“This weekend,” I told my audience, “I had a duel with a dolphin.”
“Whaaaa?” said everybody else.
Fact: when you live in a motel, you always have the best stories on Monday mornings.
“The Wonderland’s right on the beach,” I told my history class. “So I grew up speaking Dolphin.” I gave a quick demo.
“Eeeek squeeeee, klik-klik.” “What’s that mean?” asked my bud Bruce
Brandow.
“ ‘I have to go to the bathroom.’ ” “Dolphins say that?”
“Yep. Then they do it. Right there in the Gulf.
That’s why the water’s so warm.” “Gross,” said Bruce.
We were between bells, just waiting for our teacher, Mr. Frumpkes, to march in and put us all to sleep with a barrage of boring facts. It was up to me to spin a story so scintillating it could fight off the Frumpkes Funk.
“On Saturday, I was riding the waves, just surfing along—”
“Surfing?” scoffed Adam Shapera, a big guy who always sits in the back of the room so it’s easier to flick people’s ears. “Who taught you how to do that?”
“Kevin the Monkey,” said my good friend Gloria Ortega. “Star of the smash hit
Beach Party Surf Monkey.”
Unimpressed, Adam blew a lip fart.
I didn’t let Adam slow me down, because everybody else was hanging on my every word, scooching their seats closer.
“I was carving across a wave. Totally cranking. It was epic. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, this dolphin pops up!”
“The dolphin blew his airhole at me. It sounded like one of Adam Shapera’s lip farts. It spooked me so much I wiped out.”
“What’d the dolphin want?” asked Bruce.
“To challenge me to a friendly competition.” I put on my best high-pitched dolphin voice. “ ‘I am Frederick, the Dolphin King. I challenge you to a duel!’ ”
“Whoa,” said Bruce. “Just like that Alexander Hamilton dude with that other dude.”
“Aaron Burr,” said Gloria.
“Exactly,” I said. “But we wouldn’t be dueling with pistols. It’d be unfair. Dolphins don’t have trigger fingers.”
“That’s so true,” said Adam, finally getting into the story with everybody else.
“We decided on a race,” I said. “From the Gulf waters behind the Wonderland all the way up St. Pete Beach to the Don CeSar Hotel. It’d be me and my board against King Frederick and his mighty flippers. Human against dolphin. Mano a mammalo. I, of course, agreed to King Frederick’s terms. But only because I knew I’d win.”
“How’d you know that?” Adam asked eagerly. “Simple,” I told him. “I was carrying a secret
weapon!”
Copyright © 2019 by Chris Grabenstein. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
