party. They were gathered around Katherine, trying to coax her to walk backward while balancing a grape on her snout. I don't mean to sound bitter, but there it was. The grape actually
was
on the tip of her snout.

How did they teach her to do that? Katherine's a reptile, for goodness sake. With a brain the size of two mashed peas.

Mason, his mom, and I walked past the concrete area to look for a place suitable for Cheerio's lesson. I was planning to ignore Team Katherine so I could look like I didn't care for one minute that the sack of scales was doing the most amazing trick ever. But when Cheerio saw Emily, he bolted from my hands, charged up, and started licking her knees, which is the only thing he could reach. Mason ran after Cheerio, but stopped suddenly when he came face-to-face with a hissing Katherine.

“You are ugly,” he said, right to Katherine's face. Then he growled his biggest T. rex roar right at her.

Katherine, who didn't know that kindergarteners like to pretend to be dinosaurs, wasn't phased by his growling. She opened her iguana mouth, showed him every one of her 188 teeth, and hissed up a storm. Mason screamed, flew into a backward somersault, raced for his mom, and grabbed her hand.

“Don't be scared, Mase,” I told him. “Katherine's all hiss and no bite.”

“I'm not scared,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure my mom was still here.”

“Hank,” Emily said. “Team Katherine is really working hard here. So could you just stay over there in your own work area?”

“No problem,” I said, “because Team Cheerio isn't interested in showing you what's in our bag of tricks.”

“Zip, it's not like we don't know what Team Cheerio is trying to accomplish,” Frankie said. “We were just on it yesterday.”

“Oh, that's where I know you from,” I said.

“Hank, don't be that way,” Ashley pleaded. “This is about the animals, not us.”

“Fine,” I answered. “You play with your animal, if you can call it that, and I'll play with mine. Come on, Mase. You can let your mom go now.”

We set up our training area in a grassy spot by the path along the river. Mason's mom took a seat on a nearby bench and started to knit a green and yellow baby hat.

“Okay, Mason. I'll give Cheerio the command and you stand over there with a treat in your hand. Every time he follows the command, you give him a piece of soylami from the baggy.”

“Can I have some, too, if I do something good?”

“Sure, Mase. Knock yourself out.”

He opened the baggy and took a sniff.

“That's okay,” he said under his breath. “I'll wait for dinner.”

I took Cheerio off his leash. “Okay, Cheerio. Time to focus. You can do this, I know you can. Now, sit up on your hind legs.”

I raised my hand in the air, so he could follow it with his eyes.

“Up, boy. Come on. Up.”

I swear to you, he was just about to do it. I could see it in his eyes. They had a real sitting-up kind of look. But before he could actually do it, a bicycle came whizzing along the path next to us. McKelty was holding the seat, thumping along next to it, while his Chihuahua was using all four paws to hold on to the seat for dear life. The look on that little dog's face said, “Please, someone! Anyone! Get me off this thing, and quick!”

All of a sudden, Fang let out a squeal, and I really think I heard him say, “Ayyyyyy, caramba!”

Cheerio heard it, too, because in a flash, he was off and running, chasing McKelty's bike and nipping at the rubber back wheel.

“Hey, get your wiener dog out of here,” McKelty hollered. “Get control of him.”

Easier said than done. Cheerio kept nipping at the wheel, then at McKelty's pant leg. McKelty, who is not exactly coordinated to begin with, tripped over his own big feet, and went sprawling onto the path. The bike went down on top of him, and Fang went flying. Luckily, he made a soft landing on McKelty's face. He was safe except for the bad breath that was gushing out of McKelty's mouth. I bet that blast of toxic breath made the poor little guy wish he was back on the bicycle, even though he had been scared out of his wits.

“Everyone okay here?” a voice said.

It was Officer Quinn, doing his rounds along the park path. He bent over and lifted Fang off McKelty's face, then helped McKelty up.

“No, I am definitely not okay,” McKelty whined. “This little wiener dog attacked my bicycle wheel. Isn't there a law against that?”

“Hank, you know better than this,” Officer Quinn said to me. “Your dog is supposed to be on a leash.”

“What about his?” I said. “His was riding a bicycle.”

“No kidding,” Officer Quinn said. “That's a pretty good trick.”

“My dog is a real champion,” McKelty bragged. “His father was the official Chihuahua to the emperor of Mexico.”

There it was again, in full action—the McKelty Factor.