Little Jimmy's Revenge

It was the worst day of little Jimmy’s life. He was six years old and his family just forgot about his birthday. All his dreams of a new bike, Baseball cards, and a catcher mitt went up in smoke.

Let’s do a little retake on this day. It started off like most other days for a six year old. He awoke to sounds of birds chirping, a sprinkler water the yard, and a distant milk truck driving from house to house. He wakes up and puts on his bat shaped slippers and walks to the den. He turns on the large screened TV and tunes in his favorite cartoons.

He sits comfortably on the couch with his Pirate jersey robe opened in the front exposing his Pirate pajamas. During the commercial, a Gateway commercial, with a truck driver and a cow singing, he pops a few After-Dinner mints into his mouth and chews them before swallowing.

About an hour goes by with him watching the television before he hears one of his parents moving around in their bedroom. He gets mildly excited because today is his birthday.

He hears the shower and someone brushing their teeth. His parents were both up and now it was hard for him to contain his excitement. On the TV there is another commercial and this one just happens to be about celebrating a birthday at Chuckie Cheese’s, which happens to be his favorite place to eat. He knew that he’d be eating and celebrating there in a few hours. Since his parents were up he screamed “Alright Chuckie”

“Good morning, Jimmy” spoke his mother, “did you sleep well last night?”

This was the same question he heard every morning and he always gave the same answer whether he slept good or not.

“Yes Mom I slept well… thanks for scaring off those monsters again.”

Yes Jimmy was six, almost half way to being considered a young man, but he was still a little scared of things that went bump in the night. This was the nightly ritual every night. His mom would go around and open all the doors, drawers, and cabinets and ask if there were any monsters in there and they would wait for an answer.

Jim’s dad comes down stairs and they all head for the breakfast nook to have a bowl of cereal. Jim squirms with excitement but he knows he can’t say anything about it being his birthday, he wants to be surprised, besides for weeks on end he has dropped settle hints as to what he wants for his birthday, where he wants to have his special dinner, and the type of cake he wants. All the plans have been laid and there isn’t anything he can do now.

The day progressed. His Dad went to work, he mom busied herself with housecleaning, but no one seemed to be concerned with birthday planning. Little Jimmy’s heart was about to burst and not with excitement. He knew that his parents had forgotten all about his birthday.

So Jimmy, not the oldest or even the smartest attention getter, started working on a plan to help his parents remember what day it was. His plan would involve the following ingredients. Left over Fourth of July fireworks, three forgotten boxes of cake mixes, and a lighter.

He read the instructions on the back of the cake mixes and started rounding up the ingredients, the measuring cups and spoons, and the biggest pan he could find. He went out on the back deck and started mixing the cake mixes. Of course, at six years old he didn’t know the difference from a measured teaspoon or a tablespoon and you can only imagine the mess he was making with five pounds of flour, two-dozen eggs and the fireworks mixed in. He decided the best way to bake the cake was in the old burn barrel out back.

He put some old newspapers in the can and light them using the lighter and after the flames weren’t so high he carefully put the cake pan in the middle of the barrel.

In the meantime his dad came home from work and was in the middle of preparing dinner and of course to Jimmy this was the last straw but he was about to bring his memory back with a bang.

It didn’t take long at all for the cake pan to get hot enough for those fireworks to become red-hot. It took even less time for those fireworks to ignite and throw cake-battered sparks all over the back yard. Jimmy made one fatal error, he left the remaining shreds of paper close to the burn barrel and they caught on fire.

Jim’s father saw the flames and leapt to the phone as quickly as he could. He dialed 9-1-1 so fast that it took the phone a moment to register the numbers being dialed.

“9-1-1 operator how may I help you?”

“Fi fir fire!!!!”

“Sir now just calm down and give me the information.”

Jim’s mother, more levelheaded then her husband ran out into the back yard carrying a bucket and doused the fire. It was then that she realized what was taking place and immediately tried to rectify the situation.

“Jimmy, we are so sorry that we didn’t tell you that we were going to celebrate your birthday on Saturday instead of today. Your Grandma was going to fly in last week but she fell and hurt herself and wouldn’t be able to come until this weekend.

“Now help me clean up this mess.”