His Dogness

Sparkle Girl and Doobins were drawing with chalk on the sidewalk in front of their house when Jerome drove up in his convertible.

“You know what I’m thinking?” said Jerome.

“About what you’re going to get me for my birthday?” said Doobins.

Doobins’s birthday was still months away. But ever since Sparkle Girl’s birthday last week, he had been talking about what he wanted. If his birthday were coming up in a week, that would have been fine. As it was, he was driving Sparkle Girl and Garnet crazy.

“Isn’t your birthday in October?” said Jerome. “In any case, I’m not thinking about your gift. I’m thinking that it would be nice to get a new paint job for my convertible.”

“Ooooh,” said Sparkle Girl and Doobins at the same time. “Can we help you paint it?”

“I wasn’t thinking of painting it myself,” Jerome said. “I thought that it would be fun to see what color it would turn out if I drove it through a rainbow.”

“Ooooh,” said Sparkle Girl and Doobins at the same time. “Can we go with you?”

“That’s why I’m here,” said Jerome. “Make sure it’s OK with your mother and tell her she is welcome to go, too. And, if you don’t want wild-apricot leaves for lunch, you might want to pack a lunch.”

They definitely did not want wild-apricot leaves for lunch. In their experience, wild-apricot leaves were way too chewy. So, after their mother said it was fine for them to go, Sparkle Girl made a pimiento cheese on whole-wheat sandwich, and Doobins made a peanut-butter-and-marshmallow-cream sandwich. Both cut off the crusts. Doobins also packed a bag of Chortle Cheese Chips, his favorite.

Given that they were going to be driving through rainbows, Garnet made them take their yellow rain slickers, too.

“So, where are we going?” Sparkle Girl said after they climbed in.

“The usual. We’ll turn the corner at the end of the street and see where we end up,” Jerome said. “Somewhere where a rain shower is just breaking up, I hope.”

Well, that’s not how it turned out. When they turned the corner at the end of the street, they found themselves in a land chock full of dogwood trees and azaleas in full bloom. Above was the clearest blue sky you could imagine. If they were looking for clear blue sky in every direction, they could not have asked for more.

“Hmmm,” said Jerome. “Not a single cloud. Even when I squint and look into the distance, I don’t see one. Either of you see anything?”

They shook their heads.

“Maybe we should go back home,” said Doobins. “It was kind of cloudy there when we left.”

“Maybe we should just wait to paint the convertible another day,” said Sparkle Girl. “These dogwoods and azaleas sure are beautiful.”

“No,” said Jerome. “Today is the day. We will drive around for a while and see what happens.”

“Maybe we should stop and eat first,” said Doobins.

“We can’t do that,” said Sparkle Girl. “We just got started. Everybody knows that, when you go on an adventure, something has to happen before you can stop and eat.”

“Sparkle Girl is right,” said Jerome.

“If we saw six polar bears and one of them was wearing a tutu, would that count?” said Doobins.

“Even if one of them wasn’t wearing a tutu, seeing six polar bears tiptoeing through azaleas and dogwoods would count,” said Jerome. “Do you see some polar bears?”

“No, I was just wondering,” said Doobins.

After they had driven for a while, they came upon a lake. Sparkle Girl was getting hungry and having second thoughts about her bold pronouncement about having to have an adventure before they could have lunch.

“Maybe Doobins and I could do cannonballs into the lake and, when the sun shines through the splashes, it would make rainbows and you could drive the convertible through the rainbows and we could have lunch,” said Sparkle Girl.

“I think not,” said Jerome.

“If we saw a big rock, would that count as an adventure?” said Sparkle Girl.

Under normal circumstances, Jerome would have said, “Certainly not, seeing a big rock doesn’t count as an adventure.”

But he was starting to feel a little peckish himself. So, he said, “Why, I believe it would.”

They drove around looking for a rock. They saw not a single, solitary one.

Jerome and Sparkle Girl were busy trying to think of what might qualify as an adventure, no matter now small, when, Doobins said, “Yreka! I have it.”

“What!? What!?” said Jerome and Sparkle Girl.

“We stop and have a picnic. Rain loves picnics,” said Doobins.

“That’s brilliant,Doobins,” said Sparkle Girl.

“I know,” said Doobins.

“Why I didn’t think of it, I’ll never know,” said Sparkle Girl.

After they parked the car, Jerome suggested that, to improve their chances of rain even more, they leave the top down and leave the slickers in the car.

“Good idea,” said Sparkle Girl.

So that’s what they did. After they spred out the blanket, Doobins popped open the bag of Chortle Cheese Chips. As they were enjoying a few chips as an appetizer before eating their sandwiches and leaves, a cloud gathered above them. By the time they had finished their chips, the rain was pouring down.

They took off for the car. By the time they got there, they were soaked. As they waited for the rain to break, they leaned their heads back and let the rain fall onto their tongues.

When Jerome saw a sliver of sun break through the clouds, he turned on the car and started driving toward it. In a minute or two, a rainbow appeared. Jerome drove right through it.

“The rainbow makes my eyes feel fizzy,” said Sparkle Girl.

When they came out the other side, Jerome stopped the car. They all got out and took a look.

“Green,” Jerome said. “I like it.”

“Now can we eat our sandwiches?” said Doobins.

“Absolutely,” said Jerome.

“I wonder whether we will see any polar bears on the drive back,” said Doobins.

“I wonder what Momma will say when she finds out we didn’t wear our slickers in the rain,” said Sparkle Girl.

“I bet the green of the car sets off the green in my eyes quite nicely,” said Jerome.

“You’re right,” said Sparkle Girl.

The End.