by Dan Gutman
“Don’t forget UFO T-shirts,” Rob added.
By then, the others had finally caught on to the plan and saw the potential. We were all on our feet now, jumping up and down with excitement, clapping Rob on the back.
“I know exactly how to shoot the photo,” Quincy bubbled. “We’re gonna make big bikkies!”2
“We’re gonna be millionaires!” I said, just loving the sound of the word in my mouth.
“Billionaires,” said Eddie.
“Trillionaires!” said Teddy.
We were so excited that we kept on jumping up and down, and we didn’t stop jumping up and down until the Bogle twins said they had to go to the bathroom.
7
Undoubtedly Fake Flying Objects
The next morning, we all gathered excitedly at the gazebo. Quincy arrived carrying armfuls of junk. Frisbees. Frying pans. Aluminum pie plates. Garbage can covers. Old toys. Round pillows. A fishing pole. Some other junk. Around her neck was a Polaroid camera she had borrowed from her parents. Quincy was the artistic one of the group, so I put her in charge of the photo shoot.
“I brought the UFOs!” she said as she attached an aluminum pie plate to the fishing line with some tape. She had Rob hold out the fishing pole so that the pie plate dangled in the air. Quincy got down on her knees so she could point the camera upward at the pie plate. She explained that the photo would look most real if there were trees and sky in the background. She took a few shots of the pie plate hanging from the fishing pole, and we gathered around her to look at the pictures as they developed.
Well, it didn’t look like a real UFO at all. The fishing line was visible. In fact, the fishing pole was visible at the top of the photo. Instead of a UFO, it looked like an aluminum pie plate dangling from a fishing pole. We were all disappointed, except for Quincy.
“Cool bananas,”1 she said. “Forget the fishing pole idea. We’ve just gotta chuck things up in the air and shoot them.”
“Hey,” Rob suggested, “let’s chuck the Bogles’ box of dust up in the air.”
The Bogles started crying, of course, until Rob assured them he wouldn’t do it.
Quincy told Rob to pick up a garbage can cover and fling it as high as he could, like a Frisbee. She got the camera ready.
“Okay, give it a bash!”2she said.
Rob heaved the garbage can cover up into the air and Quincy took the shot.
“Oh, pig’s bum!”3 she moaned. “Missed it.”
I told the Bogles to retrieve the garbage can cover. Rob tossed it up again. This time Quincy said she got it right in the middle of the viewfinder. We all gathered around to look at the picture.
“Let me have a squiz,”4 Quincy said, holding the photo close to her face.
“What’s it look like?” asked Eddie, who was too short to see.
“It looks like somebody threw a garbage can cover up in the air,” Rob said. He was right. That was exactly what it looked like. The picture wasn’t going to fool anybody.
“No worries,” Quincy said cheerfully. “We’ve got to fuzz it up a bit. You know, so you’re not sure what it is. She’ll be apples.”5
Quincy’s camera had a dial on it that let her change the shutter speed. She said that if she slowed down the speed of the camera’s shutter as it opened to expose the film to light, a moving object would be a little bit blurry in the picture. I didn’t know much about photography, but it sounded like it made sense.
We tried it again a bunch of times, with Rob heaving stuff up in the air. Quincy fired away with the camera, trying to catch the “UFO” as it flew by.
I kept looking around, hoping that no other people would come by. It might be embarrassing to be seen throwing pots, pans, pillows, and other strange objects up in the air to photograph them.
The pictures were looking a little bit more like UFOs, but they weren’t perfect. They still looked a little fake. Quincy wasn’t discouraged. She told us that in real photo shoots, photographers will sometimes take hundreds of pictures before they get one they like.
“Let’s give these bodgy snaps the flick,” Quincy said, tossing the stack of photos aside. “They’re not worth a crumpet.”6
The camera was out of film. Quincy opened another film pack and loaded it. The rest of us gathered more stuff that might resemble a UFO.
“Okay,” Quincy said as Rob got ready to toss an old plastic toy up in the air. “Give that thingamajigger a burl.”7
They made the shot and again we all gathered around to see the result.
“Well,” Quincy said, not all that enthusiastically, “it’s better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick.”8
“It’s pathetic,” I complained. I was getting impatient. I was beginning to think this UFO thing might not have been such a good idea after all. “These aren’t UFOs, they’re UFFOs. Undoubtedly fake flying objects.”
“Don’t get niggly,”9 Quincy said. “We’re getting there.”
She shot some more photos. Some of them were pretty good, but they still looked phony to me. By this time, the Bogle twins’ attention span was just about used up. Instead of helping us with the photo, they were now running around playing tag with each other.
“Maybe we should call it quits,” Rob told Quincy. “We could save the rest of the film and try again tomorrow.”
“Nah, you might as well just blow the film,” I instructed her. “Tomorrow we’ll just have to come up with another million-dollar idea.”
“I have only one shot left anyway,” Quincy told us.
“Let’s make it count,” Rob said. He got one of Quincy’s round pillows and threw it up in the sky.
