Funny Boy Takes on the Chit-Chatting Cheeses from Chattanooga

by Dan Gutman

  It was late, and I had to get up for school in the morning. Bob Foster flipped off the TV set, a worried expression on his face.

  “I don’t know why,” Bob Foster whispered, “but something tells me those are not normal cheeses.”

  [Imagine scary music here.]

  CHAPTER 4

  IF YOU’RE A BOY, THINK ABOUT SKIPPING THIS CHAPTER, BECAUSE IT’S ABOUT LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! YUCK, DISGUSTING!

  It was a beautiful, sun-kissed day, with puffy white clouds hanging in the sky like gigantic cotton candy. But none of that had anything to do with this book, of course.

  The news that four alien cheeses had landed in Wisconsin was not a big story at first. When I looked in the newspaper the next morning, the front page headline did not shout in huge letters ALIEN CHEESES LAND IN WISCONSIN! The headline read SCHOOL BOARD TO HIRE NEW CROSSING GUARDS. In fact, there wasn’t even an article anywhere in the paper about an alien landing.

  You see, there’s something you need to know about the state of Wisconsin. It is the cheese capital of the world.

  That’s no joke. My foster dad Bob Foster’s hobby is cheese, and he knows more about cheese than just about anybody in the world. Bob told me that Wisconsin produces more cheese than any state in America, and more cheese than most entire countries. You’ve seen those guys at Green Bay Packers football games wearing cheeses on their heads, right? Well, everybody in Wisconsin walks around like that.

  People reading this book who live in Wisconsin can back me up on this. They produce so much cheese in Wisconsin that they don’t know what to do with it all. They eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They use it as doorstops and paperweights. They stuff it in their mattresses. Kids use it in place of Play-Doh.

  In Wisconsin, they don’t even use paper money and coins to buy things. They use cheese. They carry the stuff with them in backpacks wherever they go.

  It’s true, I say! The word Wisconsin, in fact, is an old Indian word that means “land of milk curds.”

  Just to give you an idea of how important cheese is in Wisconsin, I have prepared the following overview of the state. You may want to clip out this page and use it for your next social studies report:

  STATE PROFILE OF WISCONSIN

  State slogan: America’s Dairyland

  State animal: Cow

  State food: Duh!

  State color: Bleu

  State bird: The Gorgonzola

  Largest ethnic group: Kurds

  Most popular TV show: The Muensters

  Governor: Chuck E. Cheese

  Because they have so much cheese in Wisconsin, it probably wasn’t such a big deal when those four giant cheese aliens arrived from outer space. But I live in Texas, and I was sure all the kids would be talking about it at school the next morning.

  “It is time for current events,” my teacher Mrs. Wonderland announced. “Who has a news story for us today?”

  I was the only one who raised a hand.

  “Yes, Funny Boy?”

  “I don’t have a clipping from the newspaper, but last night, four giant cheeses landed on a mailman in Wisconsin.”

  The class burst out laughing. As I mentioned earlier, something in Earth’s atmosphere has made me unbelievably funny. People laugh when I say just about anything because of my super sense of humor.

  “I see it’s joke time again,” Mrs. Wonderland muttered wearily as she rubbed her eyes.

  “Joke time?” I said. “Okay, these two guys walk into a bar. You’d think the second one would have ducked.”

  “Funny Boy,” Mrs. Wonderland hissed, “where did you come up with this ridiculous notion that cheeses came from outer space and landed in Wisconsin?”

  “I was watching the Food Network—”

  Some of the kids in the back of the room interrupted me with laughter.

  “What a dork!” said Sal Monella, the biggest and dumbest kid in the class.

  “That’s enough of that!” Mrs. Wonderland roared, clapping to get everybody’s attention. “Let’s move on to math. Yesterday we were working on multiplication. Let’s review. What is eight times seven?”

  I raised my hand and Mrs. Wonderland pointed to me.

  “Eight times seven what?” I asked.

