Who Ordered This Baby? Definitely Not Me!

by Henry Winkler

  “That thing is my baby sister substitute, Rosa. And she’s the guest of honor.”

  “She’s locked up in there, right?”

  “Absolutely, Harvey. Tight as a drum.”

  “Well, ordinarily, I don’t allow web-spinning things in here, but since it’s your birthday party and I don’t want to be a party pooper, I’ll make an exception this time.” He leaned up close to me and whispered, “Could you do me a favor, though, and sit at the last stool at the counter, so you don’t upset the other customers?”

  Actually, that turned out to be a fine suggestion, because it gave me room to tie my balloon under the seat of my stool and to set up the wrapped party favors between me and the jukebox on the counter. After they were set up, I reached into the plastic bag and pulled out the two hats and horns, one for me and one for Rosa.

  I put my hat on and sat there staring at Rosa, trying to figure out exactly how a person straps a party hat on a tarantula. Somehow, I didn’t think she’d like the idea of having a rubber band under her belly. And then it hit me. I pulled the elastic band as far as it would go and slid it around the plastic tank, so the hat was resting right on top of the lid.

  I noticed that the man next to me had put down his meatball sub sandwich that was dripping with tomato sauce and was watching what I was doing.

  “I didn’t think the spider would be comfortable in an elastic chinstrap,” I explained.

  “That’s very inventive,” he said.

  I wasn’t exactly sure what “inventive” meant but I was pretty sure it was a compliment, and that made me feel really good. So I said “thank you” on instinct. He nodded, so I assumed I had guessed correctly.

  While I was waiting for my pizza, the place started to fill up. When I came in, only one table had people at it, but by the time Harvey slid my slice in front of me, all three tables were full, and so were at least half the seats at the counter.

  “Here you go, kid,” Harvey said, sliding the double paper plates in front of me. “Since it’s your birthday, consider this on the house.”

  “Thanks, Harvey.”

  As much as I wanted to take a bite, I knew I had to let the pizza cool for a minute so I wouldn’t burn the roof of my mouth. While I was waiting, I took a second to look at what I had created. There I was, with a birthday hat on, a great party favor waiting to be opened, a balloon flapping in the breeze every time someone opened the front door, and a new family member enjoying the day with me.

  Hank Zipzer, you know how to throw a party! As a matter of fact, you could open a business doing this. I could see it before me. My business cards that read, “Hank Zipzer, Party Planner Extraordinaire.” Except I don’t have a clue how to spell “extraordinaire,” so maybe the cards could say, “Hank Zipzer, Party Planner Who’s Really Good.”

  I was almost finished with my pizza slice when I realized that I was being rude. I mean, here was Rosa, smelling the fabulous combination of pepperoni and cheese and toasty crust aromas that were drifting into the airholes of her tank. She was obviously hungry, because she was running in circles in her tank, up and down the sides and across the top. She was definitely dying for a taste, and I hadn’t offered her even so much as a crumb.

  “Okay, Rosa,” I whispered to her. “It’s your turn now.”

  I tore off a piece of my pizza, about the size of my thumbnail. I made sure that I had gotten crust, cheese, and pepperoni on the tiny bite. My plan was to slide the lid off just enough to drop the piece of pizza in, then close it really fast and lock it back up again.

  But sometimes plans don’t always work out like they do in your mind.

  CHAPTER 20

  Here’s a fact that I know about tarantulas even without Robert telling me. They are fast. Let me repeat that word. Faaassssstttttt!

  Before I had slid the top half an inch, Rosa was up and over the side and on the counter, barreling toward the man with the sloppy meatball sandwich. When he got a look at her running toward him, he jumped off his stool backward and backed up so fast, he sat down in the lady’s lap sitting at the table behind him.

  “Oh my word!” screamed the lady. “I don’t believe we’ve even met!”

  Rosa didn’t stop at the meatball sandwich. Oh, no. She was up and over it like it was a small hill. As she scurried down the lime green counter, she left red tomato sauce tracks where her eight legs were running toward a really pretty teenage girl who was eating a bowl of minestrone soup. Barreling along the countertop, it looked like Rosa was leaving colored footprints in wet cement. And then suddenly, she was gone, disappeared into the bowl of soup.

