The McFactory had a large front window and a large side window, running water, electricity, and heat. It was like having the world’s greatest tree house, and I spent as much time as I could in it.
My parents let me decorate the space any way I wanted. So I had painted a map of the world on the floor and the periodic table on the ceiling, and I pasted posters of famous redheads on the walls: Conan O’Brien, Lucille Ball, Little Orphan Annie, Thomas Jefferson, Bozo the Clown, Ed Sheeran, and Shaun White. I also put up posters of some of my favorite inventors: Thomas Edison (holds 1,093 US patents!), Alexander Graham Bell (telephone), Levi Strauss (jeans), Kane Kramer (iPod), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), and Louis Reard (bikini). I’m particularly thankful to Mr. Reard.
In one corner of the room was my dad’s old reading lamp and a perfectly good recliner that I found in the alley. In that chair, I did my best thinking and my best napping.
In the opposite corner was a large secondhand blackboard on wheels that I used to organize my thoughts, work out problems, and write down computations.
In the center of the room was my lab table—our old kitchen door set on a couple of two-drawer metal file cabinets. On the table were papers, beakers, Bunsen burners, glass tubing, funnels, bell jars, Petri dishes, vials, chemicals, magnets, minerals, test tubes, balance scales, and other junk. I swept some stuff aside and set Taxi on the table.
On the far side of the room was a workshop area complete with a sawhorse, a workbench, a used band saw, a refurbished drill press, and a tool rack I made out of pegboard.
Along the walls, I had shelves stacked with reference books, a mini-refrigerator, potted plants, an antique cast iron safe, a rusty supply cabinet, a well-worn steamer trunk, and two fire extinguishers. I had an old coffee table and a broken-down couch that converted into a sofa bed to sleep in on nights when the basement got too hot or too cold or too noisy.
I received a wireless Internet signal from the modem in our house, so I was connected to the web day and night.
To keep me company, I had a snake named Nixon, a mouse called Mickey, and a rat known as Madoff. And of course there was Echo, my arrogant, colorful, and brilliant bird. She enjoyed a spacious redwood cage that my dad built with me. It was large enough for five parrots.
I picked up a pitcher from the table and quietly filled Echo’s water bowl. I think she was grateful that I never clipped her wings. I let her fly around the McFactory for exercise whenever she wanted.
I loved the McFactory. It was here that I allowed my mind to wander . . . and wonder. It was here that I hatched many of my ideas.
It was here that I built Morgan’s Firewall (also known as Don’t Even Think About It!), an alarm system that detected motion outside my bedroom door and set off a screeching noise and a flashing red light when intruders came near. (The color red doesn’t really make bulls angry. Bulls are colorblind. It’s the movement of the cape, not the color, that excites them.)
“Naturally, red is my favorite color,” I said to Taxi, scooping him up off the table. “While we’re at it, 27 is my favorite number, because if you add up all the numbers between 2 and 7, the total is 27. And 27 reminds me of my favorite planet: Uranus, which has 27 known moons.” The image of Uranus and mooning made me laugh my butt off, which unfortunately woke Echo. She squawked and flapped her wings.
“Sorry, again, Echo.” I carried Taxi over to my supply cabinet. “But we’re not here to think about planets or moons. We’re here to invent the solution to shaving. Do you see anything in here that can help?”
I had plenty of spare parts to use. My dad had kept all of the used equipment from the TV studio. He always brought home leftover supplies and old, thrown-out parts from the station. Instead of stacking blocks when I was a baby, I stacked spools of speaker cable. Instead of playing with toy trains, I played with broken down transistors, transformers, and transponders.
“I need a device of some sort,” I said aloud, scanning the supply cabinet inventory. “Can I run a laser or invisible sound waves over my skin to make the whiskers stop growing?”
I rubbed my freshly shaved chin, thinking. Maybe it would be better to go with some kind of lotion, some kind of ointment that sealed the skin.