  “Eight times seven anything,” Mrs. Wonderland replied. “It’s simple. Eight ... times ... seven.”

  “Well, it’s not as simple as it seems,” I pointed out. “For example, eight times seven pumpkins would be more than eight times seven apples, because pumpkins are bigger than apples. But if you made the apples into applesauce and scooped out the pumpkin seeds, you would probably have more applesauce than pumpkin seeds. See?”

  Mrs. Wonderland stared at me for a long time.

  “Go to Principal Werner’s office,” she instructed.

  As it turned out, I didn’t have to go to Principal Werner’s office after all, because Principal Werner saw me coming down the hallway and told me to go jump in a lake. I could tell that physical fitness was very important to Principal Werner, because he was constantly telling me to jump in a lake.

  Oddly, there was no lake on the school grounds, so I joined the rest of the class at recess in the playground. A group of the fourth-grade boys were hanging around near the swings, so I joined them.

  “I hate girls,” Sal Monella told the boys.

  “I hate girls, too,” one of the others agreed.

  “Me, too.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Me, too.”

  At that moment, this girl walked by. Not just any old girl. This girl was, without a doubt, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD!

  Let me try to describe her for you. She had long blond hair, which was curly and dark. She was tall, on the short side. Her body was thin, and just a little overweight. I had never seen anyone like her before.

  “I hate girls, too,” I agreed. “Who’s that?”

  “It’s the new girl. Tupper Camembert,” Sal told me. “She just moved in around the corner from me. She’s in the other fourth-grade class. This is her first day in school.”

  “Tupper?” somebody asked. “What kind of a dumb name is Tupper?”

  “Who cares? I’m in love!”

  “I’m in love!”

  “I’m in love!”

  “I’m in love!”

  “I’m in love!”

  “I’m in love!” I proclaimed.

  “Forget it,” Sal snickered. “Tupper Camembert wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said. “We’ll see about that!”

  I quickly caught up with Tupper and tapped her on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me,” I said as charmingly as possible. “Can you please tell me what time it is?”

  “No,” Tupper replied. “Why don’t you go jump in a lake?”

  I jogged back over to Sal and the group of boys.

  “You were right,” I huffed to Sal. “She wouldn’t give me the time of day. But she did invite me to go swimming.”

  “What?” the boys all asked, their mouths open.

  “She asked me to jump in a lake,” I replied, which for some reason the boys found amusing.

  “That means she thinks you’re a dork, dork,” said Sal.

  “Go ahead and laugh,” I told them. “1 love Tupper Camembert and none of you will be invited to our eventual wedding. I have seen the girl I will spend the rest of my life with, er, I mean the girl with whom I will spend the rest of my life.”

  “Huh?”

  “Let me shout it from the mountaintops. I’m in love with Tupper Camembert! I will follow her to the ends of the earth. I will follow her until the stars cease to shine. Until the oceans stop waving and the moon stops mooning. I will follow her until Bill Gates runs out of money. Until the Chicago Cubs win the World Series. I love her as no man has ever loved a woman.”

  “What a dork!” Sal replied as the bell rang.

  CHAPTER 5

  IF YOU’VE READ ALL THE
OTHER CHAPTERS, YOU SHOULD BE TOTALLY HOOKED BY NOW AND WILL WANT TO READ THIS ONE, TOO. OR NOT.

  It was raining and cold when I got up the next morning. But as you very well know, that had nothing to do with the story. So there was no good reason to bring it up.

  The news about the giant alien cheeses wasn’t in the papers that day. But it was the next day. There was a small item in the food section about these “cute” cheeses that were nice enough to travel 40 million light-years to provide Earth with all the cheese we’d need until the cheese shortage was over.

  I thought that would be the end of it, but the next evening Bob Foster and I were watching the The Tonight Show, and who should be on as a guest but Monterey Jack, the leader of the cheeses! They had to build a huge chair for him to “sit” in while Jay Leno interviewed him.

