“Come on, let’s get some sliders,” Dad says. “That line is long but manageable.”
We each use our phones while we wait. (Carly still hasn’t texted.) When it’s our turn, Dad orders turkey patties with cheese and I get the bacon and mushroom sliders. The baby burgers don’t take too long to come out; even so, by the time we find Mom, she’s already finished eating.
There are lots of people here from the neighborhood and several of Mom’s patients. It’s nice to see them, but I’m on the hunt for inspiration and end up walking ahead of my parents.
Moon bounce? Too young.
Face painting? Too messy—AND too young.
Adopt-a-dog? Already have one.
When I double back to see what my parents are up to, I find Mom at a booth learning how to make soap with herbs and olive oil. She ends up buying several kits to make her own lemon and lavender soap, which is probably good since I used up all her bath stuff trying to film Frank.
Dad just shakes his head. “She’s never going to use those—you know that, right?”
I laugh, knowing how enthusiastic Mom gets about arts and crafts projects, forgetting she doesn’t have a lot of extra time to do them in.
Dad tries on a few T-shirts and buys one with a minnow swimming against the tide. I don’t really get it, but he seems happy so I am too.
“You want to get something?” he asks. “There’s a vintage Pac-Man there.”
Usually I’d take advantage of some cool free stuff but my attention is fixed on a guy in the next booth putting handfuls of earthworms into a bucket. He sees me looking at him and motions me over.
“Did you know you can start a compost heap with worms in your backyard?” he asks. “They’ll eat your food scraps—even coffee grounds! The garbage passes through their bodies, making a rich fertilizer you can use in your garden.”
Mom peers over her reading glasses into the bucket. “I wonder if Carly’s mom knows about this.”
Carly’s mom’s a landscaper and their garden is full of the biggest birds of paradise I’ve ever seen. Maybe Carly’s mom uses GIANT pooping worms.
Mom asks the guy more questions until Dad drags her away. “Making your own soap AND composting?” he asks. “Are we quitting our jobs now?”
Mom ignores him, moving on to the leather sandals in the next booth.
Dad LOVES sampling food—it takes forever to get him out of Costco, where he tries bite-sized pieces of everything from cheese to salmon. Today is no different. Spoonfuls of blueberry honey, multigrain bread on a toothpick, and sausage in a little paper cup—Dad’s not fussy when it comes to trying new foods.
“Try this hot sauce,” he tells me. “It’s got ten different chilies—it’ll blow a hole in the back of your skull.”
Mom shakes her head and walks away; she’s not a fan of spicy foods like Dad and me who’ll put hot sauce on just about anything.
Dad hands me a piece of bread doused with a sauce called Taste Bud Explosion 10.
“It makes our Taste Bud Explosion 9 seem like baby formula,” the vendor tells us.
The sauce has barely hit my mouth when I start sweating. The vendor doesn’t blink, just hands me a glass of water. If I were a cartoon, there’d be steam coming out of my ears with fire engine sound effects. I still can’t talk but give my dad a big thumbs-up.
He takes out his wallet and reaches for two bottles of the hot sauce. “It’ll kick our chicken chili to a whole new level.”
But I’m not thinking about chicken or chili or even nachos. I just figured out the premise of my new YouTube show!
YET ANOTHER IDEA
My parents have been adamant about me not using Frank in my YouTube videos, but considering the class reaction to the Tank, I don’t have a choice but to go back to using my capuchin. I’m facing some fierce competition—not just from the other kids in Mr. Ennis’s class, but from the billions of people already on YouTube. Anybody with a monkey at his or her disposal would use it, right?
Even if I’m going to disobey my parents, I know better than to give hot sauce to a monkey. Of course that doesn’t stop me from putting a tiny drop of the new hot sauce on my finger and letting Frank lick it off when we get home. He seems to like it—even tries to grab the bottle out of my hand—but if I’m going to shoot lots of videos, I’ll need a substitute for Taste Bud Explosion 10.
Gratefully, Mom’s meeting a friend and Dad’s catching up on work so the chances of them cutting into my fun are slim. I rummage through the back of the fridge where all the half-eaten jars of curry and pickles are until I find a bottle of hot sauce from the last street fair or farmers’ market Dad went to. I empty the contents into the sink, rinse the bottle, and refill it with ketchup, a harmless condiment that will look exactly like hot sauce in the video.
Frank must know something’s up because he’s already clambering to get out of my arms. As soon as I douse one of his monkey biscuits in ketchup, Frank grabs it out of my hand and gobbles it down. I squirt some ketchup on the outside of the bottle to keep him interested.
Capuchins are pretty good at foraging, so my idea is to hide the bottle of hot sauce and have Frank root around the house to find it. In post-production, I’ll speed up the footage, add cartoon sound effects, as well as a theme song to make the video even funnier. So question number one: Where should I
