by Tween Hobo
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• 25%—Food
• 25%—Shelter
• 25%—Clothing
• 25%—Six Flags
As Seen In
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• Denver County Juvenile Court Records, Colorado v. Clementine O’Bama
• Tessa Alexandra’s Facebook Page, Top Friends List
• Milk Carton, “Missing Girl,” Various US Cafeterias
Rewards
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• Pledge $100 or more: get ten (10) fuzzy stickers, ten (10) oilies, and whichever of my sparkly hearts you want except the blue one
• Pledge $10 or more: get one (1) fuzzy sticker and one (1) Lisa Frank unicorn (previously stuck to my notebook, semiwrinkled)
• Pledge $1 or more: get one (1) sticker I peeled off a nonorganic lemon
• The greatest gift is the gift of giving to a celebrity’s Kickstarter.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/17
So psyched to be in this Gypsy caravan—although technically I think I’ve been kidnapped.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/18
The Gypsies are favoriting all my tweets :) #kidnapped #NBD
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/19
A nip of fall in the air reminds me that it’s time to insert a full set of candy-corn teeth.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/20
Trying to calculate how many towns I can hit up for candy on Halloween with the North American freight schedules being what they are.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/21
People who just leave bowls of candy outside so u don’t have to answer the door, I promise to honor yr system 100%. Where do u fools live?
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/22
When I come to your house, you will have the option of giving me either candy or money for a good cause (which is candy).
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/23
You bums can forget about me trading any of my Mounds for your Almond Joys. #NutAllergy #ImNotHereToMakeFriends
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/24
Old hobos speak of a time when Halloween costumes weren’t based on memes.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/25
You know what a sext is, but do you know what a hext is? It’s a text from a witch.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/26
Montana Slim says he’s going as the Yellow Guy from the “Gangnam Style” video.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/27
I might go as Slutty Anne of Green Gables.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/28
Diana is my bosom chum! #SluttyAnneOfGreenGables
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/29
Slutty Anne of Green Gables hooks up with all the boys of Avonlea, not just Gilbert. I’m looking at you, Moody Spurgeon MacPherson.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
10/30
Some of my best friends are goblins.
Hallowe’en
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(that just means Halloween)
I’m gonna come out and say it: Halloween is the best holiday ever invented. Sure, Christmas is kind of a rush, but then it’s 6:35 a.m. and you’ve already opened all your presents and you don’t have the right batteries and the stuff your brother got is better and besides, the whole Santa charade, it just gets exhausting. But Halloween? Halloween is sophisticated. Halloween happens at night. Halloween draws you into a tantalizing vortex of skeletons and Scream masks and animatronic tarantulas, and you know what’s at the hot, pulsating center of that vortex? BITE-SIZE FRICKING SNICKERS BARS. THAT’S WHAT. It’s like all the parents in the world took drugs and said, you know what, it’s a school night, let’s take our young daughter out on the town in a ratchet Disney Princess dress and full makeup and knock on everybody’s door until this plastic pumpkin is filled to the brim with world-class Hershey’s treats, which she then gets to keep in her room, to be eaten at her discretion. Whoever the freaks were that came up with Halloween deserve a Caldecott.
So I won’t go into too much detail about what happened to me this Halloween, mostly because I’m having a hard time recalling specifics through my sugar haze. (I’m riding an empty grainer through Texas Hill Country, divvying up my tremendous candy pile with TGLDIA, who is not allowed to eat chocolate or, really, any of this stuff, so I get most of it, and she gets a piece of beef jerky, which is basically the Toblerone of the dog world, so she’s psyched.) The key thing that happened was, I won a costume contest. Accidentally. And then all the kids in the town dressed up like me.
It went a little something like this. Having rolled into town on Halloween afternoon in the back of a Gypsy caravan (or, to be precise, a Dodge Grand Caravan driven by a polite Italian couple), I wandered into the parking lot of the Austin Jewish Community Center just as the kids were lining up in their costumes to be judged. I scoped out the competition and was impressed: there were your standard-issue witches, pirates, and Power Rangers, but also a spray-painted robot (homemade, #respect), a zombie Tinker Bell, and a two-headed girl who was really a pair of one-headed girls in an oversize University of Texas sweatshirt. (Which made me think—it would be tricky for Siamese twins to pull off a successful Parent Trap situation.) As the wobbly line of colorful characters arranged itself beneath the watchful eyes of grown-ups I assumed to be parents and/or rabbis, I emerged from the bushes in my tattered and filthy ensemble, mascara smeared under my eyes, hot-pink bindle perched over my shoulder.
A woman with craft-fair earrings and a fleece vest spotted me and held up her hand. “Hey, we’ve got one more,” she called out, and motioned at me to come over. “Look at this—she’s a hobo! Oh, that’s terrific. Stand over here, Miss Hobo.” The whole crowd turned to check me out, and I heard appreciative murmurs ripple through the parking lot. “Wow, she’s so dirty,” one kid said. For a moment I considered correcting their mistake and explaining that this was my everyday street style and that I was an actual hobo. But just as quickly I realized there was probably candy, or even cold cash, on the table here, and I might as well try my luck at nabbing a prize. So I lined up. The yarmulked Harry Potter next to me wrinkled his nose and shifted slightly to the left.
