by Tween Hobo
5/24
YOLO (You Only Log Once)
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
5/25
Is there some kind of app I can download to spot nearby circuses?
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
5/26
Another bunch’a rotten luck: jumpin’ the night train outta Spokane I lost like eighteen of my origami swans.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
5/27
Worked a whole day for some black-eyed peas—cuz I thought the man was talking about the band. #FML
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
5/28
Ragamuffins don’t come gluten-free.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
5/29
Whittlin’ (on Ritalin).
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
5/30
I ain’t sayin’ she’s a gold digger—but she is panning for gold in the Yukon Territory.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
5/31
Today we cross the border into a Chipotle.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/1
Cain’t sleep a wink, bedroll’s too thin, plus Hot Johnny Two-Cakes won’t text me back :(
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/2
The video game of my life would be Grand Theft Scrunchie.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/3
Holla at me if you’ve been to town and learned all the new dances.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/4
My teepee has heart stencils.
History’s Greatest Tweets
Doing a report on History’s Greatest Tweets.
1. “TGIC!! (Thank God It’s Canada)”—Harriet Tubman @tubster
2. “HEADS UP GUYZ THE BRITISH R COMInGg”—@PaulyDingDong
3. “Women should TOTES have the right to VOTE”—Susan B. Anthony @CoinsAreDollarsToo
4. “We’re related to monkeys. #DealWithIt”—@Darwinning
5. “@lewis @clark Been by this ocean 15 mins where u at”—Sacajawea @NotPocahontas
6. “Check out this link for one weird old trick about #corngrowing (h/t @NausetPeople)”—@pilgrimdude1
7. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that Taco Bell’s new Monterey Jack chicken burrito is flavortastic.”—@ThomasJeff / (Promoted Tweet)
8. “Shocker: I flew a kite today and it got #real. Click over to my blog for more info”—Ben Franklin @PhillyLove
9. “If I drown, I’m not a witch. If I float, you’ll kill me anyway. #Mondays”—@GoodySalem
10. “Sorry, brah, it’s all in the game RT @Caesar Et tu Brute?”—@BrutusXLIV
June 6
* * *
Salt Lake City, Utah
If life on the road has taught me one thing, it’s that you never know what’s coming next. We’re on our way to LA to find my brother, but things have gotten even more exciting. I knew I was destined to meet Stumptown Jim, but until tonight I didn’t exactly know why. Well, you’re not going to believe this. Stumptown Jim, it turns out, has a brother too. A missing brother. OMG, I don’t want to spoil it for you! Just gather round and let me blow your mind.
So, it was a typical night down in Hobo Jungle. Campfire. Harmonicas. A few bad women. Me and Tin Cap Earl were doing our Dr Pepper hand-slap routine and sharing the edible parts of a (spoiled alert) rotten head of cabbage. Blind Hank was inexpertly gutting a fish, Toothpick Frank was futzing with his Pinterest page, and a couple other guys just lay there slowly dying.
Stumptown Jim seemed to be in a foul mood. The light in his eyes had gone dim, and he kept letting out this low, sad whistle. At a certain point I was like, “What is the deal with Stumptown Jim tonight?” Tin Cap shook his head. “He gets like this sometimes. When the past creeps up on him, he gets lost in it.” I was like, “Yeah, okay, but he doesn’t have to be such a Debbie Downer.” I purposely said this loud enough for Jim to overhear. But he continued to look hollow and ignore me.
Whiskey Bob, overhearing us, chimed in, “Betcha six Buffalo nickels he’s thinkin’ back on the day he got the name Stumptown Jim. You ever hear the story of why they call him that?” Um, no, I said. Tell me now. “It’s not my place to tell,” said Whiskey Bob. “You’ll have to ask him yourself. And if I were you, I wouldn’t ask right now.” But you’re not me, I said. If you were, you’d be much more well versed in the works of Judy Blume. And I’m not gonna sit here and let my BFFL blubber all night. I went right up to Stumptown Jim and flicked him on the ear.
“Dude,” I said. “What is your malfunction?” Fast-forward through twelve minutes of sorrowful silence. Then, finally: “The past,” he said. “The past is gone. Gone and lost and vanished and ain’t never comin’ back.” Okay, yeah, duh, I said. But we’re here right now, aren’t we? Can’t we just chillax? “Part of me’s here,” he said. “And part of me ain’t.”
“Stop speaking in riddles,” I told him. “Riddles are for math books and long car rides. What happened to you in the past? What’s the secret reason why they call you Stumptown Jim?”
A giant gasp was heard around the campsite. Multiple hobos gasping at once is a truly hideous sound. Like some kind of sewer being dredged. Plus, with that ague still going around, there was extra phlegm. I refused to be swayed: “Out with it, buddy, Best friends don’t keep secrets from each other.”
Jim bowed his head so low he was practically underground. Then, all at once, he straightened up, and with the courage of a Powerpuff Girl, he told his story.
The Story of Why They Call Him Stumptown Jim
Kid (this is Stumptown Jim talking now), before you were born, there was a music festival. It was called Woodstock ’99.
