“Are you ready for Rule Number One?” Donnica asked Oggie.
“Ready,” he told her.
Donnica held up a pink-glitter-polish-tipped finger. “NO prrrrr-ip-ing ALLOWED.”
Donnica was delighted to see the worried look on Oggie’s face. Her plan was working already!
“No prrrrr-ip-ing?” Oggie asked. “Gee, that might be kind of hard. See, I don’t do it on purpose, it just pops out accidentally when I’m feeling happy.”
“Well, it’s not allowed to pop out at my party,” said Donnica, folding her arms across her chest. “So if you can’t control it, you can’t come.”
Oggie couldn’t bear the thought of missing Donnica’s party. There had to be something he could do to keep from prrrrr-ip-ing while he was there. When he got the hiccups he always held his breath or put sugar under his tongue. Maybe that would work. Or maybe if he prrrrr-ip-ed a whole bunch right before the party, he’d be all prrrrr-ip-ed out when he got there.
“I’ll figure something out,” Oggie told Donnica. “Is that the only rule?”
Donnica shook her head and put up a second finger.
“Rule Number Two: NO CROCHETED SHOELACES ALLOWED.”
Oggie looked down at his feet. The quadruple knot he’d tied was still holding tight.
“I don’t have any regular shoelaces,” he said. “But I guess I could buy some, or maybe I could just wear slippers. I’ve got a pair of really nice fuzzy ones. They’ve got pom-poms on the toes. Are pom-poms allowed?”
Oggie’s parents’ store specialized in used clothing of all kinds. “Vintage,” his mother called it. Donnica knew that almost everything in Oggie’s wardrobe came from the store, which is why she was ready with Rule Number Three.
“NO USED CLOTHES ALLOWED,” she said. “And in case you’re wondering, that includes bathing suits.”
Instead of being upset by this, Oggie broke into a huge grin.
“No prob-lemio with the bathing suit-io!” he cried happily. “My mom just bought me a pair of swim trunks on sale at Selznick’s department store. They’re red with pineapples on them and they’ve even got pockets. And if I can’t figure out what to wear on my feet I can always just come barefoot.”
The plan was not working quite as well as Donnica had hoped, but she was not ready to give up yet. She was determined to keep Oggie Cooder away from her birthday party, no matter how many rules she had to come up with.
“Sorry,” she said, holding up a fourth glitter-tipped finger. “Rule Number Four: NO RED BATHING SUITS ALLOWED.”
“Really?” said Hannah, who had gotten so caught up in Donnica’s rules, she’d forgotten they weren’t real. She was worried about the fact that the bathing suit she was planning to wear to the party was also red. One sharp look from Donnica brought her quickly back to her senses just in time to save herself from a painful jab in the ribs.
“How many rules are there?” asked Oggie.
As many as it takes, thought Donnica, and she began to tick things off on her fingers.
“No tripping over your feet, no cheese charving, no talking about boring inventions, no Uncle Vern stories, no dorky, made-up words like ‘yeppers’ or ‘bazillion,’ no warnings about things that can ruin your brain cells, no dogs allowed — especially big hairy ones that are named after sandwiches. No bird imitations —”
When she said that, Oggie’s eyes got very wide.
“Uh-oh,” he said, suddenly looking very worried. “I think we have a problem.”
Donnica smiled. It had taken a little longer than anticipated, but her plan was finally working. Oggie Cooder had realized that he would never be able to follow all the rules she had come up with. Ah, sweet victory!
But then something strange happened. Oggie got down on his hands and knees and began crawling around on the floor, frantically lifting up the edges of the rug and peering under the furniture.
“What in the world are you doing?” asked Donnica.
“I’m looking for my Swiss Warbler,” Oggie explained. “I must have dropped it when I tripped. I have to find it. I can’t do my yellow-bellied sapsucker without it!”
Tweeeeeeet!
Oggie sat up and looked at Donnica.
“What are you looking at me for?” she said. “I didn’t make that sound.”
He looked at Dawn and Hannah, but they both shook their heads.
Tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!
