Samantha Puckett yawned. She and her roommate, Catherine Valentine, were in their apartment, sitting on the sofa staring at a blank TV screen.
"I'm sooo - gimme another chicken leg - ooooooo bored," Sam moaned.
Cat started to hand Sam her fifty-third chicken leg today, but her roommate swiftly snatched it out of her grasp and chomped into it. She promptly spit it out. "Ugh!" she gagged. "This is tasteless! Give me that barbecue sauce!"
"All right..." Knowing that Sam would just pull it out of her hand anyway, the red-headed teen tossed the bottle of barbecue sauce into Sam's hand.
Sam shook the bottle, turned it upside-down, opened the cap, and squeezed as hard as she could. The sauce oozed out of the opening and painted the chicken leg she was holding a reddish-brown. It then dripped over the sides and landed on the couch and the floor.
"Um, don't you need a plate or a bowl to put the chicke - " started Cat.
"SHUT UP!" Sam interrupted. She shook the bottle. "Dang it!" she shouted, throwing the bottle across the room and out the window. "It's empty." She crossed her arms.
"Sam...?" whined Cat. Outside, there was a large crash, and several car alarms started going off at once.
"Yes?" Sam grumbled.
"When are the kids we're supposed to babysit going to be here? Their mom was supposed to drop them off two hours ago!"
"I don't know, but when they do arrive, I'm going to kick them in the n - " Sam slammed her fist on the coffee table, but accidentally hit the power button on the TV remote when she did.
The television screen flashed to life and a purple dinosaur appeared.
"Yaaaaayyyyy!" Cat cheered, clapping her hands in enthusiasm. "I love Barney!" Yes laughed her trademark high-pitched giggle.
At the same time, Sam was scrambling from the remote, yelling, "Oh, my God, oh, my God! Turn it off!" She desperately tried to change the channel, but the buttons weren't working. "Turn, darn you!" she screamed.
"Why don't you turn it off, using the little buttons on the TV?" suggested Cat.
Sam ignored her. "Great, the batteries are dead, and now I'm stuck watching Barney with an insane moron!" She flung the dead remote out the window, causing yet another vehicular wreck. "Oh, well. I might as well just grin and bear it, right, Cat...Cat?"
But Cat was too enthralled in Barney to answer.
On the screen, a group of kids were going through a giant crate of shoes and singing a song about them.
"We've got lots and lots of shoes, and they're really, really, neat..." Cat sang along.
"Please don't sing the song too!" Sam begged.
"Why, what's wrong with it?" said Cat.
"It's attacking my eardrums. It's too annoying."
"Well, at least it doesn't have that dirty 'B' word in it!" argued Cat.
Sam easily guessed what the "dirty 'B' word" was. "'Booty'?" she scoffed. "Will you ever grow up, Cat? I don't think that 'B' word is as near as bad as that other 'B' - "
"Shh, shh, shh," whispered Cat, pointing at the screen. "Look!"
"And tap shoes are fun," sang a little boy wearing tap shoes, "'cause when you dance, you hear them tap!"
"OH! I have to get my tap shoes!" gasped Cat, dashing out of the room as the boy did a tap solo.
Sam just sighed and sunk into the couch.
"Baaaarrrrneeeeyyyy!" called a kid from across the room.
The purple dinosaur shuffled over. It seemed that he didn't mind at all that the boy was whining, as he still donned a huge smile on his face.
"Yes, Nick?" he answered.
"I don't WANT to take my tap shoes off!" Nick cried, shaking his head violently. With his red-hot cheeks and his angry expression, it was obvious that he would explode if he didn't get what he wanted.
"Someone punch that kid in the face!" yelled Sam.
"Yeah!" agreed Cat, stomping her tap shoe. "Or at least put him in time-out," she said meekly.
"Anyway, did you notice that most of those kids are teenagers?" added Sam. "If I were on that show, I would throw things at Barney and laugh instead of listening to him."
"Well, let me help you think of a way to solve that problem!" Barney grinned, still with a cheerful voice. "Let's see now, we already did that number two days ago..." he muttered. "I guess it wouldn't hurt to perform a happy dancin' show for the ninth time this month," he decided aloud. "Shimbaree, shimbarah." He began to flatly say the magic spell. "Shimbaree, shimbaraaaah."
He then hopped up into the air, and when he landed, a pair of black and white tap shoes magically appeared on his feet. But they'd gotten so worn that they were faded, and a hole in one of them exposed Barney's toe.