  “I must say,” Jay Leno said, “Jack, you’re the first enormous talking cheese we’ve had on the show. You certainly are ugly.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere, Jay. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

  “So, do you have a wife or a girlfriend, Jack? What’s her name, Velveeta?”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  “I notice you use a lot of clichés when you talk, Jack. You know, tired, overused expressions that have lost their originality and impact because we’ve heard them so many times.”

  “I make no bones about it,” Jack replied. “If the shoe fits, wear it.”

  “Don’t you ever talk without using clichés?”

  “Once in a blue moon.”

  “When were you born?”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday, Jay.”

  “Tell me, what does a cheese eat?”

  “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”

  “So you’re basically a chitchatting, cliché-cracking cheese from Chattanooga.”

  The audience thought Monterey Jack was a witty and engaging guest. The next week, there was a feature story in People magazine about the Wisconsin mailman and the four cheeses that fell on top of him.

  The Guinness Book of World Records sent a representative to verify that what had fallen out of the Wisconsin sky was in fact the “largest cheese in the world.”

  On TV, 60 Minutes devoted a segment to the alien cheeses. They appeared on an episode of Modern Family. A parade was held in their honor, and they were hailed as the heroes who had saved America from a real cheese crisis.

  It wasn’t long before “cheesemania” was sweeping the nation. Sales of all cheese products tripled. Cheese-themed trading cards, T-shirts, and lunch boxes appeared on store shelves. Somebody came out with a rap song about cheese. There was talk of a major motion picture starring Monterey Jack, Romano, Fontina, and Mozzarella. People said they could be the hottest thing since Silly Bandz.

  Young girls argued about which of the four cheeses was the cutest. Grown women found them to be attractive, too. Monterey Jack received several marriage proposals. There were rumors that he was seen at a nightclub with those tennis-playing Williams sisters.

  Everybody, it seemed, loved Monterey Jack, Romano, Fontina, and Mozzarella.

  Everybody but my foster father, Bob Foster, the cheese hobbyist and knower of all things about cheese.

  “Something tells me,” he whispered, shaking his head, “those cheeses are up to no good.”

  [Imagine increasingly scary music here.]

  CHAPTER 6

  MORE LOVE STUFF HERE. BOYS MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS CHAPTER AND MOVE ON TO CHAPTER 7, WHERE THERE’S A LOT OF VIOLENCE AND DESTRUCTION AND DEATH. COOL!

  Despite the scary music that ended the last chapter, I didn’t concern myself with the enormous cheeses that had landed in Wisconsin and become worldwide celebrities. Monterey Jack, Romano, Fontina, and Mozzarella seemed like happy, harmless cheeses that just happened to have come from outer space. It wasn’t like they were evil aliens that were going to take over Earth or anything. Nothing to worry my little head about.

  Besides, I had something else on my mind. Tupper Camembert.

  I was in love! I let the sound of her name roll around in my mouth. Tup-per Cam-em-bert. Tup-per Cam-em-bert. Say it loud and there’s music playing! Say it soft and it’s almost like praying.

  I had never had this feeling in my life. Tupper was so beautiful! I couldn’t get the picture of her out of my mind. I thought about her day and night. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I dreamed about her.

  Tup-per Cam-em-bert. Tup-per Cam-em-bert.

  “Will you stop it?” my dog, Punch, snapped as I was writing Tupper’s name over and over again on my hand with indelible marker. “That stupid name is giving me a headache.”

  “How dare you call the girl I love stupid!”

  “It’s you who’s stupid!” Punch barked.

  I tackled Punch, and she began biting me on the leg. We rolled around on the floor for a few minutes before Bob Foster came in to see what all the fuss was about.

  “I think we should have a little talk,” Bob Foster told me after he had broken up the fight. Punch stormed out of my room in a huff.

  Bob Foster sat on my bed with me. “It’s time you learned about the birds and the bees.”

  “I’m not interested in animals,” I replied. “I want to know about girls.”

  “No, what I mean is, it’s time I told you the facts of life.”

  “Huh?”

