The Old Blog in the Desert

Mom had just polished the floors and dusted every surface in the house, and she’d gone on and on about company coming. She strictly forbade Adam and me from setting foot outside.

Now, any sensible boy would have obeyed. But Adam and I were not sensible.

We slipped out the bedroom window like two tiny burglars and spent a solid hour roaming the back and side of the house, turning sticks into swords and dirt into gold. I was having a fine time until I heard Mom holler my name.

I heaved myself back through the window and trudged into the kitchen, where Mom stood, arms crossed, looking like a storm cloud with a feather duster.

“What took so long?” she demanded.

I fibbed with the kind of earnestness only a boy can muster. “I was under the bunk bed. Had a hard time getting out.”

“Where’s Adam?”

I pointed to his supposed hiding place. “In the bedroom. In the closet.”

Mom’s frown hung there a moment, and then we both heard it, the unmistakable squeak and slide of the living room glass door. Mom dashed the few steps over to find Adam standing there, as calm as a cat in church. He had his hands clasped behind his back, rocking gently heel to toe.

“Adam!” Mom shouted. “Were you outside?”

Adam turned ever so slowly, revealing a pair of those joke glasses with the giant nose and bushy mustache, not a trace of his usual black rims.

In a perfect German accent, he had cleaned from watching ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ each afternoon, he asked, “Und who ist dis Adum you shpeek uff?”

Mom’s eyes went wide, then crinkled, then she laughed so hard she had to lean on the counter. I exhaled like I’d been holding my breath for an hour, knowing Adam had saved us both from a butt-whipping.