“Oh, no!” cried Oggie when he saw who was making the sound. “What did you do, Turkey Boy?”
Turk, who was sitting by the door, wagged his tail and tried to look innocent, but the whistling sound coming from his mouth gave him away.
He’d found the Swiss Warbler on the floor and had swallowed it. Now it was stuck in his throat!
Oggie quickly stood up. This was not the first time Turk had eaten something he wasn’t supposed to. In fact, it had happened often enough that Oggie already knew the drill.
“I have to go home right away and call the vet, in case I need to bring Turk in to see him,” he said.
Donnica was not happy. She was convinced her plan had been about to work, and she wanted to finish what she had begun.
“We have to go over the rest of the rules,” she said.
“I don’t have time right now,” Oggie told her. “I have to call the vet. Besides, I have a terrible memory. Why don’t you write down all the rules and bring the list to school with you tomorrow, okay?”
Turk let out another loud tweeeet! followed by about a dozen high-pitched chirps, and Oggie hurried off with him.
“Are you sure this plan of yours is going to work?” Dawn asked after Oggie had left. “He seemed a lot more worried about his dog than he did about your party rules.”
“Shows what you know,” Donnica said with a superior smile.
To be honest, though, a minute earlier Donnica had been feeling worried about the plan, too. But she wasn’t as worried anymore. She’d just been handed the secret weapon she’d been searching for — an Oggie-proof rule.
The minute Oggie got home, he called the vet and explained what had happened.
“It’s probably nothing to worry about,” Dr. Roberts told him. “Just feed him a few slices of bread. That ought to knock it loose.”
Turk was more than happy to cooperate, but even after he wolfed down four slices of bread, the Swiss Warbler was still stuck in his throat. He didn’t seem to be in any pain, and when Oggie checked back with the vet, Dr. Roberts said to give it a little more time and a lot more bread. Oggie decided there was no point in worrying. He decided the same thing about the B.P.R.’s. As long as Donnica brought the list to school in the morning, he’d have enough time to go over it before the party. On Saturday he would simply bring the list with him in case he needed to refresh his memory about any of the rules.
For years Oggie had sat on his porch steps listening to the laughter and splashing and happy shrieks coming over the high wooden fence that surrounded the Perfectos’ swimming pool. He wasn’t about to let a few silly rules keep him from finding out how it felt to be on the other side of the fence for a change.
* * *
At dinner that night, Oggie told his parents that Donnica had invited him to her birthday party.
“How nice!” said Mrs. Cooder. “The Perfectos have been a lot more friendly lately, have you noticed? Why, just the other day Miriam Perfecto, who never even used to wave when she saw me, practically kissed me when I suggested that all she needed to perk up her begonias was a few handfuls of eggshells.”
“Why don’t slugs like eggshells?” asked Oggie.
“I suppose they don’t like having their tender little bellies scratched,” Mrs. Cooder explained.
“I guess that makes you the opposite of a slug, huh, Turkey Boy?” said Oggie, reaching down and giving his dog a quick belly scratch.
Turk rolled over on his back and let out a satisfied tweeeeeeeeet!
* * *
After helping to clear the dinner table, Oggie went to h
is room and settled in to finish his homework. He’d already done the math problems and had looked over the spelling words. The only thing he had left to do was to write his haiku. Usually when Oggie had to come up with an idea for a story to write during Creative Writing, he thought about interesting things that had happened to him — like the time he got his toe caught in the bathtub faucet, and his mother had to use a whole stick of butter to make it slippery enough to pull it out. Or the time Turk sat down on a bottle of glue and ended up with his rear end stuck to the carpet.
But Turk’s rear end didn’t seem like the right kind of thing to write a haiku about, especially since the poem was supposed to be about Oggie. He thought about trying to use the word prrrrr-ip in his haiku, but he couldn’t decide whether to count it as one syllable or two, so he figured it would be safer not to use it at all. Oggie tried and tried to figure out how to describe the most important thing about himself, his essence, but the more he thought about it, the harder it seemed to get.