Folks traveled from all across the land to join hands and sing along to the powerful tunes of bands like Guster, Korn, and the String Cheese Incident. It was meant to be a positive gathering, a communal celebration of light and love and the human spirit, with single-serving pizzas available for $12 and bottled water available for $4. But the gods did not smile upon the weekend. And things went dreadfully wrong.
My younger brother and I had journeyed to the festival together, hoping to barter for food and friends with some rad wallets we had made out of duct tape. My brother, who was really quite young at the time, was jittery, nervous, and wild. It was to be his first concert—and what a lineup! What a show! G. Love and Special Sauce were there. Everclear was there. Rusted Root. The Offspring. Jamiroquai.
And best of all, on Saturday night, we would stand in the presence of, and be rocked by, the magnificence known as Limp Bizkit. Limp! What a word to call such hard men! We laughed at the irony. “This will be a night to remember!” exclaimed my little bro, tossing the last of our duct-tape wallets into the air. And how right he was. But the memory is a harrowing one.
Only a few songs into their set, maestro Fred Durst and the Bizkit ensemble dove into a stirring rendition of their hit single “Break Stuff.” And the crowd, a horde of maniacs in checkerboard Vans, took the chorus all too literally. Break stuff they did, as if Dionysus himself had arisen in the soul-patched, Kangol-hatted face of Durst and commanded them to destroy the very ritual of music itself. They tore plywood from the walls, overturned the Porta Potties, set plastic bottles on fire. The mosh pit became a serpents’ den. And my little brother was caught in the mix!
I was momentarily blinded due to somebody’s breaking a glow stick and splooging its phosphorescent liquid in my eyes. When my vision cleared, I had lost sight of my brother. I called out for him, panicked, and began to force my way through the mob. Up on the stage, Fred Durst was halfheartedly advocating against further violence, while at the same time making it known that he did not want us to “mellow out” like some risible Alanis Morissette listeners. At the very mention of Morissette’s name I saw a girl get punched in the face. Where was my brother?! I scanned the flickering darkness.
At last I spotted him—and not a moment too soon. Hidden behind some enormous speakers, he was up against a wall, held hostage
by a quartet of Juggalos. Yes, Juggalos—those devoted worshippers of the Insane Clown Posse, who channel their aggression against more commercial music acts into black-and-white face paint, twisted Caucasian dreadlocks, and a tongue-in-cheek attitude toward basic hygiene. These Juggalos had captured my little brother, who had made the rookie mistake of wearing a Limp Bizkit T-shirt to a Limp Bizkit concert and had thus inspired their condescending rage. “You think this nonsense is authentic?!” one of them spat at him. “This ain’t real! This ain’t underground! Them jokers is just MTV’s copy of ICP!” My brother stammered, and tears sprang to his eyes, possibly from fear, but more likely from sheer disappointment.
I tapped the biggest Juggalo on the shoulder. “Say, fellas,” I began, hoping to reason with them. All four whipped around, their painted faces more open than I expected. We might have all become friends were it not for the unfortunate puncturing of our little moment by a hot-pink explosion. A gang of paintball warriors had come blasting through the crowd, fully decked out in kneepads and face masks. They wielded their Crayola-spurting weaponry like trained soldiers, and despite an evident shared interest in paint, it seemed their enemy number one was any and all Insane Clowns. A messy, neon-tinted battle erupted, as the fires burned in the distance and Durst licked his microphone.
I was fending off a Juggalo with one arm and kicking away a paintball gun with one leg when I saw that my brother was about to be shot, at close range. With all the fraternal love in the world I leapt to save him. As I dove in front of him, making myself into his human shield, the trigger was pulled. I got shot. Right in the crotch. I felt like my soul was on fire. Later, at the emergency room, the doctors shook their heads. There was nothing they could do. My physical being had been abruptly deformed. In short, they broke my junk. Those paintball guns should really come with warnings, the doctors said.
My brother felt so guilty, and I so ashamed, that we never spoke of what happened. Shortly thereafter I left home, catching out on my first train ride. I haven’t seen my brother in over a decade. If he thinks of me still, he thinks of me as “Jim.” The Jim I used to be. Whereas out here, on the road, everybody knows me as the man I now am. The man with only a useless stump. Stumptown Jim.
* * *
Okay—WHOA. That was intense! And semi-inappropriate! But he’s done talking now. It’s me again. Tween Hobo. #Represent
Finished with his story, Jim sat by the fire, worn-out. The other hobos held their heads in their hands and moaned. I tried to come up with an adequate response. “Uh, YIKES,” I said. “That suuuuccckkkssss.”
“You’re tellin’ me,” sighed Jim.
“The saddest part,” I said, “is that you never saw your brother again. Don’t you miss him?”
“I’m not sure that’s the saddest part. But, yeah, I do. I kinda get to wonderin’ what he’s up to, now and again.”
Okay—now here’s where the amazeballs part occurs. When Jim said, “Now and again,” he glanced down at his left wrist. His left wrist. Where, I noticed for the first time, he was wearing a bracelet. A weird old leather-string bracelet. A BRACELET EXACTLY THE SAME AS MR. BRINK’S!!!!!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!?!?!??!!?!?!!!!
