“Jamie Grimm?” says Ray Romano. “You’re our final finalist! Congratulations!”
Somewhere off in the distance, I hear Uncle Frankie’s ear-piercing whistle. “Way to go, kiddo!” he shouts. “You won!”
Judy Nazemetz runs over to my chair and throws her arms around me and kisses me—right on the lips.
On network TV.
I turn red. And smile for the first time in days.
Now Chatty Patty and Antony Guerrero come over to join us. Apparently, we’re the four finalists in the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic Contest.
I guess I did pretty good.
I guess I’m one of the four funniest kids on the whole entire planet!
“Congratulations,” I hear Judy whisper under all the audience applause. “We both live to bomb another day.”
That makes my grin grow even wider.
We fist-bump on it.
“Sympathy vote,” Chatty Patty says through her fake smile.
But I don’t care. I don’t have to give my “I’m sorry I lost” speech. At least not for a few more weeks.
America voted, and I am definitely, officially, certifiably funny!
Not that I’m going to get a big head about it or anything…
Chapter 40
A HEAD TOO BIG FOR MY HAT
Yes, I head home to Long Beach the same humble and modest Jamie Grimm I was when I left.
Okay. Maybe I’m just a little puffed up about winning.
But I’m told your head always swells a little when you fly all the way across the country. And the truth is, I’m even bigger than I was before.
In fact, I’m the biggest hero in this Long Island town since Billy Crystal.
That’s right, another one of the planet’s funniest comedians grew up in Long Beach on Long Island. Billy Crystal—the star of Saturday Night Live, When Harry Met Sally…, City Slickers, The Princess Bride, and, most impressively, the voice of Mike Wazowski in Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University—used to hang out in all the places where I hang out now.
I’m thinking there’s something magical in this little seaside paradise that, every generation or so, makes one kid in Long Beach really, really funny.
At least that’s what I’m telling everybody.
What I’m pretending to believe.
At school, I am one of the cool kids. Okay, I am the Coolest Kid. Ever.
Hey, I’ve been on national TV. I won a contest. Billy Crystal probably wants me to do a voice in the next Monsters movie. What could be cooler than that?
Life is great. No, my life is awesome.
There is only one teensy-weensy, tiny problem.
Before I went on, before I did whatever jokes I did (and can’t remember), BNC ran that sappy background piece the camera crew filmed about me in Long Beach.
All of America got to see me stuck in the gutter. They watched me flip through an old family photo album and sob (I couldn’t help it) over pictures of my mom and dad and little sister, Jenny. They saw me wrestle with denim as I wiggled around on my bed, trying to pull on a pair of jeans over my dead legs.
Then there were the grainy newspaper headlines and slow-motion Action News footage of swirling emergency lights from the car crash that left me an orphan. After that came some dramatic still shots of me struggling through physical therapy at the rehab hospital.
Yeah.
Chatty Patty was right. America gave me their pity vote. That’s how I survived the first round of eliminations.
But don’t worry.
I can still fool people into believing I’m the kid who WON the big contest because I’m incredibly funny and extremely talented.
What other choice do I have?
Go all honest and admit that I’m the biggest loser ever?
Because that’s the real truth.
Chapter 41
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE…
At school, when my “friends” Gaynor and Pierce back me into a corner near our lockers, I go ahead and let them lecture me.
When they’re finally done giving me a piece of their minds, I rank on them in return.
“You know what I think, guys? I think you two are jealous. You wish you could be famous like me, but you never, ever will be. You know what else I think? I think I’m kind of ashamed and embarrassed for you both. Seriously. Jealousy and envy are such a waste of time.”
Pierce and Gaynor drop their jaws like they can’t believe what I’m saying.
Neither can I.
And to make matters worse, Gilda comes over and it’s obvious she heard it all. “We’re your friends, Jamie,” she says, trying to make peace.
If they were truly my friends, they would know how I really feel, right? So instead of explaining something I don’t want to explain, I flip out.
“No, you’re not. You just want to glom on to my fame and bask in my glory. Face it, that’s all you guys have ever wanted!”
Chapter 42
TONIGHT’S SPECIAL: ANOTHER LECTURE
I get yet another lecture from Uncle Frankie that night at the diner.
“I’m just being honest here, Jamie. I gotta agree with your friends. You’ve got a bad case of swollen-ego-itis complicated by severe stuck-upness.”
“Those guys are not my friends. They’re just a bunch of fame moochers.”
Yes, when I become a jerk, I go all in.
Uncle Frankie shakes his head. “Those three were your pals long before you even entered your first comedy contest.”
“A contest I only entered because you made me do it!”
Yeah, I’m kind of lashing out at everybody I love because I know the truth: I’m a loser who only made it into the Final Four because I rolled onstage in my wheelchair.
I’m one of those YouTube clips that get passed around a billion times—not because my act is funny. Because I’m so pathetically sad and it makes people feel better about themselves to cheer me on.
“You pushed me onto that stage, Uncle Frankie, and only because you wanted to relive your bygone glory days as a yo-yo champion.”