“What are you working on, son?” asked Mr. Cooder, sticking his head in the doorway to see how Oggie was doing.
“Haiku,” said Oggie.
“Gesundheit!” said Mr. Cooder.
Oggie laughed at the joke. Haiku did sound a lot like achoo.
“It’s a kind of a poem,” Oggie explained. “And I have to write one.”
“Sorry, Ogg. I’m not a very poetic guy,” said Mr. Cooder. “That’s more your mother’s department. Want me to send out an S.O.S.?”
“What’s an S.O.S.?” Oggie asked.
“That’s a signal you send out when you’re in trouble. In Morse code it’s dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot.”
Oggie had heard of Morse code. Samuel Morse, the man it was named after, was one of the inventors in the book Oggie had taken out of the library.
“Okay,” Oggie told his dad. “Go ahead and send out an S.O.S. I can use all the help I can get.”
Mrs. Cooder came in a few minutes later.
“Your father tells me you need a little help with a haiku,” she said. “I remember writing those in grade school. What is the pattern again?”
“Five, seven, five,” Oggie told her.
“What are you going to write about?” Oggie’s mother asked. “Cherry blossoms and mist-covered mountains?”
“No. I’m supposed to write about my essence,” Oggie explained, quickly adding, “but not the kind of essence Uncle Vern has in his armpits.”
“Thank goodness.” Mrs. Cooder laughed. “What have you written so far?”
“Nothing,” Oggie confessed. “I’m kind of stuck.”
“Sometimes when I’m looking for inspiration, I stand on my head,” Mrs. Cooder told him.
“Does it work?” Oggie asked. He had seen his mother stand on her head many times, but had never thought to ask her why.
“It certainly gets the blood circulating,” she said. “Why don’t you try it and see what happens? Just be careful not to fall over.”
After Oggie’s mother left, he pulled the pillow off his bed and put it on the floor. But the minute he tried standing on his head, Turk came running over and knocked him down. Turk thought this was a great game, but Oggie had work to do, so after it happened again, Oggie kicked Turk out of the room and closed the door. Then he placed the top of his head in the middle of the pillow and pushed himself up into a headstand.
Turk whined and scratched at the door while Oggie stood on his head and tried to think about his essence. “Who am I?” he asked himself again and again. His face turned bright red as the blood rushed to his head, but it didn’t seem to be helping with the haiku. Then, just as he was about to give up, an idea appeared from out of nowhere, like magic.
“That’s it!” Oggie cried as he toppled over onto the carpet.
Ten minutes later Oggie’s haiku was not only finished, it was neatly folded and tucked into his backpack ready to bring to school.
The next morning, Oggie ran into Donnica, Dawn, and Hannah on their way to school. They were talking about the haiku they’d written for the assignment.
“Mine is totally me,” said Donnica proudly. “In other words, per —”
Dawn and Hannah hesitated.
“Per —” Donnica prompted again.
“— sonal?” Hannah said uncertainly.
“No,” said Donnica disgustedly. “Not personal. Perfect. My haiku is perfect. Perfection is totally my essence.”
“I couldn’t think of anything at first,” Oggie told the girls. “But then I stood on my head. It was kind of like the Heimlich maneuver — you know, that squeezing thing you’re supposed to do when someone’s choking? — except instead of a clam shell, a haiku came flying out.”
The girls looked at one another.
“Loo —” mouthed Donnica silently to Hannah and Dawn.
“— zer” Hannah and Dawn mouthed back.
“So did you bring the list?” Oggie asked Donnica.
Donnica reached into her backpack and pulled out several sheets of paper, neatly stapled together. “B.P.R.” was written in large pink letters across the top of the first page. Before she handed the list to Oggie, Donnica took out a pen and added one more rule.
“‘Rule Number One Hundred and One,’” she said as she wrote, “‘NO STANDING ON YOUR HEAD ALLOWED.’”
When she finished, she gave the list to Oggie.
“If I were you, I’d stay away from those orange apricots,” she told him. “You’re going to need all the brain cells you’ve got if you’re going to have these rules memorized by Saturday.”