Obviously, I won. I mean I swept. Craft-Fair Earrings was the main judge, and she said my costume was so “terrific” she had to give me three prizes: Most Convincing, Zaniest, and Most Socially Relevant in the Current Economic Climate. When I untied my bindle to tuck away my candy booty (booty means “prizes,” LOL), she oohed and aahed some more: “Look, she has a railroad spike in there! Oh, that’s hysterical. That’s a real period detail!” (When she said “period detail,” I thought she was referring to my tampons, which I was still carrying, and I got embarrassed.) All the kids circled around me and poked at me and sniffed me and made awful faces and laughed and turned to their parents and/or rabbis and said, “She’s awesome! I want to be a hobo!” I didn’t think much of it at the time. I just grabbed my bindle and said shalom.
But to my surprise, later that night, when the trick-or-treating began, I saw that I had made quite an impression. Gone were the witches, robots, and Tinker Bells. In their place was a horde of little derelicts, each decked out in copycat rags, with an imitation bindle apiece. Everyone was a hobo!!!! It was mayhem!!! The neighborhood looked like District 12 from The Hunger Games on a bad day. And all these bums were angling for a handout. Door-to-door they went, knocking and begging without shame. I’d get to a house and the people inside would already be tired of me. “Not another hobo!” they’d moan. “What’s this town coming to?!” And they’d toss an Almond Joy in my bucket and slam the door before I could say, “Nut allergy.” It was infuriating. I wanted to kick the door back open and shout, “It’s not fair! I’m the real Tween Hobo! These kids are all copying me!”—but that would only draw attention to the fact that my outfit was
actually not even a costume in the first place. Instead, I just sighed and candyjacked a stray ladybug, who was too much of a baby to fight back.
Okay—but here’s the twist. I turned a corner and ran into the lady with the craft-fair earrings from the JCC, who immediately recognized me. “Look, it’s Little Miss Hobo!” she cried. “Well, aren’t you a trendsetter!” She pushed her own daughter, who was toddling beside her, fully bindled out, forward to meet me. “Rivka, say hi,” she commanded, and then, just making a general comment on everything, shouted, “Terrific!”
Rivka, who was a teensy little thing, approached me shyly. I inspected her. The costume was solid. Her hair was a mess, her face was dirty, and she wore a pair of overalls straight out of a Mary-Kate and Ashley adaptation of John Steinbeck. Most authentic looking of all was her bindle. It was made of a blue bandana—an old, distinctly weather-beaten blue bandana. “Wait a second,” I said, freaking out. “That’s Stumptown Jim’s bandana!”
Rivka’s mom, aka Craft-Fair Earrings, leaned in. “What’s that? Whose bandana?”
“Stumptown Jim. He’s my best friend, even though we got in a huge fight. I’ve been looking for him. That’s his bandana. I’d know it anywhere! Where did you guys find it?”
“By the choo-choo trains,” said Rivka, laying the teensiness on a bit thick IMHO.
“That’s right,” said her mom. “We went down to the railroad tracks, to get inspired. And we found this old bandana tied to a post. Isn’t it just—”
“Terrific!” I finished for her, and tore off toward the rail yard. Now I knew for sure that Jim wanted me to find him. He was leaving messages for me! He had tied his bandana around that post so I would see it and know that he was out there, thinking of me. With TGLDIA by my side, her little tongue hanging out of her mouth like a small, wet rag, we ran through the dark, past clumps of hobo-fied trick-or-treaters, all the way down to the tracks, where we squatted in wait for a train to come.
We’re on our way to find Jim now. The past is past. The future lies ahead. I do get to wondering, though, how the city of Austin is handling its sudden spike in child vagrancy. Sakes alive—I never said I was a role model!
If I, Tween Hobo, made a joke Twitter acct, it’d be a li’l raisin guy who dried up in the sun & was packing 2 pistols & doing bank heists, etc.
Fake Twitter Accounts
My own Twitter account is 100 hundred percent authentic and bona fide. I am totally opposed to putting anything online that is not accurate and real, because otherwise how is the government supposed to keep track of us all? Having said that, though, I do have a bunch of ideas for joke accounts, so here they are, and have at ’em.
Tween Hobo’s Ideas for Hilarious Joke Twitter Accounts
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1. Hot-Tempered Li’l Raisin Guy (@RaisinGuy)
2. Badass Bald Eagle in a Jean Jacket (@EagleDude)
3. Strict but Fun Governess (@MaryPoppins)
4. Single Eagle Who Just Wants to Get Married and Settle Down* (@OkEagle)
5. Sociopathic Yoga Teacher (@Namastank)
6. Proud Cat Lady (@CatPride)
7. Frontier Woman Kidnapped by Indians Who Is Kind of Getting into It (@HappyCaptive)
8. Eighties Businesswoman (@ShoulderPadz)
9. Slutty Ghost (@SlutGhost)
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
11/3
This train is all Okies, Arkies, Texans, and sixth-graders (me).