Uncle Frankie cocks an eyebrow. “Seriously? That’s what you think?”
“Think? That’s what I know.”
Uncle Frankie sighs. “You’ve changed, Jamie. And not for the better.”
“I know. I used to be able to walk.”
“This isn’t about your legs, Jamie. It’s your head that’s got me worried.”
“You mean me thinking I’m a super-important comedian?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, stop worrying. It’s just an act. I’m just pretending to be a big shot.”
“What? Why?”
I take a deep breath. “So people will hate me so much for being a conceited twit, they won’t have time to realize I’m not funny.”
“You? Not funny?”
“Come on. I only made it to the Final Four because I’m the sad little crippled kid. I won America’s sympathy. Me thinking I could actually win a comedy contest? That’s the biggest joke I’ve ever heard.”
Chapter 43
WE INTERRUPT THIS MELTDOWN FOR A VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
Yep, we have another delay of game.
This time, it isn’t the countdown clock or a television network’s fault.
In fact, this time, it has absolutely nothing to do with the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic Contest or the Smileys or Chatty Patty or Gilda Gold or even me. This time, it’s something way more important than the most important thing in my life.
Something way more dangerous, too.
Before Uncle Frankie can give me the old spiel about how I’m not a loser, blah blah, the Seinfeld rerun on the TV cuts out and is replaced by an intense STORM ALERT graphic. If letters could talk, these would be screaming bloody murder.
“This just in from our weather center,” says an even more intense voice. Now the TV screen behind the counter is filled with satellite footage showing a swirl of angry white clouds whipping around the eye of the storm. The cloud whir
l looks like it covers the entire Atlantic Ocean.
“The hurricane we’ve been tracking all week has unexpectedly changed course!” shouts a weather guy who’s wearing a yellow rain slicker and standing on a beach in the howling wind.
Why do they do that? Why do TV people think they need to stand in knee-deep water and hang on to trees, lampposts, and their baseball hats to tell us about a storm?
This particular weather guy looks like the fisherman on the fish sticks box, except he’s about to be blown sideways.
“Revised estimates,” the reporter yells over the roar of the wind and the crash of the waves, “show Hurricane Sam making landfall somewhere along the Long Island coast in the next few hours! We can expect quite a storm surge. Flood warnings are in effect for the entire region.…”
“Maybe it’ll miss us,” I say.
Then again, maybe it won’t.
Because the next graphic on the TV screen shows the storm making a beeline not just for Long Island.
It’s heading straight for Long Beach.
Chapter 44
SAM I AM. BAM!
That night, Hurricane Sam slams into Long Beach.
At high tide. Under a full moon.
No wonder the TV is calling Hurricane Sam the storm of the century.
It’s scary.
No joke.
Because the storm wasn’t originally supposed to blow this way, Long Beach didn’t really prepare well enough. The Smileys and I huddle in the living room all night as the wind shakes the walls and roof like the wolf in “The Three Little Pigs.” The power goes out and seawater starts seeping into the house. We had no idea it was going to be this bad.
The next day, I venture out to see the damage.
I’m blown away.
The whole boardwalk is demolished. Frankie’s Good Eats by the Sea is wrecked. The fish and seafood in Uncle Frankie’s freezer got to meet some of their long-lost cousins when the Atlantic Ocean rolled through the front windows for an unannounced visit.
My home, Smileyville, is totally flooded with two feet of water and sludge. It’s deeper in my bedroom because the garage sits lower than the rest of the house. All my comedy notebooks and funny DVDs and jokelopedias are floating around like the flotsam and jetsam bobbing belowdecks in that movie Titanic.
Worse than anything that happened to me on national TV. In fact, seeing all this destruction—how quickly homes and businesses and whole lives can be swept away—makes me realize that my problems are nothing compared to what just happened to my neighbors.
I’m reminded of something I heard once: If we all took our problems and threw them into a pile next to other people’s and saw what they had to deal with, we’d grab our own problems back as fast as we could.
So what if I only moved up in the comedy contest because of the sympathy vote?
Uncle Frankie just lost his diner, his whole life.
Hurricane Sam is like a wake-up call: a bucket of cold water tossed in my face.
Except this cold water is also salty. And full of fish.
Chapter 45
MOVING TO COT CITY
With most of Smileyville swimming in seawater, it’s basically uninhabitable. We’re ordered to evacuate the house.
Cousin Stevie refuses to leave without his most prized possession. So he slogs through the ankle-high water to his bedroom and grabs his money box. It’s where he keeps all the cash he collects shaking kids down outside the cafeteria.
“It means more to me than anything in the world! Even my monogrammed set of brass knuckles.”
Four burly National Guardsmen hoist me up and load me into the back of their army truck. We power our way through the flooded streets and make it to the high school, where the Red Cross has set up an emergency shelter inside the gym.
I see some of our neighbors. Ol’ Smiler wags his tail when he sniffs a few familiar butts.
And then I see the Golds. Gilda’s family.