  “Eeuuuwwwwww!” the girl screamed. “Gross! There’s a hairy thing splashing around in my soup!”

  Harvey’s head spun around just in time to see Rosa swimming the breaststroke across the bowl of minestrone.

  “Hey, kid,” he yelled to me. “You promised to keep that thing under control!”

  That snapped me into action. I got up and dashed over to the stool where the girl had been sitting. I stuck my hand into the soup, grabbing for Rosa. But as I’ve already pointed out, tarantulas are fast. All I came up with was a fistful of zucchini and some soggy cabbage.

  “Rosa!” I yelled. “Get back here this instant. This is completely unacceptable behavior.”

  She was in no mood to listen to instructions. She stood just out of my reach on the counter, pulsating, pumping up and down on her eight legs like she was on a bouncing trampoline.

  “I need your cooperation now!” I said. “Remember what we said about using our restaurant manners.”

  I extended my hand toward her. Slowly. Slowly. Just as I went for the grab, she took off the other way, running all the way to the other end of the counter where Harvey keeps his coconut cake under a glass domed dish. Everybody from that end of the restaurant was on their feet now, and they weren’t happy.

  “A spider!” yelled a woman in a green knit cap.

  “I’m allergic to bugs!” called a man in a bow tie. “They give me a rash on my elbows!”

  “Mamma mia!” cried an Italian woman with a small mustache. “It’s going to bite us, one by one.”

  “Hank, please!” yelled Harvey. “Capture that thing.”

  “I’m trying, Harvey! I really am! But babies have a mind of their own.”

  Rosa looked over at Harvey and moved in closer, close enough for him to try to bonk her with his wooden spoon. She reached her hind leg up to her tummy, and flicked a few choice tarantula hairs in his direction.

  “Eeeuuuwww!” the teenage girl called. “The beast is flicking hair all over the place. Gross!”

  That made Harvey jump back, landing on his butt on the sandwich counter. His butt hit a bull’s-eye on the squeeze bottle of yellow mustard, which squirted all over his rear end. You can only imagine what it looked like all over the back of his pants. Let me just say, it didn’t look like mustard.

  Everyone took off to the back of the restaurant and stood huddled in a corner, smooshed into a ball of people. Rosa must have seen them and thought to herself, Hey, this is fun. She made another dash down the counter toward them, and just before she got to the very end, she jumped onto the last stool in front of them. They ran screaming with their hands in the air, into the opposite corner by the window. The man in the bow tie, who had dropped his pizza slice, stepped on it and went sliding on the cheese along the linoleum floor. He looked like he was skateboarding.

  “Whooaaaa!” he yelled.

  “Nice moves, dude,” a skateboarder from one of the other tables called out.

  A part of me wanted to step back and enjoy the scene. I mean, let’s face it. It was pretty funny. A guy in a bow tie skateboarding on melted cheese? Come on. You have to laugh. Besides, we all know that Rosa is basically harmless.

  But the other part of me, the big brother part, knew that I had to be responsible and handle the situation quickly. That part of me knew that this was not a laughing matter.

  And that was the part that cleared my brai
n and instantly created a plan of attack. I raced down to the end of the counter and took the glass dome top off the coconut cake plate. I crept as quickly and silently as I could behind Rosa and in a swift (and if I say so myself) precise move, captured her under the top. All the customers broke into applause. I didn’t realize until that moment that I had been holding my breath, which I let out in a big sigh.

  I gave Rosa a stern look.

  “You and I have to talk, young lady,” I said. “You can bet there will be consequences for this.”

  Holy moly! Now I wasn’t just sounding like my father, I had turned into him!

  I turned to all the customers and tried to smile, like this was no big deal.

  “It’s okay, folks,” I said. “The situation is under control, and there is no danger. Please go back to enjoying your meal.”

  “What about my soup?” the teenage girl said. “It’s probably got spider pee in it.”

  “Rosa and I would like to buy you another bowl,” I said, without hesitating.