I placed Taxi on the painted floor map, just over the continent of Africa, from where his ancestors originally came. (Message to me: “Tell Chloe that Africa is the second largest and the most populated continent in the world.”) Above Africa, on my ceiling periodic table was Zn (Zinc, element #30). (Since 1982, US-minted “copper” pennies have actually been 97.6 percent zinc, with just a 2.4 percent copper coating. Hey, you never know when someone will ask you about that.)
But enough stalling. It was time to start inventing. I loved the challenge of trying to think of something that never existed before. Something altogether new. Something that would solve a problem that’s been around since the first whisker sprouted on the first face. Something that could change people’s lives forever. I sank deeply into my recliner chair to do some deep thinking.
Every great inventor knows that great successes come from many small failures and that lesser inventions come before greater ones. I set my mind on reverse mode, thinking back to see if any of my past inventions could aid me with my current project.
Over the years, I had rigged my basement bedroom with gizmos and gadgets. I had built the Neighborhood Watch Camera on the roof, my Automatic Bed Maker, and my Mastermind 5000—a voice-controlled activator that followed simple verbal commands like, “lights on,” or “iPod off,” or “MP3 player on,” and so on. (To give verbal commands, we rely on vibrating vocal chords, which are only the size of our thumbnails.)
I’d also had my share of unsuccessful inventions. But as Thomas Edison said, “Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do, doesn’t mean it’s useless.” So I thought over my, uh, less-than-successful inventions as well, in case they offered lessons that would help me now.
I thought about my inflatable dartboard. That one had let the air out of my inventing career for a while.
I’d also invented Fan-tastic Paint. If you tie an open paint can to a ceiling fan, you can very quickly spread paint on your walls. Warning: your room will look like Jackson Pollock (look him up) barfed all over.
My drinkable shampoo, which I called SodaPoo (a really bad name), was a big bust as well.
“But I can’t fail this time, Taxi,” I said. “I need to come up with an anti-beard growth formula so that Brad will leave me alone and men everywhere will have more time.”
“More time, more time!” Echo dittoed.
“Here’s the assignment.” I popped up from my chair, paced across the room, over Tunisia and under Tellurium, and I wrote the words Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow on the blackboard.
“Imagine no more razors, shaving cream, razor blades, or after-shave lotions. Imagine no more going to school with little pieces of toilet paper stuck to your face covering nicks.” I paused for a moment. “Imagine nobody making fun of your stubble ever again. Just imagine.”
“Just imagine,” Echo echoed.
I sat back down in my recliner, closed my eyes, and began to imagine, pondering the possibilities of a beard-free world. In order to stop whiskers from growing, I needed to understand how they started growing. By knowing all the facts, by applying some mighty McCracken mind power, by making some lucky guesses, I could save three billion men in the world ten minutes of their lives each day! Ten minutes they would never get back.
“Just imagine!” Echo said again, before falling back to sleep.
(The song “Imagine” by John Lennon of The Beatles was the best-selling single of his solo career.)
THE MYSTIFYING FEMALE SPECIES
The next thing I remember, Mom was shouting from outside, “Morgan! Now!”
I had fallen deep asleep in my deep thinking chair. It was already noon. And I hadn’t done my Saturday morning chores. The punishment for not doing my Saturday chores was no lab privileges on Sunday. I couldn’t let
that happen. I was on a mission.
In order to exit the McFactory fast, I executed my “emergency jump,” an athletic leap from the opening of the hatch to the garage floor, vaulting over all the trapdoor stairs. I landed hard onto the cement floor, grabbed the broom out of the garage, and hurried to the front yard.
I was sweeping the leaves off the sidewalk in front of my house, thinking of different components I could mix together for my formula, when I heard someone call out, “Hi.” It was the goddess from across the street. I almost lost my balance.
Was she talking to me? Couldn’t be. But what if she were? I had to be sure. I looked behind me, confirming that I was the only one around. I pointed to my chest and cocked my head like a puppy. She nodded and took a step in my direction. Was this really happening?
“Hi,” I said, excited to have exchanged our first words (all four letters).