"That's not fair!" shouted Sam. "I can do that too!" She repeated the magic spell and jumped as high as she could. She lost her balance when she landed and fell flat on her face.
Cat cracked up. When she could finally pull herself together, she helped Sam up and decided to try the spell herself. "Shimbaleer, bimbabrah!" she yelled. She jumped off the couch, did a somersault, and landed perfectly. Her tap shoes clicked. "Yay! I did it!"
"Sam, you're already wearing tap shoes," reminded Sam.
"Oh, yeah," Cat remembered. "Darn!"
Barney and Nick were now on a stage in tuxedo outfits, doing a tap dance routine and singing:
"Happy dancin' in my shoes,
Helps me chase away the blues.
Makes me feel just like I may...
Go happy dancin' all day!"
Sam's foot began to tap. "Must... resist... the urge!" she said. She put her hand on her shoe to try and stop it, but it continued to tap anyway. That beat was just too catchy. She glanced over at Cat, and saw that she was making no effort whatsoever to keep her feet from tapping.
Suddenly, the two heard the front door open. "Hey, you two," a voice said. It was Dice, with a couple of grocery bags of meat for Sam. He was very confused when he saw Cat and Sam watching Barney & Friends. "What the heck?" he mumbled quietly to himself.
Sam ran over to the TV and frantically started pushing the channel buttons at lightning speed. But it was already too late.
"What were you two watching?" he demanded, placing his hands on his hips, but at the same time trying to stifle his laughter.
"NOTHING!" screamed Sam and Cat together. But, of course, Dice wasn't convinced. He walked over and returned the TV to PBS.
"Is this what you were watching?" he chuckled. "Barney?"
"Yes!Wewerewatchingitbecausewewereboredand..." confessed Cat.
"Hey, did you know that..." Dice turned to the TV screen and his eyes widened. "Hey, that's me!"
"What?!" exclaimed Sam, shocked.
"Yeah, I was part of the Barney gang a few years back! That's what I was about to tell you! My name was Stanley! But everyone called me 'The Hyper One.'"
"Why?" asked Cat.
Dice pointed to the TV screen with a mixed expression on his face.
On the screen, BJ and Baby Bop were playing a quiet board game while Dice, or Stanley, was running around the caboose like a madman, screaming and crashing into stuff while the other kids were chasing him. Panicked shrieks filled the air.
"No, Stanley!"
"Bad boy!"
"Stop it!"
"Stanley" turned around, his breathing heavy and his mouth foaming. "You don't tell me what to do, suckers!" he hollered, throwing wild punches at the kids. He roared like a lion, then proceeded to do another lap around the set, making airplane noises. It wasn't too long before he knocked over the model globe that the other kids had just finished making, so the glue was still wet.
"Barney!" complained a girl named Emma.
"Some kids are just like that, Emma," Barney tried to reassure. "He'll tire himself out soon; you don't need to worry about it."
"But, Barney, what will we do about him?" Tears filled Emma's eyes.
B.J. rolled the die. "Four!" he shouted when it stopped bouncing, and began to move his gamepiece. "One, two..."
Suddenly, "Stanley" tackled B.J. to the ground. "Give me that!" he screamed. "It's my turn!"
"No, it's mine! You're not even playing!" yelled B.J.
They both got in a tug-of-war with the piece until it flew out of their hands, soared through the air, and fell down an air vent.
"Stan, what are you doing!?" wailed Baby Bop as he clutched onto her head and started to tug.
"NO, STANLEY!" The other children ran towards the three in slow-motion. But it was too late.
"Stanley" finally managed to pull off Baby Bop's head, revealing the performer underneath. "Baby Bop, did you EAT someone?" he screamed excitedly. The woman could do nothing but cry.
"Yep, a steady diet of Blue Dog Soda and a deep hatred for Barney is not a winning combination," explained Dice as the program ended for the day.
"So, you auditioned for Barney just so you could wreck everything?" asked Sam.
"Yeah. I'm going to go to to the new Groovy Smoothie joint that just opened up," said Dice. "Bye!"
Ten minutes later, Sam and Cat were once again bored. There was absolutely nothing to do.
"I'm bored," groaned Sam. "There's absolutely nothing to do."
"How about we sing some public domain songs?" suggested Cat.
"Public domain songs are old-people songs," yawned Sam.