  “You see, Funny Boy, the purpose of a man is to love a woman. You follow me?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And the purpose of a woman is to love a man.”

  “Okay ...

  I didn’t quite catch the rest, because Bob got up and started singing and dancing around my bedroom like a lunatic.

  Eventually, Bob Foster regained control of himself and sat back down on the bed.

  “I love Tupper Camembert,” I complained. “But she won’t give me the time of day.”

  “Look,” Bob Foster said, putting his arm around my shoulder. “You’re still new to this planet. You gotta understand the way the game of love works. If this girl is acting like she’s not interested in you, that means just one thing—she is totally in love with you. Don’t you see it? She’s just playing hard to get.”

  “Hard to get? What does that mean?”

  “When a girl likes a boy, she pretends she can’t stand him. And when a boy likes a girl, he pretends he can’t stand her. That’s the way the game works. So if this girl acts like she can’t stand you, that is a sign that she is in love with you.”

  “Either that,” Punch shouted from the next room, “or she just can’t stand you.”

  “But it doesn’t make any sense,” I told Bob Foster. “If somebody really likes somebody else, why don’t they just come out and say so?”

  “That’s the game of love.” Bob Foster grinned, shaking his head and chuckling. “Girls want to be chased. She wants you to pursue her.”

  I decided to put Bob Foster’s theory to the test. When school let out the next day, I spotted Tupper Camembert walking home. I didn’t follow her, because I didn’t want her to know I was trying to catch up with her. Instead, I ran around the block so she would have to bump into me and it would look like she was following me.

  “Hi, Tupper,” I declared. “Are you following me home?”

  “No.”

  I thought that if I told a joke, it might loosen Tupper up a little.

  “What did one plate say to the other?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Lunch is on me.”

  She wrinkled up her nose, as if she had smelled something really bad.

  That’s good, I said to myself. The fact that she hadn’t laughed at the joke meant she really liked it. Maybe Bob Foster was right. Now I had to show Tupper that I didn’t have the least interest in her.

  “You don’t want to go out for dinner with me sometime, do you?” I asked.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Don’t give me your answer right now,” I interrupted. “Take your time and think it o
ver.”

  “I did. The answer is no.”

  “Good,” I replied. “I don’t want to have dinner with you either. I just wanted to make sure we were in agreement. You don’t want to go out for lunch, do you?”

  “No.”

  “What a coincidence. Me neither,” I replied. “What about breakfast?”

  “No.”

  “Great!” I exclaimed. “You know, Tupper, I think you and I have really hit it off. We have a lot in common. You don’t want to go out with me, and I don’t want to go out with you either. We’re the perfect couple.”

  Tupper just stared at me like I was from another planet, which made sense because I was from another planet.

  “What about a snack?” I asked. “You wouldn’t be interested in joining me for an after-school snack, would you?”

  “No,” she replied. “Will you leave me alone, please?”

  “You don’t eat much, do you, Tupper?”

  “Look, why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier?”

  Boy, Earthlings certainly do enjoy water sports! I couldn’t get over it. Back home on Crouton, we used to swim once in a while when the weather was hot. But here on Earth, people must go swimming all the time. I was constantly being told to jump into lakes, dive off cliffs, soak my head, and take long walks off short piers.

  I remembered what Bob Foster had told me. Tupper was playing hard to get. Deep down inside she felt the same way about me as I felt about her.

  This was great. She was acting like she really couldn’t stand me. So she must truly be in love with me. Things were going perfectly according to plan! If I just kept it up, eventually Tupper would admit her love for me and we would live happily ever after. That is, unless something really horrible happened to mess everything up.

  And then something really horrible happened to mess everything up.

  CHAPTER 7

  IF YOU’RE A GIRL THINK ABOUT SKIPPING THIS CHAPTER, UNLESS YOU’RE THE KIND OF GIRL WHO HATES THE LOVE STUFF AND LIKES VIOLENCE AND DESTRUCTION AND DEATH.