“Buckholtz is such a baby, isn’t he?” Robin said, walking leisurely toward me.
I raised the broom above my head, indicating Buckholtz’s height, and said, “Yeah, but a big baby.”
Robin remained focused, continuing to cross the street, like in slow motion. Her black ponytail bounced softly. I noticed that her emerald green eyes were red from lack of sleep or from crying.
“Where did you learn to run so fast?” she asked.
“At my old school.”
“Were you on the track team?”
“No. I seem to attract bullies.”
“I’m Robin,” she said, joining me on the sidewalk.
“I know,” I said. “I’m Morgan.”
“I know,” she said.
My heart beat hard as we shook hands, her hand in mine. She knew my name? “I live over there,” she said, pointing to her two-story house.
“I know. I live over here,” I said.
“I know,” she said.
“I guess we know a lot about each other.” Spoken like a true geeknoid. I shifted from one foot to the other. Neither of us said anything else. We just stood there. Some guys always know exactly what to say to girls. They can keep the conversation going, making girls laugh, making them feel like one of the guys, but more special. They know how to get girls to like them. Where did they learn how to do that? Why didn’t anyone teach me? How much longer would Robin stay there without my speaking? I really didn’t want her to leave. She was watching a seagull circle overhead, waiting for me to say something, anything. So was I.
It takes the interaction of seventy-two muscles to produce human speech. I finally managed to force enough of my mouth muscles to utter something.
“I like your ponytail.”
“It’s just hair,” she fired back.
I was so flustered I didn’t know what to say next. My noggin took over. I went to my auto-response, my default, my fail-safe trivia. “So Robin, did you know that the robin is the official state bird of Connecticut, Michigan, and—”
“Wisconsin,” Robin said.
“Right,” I said. “And did you know that ‘Q’ is the only letter in the alphabet that doesn’t appear in the name of any of the states in America?”
“That’s because ‘Q’ is the least-used letter in the English language,” she said. “And did you know there’s a tiny town in Nebraska named Morgan?”
This was getting interesting. Robin knew strange and little-known stuff like I did. Stuff like Morgan, Nebraska (population 132, incidentally).
I was still mostly surprised that she knew my name. I wondered if she wanted to know more about me. Could we actually be friends? Could we be more than friends? The answer came quickly.
“Well, gotta go,” she said. She started to walk across the street back to her house.
I knew it was too good to be true. She was just trying to be neighborly. Robin Reynolds certainly didn’t need any more friends. She wasn’t going to waste time talking to someone who couldn’t talk. I dropped my head and resumed sweeping the walkway until Robin turned and called out, “Why was he chasing you?”
I looked up with renewed hope. “He’s jealous that I shave,” I called back.
“Then, I guess he’s jealous of me, too.”
“You shave?”
“Half the girls at school shave, dummy. It’s no big deal.”
I couldn’t believe I was speaking to Robin Reynolds, especially about shaving. I didn’t want it to end, even if she did call me “dummy.”
“What if you didn’t have to shave?” I asked.
“My legs would look like a woolly mammoth’s.”
I laughed. She didn’t.
“I mean, what if someone invented something so you’d never have to shave again?” I asked.
She thought for a moment and hollered back, “If someone hasn’t invented it by now, no one ever will.”
Just as I was about to thank her for stopping Buckholtz from catching and killing me, she said, “See ya.”
I watched her step onto her front porch and open the door. She stopped, spun around, and said, “There are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on every beach on Earth, in case you were wondering.”
“Every star you see in the night sky is bigger and brighter than the sun,” I said in return. “In case you were wondering.” That fact didn’t seem to impress her. She just stared at the “dummy” and went inside her house.
I stood there feeling feelings I had never felt before. I felt that I might have made my first Carlsbad friend. I felt a real connection between Robin and me. Suddenly, the front door to her house flung open. Robin stood there in the doorway with her hand on her hip and yelled, “I’m more than my ponytail, you know!” She slammed the door hard.
