Paul, Luke, and Evan Laningham woke early one morning. The familiar theme music of their 3 Dudes Adventures was already playing, so they new this would be an action packed day. Quickly they dressed, loaded their backpacks with peanut butter sandwiches and fruit leathers, strapped on their light sabers and Supersoaker guns, and quietly made their way out to the driveway. Their little Peg Pergo Gaucho Jeep waited pathetically in the driveway. Their Mom had picked it up on the side of the road, a discarded, worn electric toy car that had weathered one too many storms in someone else’s yard. It looked worthless to the untrained eye, but the 3 Dudes knew it would transform into a magic flying machine as soon as they put a Gummy Worm into the key hole and started it up.

Luke jumped in the driver seat, Paul riding shotgun, and Evan in the back to cover any intruders form the rear. For where they were going, they would need a driver with ice in his veins and two sharpshooters with eagle eyes. The were headed to … PLANET TEETH!

Luke fired up the Gaucho and jammed it into Fly 1. The Gaucho leapt off the ground and rocketed up above their house, the blast sending Tux the cat somersaulting across the lawn and into one of the bubbling fountains. Evan screamed his usual “YEEEEHAAAAWWWWW!” as they picked up speed, rocketing up through the clouds and barely missing some Monarch butterflies migrating to Mexico for the Winter. One did collide with the Gaucho and took up a seat neat to Evan. He said to the boys, “Dudes, my name is Larry. If you don’t mind I’ll tag along, since I like peanut butter sandwiches and I smelled them in your backpacks.” The boys agreed and gave Larry a toothpick to use as a sword in case they fell into Harm’s Way, a canyon on Planet of the Teeth where bad things always seemed to happen.

About halfway there, Paul asked to drive, Luke said “no,” and a scuffle ensued, sending the Gaucho into a momentary tailspin while the boys worked out their issues. Finally they calmed down with Paul in the driver’s seat and half a peanut butter sandwich up his nose. Luke was now riding shotgun, but wearing one of Paul’s shoes for a hat and his shirt was on backward and inside out. They apologized to each other, did a quick head butt, and everything was cool.

Suddenly, a bright orange planet zoomed into view, and they realized that in their distracted state they had not realized how close they were to their destination. Paul jammed the breaks and 60 seconds later, and a ball of flames, they landed in Harm’s Way, hair slightly singed but none the worse for it. The Dudes quickly jumped out of the Gaucho and assumed defensive postures with weapons at the ready. Larry stayed behind, working on a peanut butter and Nutella quarter-sandwich. The Dudes had not gone more than 10 paces from their interstellar jeep transport when they heard the familiar and eery sound of “CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP!”

It was their nemisis, Moley, king of the Teeth, freshly flossed and shoeless, but as frightening as ever.

(to be continued…)

Don’t you love the precision and analytical quality of that kind of reasoning? Not long ago I asked him about what it felt like to be standing by and looking into an empty Texas DKR Memorial Stadium where the Texas Longhorns football team plays.  Speaking with an economy of words I never seem to achieve, he remarked, “I’ve never laid foot in a place like this. I’m gonna lay foot.”

One of daughters once asked, when riding in the car while we passed a no parking sign, “Why does it say no ‘P’s?” Clearly, she thought the letter was banned from use in the space around the sign. Another of our sons had a knack in his early years for asking very pointed questions and sometimes using terms uncommon for a 5-year-old. When a friend arrived ahead of his wife for dinner one night, our youngster inquired, “Hi Jeff. Where’s your woman?” And later, when encountering another single friend who was accompanied by a different woman than we had seen him with a few days before, our young Dan Rather inquired, “Is this your wife?”  “No,” replied our friend. “Well, is (name withheld) your wife?” “No,” came the friend again, shifting uncomfortably. Our son finished the grilling session with, “I don’t understand?”

Our friend laid foot right outta there.

In the last few days I’ve heard some doozies. A roofing tile sales guy told me the price of asphalt shingles has gone through the roof “because the primary ingredient, plutonium, is so scarse!” Plutonium? I thought the tiles were made out of paper, oil and ceramic gravel? The primary ingredient of asphalt roofing tiles is “a rare transuranic radioactive chemical element with the chemical symbol Pu and atomic number 94?” Thank you Wikipedia.  I know that it’s used for nuclear weapons and reactors. I had no idea it was all over my roof. I’m not replacing the roof. I’m moving.

Then another traveling salesman shows up yesterday, and as he spins a personal tale more fantastic by the second, he gets to the part where, being a UT football alum, he receives 500 free tickets per season. 500! Even at the cheap seat price of 60$ that comes out to 30 grand in free tickets annually. So why is he selling frozen chicken in my neighborhood? When I asked him what he does with all 500 he said, “I give many away. No way I have time to go, myself, 500 times!” HOLY COW! Do you mean the Longhorns are now playing a 500 game schedule? Quite frankly, I think Mack Brown and company are working cheap.

Gotta run. Here’s comes a Kirby vacuum salesperson wearing a “Gig ‘em Aggies!” t-shirt underneath a hazmat suit. I think I know where this is going.

As one of the remaining, aspiring Mrs Jake’s, Ali, struggled with a decision to leave the show and save her dream job or stay and lose it with no guarantee of winning Jake, the Bachelor chose to whine and cry on her shoulder and think only of himself and his continuing harem pleasures. What should he have said?

Ali, you’re a wonderful woman and your happiness is so important to me. As much as I would like for you to stay, I think you need to go and keep that job which means so much to you. If it is right for us to be together, we will some day. We have to trust. I cannot just think of myself in this. I have to think of you. After all, selflessness is the bedrock of a successful, long-term relationship.

Have I always lived up to that standard? No. But I know it is right. And when you have a stage as large as a network TV show, you’ve got to be thinking about the message you’re sending out there. Jake dropped the ball so hard tonight it cracked the North American tectonic plate. All kinds of self-centered young men must have felt very empowered by Jake’s whining, complete with sappy music underscore. Ali kept apologizing. He never did.

Shameful. And he claims Texas as his home.  Hopefully, Texas will forgive him. Even if she does, there’ll be an emotional butt-whuppin’ waitin’ for him back home someday. It’s unavoidable.

NOTE: If you live in the Austin area and have hot water issues, these guys installed mine and they were great. They have the tankless too.

But the thing that really scares me is young boys without a bath for 48-plus hours. This is not something that modern suburban life prepares you for. Strange odors multiply rapidly when soap with the stripping power of paint thinner is not applied to a young boy’s body ever 24 hours. And since most pre-10-year-olds seem determined to wear the same clothes at least three days in a row, some clothes our house will soon start walking around on their own without the respite of shower time and a clean body every 86,400 clicks of the second hand. What will I be able to say to the boys tonight when they scream, “Dad, there’s a monster in the corner!” with the knowledge that it is not their imagination. We will both be screaming.

While on the subject of the civilization-sustaining miracle of hot water, what is going on in that shower with the teen girls, and boys, who take 30-minute vacations in there? Maybe the term sabbatical, defined by Wikipedia as “a rest from work, or a hiatus, often lasting from two months to a year,” is derived from the original Greek Sabbathical.  Strangely, it is the young atmosphere-altering boys who actually need 30-minute showers with multiple soap and rinse cycles but who would just as soon step in, shoot water around the shower stall for a few minutes, do some hieroglyphics on the glass, and then get out, still wet and dirty, and put their pajamas on inside-out and backwards.

H E L P !