She is there, too, of course.
It’s time to face the music.
She goes first. “Hello, Jamie. You guys okay?”
“Yeah. I guess. The house is a mess.…”
“Ours, too.”
“I always wanted an aquarium in my room,” I joke, “but this is ridiculous.”
Gilda grins.
“Sorry,” I say. “I…”
“Yeah. I know. Me too.”
She leans down and, even though our clothes are like wet, squishy sponges, we hug. It’s probably the best hug I’ve had in months.
Chapter 46
PLAYING THE RED CROSS ROOM
Hey, you’re Jamie Grimm!” says this little kid on a nearby cot. “I saw you on TV!”
I kind of smile and wave.
“You’re that comedian kid, am I right?” says a guy sipping coffee out of a paper cup.
“He’s funny,” says somebody else. “Do that politically incorrect bit you did on TV.”
“And that jingle you made up. You know, that funny car commercial you sang on the show. That was hilarious.”
Wow. These people remember more of my Hollywood performance than I do.
“Thanks, you guys,” I say. “Maybe some other time, okay?”
“What?” says the guy with the coffee. “You got some previous engagement or something tonight?”
“No, but, well… I’m not sure this is the right time and place for, you know, comedy.”
“How come?”
“Well, sir, a lot of these people don’t have much to laugh about tonight.”
“I know,” he says. “That’s why they need you to give ’em a smile.”
“He’s right, Jamie,” whispers Gilda. “Everybody in Long Beach could use a good laugh tonight.”
“Seriously?”
She nods. “It’s what non-jerk Jamie would do.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I remember him.”
I roll forward a couple of feet. Find an open spot in the sea of cots.
There’s no microphone. No spotlight. No Ray Romano giving me a big introduction.
I just take a deep breath and start, trusting that Gilda (who has the best and bubbliest laugh in the world) at least will chuckle, even if nobody else finds me particularly funny on this gloomy night.
“Um, hi, everybody. I’m Jamie Grimm. I’m also soaking wet, but, hey, tonight, who isn’t?”
Gilda giggles. I keep going.
“So, anybody here ever gonna name a kid Sam? Didn’t think so.”
I hear some muted laughs.
“How come they give hurricanes and storms such ho-hum, boring names? Sam. Kate. Barry. Sounds like those kids who used to be on The Brady Bunch. They should give hurricanes names like Shamu. Or Bertha. ‘Look out. Here comes Big Bertha!’ Or Conan. That’d be a good name for a storm. Not Conan the comedian. Conan the Barbarian!” I put on my best Ah-nold Schwarzenegger voice. “ ‘I am Conan the Hurricane. I will huff and puff and blow your tallest trees down.’ ”
The laughs grow bigger. A small crowd gathers in a circle around me. There are some kids, so I pull out a couple of corny one-liners I remember from my floating joke books.
I turn to the man with the coffee cup. “What did one tornado say to the other?”
The man’s smile widens. “Let’s twist again like we did last summer.”
More laughs. I pretend to be offended.
“Great. This is why I hate hurricanes. Everybody in the Red Cross shelter thinks they’re a comedian.”
“Yeah,” says Mr. Coffee, “but ain’t none of us ever been on TV with Ray What’s-His-Name.”
“Romano,” I say. “Like the Italian cheese. I bet he’s glad he isn’t Ray Parmesan or Ray Mozzarella. Hey—anybody else hungry for pizza all of a sudden?”
I do about thirty minutes of material.
Everybody is laughing and smiling, but eventually, I have to stop.
Kids need to go to sleep. The Red Cross needs to save gas in the generator and turn off the lights.
Soon i
t’s very quiet again—except for the wind still whipping through the empty streets outside.
And some people sobbing.
People who’ve lost their homes, maybe worse.
I’m glad I was able to help them forget all that, if only for a few minutes.
Chapter 47
FUNNY MEETING YOU HERE
And then something funny happens.
Not ha-ha funny. More like weird funny.
The Gaynors and the Pierces arrive at the Red Cross shelter. Joey and his mom; Jimmy and his dad, mom, and little sister.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” says Pierce. “Hurricane Sam was a category four when it made landfall, the same as the great Galveston, Texas, hurricane disaster of September eighth to ninth, 1900.”
“Awesome,” says Gaynor.
Yep. My brainiac and headbanger buds are back, as if nothing ever happened—like, for instance, me turning into a jerk.
“You guys?” I say, mustering up the guts to apologize again.
“I already told them,” says Gilda, coming over to complete our group hug.
So we hang out and shoot the bull like we used to, until, one by one, we all sort of drift off. Gaynor, Pierce, and Gilda go bunk down with their families. The Smileys curl up together and sleep. Yes, they frown when they dream, too.
I kind of conk out in my chair.
Until about three in the morning.
I feel a gentle nudge and creak open my eyes.
It’s Uncle Frankie.
He’s smiling at me.
The man who just lost his diner, his beloved boardwalk, his whole life, is smiling.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah. How’s by you, Jamie?”