Oggie stopped dead in his tracks.
“Memorized?” he said. “You didn’t say anything about memorizing.”
“Didn’t I?” There was a gleam in Donnica’s eyes. “Well, it’s right here. See?” Donnica pointed to the last page of her list. “‘Rule Number One Hundred, All Birthday Party Rules must be memorized.’ And you’ll have to be able to prove it, too.”
“Prove it?” Oggie gulped.
“Yes — I give all my party guests a little quiz before they’re even allowed to come in the door. Right, girls?”
Dawn and Hannah nodded like a couple of bobbleheads on a dashboard.
Oggie was pretty sure he could manage to keep from prrrrr-ip-ing if he put his mind to it. He could go to the party barefoot instead of wearing shoes or slippers. And it wouldn’t be hard to exchange his red bathing suit for another color. But memorizing was another matter. Oggie had trouble memorizing the weekly spelling words, and there were only ten of those. There was absolutely no way he was going to be able to memorize a hundred and one rules by Saturday. Oggie was not going to be able to go to Donnica’s birthday party.
And as that disappointing thought entered Oggie’s head, something occurred in Wawatosa, Wisconsin, that had never happened before: Donnica Perfecto and Oggie Cooder were thinking the exact same thing.
* * *
Kids were already beginning to go inside when Oggie reached the schoolyard. Amy Schneider waved to him from the top of the steps, but he didn’t see her. As Oggie walked down the hall toward his classroom, all he could think about was the fun he was going to be missing. What if there were piggies-in-a-blanket? Oggie’s aunt Hettie always served those when she had a party. They were delicious little hot dogs rolled up in dough with toothpicks stuck through them. Oggie’s uncle Vern loved them, too, and had once eaten sixty-seven of them in one sitting — including the toothpicks.
Oggie’s mouth watered thinking about those piggies-in-a-blanket, but it looked like his imagination was as close as he was going to get to mini–hot dogs now that Donnica had informed him that the rules for her party had to be memorized.
Oggie felt so miserable, Mr. Snolinovsky didn’t have to speak to him once about prrrrr-ip-ing during class. What was there to prrrrr-ip about? A dark cloud hung over Oggie’s head all morning, until suddenly, right before lunch, he had a brainstorm. Oggie and Amy sometimes quizzed each other on spelling words. Working together ma
de it much easier. Since Amy was going to Donnica’s party, too, maybe they could team up and work together on memorizing the rules!
“I was thinking maybe we should get ready for Donnica’s party together,” Oggie said the minute Amy sat down at the lunch table.
But Amy got the exact same uncomfortable look on her face that she’d had the day before when the topic of Donnica’s party had come up.
“What’s the matter?” Oggie asked.
“Did Donnica really invite you to her party?”
“Yeppers,” said Oggie. “I’d show you the invitation, but Turk ate it. He ate my Swiss Warbler, too. I’ll tell you about that later. First I want to know if you want to help each other get ready.”
“Um. I don’t think so,” Amy said.
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m not going to the party.”
“Why not? Don’t you like girls either?”
Amy gave him a funny look.
“That’s why Dylan isn’t going,” Oggie explained. “He doesn’t like girls. He only likes Ghorks.”
Amy gave Oggie an even funnier look.
“Ghorks?”
“Yeah,” said Oggie, “Ghorks and windowsills. Or something like that. Anyway, how come you’re not coming to the party?”
“Because I didn’t get invited,” said Amy.
“You didn’t?” Oggie was genuinely surprised. He had assumed that since Donnica had invited him, she must have invited everybody in the class. “Maybe your invitation got lost in the mail,” Oggie said to Amy. “Do you want me to ask Donnica to send you a new one?”
“No,” Amy said quickly. “I don’t really want to go to Donnica’s birthday party. We’re not exactly friends, you know.”
Oggie felt that dark cloud sliding back into place over his head. If Amy wasn’t coming to the party, that meant he was back at square one. He knew he would never be able to memorize all of the rules by himself.
Now it was Amy’s turn to ask Oggie what was wrong.