While the pillow was in the air, Eddie and Teddy were chasing each other around, not looking where they were running. They didn’t see Quincy as they got close to her, and Quincy didn’t see them because she was looking into the viewfinder. I was the only one who could tell there was going to be a collision.
“Watch out!” I yelled.
It was too late. Eddie Bogle slammed into Quincy just as she pushed the button on the camera. He knocked her to the ground.
“Cripes! You little germs!” Quincy shouted. I had never seen her so angry. “Can’t you jacks-in-the-box behave? Pull your socks up! You ruined it, you dumb wallies!”10
“I didn’t mean to!” Eddie whined. He put his hands over his face in shame.
“Oh, man, that was our last shot!” Rob said disgustedly.
We all helped Quincy get up off the ground. Rob picked up the camera. It seemed to be okay. The picture Quincy had taken was lying in the dirt. She picked it up and was about to toss it on the pile of rejects, but the image was beginning to come up, so she watched it.
“Hang on a tick,”11 she said, some excitement building in her voice.
The rest of us gathered around for a peek. As the picture developed, we could see that it didn’t look like any of the other photos Quincy had taken. The impact of Eddie smashing into her just as she snapped the picture had shaken the camera. The picture was fuzzy, but not so fuzzy that you couldn’t make it out. There it was—a lifelike UFO hovering over the trees.
“Well, I’ll be stuffed!” Quincy exclaimed. “It’s a ripper!”12
8
The National Truth
The five of us gathered around looking at our photo, like football players in a huddle.
“It’s perfect,” Rob announced. “Just perfect.”
“It’s dinkie-di,” Quincy said. “This snap is crash hot.”1
“I gotta pee,” Teddy said.
“There’s only one way that anybody would be able to tell this photo is a fake,” I told the others. “And that’s if one of us spilled the beans.”
“What do beans have to do with it?” asked Eddie.
“It’s an expression, dingbat,” I told Eddie. “It means to reveal a secret.”
So together we made a pact. A solemn vow. The five of us agreed that we would tell everybody we had been out in the field playing when this UFO buzzed by
. It stopped over the trees, hovered there for a second or two, and then it zipped away. We just happened to have a camera with us and were lucky enough to snap this fuzzy picture.
That was the story, and we all promised to stick with it. We agreed that if any one of us revealed that we had faked the photo, terrible, horrible things would happen to that kid. I thought it would be a good idea to seal our vow with blood. Nobody wanted to bleed, so we used grape juice instead.
That afternoon, we all rode our bikes over to the supermarket. They’ve got a rack of newspapers by the cash register that aren’t really newspapers. They look like newspapers, but the stories don’t sound anything like the stories you read in regular newspapers. WOMAN GROWS PUMPKIN IN THE SHAPE OF THE PRESIDENT’S HEAD! JFK LIVES…IN THE WHITE HOUSE BASEMENT! MY TWIN BROTHER IS FROM MARS! That sort of thing.
All of them looked like the kind of newspaper that might go for a story about UFOs. We decided to buy one called the National Truth. The cover headline read: METEOR ON COURSE TO DESTROY EARTH NEXT WEDNESDAY.
We dug into our pockets and came up with $2.40. “Will we get this back?” asked Rob.
“Listen,” I said. “It’s our capital. Think big. Think of it as an investment.”
“Oh, great,” said Rob. “We don’t get it back.”
“Can we at least get some gum with it?” asked Teddy.
The $2.40 in investments was enough to buy the National Truth, with exactly enough left over for a pack of Bubblicious gum.
On the way back, we split up the gum. Once we got to the gazebo, we found the page in the National Truth where they had the mailing address. Rob worked out a letter to include with our photo:
Dear National Truth,
We are five children who live in Maine. We created this fake UFO photo and we thought you might be able to use it in your paper. Please get back to us as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
The Get Rich Quick Club
“Are you crazy?” I asked Rob after I had read his letter. “Do you honestly think they’re going to go for that?”
“Well, it’s the truth,” he replied.
“The truth is boring,” I told him. “Nobody’s gonna pay us a million dollars for the truth.”
Lying, I realized, just didn’t come naturally to Rob. Even though he was the genius in our group, it would be up to me to compose the letter. So I did:
Dear National Truth,
I am a 55-year-old man with a wife, children, and no history of mental problems. The other day I was in the field behind my house when I saw a weirdly shaped object in the sky. I happened to have my camera with me and snapped the enclosed photo. I thought you might like to use it in the National Truth. The price for this photo is one million dollars. I would appreciate it if you would pay in cash. Please get back to me as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Herb Dunn
“Who’s Herb Dunn?” Eddie asked.
“How should I know?” I replied. “I made him up.”
Carefully, we slipped the letter and photo into an envelope. Quincy put the address of the National Truth on the outside and enough stamps to send two ounces. (She even weighed it on a little scale she found in her father’s study.) She wrote UFO PHOTOS, DO NOT BEND on the envelope, too. We sealed it up and walked it over to the mailbox at the end of the block. All five of us crossed our fingers for good luck as we dropped it into the slot.
“All we can do now,” I said, “is wait.”
So we waited. And waited. And waited some more. It seemed like it took forever.