If I’d been an owl, my head would have spun all the way around. If I’d had a pet falcon, I would have launched it into the heavens with the command, “Jazzy! Fly! Fly back to Charlottesville and tell Mr. Brink that I have found his missing brother!!!!!”
Since no birds of prey were available, I basically just gawked. Jim was like, “What?” And I was like, “Brace . . . let . . .” He goes, “This old thing? What about it?”
I was about to start gushing and yodeling all over Hobo Jungle about how Jim and Mr. Brink were long-lost brothers and how thanks to yours truly Tween Hobo they could now be reunited, but I saw this strange little twitch in Jim’s eye, and it stopped me. I knew my BFFL pretty well at this point, and something told me he wasn’t ready to see his brother again. All in good time, I told myself. And now I had a powerful secret.
“What about it?” Jim asked again.
I drummed up a reply. “Oh—nothing. It just reminds me of—well. It reminds me of my brother. And how much I miss him. Oh, Jim, do you think I’ll ever see my brother again?!”
“Of course I do. We’re going out to LA to find him, ain’t we?”
“Yeah,” I said, staring at the fire. “I hope so.” And I bit my lip to stop myself from grinning.
(Btw, sometimes I wish I’d lived through historic times, but that Woodstock ’99 sounds like a real nightmare.)
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/7
To stay safe on the rails I have to look like a boy, but that’s okay, because Justin Bieber looks like a girl.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/8
I’m so hungry I could eat a Trivial Pursuit pie with all six wedges filled in.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/9
Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Give a man a hypercolor T-shirt, he’ll look awesome for the rest of his life.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/10
Unlike most kids my age, I have like a one-fortnight attention span.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/11
The problem with middle school boys is they don’t have huge beards.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/12
With all my creativity and spunk I’ll definitely get a good job someday. Or at least a good . . . cardboard box.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/13
Someday they’ll tell my story on a really notorious Wikipedia page.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/14
Might you allow a poor beggar past the mesh gates to your bouncy castle?
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/15
I’m just a low-down, rascally scamp, but the elegance of a tube-to-mouth yogurt-delivery system is not lost on me.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/16
My folks never larned me no netiquette.
Subtweets to a Pony
Subtweet (noun): a tweet posted with the specific intention of getting a message across subliminally to someone who you hope will be reading it.
Example: A boy with a crush on his camp counselor, the one who was always down at the waterfront handling the canoes, might tweet: “Got canoeing on my mind . . .”
Then, when the camp counselor, who follows him, sees the tweet, she might realize that he has her on his mind. This would make it an effective subtweet.
Of course the problem with subtweets is that you never know who’s reading your tweets and mistakenly assuming your subtweets are directed at them. So, for example, when this kid tweets, “Got canoeing on my mind . . . ,” he might be horrified to realize that the tweet has been seen by the girl in Bunk 6 who stalked him all summer and she thinks he’s referring to the time she was stern and he was bow and they rowed all the way to the creepy island in the middle of the lake. And now she thinks he likes her back.
So to avoid having a situation like that on my hands, I’m just gonna come out and say exactly who these subtweets are meant for.
These are my SUBTWEETS TO A PONY:
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/18
Fantasizing about feeding oats to a certain someone.
#SubtweetToAPony
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/18
There’s someone out there who I think is top-notch. He has a black spot on his nose. I’m not saying his name tho.
#SubtweetToAPony
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/18
You think you’re great because your nose is so soft, like I even care. #SubtweetToAPony
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/18
I want a #PONY2012. #SubtweetToAPony
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/18
Wild horses couldn’t drag me back home but a pony?—yeah, that could. #SubtweetToAPony
A Facebook Message from the Fifth-Grader Formerly Known as Tessa, My Second-Best Friend
Today I got a Facebook message from Tessa!!!! Copied here in its full pain-in-the-buttness.
Wednesday, 7:48 p.m.
From: Tessa Alexandra
umm . . . where are u . . . lol?! we finished 5th grade wit out u :( now it’s summer vacay—r u ever coming back to c-ville??? u missed a lot at skool this year—we got a lil turtle—he’s soooooooooo cute but he still doesn’t have a name :(. we also had to memorize some “great american poems.” it was booooorrrinnnggg so i just did ke$ha lyrics instead :) oh, but guess what?! mr. brink got switched from 5th to 6th so he’s gonna b our teacher again next yr!!!!! also kevin r. is still #gross. he eats too many #cheetos.
im rly sad becuz u r my 2nd-bffl and u r missing :(. i dont want to hurt ur feelvings but if u dont come back soon i might make Emma 2nd and u 3rd. pls come back soon cutie pieeeee.
miss u
xoooxoxoxoxooxox
mrs. tessa jonas
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/19
This railroad cop’s telling me how I need to buy a valid ticket and I’m all *looks straight into camera*.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/20
Rainbows remind me there is always hope I might get to eat some Lucky Charms.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
6/21
Most of the traveling salesmen I meet are selling illegal DVDs.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo