Chicken Soup for the Kid’s Soul (11 page)

Green Salami

T
hat is the best—to laugh with someone because you both think the same things are funny.

Gloria Vanderbilt

Sometime during the seventh grade two things happened to me. The first was that I got hooked on salami. Salami sandwiches, salami and cheese, salami on crackers— I couldn’t get enough of the salty, spicy sausage. The other thing was that my mom and I weren’t getting along really well. We weren’t fighting really badly or anything, but it just seemed as if all she wanted to do was argue with me and tell me what to do. We also didn’t laugh together much anymore. Things were changing, and my mom and I were the first to feel it.

As far as the salami went, my mom wouldn’t buy any because she said it was too expensive and not that good for me. To prove my emerging independence, I decided to go ahead and eat what I wanted anyway. So one day I used my allowance to buy a full sausage of dry salami.

Now a problem had to be solved: Where would I put the salami? I didn’t want my mom to see it. So I hid it in the only place that I knew was totally safe—under my bed. There was a special corner under the bed that the upright Hoover couldn’t reach and that my mom rarely had the ambition to clean. Under the bed went the salami, back in the corner—in the dark and the dust.

A couple of weeks later, I remembered the delicious treat that was waiting for me. I peered beneath the bed and saw . . . not the salami that I had hidden, but some green and hairy object that didn’t look like anything I had ever seen before. The salami had grown about an inch of hair, and the hair was standing straight up, as if the salami had been surprised by the sudden appearance of my face next to its hiding place. Being the picky eater I was, I was not interested in consuming any of
this
object. The best thing I could think of to do was . . .
absolutely nothing.

Sometime later, my mom became obsessed with spring cleaning, which in her case meant she would clean places that had never seen the light of day. Of course, that meant under my bed. I knew in my heart that the moment would soon come when she would find the object in its hiding place. During the first two days of her frenzy, I watched carefully to judge the time when I thought she would find the salami. She washed, she scrubbed, she dusted . . . she
screamed!
She screamed and screamed and screamed. “Ahhhhhh . . . ahhhhhh . . . ahhhhhh!” The screams were coming from my room. Alarms went off in my head. She had found the salami!

“What is it, Mom?” I yelled as I ran into my room.

“There is
something
under your bed!”

“What’s under my bed?” I opened my eyes very wide to show my complete innocence.

“Something . . . something . . . I don’t know what it is!” She finally stopped screaming. Then she whispered, “Maybe it’s alive.”

I got down to look under my bed.

“Watch out!” she shouted. “I don’t know what it is!” she said again. She pushed me to one side. I was proud of the bravery she was demonstrating to save me from the “something” in spite of her distress.

I was amazed at what I saw. The last time I had looked at the salami, the hair on it was about an inch long and fuzzy all over. Now, the hair had grown another three inches, was a gray-green color and had actually started to grow on the surrounding area as well. You could no longer tell the actual shape of what the hair was covering. I looked at my mom. Except for the color, her hair closely resembled the hair on the salami: It was standing straight up, too! Abruptly she got up and left the room, only to return five seconds later with the broom.

Using the handle of the broom, she poked the salami. It didn’t move. She poked it harder. It still didn’t move. At that point, I wanted to tell her what it was, but I couldn’t seem to make my mouth work. My chest was squeezing with an effort to repress the laughter that, unbidden, was threatening to explode. At the same time, I was terrified of her rage when she finally discovered what it was. I was also afraid she was going to have a heart attack because she looked so scared.

Finally my mom got up her nerve and pushed the salami really hard. At that same exact moment, the laughter I had been trying to hold back exploded from my mouth. She dropped the broom and looked at me.

“What’s so funny?” my mom asked. Up close, two inches from my face, she looked furious. Maybe it was just the position of having her head lower than her bottom that made her face so red, but I was sure she was about to poke me with the broom handle. I sure didn’t want that to happen because it still had some pieces of gray-green hair sticking to it. I felt kind of sick, but then another one of my huge laughs erupted. It was as if I had no control over my body. One followed another, and pretty soon I was rolling on the floor. My mom sat down—hard.

“What is so funny?!”

“Salami,” I managed to get out despite the gales of laughter that I had no control over. “Salami! Salami!” I rolled on the floor. “It’s a salami!”

My mother gazed at me with disbelief. What did salami have to do with anything? The object under the bed did not look like any salami she had ever seen. In fact, it did not look like
anything
she (or I) had ever seen.

I gasped for breath. “Mom, it’s a salami—you know, one of those big salami sausages!”

She asked what any sane mother would ask in this situation. “What is a salami doing under your bed?”

“I bought it with my allowance.” My laughter was subsiding, and fear was beginning to take its place. I looked at her. She had the strangest expression on her face that I had ever seen: a combination of disgust, confusion, exhaustion, fear—and
anger!
Her hair was standing on end, perspiration beaded on her flushed face and her eyes looked as if they were going to jump out of her head. I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh again.

And then the miracle of miracles happened. My mom started to laugh, too. First just a nervous release, a titter really, but then it turned into the full-on belly laugh that only my mom’s side of the family is capable of. The two of us laughed until tears rolled down our cheeks and I thought I would pee my pants.

When we finally were able to stop laughing, my mom shoved the broom into my hands.

“Okay, Patty Jean Shaw,
clean it up,
no matter what it is!”

I had no idea how to clean up something and not look at it or touch it. So, of course, I got my little sister to help me. I could get her to help with anything, as long as I bribed or threatened her. Since she didn’t know what the object was supposed to look like to begin with, she didn’t have much fear attached to helping. Between the two of us, we managed to roll it onto the evening newspaper (my dad never knew what happened to it). I
carefully
, carefully carried it outside and put it into the trash. Then I had my sister remove the remaining fuzz from the carpet. I had convinced her that I was too large to get into the small corner where it had grown. I ended up owing her my allowance for two weeks.

