By Car Johnson
It took a whole day for Roger to get back to me. He showed me a letter from the agent and I grabbed it and read as quickly as I could.
Dear Mr. Johnson,
Thank you for your lyrics and advice on how to use them to “take me to the next level,” but I have to decline and ask that you refrain from contacting me again.
Sincerely,
Mike O’Mally, agent to the stars.
Yippee! He thanked me! It didn’t matter that he declined my advice. All I needed was the thanks. Almost all of Candy’s scavenger hunt tasks were completed and I was that much closer to winning her heart in marriage. Now it was time for the hardest task of all, to find a teenager without a cellphone. At first I thought of starting up a program to trade cellphones for concert tickets, but I was afraid that Candy would see it as cheating. So, I got my great uncle Douglas to fly me back home in his Curtiss P-40 Warhawk and scouted the streets for a teenager who would fit Candy’s criteria.
It was Saturday, so a lot of teenagers were out and about, all chatting away with phones glued to their ears or texting people two feet away from them. The only way I could think to find a cellphoneless teen in such a short amount of time was to go to my technology hating second Amelia, who lived four hours away on the top of a mountain, with nothing but her family and tools to work their land. They were a hard working, honest family, and best of all, were guaranteed not to have any cellphones within a ten mile radius of their house.
So, I took the four hour drive up to their house, listening to a self-published book on tape my mother produced about aliens coming to Earth to win a swing dance competition, so they could make their parents proud and scope out cattle to mutilate. It took the whole four hours to listen to one chapter, but it was worth it. Mother always had a way with stories. When I was a kid, she’d tell me about the adventure of Apathy Man, the only superhero in the world to retire after one day on the job, and hear warming tales of Spotty, the super-intelligent dog who took over the world.
Well, time was of the essence, so I got out of my car and started up the trail leading to Amelia’s house. It wound through the windiest forest I’d ever been in, twisting and turning like one of Mother’s mysteries about Mikey the armchair sleuth. When I was a kid, I loved these woods and pretended I was an insurance salesman tracking down the lead of lifetime. But now, all I could think about was getting to the top of the hill and completing task as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, quickly wasn’t much of an option. With all the twist and turns and without one of my second cousin Amelia’s handwritten maps, I was lost. No matter which way I turned, I just found another curve and more trees, and no helpful little woodland creatures willing to show me the way. I even asked a squirrel if he could lead me to Amelia’s house, but he ignored me, no matter how many acorns I offered him. So, I kept walking, hoping to find something familiar.
Then I saw it. One of the trees had all the lyrics to the theme song to an old local children’s show called Manny and the Manic Monkeys. I remembered carving that when I was fifteen and I also recalled that the tree was one of them ones bordering Amelia’s house. A few minutes later, I found an opening and rushed across the lawn to the front door of Amelia’s log cabin.
She came to the door, carrying an axe… and a cellphone. Her three youngest kids came up behind her, also carrying cellphones, even little eight year old Susie, with her pigtails and homemade dress. Stacy and Tracy, the fifteen year old twins I was coming to see, were both busy texting. Amelia took the phone down from her ear and frowned. “Car honey, it’s nice to see you, but what’s wrong?”
“You’re supposed to not like technology,” I said, as I pointed to her phone.
Amelia laughed. “A cellphone isn’t technology silly. It’s a necessity.”
“Mine has unlimited texts,” Tracy chimed in.
Amelia’s husband Claude came in from the other room. “And mine has internet.”
I sighed and looked at my watch. There were only ten hours left until Candy’s deadline and I didn’t have a teenager without a cellphone. Now what was I going to do?
-to be continued-
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Ask Car
Do you think Candy will actually marry you if you complete the scavenger hunt?
Car
Of course. She’s true to her word, no matter what personality she’s in.
Car will answer your questions next week as well. Be sure to email them to car_johnson_rocks@hotmail.com
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