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
11/4
Who should I vote for if I want to keep my Nerf gun and also get a Nerf gun for my baby but not get married because boys are gross?
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
11/5
If I made the laws, we’d pick our presidents the old-fashioned way: Funny Hat Contest.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
11/6
Dear Mrs. Roosevelt, how toned were your biceps?
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
11/7
Writing a tragic American saga about homework: The Grapes of Math.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
11/8
The past ten years can be called a Lost Decade for the American Middle Class—and also for my missing Slinky.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
11/9
Gr8 Depressions are sooo depressing :(
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
11/10
I go off a fiscal cliff every time I go near a Claire’s boutique.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
11/11
Scrolling through Bieber’s tweets, Johnny Cash “Hurt” on repeat.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
11/12
Gucci Gucci Louis Louis Fendi Fendi Burlap
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
11/13
These rollin’ Oklahoma hills are redonkulous.
* * *
* A lot of my ideas are about eagles for some reason.
When a man is starving, he won’t really appreciate your scratch-n-sniff sticker collection.
November 15
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Sallisaw, Oklahoma
To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not help what was already a bad hair day.
The hitchhiker (me) had traveled a long way, and now she walked down the dusty road, coughing a bit, hoping it wasn’t strep™. Her trusty little dog marched beside her, flicking away the heat and flies with her tail. The dog was thirsty. So was the hitchhiker. And superhungry too.
A big, slow tortoise was crawling across the road, and it made the hitchhiker think of the tiny turtle in her fifth-grade classroom who still needed a name. Maybe, if she ever went home again, she would name it Zooey. Zooey Descha-shell.
The tortoise was taking its sweet time getting across the pavement, and now a vehicle was approaching—a white RV. The hitchhiker didn’t think she could handle seeing that old tortoise get smushed. So she leapt out into the road and waved her arms in the air frantically. The RV came to a screeching halt.
All the doors popped open and out spilled a jumbled bunch of people that the hitchhiker supposed was a family, as opposed to, say, a rock band on tour. There was a dad, a mom, two older sons, a pregnant daughter, her skeezy boyfriend, two little children, and a very old lady. “What do you think you’re doing?” shouted the dad. “You coulda been killt!” They seemed to pronounce certain words in the past tense like that. Killt. Wisht.
“You were gonna run over that turtle,” said the hitchhiker defensively.
“Think I give ten cents about a reptile?” yelled the dad. “I got troubles enough! I got a whole mess’a troubles, believe you me!”
His wife tried to calm him down. “Now, Pa,” she said, doing that weird thing where the wife calls her husband Pa. “She was only tryin’ ta be a Good Samaritan. Ain’t that right, little fella?” She seemed to be referring to the hitchhiker as “little fella,” which was also weird, since the hitchhiker (me) was twelve years old and right on the verge of actually needing a bra. “Now, what on frying earth are you doing out here by your lonesome, little fella?”
The hitchhiker was about to answer, but she got distracted by the two little kids, who had come right up and started petting her dog. The dog, who was known officially as The Greatest Little Dog In America, seemed to take an immediate liking to the strange, towheaded little boy and girl and was licking their hands in a vivacious and friendly manner that made the hitchhiker feel possessive. She jerked at the little dog’s rope to pull her closer, as the mom did a similar thing vis-à-vis the little kids. “Ruthie! Winfield! You two git over here, now! We got to keep the fambly together!” The two children, evidently scared of their mom, reluctantly backed off the dog and away from the hitchhiker.
The pregnant daughter was yawning a lot and kept trying to lean on her skeezy boyfriend, who was housing a bag of Late Night All-Nighter Cheeseburger Doritos and not really sharing. The very old lady was tottering around and mumbling ferociously about air-c
onditioning. One of the older sons was relieving himself on the side of the road, while the other, who had a more heroic air about him, came over and gave his mom a little shoulder massage. The dad whipped out his busted old cell phone to check the time. “Lookit,” he said. “We’re behind schedule. Everybody back in. Let’s go.”
“We cain’t go, Pa,” said the mom. “We cain’t jus’ up and leave a child on the road.”
“Sure we can,” said Pa. “She ain’t our kin! ’Sides, we don’t know who her folks are. Maybe they live round these parts. Maybe she’s jus’ walkin’ home.”
“Ain’t nobody live round these parts no more, Pa, and you know it,” scolded his wife. “Everybody’s gone. Place cleared out. Us here is some of the last holdouts, and now we goin’ too.”
The little girl, Ruthie, started jumping up and down. “She can come with us! She and her little doggy!”
Before the hitchhiker could protest, Pa did it for her. “Heck no, she cain’t,” he sputtered. “We ain’t got provisions! We cain’t feed an extra mouth—two mouths, if you’re countin’ the dog! We ain’t got enough to feed ourselves.” And he looked as if he might start to cry. The more heroic older son stayed quiet but wiped his nose in solidarity with his father’s pain.
“Well, now, think about it, Pa,” said the mom. “Might be good to have a dog with us. Might be a kind of security. Gon’ be stayin’ in all sorts of who-knows-wheres, in camps and tents and all manner of backroads places. A dog at night could be a help to us. Might be a protector.”