I shook my head, leaned on my broom and tried to figure out what she meant. Had I said something wrong? Was this what girls were like? Would we ever talk again? Did I blow it? As I contemplated why our first chat ended so badly, her front door flew open once more, her head popped out and she shouted, “Hair can’t be stopped from growing! It’s impossible!” Again, she slammed her door. Harder than the first time.
Maybe girls spoke in riddles. Maybe she was challenging me. I knew a lot about a lot of things, but I knew nothing about the female species. Parrots were easier to understand. Turtles were a snap. But girls were well beyond my comprehension.
I knew this, though: Robin was as smart as she was beautiful. And up close, she looked like a movie star.
More than ever, I felt motivated to continue my shave-no-more quest. I’d show the world that I could do the impossible, that I could invent something nobody had invented yet. I’d prove that I was more than red stubble and freckles. I’d show Robin Reynolds that Morgan McCracken was a dummy she would want to be friends with. Or more than friends with.
Poppy came walking up the street. His necktie was loosened, his coat was draped over his arm, and he was smiling.
“Did you get a job?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“What did they say?”
“Let me think. Oh, yeah . . . ‘you’re too damn old.’”
Then he laughed. “No problem,” he said. “It’s like fishing. I’ll get one next time.”
Poppy was an optimist. Nothing ever seemed to get him down. Nothing was impossible for my grandpa. Nothing should be impossible for his grandson.
MORGAN FOR PRESIDENT
Unluckily for him but luckily for me, Buckholtz contracted mononucleosis and was out for the rest of the semester. I wondered who would ever kiss him. Isn’t that how you catch that disease? Come to think of it, I wish I had caught mononucleosis . . . from Robin Reynolds. Here’s a fact I wished I didn’t know: Morgan McCracken had never kissed a girl. And a girl had never kissed him. I guess that’s the same pathetic thing.
I could barely talk with a girl. How could I ever kiss one? Of course, you don’t have to talk while you’re kissing. I actually had taken an acting class last summer hoping to be assigned a love scene where I had to kiss a girl. Instead, I was given a Shakespearean monologue that took all of J
uly to memorize.
My first kiss would be a long, long way off.
As an inquisitive kind of fact-gathering guy, I have done quite a bit of research on the subject of kissing. Things I learned: Lips are more sensitive than the tips of the fingers. Two-thirds of people turn their heads to the right when kissing. The X’s at the end of a correspondence are meant to be what two faces look like during a kiss.
Morgan McFactoid at your lip-locking service!
Anyway, with Buckholtz down with mono and with Robin seemingly mad at me for mysterious reasons unknowable to me, I could concentrate on my search for a solution to shaving. I went to the library and read everything on the subject of facial hair, which wasn’t much. I stayed up late Googling “hair follicles,” “beard growth,” and “whiskers.” I found out that:
The average man’s face contains up to fifteen thousand whiskers. (I counted over three hundred red ones on my face. More red whiskers than red freckles.)
Men’s beards grow at a rate of about half an inch per month (six inches per year).
A man will shave at least twenty thousand times in his lifetime.
Archeologists believe that cavemen used clams and shark teeth to shave with twenty thousand years ago in the Stone Age. Ouch!
The longest beard ever recorded was on Hans Langseth of Norway. It stretched seventeen feet and six inches. (That’s way longer than Dad’s Jeep!)
A man removes over twenty-seven feet of hair in his lifetime through shaving. (Ah, twenty-seven, my favorite number again. Twenty-seven is also the number of bones in the human hand.)
And here’s one for Robin: women have been pulling, plucking, burning, tweezing and ripping out their leg and armpit hair as far back as 4000 BC, when they were using dangerous substances like arsenic and quicklime to get the job done.
Before I spent any more time on my idea, before I went any further with my plans, I needed to know if I was on the right track, if my shave-no-more project was really worth pursuing. I wanted to get some professional feedback. (“Feedback” is the shortest word that contains the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F.)
The McVentures of Me, Morgan McFactoid Page 3