"We could...um..." Cat stopped to think. "We could go to the Groovy Smoothie."
"No, they don't serve meatshakes anymore," Sam moaned.
"We could do some happy-dancing," said Cat.
Sam perked up almost immediately. "Yeah! I'll go get my tap shoes that haven't been used in four or five years!" She ran to her closet.
After both girls were in their tap shoes, they randomly moved their feet around as they attempted to repeat Barney's routine.
"Is it happy shoes, or dancing shoes, or..." mumbled Sam, trying to remember the lyrics. She did a lopsided kick and accidentally hit Cat with her makeshift cane.
"Happy shoes... something, something, blues," sang Cat off-key.
"Oh, um, I think you have to tap your foot to the side like this first!"
The front door opened again, and two young black kids walked in along with their mother. They were the kids that were being babysat. "Hey, are you Sam and CaaaAAHHH!ยก!" the woman screamed when she saw a blonde and a redhead awkwardly shuffling around in their tap shoes.
"Happy shoes, something, blues, yeah!" they sang.
"Get back in the car, kids!" she ordered her children, who ran outside. She quickly dialed 911. "Hello, Los Angeles Police Department!? I have two mentally retarded teenagers here! I think they're using their feet to communicate an evil scheme! Come and put them in the loony bin, now!" She hung up and grabbed Cat by the shirt. "WHY didn't you tell me you had a MENTAL DISORDER?!" she shouted.
"But, I - " Cat tried to explain.
"How can I trust mental retards to babysit my kids?!" continued the angry mother.
"Oh, God, you're on your own, Cat!" Sam ran to her room before things got out of hand.
"I do NOT have a mental issue!"
"Yes, you do."
"No, I don't!"
"Yes, you DO!"
"No, I DON'T!"
"Yes, you DO!" the lady yelled. "And thanks to you, I'm going to be stuck at home with two loud kids while my husband has to go to the wedding himself!" Her voice cracked. "Good-bye," she finished, slamming the door.
A few seconds after the family left, the doorbell rang. "Ding-dong!" Cat repeated, running to answer it. It was a police officer.
Cat gulped. "Good afternoon, sir," she quivered.
"Good morning, ma'am," replied the officer. "We got a call about a couple of mentals. I just wanted to check to see if everything's okay."
But Cat panicked. She felt like she needed help. "SAM!" she called. "Samantha Fuck-It!"
"Puckett!" Sam corrected from her room. She stopped untying her tap shoes to put her head in her hands. "Oh, my God, that's the worst one yet!" the blonde moaned.
The officer raised an eyebrow and stared at Cat in a funny way.
"Oh, I almost forgot, my tap shoes!" Cat tittered nervously, lifting up one foot so the cop could see the taps underneath. "They have a two-inch heel!" She pressed her shoe up to the officer's face.
Sam ran up to see Cat rubbing her tap shoe in a police's officer's face and knocked her to the ground. "What, are you trying to make him think we're retards?!" she shouted. "Let me handle this!"
Sam took a plate piled high with meatballs and dumped it down the back of the officer's underwear, then gave him a wedgie. The burning pain was too much for the cop to handle, and he fainted. With a meatball wedgie. Cat watched the whole thing while she was still lying on the ground with her mouth open wide.
Sam called 911. "I have an emergency!" she stated. "Yeah, we have an unconscious cop," she half-lied. "See ya." She hung up the phone and turned to her roommate. "Hey, Cat."
"Yes?" answered Cat.
"Let's watch Barney!" Sam held up a Barney DVD.
"Oh, my gosh!" Cat was very excited. "Where'd you find the time to get that?"
"Oh, I've kept it hidden at the top of my closet for a long time," Sam responded coolly. "Secretly," she whispered, "I LOVE Barney!"
"Did someone say Barney?" someone yelled from outside. The door opened and two paramedics ran in. "We love Barney!" Not seeing the KO'd cop, the paramedics scrambled to get on the couch. "Quick! Put it in!" they both said eagerly.
Sam happily put in the DVD. The two girls sat on the couch with the paramedics. "Gee, it sure was great that you prank-called us," one of them whispered to Sam. "Now we can have a Barney party!"
Sam decided to just go along with it. "Yeah!" she chuckled. They all got comfortable on the couch, and as the first few bars of the theme song filled the room, Cat put her arm around Sam and smiled.
"Barney is a dinosaur from our imagination, and when he's tall, he's what we..."