  I reached into my jeans pocket to see how much money I had. I couldn’t count it very well, so I just laid it all down on the counter, pretending I knew what I was doing with it.

  “This should cover it,” Harvey said, taking a dollar and some change. I had no idea how much I had left, but I picked it all up and put it in my pocket with great confidence. You learn to put on a brave face when you can’t do math in your head.

  “Now, Hank, since you’re finished with your pizza, I think it’s time to take your spider home,” Harvey said. “And by the way, make sure you leave her there next time you come in for a slice.”

  As I was gathering up my things, the front door opened and in came Papa Pete.

  “Hey, Hankie,” he said. “I stopped by the apartment and your mom said you were here.”

  “Papa Pete, I’ve never been so happy to see you.”

  “We had a little excitement here,” Harvey said. “The kid will tell you about it. Right after he escorts the spider out of here…which he will be doing immediately if not sooner.”

  I looked at Rosa sitting under the glass cake dome and Papa Pete followed my gaze. There she was, having her own party under there, happy as can be. She had found a shred of coconut and was having a grand old time lapping it up, or whatever spiders do with birthday cake.

  “Hank, what’s she doing here?” Papa Pete asked.

  “I invited her to my birthday party,” I said. “But she hogged the show, just like a typical baby. That’s what you get for trying to share. The baby takes over.”

  “Families share,” Papa Pete said. “That’s what they do. With certain exceptions. And one of them is birthdays. That’s your special day. No sharing required.”

  “Tell that to Rosa,” I said.

  “I will, as soon as we get her out of Harvey’s cake dish. She seems to have made herself at home with the coconut frosting.”

  I went and got Rosa’s plastic tank, tore off another little piece of pizza, and dropped it in. I brought it down to the cake dome and quickly lifted it just enough to slide Rosa’s tank inside. She didn’t attempt to get out this time, because she was busy chowing down on her dessert. But within a few seconds, the pizza smell hit her, and she stopped eating the coconut and made a beeline for the pizza. Who wouldn’t? Harvey’s pizza is the best.

  Once she was inside her tank, Papa Pete lifted the cake dome and I slammed on the lid.

  “Mission accomplished,” Papa Pete said.

  I gathered my party favors and balloon, thanked Harvey for his patience, waved good-bye to all the other customers, and headed out the door.

  I had the feeling they were all very happy to see us go.

  CHAPTER 21

  As Papa Pete walked me home, I thought about everything that had happened on my party day. And if I give myself any more parties in the future, here are ten rules I made for myself.

  HANK ZIPZER’S TEN RULES FOR SELF-PARTY GIVING

  Only invite two-legged creatures with nostrils. (Except for Cheerio, who is used to parties and has great party manners.)

  Eat your black-and-white birthday cookie first in case one of your guests decides to take a bath in a bowl of soup.

  Don’t forget to take your whoopee cushion party favor or you won’t be able to put it under the big butt of Nick McKelty.

  Make sure your balloon doesn’t say “Get Well Soon” because all the grown-ups want to check and make sure you don’t have a fever.

  Take at least one bite of your pepperoni pizza, and if a spider gets loose before you have time to finish it, make sure that you ask for a doggie bag. When you get home, remind the dog that doggie bags are for people.

  I was just starting to think up Number Six when we reached the front door of my building. Sorry that I didn’t get to ten. I would have, if the walk from Harvey’s to my apartment wasn’t so short.

  CHAPTER 22

  Papa Pete dropped me off in front of my building, and as I got in the elevator, my fingers were itching to press the six button instead of ten. Six is Frankie’s floor, and I really wanted to check in with him and tell him the story of The Spider Who Ate My Birthday Party. When you have a best friend, there’s nothing better than being able to share a great adventure, even if it turned your birthday party into a bad horror movie.

  I didn’t press six, though. I had made such a big deal about giving myself my own birthday party and not needing any of my friends to be there that I felt I should finish the day out all by myself. I mean, either you’re an independent party giver and goer, or you’re not. Right? And that’s same reason I didn’t push the fourth-floor button, which is Ashley’s floor. So my thumb had no choice but to find its way to the tenth-floor button, which would take me home.