My mom never got mad at me for buying the salami. I guess she thought I had already paid a price. The salami provided a memory of shared, unrestrained laughter. For years to come, all I had to do was threaten to buy salami to make my mom laugh.

Patty Hansen

©Lynn Johnston Productions, Inc. Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

Going, Going, Gone

“They’re going to give us twenty bucks for it?” I asked my sister, Melva, in disbelief. “Are you sure?”

“They said twenty,” my sister repeated. “Thirty if we throw in the old cabinet radio.”

“Sold!” we exclaimed in unison, giving each other a high five. We couldn’t believe what was happening. All we did was post a sign that said “Garage Sale,” and our yard was swarming with shoppers. We sold the baby crib I’d long since outgrown, clothes, jewelry, dishes, antique records—whatever we could find around the house that was old and seemingly useless.

Mom and Dad were away on vacation, and we were determined to surprise them with more money than they could ever make in one weekend. Each time the stock on the front lawn ran low, one of us would excitedly return to the house to find more items to sell. On one trip, we weren’t quick enough, and a few of the customers came in after us.

“How much would you take for that two-piece sofa set?” one woman asked.

My sister and I looked at each other. It certainly wasn’t new, and Mom had been talking about replacing it. Still, it was our living room furniture. If we sold it, what would the family have to sit on?

“We don’t really know if we can sell that. . . . ” we hedged.

“I’ll give you ten bucks for each piece,” she coaxed.

Ten dollars? That would be twenty bucks for the whole set! We had no idea how much it would cost to replace, but we did know another twenty bucks would bring our day’s total to over three hundred dollars! Mom and Dad were going to be so proud of us. They were going to be thrilled. They were going to be . . .

“You did
what?
” Mom said as she walked into the house and saw the empty spaces where the furniture used to be.

“But we made over three hundred dollars!” we said, handing her the wad of bills.

“Do you have any idea what the things you sold were worth?”

Her tone of voice made it hard to tell whether she was laughing or crying.

“More than three hundred dollars?” we asked meekly.

By our calculations, we’ll be allowed to come out of our rooms in just three more years.

Martha Bolton

Your Name in Gold

Anne sat at the breakfast table, eating her cornflakes and reading the print on the cereal box in front of her. “Tastee Cornflakes—Great New Offer!” the box read. “See back of box for details.”

Anne’s older sister, Mary, sat across from her, reading the other side of the cereal box. “Hey, Anne,” she said, “look at this awesome prize—
your name in gold
.”

As Mary read on, Anne’s interest in the prize grew. “Just send in one dollar with proof-of-purchase seal from this box and spell out your first name on the information blank. We will send you a special pin with your name spelled in gold. (Only one per family, please.)”

Anne grabbed the box and looked on the back, her eyes brightening with excitement. The name
Jennifer
was spelled out in sparkling gold. “That’s a neat idea,” she said. “A pin with my very own name spelled out in gold. I’m going to send in for it.”

“Sorry, Anne, I saw it first,” said Mary, “so I get first dibs on it. Besides, you don’t have a dollar to send in, and I do.“

“But I want a pin like that so badly,” said Anne. “Please let me have it!”

“Nope,” said her sister.

“You always get your way—just because you’re older than me,” said Anne, her lower lip trembling as her eyes filled with tears. “Just go ahead and send in for it. See if I care!” She threw down her spoon and ran from the kitchen.

Several weeks passed. One day the mailman brought a small package addressed to Mary. Anne was dying to see the pin, but she wouldn’t let Mary know how eager she was. Mary took the package to her room. Anne casually followed her in and sat on the bed.

“Well, I guess they sent you your pin. I sure hope you like it,” Anne said in a mean voice. Mary slowly took the paper off the package. She opened a little white box and carefully lifted off the top layer of white cotton. “Oh, it’s beautiful!” Mary said. “Just like the cereal box said,
your name in gold.
Four beautiful letters. Would you like to see it, Anne?”

“No, I don’t care about your dumb old pin.”

Mary put the white box on the dresser and went downstairs.

Anne was alone in the bedroom. Soon she couldn’t wait any longer, so she walked over to the dresser. As she looked in the small white box, she gasped. Mixed feelings of love for her sister and shame at herself welled up within her, and the pin became a sparkling gold blur through her tears.

There on the pin were four beautiful letters—her name in gold: A-N-N-E.

A. F. Bauman

Father’s Day

When I was six years old, I never thought I would feel happy inside again. My father had just died. He had been sick for a very long time and never could play with me. The Father’s Day after my father died, we had to make cards for our dads at school. I made mine for an angel. No one seemed to understand how sad I was inside not to have a dad, and not to have anyone to make a card for.

Then the most wonderful thing happened. My mom met Michael. On New Year’s Eve, we all sat down together and said our thanks for the past year and our wishes for the New Year. I told Michael that my wish was that he would be a dad to me. Michael’s eyes filled with tears, and he said yes—but only if he could really be a father to me, not just do all the fun stuff. I said yes. Of course, Mom thought this was all pretty wonderful, too.

I want to thank Michael for being my dad, for being there for me and for taking away much of the sadness. I want to thank Michael for getting Mom to say yes to a lizard, for throwing a baseball with me and for being at
all
of my soccer games. But mostly I want to thank Michael for teaching me that parents can come to us in many different ways, and that a person who did not help to create you can be as much or more of a parent to you as someone who did. Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

Taylor Martini, age 8