While we were waiting to hear from the National Truth, I worked up a profit and loss statement and presented it to the rest of the company at our next meeting.
“It doesn’t look like we’re doing very well, does it?” Rob noted.
“Every company takes a while to turn a profit,” I said. “We just have to be patient.”
* * *
PROFIT AND LOSS STATEMENT
EXPENSES
Film (pay back Quincy)
$10.95
National Truth
1.75
Bubblicious gum
.65
Postage (pay back Quincy’s dad)
.60
$13.95
INCOME
None
0
NET LOSS
$13.95
* * *
“But it’s already been two whole days!” Eddie moaned. Eight-year-olds are not exactly good at delaying gratification.
“Do you know how long it took Walt Disney to build his company?” I asked the group.
“No…”
“Neither do I,” I snapped. “But believe me, he didn’t do it in two days.”
Finally, everybody got tired of waiting to hear from the National Truth about our photo. They started bugging me to call them on the phone and see what was taking so long. I held the kids off for a week and then agreed to make the call.
The phone number inside the National Truth got me into a confusing voice-mail system. I had to punch a bunch of numbers, but finally I got one of the editors on the phone.
“Eve Stropper,” she said gruffly. “What is it?”
“I’m calling from Maine,” I told her. “I sent you a genuine UFO photo. Did you receive it?”
“Which UFO photo?” she said, unimpressed. “We get hundreds of UFO photos.”
I described the photo and the envelope it was in. Eve Stropper put me on hold while she looked around her office.
“Oh yeah, got it right here,” she finally said. “But something tells me your name isn’t Herb Dunn.”
Oops! I had forgotten I’d written the cover letter saying I was a fifty-five-year-old man.
“I…uh…well…”
“It doesn’t matter, kid,” Eve Stropper said. “You did a nice job on this picture.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Who’s kidding who, kid? This picture is as phony as a three-dollar bill.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because all UFO photos are phonies.” She laughed.
My heart sank. Quincy, Rob, and the Bogle twins were looking at me, trying to figure out what was going on. “How much are they going to pay us?” Rob whispered.
“Then you won’t print it?” I said into the phone.
“I didn’t say that,” Eve Stropper replied. “Kid, we print phony UFO pictures all the time. The only problem is we just ran a big UFO piece a couple of weeks ago. Didn’t you see it? It was a story about aliens taking over the Earth by hiding secret messages in McDonald’s Happy Meal toys. You see, there’s a secret code on the bottom of each toy. When three-year-olds see the code, they go insane.”
“But three-year-olds can’t even read yet!” I told her.
“Who cares?” Eve Stropper said. “It was our bestselling issue since the one with exclusive photos of Laura Bush sneezing.”
“That was news?” I asked, amazed.
“She had never been photographed in mid sneeze before,” she replied. “Anyway, we can’t run another UFO piece for a while. Try me again in about a year.”
“A year!” I exclaimed. “That’s like forever.”
“Sorry, kid,” Eve Stropper said. “If we ran UFO photos every week, they’d have no shock value. We’d lose our credibility. Readers would start to believe the pictures were faked.”
“But your pictures are faked!”
“Well, we don’t want them to know that,” Eve Stropper said with a chuckle. “Hey kid, you sound like you’re pretty bright. Did you shoot any pictures of Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe lately?”
“Didn’t they die a long time ago?” I asked.
“So what?” she said. “They still sell papers. To their millions of fans, they live forever.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t have any photos like that.”
“Too bad. We haven’t run a good Elvis sighting in a long time.”
I asked her to send the photo back to us and h
ung up the phone. The National Truth was not going to pay us a dime, much less a million dollars.
9
The Big Payoff
When I told everybody that the National Truth wasn’t going to use our photo, they all acted like it was the end of the world. They were moping around, hanging their heads, all depressed. As CEO of the company, it was part of my job to keep up the company morale.
“Are you going to let one little failure knock you down?” I said, pacing around the gazebo. “What do you think GRQ stands for? The Gang of Real Quitters?”
“Maybe shooting fake UFO pictures wasn’t such a good idea after all,” Rob grumped. “It was dishonest. It was cheating. It was—”
“It was brilliant,” I interrupted. “Do you think Bill Gates gave up the first time somebody told him no?”
“Did Bill Gates try to flog fake UFO snaps too?” Quincy asked.
“That’s not the point,” I told her. “The point is that we’re not quitters. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, right?”
“Try what again?” Teddy asked.
“Try another paper,” I told him. “If the National Truth doesn’t want our photo, somebody else will.”
The Bogle twins would pretty much go along with anything I told them to do, but Rob and Quincy were not all that enthusiastic about sending the photo to another paper and waiting weeks to hear back. They argued that the other sleazy papers like the National Truth probably had boxes full of UFO photos that readers had sent in. They were probably right.
The Farmington Journal is our local paper. It’s skinnier than most other newspapers and only comes out once a week. In the Farmington Journal, it’s a big news story when a school crossing guard retires. That’s front-page news. The rest of the paper is filled with announcements, like what day people should put their cans and bottles out in front of their houses for recycling. Stuff like that.