  “Rosa, I hope you’re thinking about what you just did,” I said to her as we rode up the elevator. “I really had a great party planned, and it did not include you doing the backstroke in a bowl of minestrone.”

  Rosa just sat there, hanging on the side of her tank, pulsating. But her body was turned away from me. I don’t think she could look me square in the eye. She knew. I truly believed she had learned her lesson. And I didn’t want to punish her. After all, she’s just a baby.

  “Hey, everyone, I’m home,” I called as I walked in the door. Silence yelled back at me. The only thing that broke the silence was Cheerio, who scampered down the hallway and, as he always does, slid the last seven feet on the slippery floor.

  “Hey, boy,” I said, scratching him behind the ears. “At least someone’s glad to see me.”

  I decided to put Rosa’s tank down on the coffee table in the living room, so she could have a look around and get used to that room, since she hadn’t spent a lot of time in there. Then I went into my bedroom and tossed my jacket on my bed instead of hanging it up right away. I made a mental note to hang it up before my mom saw it. I looked around for Cheerio, who usually follows me wherever I go, so that I could have a friendly boy-dog wrestle, which is our tradition when I come home. He wasn’t there, but I heard him growling in the living room…a low growl that came from the bottom of his throat. This was definitely not a Cheerio sound.

  I raced into the living room and found him standing on the coffee table, crouching like a lion and inching himself toward Rosa’s tank. He had his head down and his eyes never left Rosa’s tank. He was definitely giving her the evil eye. Wow, my little Cheerio suddenly looked like one of those hunting dogs that you see on Animal Planet.

  Rosa wasn’t taking it too well. She was hunched in the corner of her tank, hanging upside down off the upper corner next to the lid. She had made herself into the smallest ball possible. Seven of her legs were wrapped around her body, and she was using the eighth to hang on for dear life. I could tell she was trying to make herself invisible, and I couldn’t blame her. I mean, to her, Cheerio must have looked like a T. rex about to gobble her up for lunch.

  “Cheerio!” I said in a voice so harsh it surprised even me. “This is comple
tely unacceptable. Get off the table this instant.”

  Cheerio looked at me and growled.

  “Don’t use that tone of growl with me, young man,” I said. “And get off that table immediately. You’re scaring your baby sister. You should be nice to her.”

  Cheerio only did half of what I commanded him to do. He did jump down off the table, but instead of being nice to Rosa, he started to run in circles around the table. He usually chases his tail around in circles just as his hobby, but now, it seemed like he was running in circles to keep me from getting close to the table.

  “Cheerio, sit!” I said. “And I’m not kidding.”

  I must have had that “you better listen and listen now” tone to my voice that my dad is so good at, because Cheerio’s bottom hit the floor at lightning speed. The truth is, and I don’t mean to insult Cheerio, when you’re a dachshund with those short legs, you don’t have far to go before your butt is introduced to the floor.

  “That’s more like it,” I said to him. Then I reached out and grabbed Rosa’s tank. She was still curled up in the top corner, although the motion of me lifting the tank made her sway from side to side like she was on a swing.

  “You okay, girl?” I said to her. “Cheerio didn’t mean to scare you. He’s probably just jealous of you, because you came to the party and he wasn’t invited. It’s hard to have a new baby in the house.”

  Whoa, suddenly it hit me like a sack of cat’s-eye marbles. Cheerio had the same feelings that I was experiencing. I mean, he had always been the main dog in our house, and my favorite pet. We had a special relationship, him and me, like Batman and Robin. Now that Rosa was here, he was scared that he was going to lose his place with me.

  Wow, did I know that feeling.

  I put Rosa down behind me, out of Cheerio’s sight. Then I kneeled down right in front of him and scratched him on his favorite spot. I started at his ears and worked my way down the sides of his mouth, ending up at his nose. I could tell that this was a super deluxe scratch treatment for him because he got a faraway look in his eyes, and his back leg—do not ask me, because I don’t know if it was his right or his left—started to scratch the air like it does when he’s over-the-moon happy.