We brushed the dung-colored dust off our leotards, pausing only to read a restraining order from the city of Pittsburg. Said city barked that Pittsburg jokes were definitely off limits. If we wanted to pick on somebody, we could go pick on Gary Indiana, so nyahhh!
I paused momentarily to wipe the nyahhh! off the restraining order.
Either the solar wind or the sheer volume of its music pushed us across the dusty landscape to the only recognizable building on the planet, the "Ao noordelijk twee bordos" penned in what we later discovered was the local language. Roughly translated, the "Thumbs Sized While You Wait" Hotel.
We glided hotelwards. As soon as we breezed through the Hotel's revolving doors, we were met by a polite liveried footman. No, not the eternal footman.
"Welcome!" he toothed. "I am Raoul, your multi-lingual Guest Relations Officer. "
He pounded ferociously on a bell sitting on his desk. After he got down off the desk, he said:
"There! You see? Friendly porters are at this very moment ensuring that your luggage is safely in your rooms "
The porters were, in fact, doing double duty. They were carrying our bags and, at the same time, engaged in a game of Jai-Lai in the halls.
The little rubber ball said: "Pocketa pocketa."
Where had I heard that sound before, and in such indifferent profusion while lying on a couch?
Well, the service was friendly enough. But the beds were concave and lumpy. So was the TV. On every channel was Doctor Tadpole, a chubby man presenting the "Frogs In Sump Pump Hour".
Here are some questions posed by listeners plagued by Frog Problems.
Q: "Dear Doctor Tadpole. Frogs, or maybe peepers, had babies in the sump pump basin in the basement. Will they go away? Right now, I open the basement in the morning and say hello to them...they are waiting to go out. In the evening they are waiting by the door...on the inside! Tonight I turned on the pump to drain some of the water and they started swimming around...tiny little things. How can I encourage them to go outside and stay out?"
Floyd
A: Dear Floyd. Buy a bucket. Put frogs in bucket. Open door. Pitch out frogs. Get life.
Q: "Dear Doctor Tadpole -- Our frog got lost one day, and we couldn't find it. I was doing laundry in my basement some weeks later and decided to check the sump pump switch. I looked at the pump well and see, guess who, Froggy, alive and reasonably well, swimming around. He had somehow managed to travel down two floors and find a home in the sump pump well.."
Sally
A: Dear Sally. You might consider getting a good mouthwash. If your frog goes to that much trouble to escape you, it's probably trying to tell you something.
Q: "Dear Doctor Tadpole. I had a dream that our fish tank was dying, and I needed to clean it. So I scooped the fish and the frog out, and went to fill the cup they were in with water from a water cooler. But all that came out was clam chowder. The fish and frog were drowning, and there was nothing I could do. I spilled the cup on the floor and tried to pick them up, but no luck..."
Bertram
A. ”Dear Bertram. Ah, yes. The old dead frog in the clam chowder dream. Contrary to popular belief, Berty, fish tanks aren't alive to begin with. What you need is a better class of dream.
I was starting to get frog-flummoxed. So I turned off the TV, opened the windows and immediately gasped. I had forgotten. It was the room across the hall that had the breathable air.
Without knocking, I burst into the room-across-the-hall unannounced. (This is what usually happens after you don't knock. Either that, or you just meekly walk back into your room with an unrealized knock tacked onto your karma. I, to my everlasting shame and tooth whitening, chose the former.)
"I say, do you mind?" I burped. "It's three o'clock in the morning!
A small weasel-like man in a trench coat was huddled over a mechanical contraption. The machine was saying: "pocketa-pocketa".
"I was just oiling my pocketa-pocketa machine," said the weasel. "
He produced a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket.
"You see? I have a pocketa-pocketa permit."
"OK. But just don't let it happen again!"
I went back to my room and fell into a swoon. Fortunately, we had remembered to pack our portable swoon.
And in this swoon, I dreamt a dream. Someone was sending me messages from (of all places) a remote island out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Something about buying coleslaw in the produce department. I hoped it was the creamy kind.
I awoke with a finish (they were fresh out of starts on this planet). Smike was talking to someone on the phone in a low, suspicious voice.
"If you begin getting signals from your cookie jar, call me immediately," said the phone
Smike saw that I was awake. He looked at his watch which, a half hour ago, wasn't there.
"Oh, it looks as if our hour is up. Yes... You don't say... You don't say..."
He hung up.
"Who was that?"
"She didn't say."
We stayed the night. Not much to do since the TV was stuck on sump-pump frogs and we got tired of ripping off Spike Jones.
Things were relatively peaceful, except for the volcanic eruption which occurred at 3:16 am. We lay for a while in our concave beds, stupefied and terror-stricken, expecting hideous destruction. The room vibrated violently. We endured a gigantic flaming mass of molten goo. Why is it that you can never find a vibrating fluid bed de-gooer when you need one?
About 4 am, I called the front desk to see if we could get some grilled cheese sandwiches. Raoul, who was smiling over the phone, said the kitchen was closed until six. But he said he would send his cousin over to the volcano with some cheese and bread.
That was last Thursday. If Raoul's cousin thinks he's going to get a big tip, he's woefully mistaken.
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