Okay, so what do you think when I say Kung-Fu, school, and suckers? Unless you're me, you'd probably think…eh, who cares what you'd think, my point is I'm sure it won't get you any cash. Hey, it takes a special kind of genius to come up with something as brilliant as Master Eddy's School of Kung-Fu!
Yeah, you're kicking yourself for not thinkin' of it first, aren't you? I mean, come on, who wouldn't pay big bucks to pick up some flashy Kung-Fu moves? Me and the boys were about to go from Brokesville to the Land of Livin' Large, all thanks to me – all we needed were a few Grade-A suckers, and I knew just where to find some…
"Hey hydrant, your fly's undone!"
All right, make that Grade-A fruitcakes – what the heck, I'll take what I can get! The good thing is that Jonny and Plank have plenty of cash, and Jonny's head ain't exactly as big as it is 'coz it's full of brains, if you catch my drift. And maybe Double-D's the brains of my outfit, but I know the most important thing of all: one big empty head, plus two big fat allowances, equals cash for Eddy!
What else is there to know? Time to milk the fruitcake.
"Hi-ya!" I'd been waiting forever in that tree just so I could jump down and scare the heck outta someone, but Jonny didn't even blink. I guess if you spend your whole life yackin' it up with a piece of wood, people popping up out of nowhere ain't all that strange. No problem, I had an ace up my sleeve!
"Hi-ya! Hi-ya! Hi-ya!" How'd I make five more Eddys jump down all around Jonny? Ha, easy as pie! I just used the – uh – the re-flexive properties of the...thing...to create an op-ti-mal illusion of...uh...
Okay, fine, so my 'ace' was some thing-a-ma-bob Double-D made, what'd you expect? Hey, I ain't gonna do everything myself! It was still me that made his little trick work, though – after all, the whole point was to impress our suckers, and what could be more impressive than a truckload of Eddys?
Yeah, you wish you coulda been Jonny just then – who wouldn't? Hey, maybe I could sell cardboard cutouts of me so everyone could have their own Eddy! Oh man, write that down, would ya? I've gotta get Double-D to work on that pronto! We'd sell a million of those things to Nazz alone – and who knows how many the rest of the cul-de-sac would –
Huh? All right, fine, back to Jonny – so there he was, surrounded by Eddys, and that sap wasn't even happy about it! "I think I'm reliving that expired tofu, Plank!" He looked way more worried than wowed – eh, what do you expect from a tofu-eater? I was about to just go scare some cash outta him, but then his split personality kicked in. "Huh? You've gotta be pulling my leg!" The guy's cracked – I mean, all around him was the coolest guy he knows, and still all he wanted was to 'talk' to that stupid board! "Special effects?"
Ahh, I love the sound of a sucker taking the bait, don't you? Who cares if he was passing up a once in a lifetime chance to hang out in a crowd of Eddys – it was time to reel in the catch of the day! "That's right, Grasshopper, only one of the lessons you'll learn at Master Eddy's School of Kung-Fu!"
A few fancy moves – Bruce Lee, eat your heart out! – and me and ol' Melonhead were back at the garage – er, I mean the school. Jonny looked pretty wowed when he saw how much Ed and Double-D looked like real, live karate fighters – and here Double-D had been whining at me all morning about how you had to be an expert and junk to teach people Kung-Fu! Man, I love it when he's wrong.
Ed had a sock over his eyes like a blindfold – eh, why not, it ain't like his eyes and brain are actually connected anyway. At least he was putting his head to good use for once, trying to use it to break some log thing Double-D was holding. "Did I get it?"
Yeah, right, like Ed ever gets anything. The guy needs step-by-step instructions to make cereal.
"Not by a mile, Ed, shall we try one more time?" So how'd I rope ol' Sock-head into this one? Nah, of course I didn't threaten to tell everyone what's under his hat – where's the fun in that? I never use that unless I'm in a hurry – otherwise, it's just too much fun showin' Captain Intellectuiod who the real brains of the group is. Lemme let you in on a little secret: Double-D's got more buttons than a…um…thing with a whole lot of buttons – a sweater, yeah, that'll do – and I know where every, single, one is. Wanna get him sloshing around in the sewer? Remind him of all the spiders down there! Wanna dress him up like a clown and rent him out to the other kids for cash? Get him all worked up about 'investigating' why so many people are afraid of clowns. And, wanna get him to tie a sock around his head and stand in a stinkin' hot garage trying not to get clobbered by Ed? Let him wear that stupid lab coat of his and tell him he can be a teacher. "Remember, Ed – envision the log, focus, and make contact!"
It's so easy, it's almost unfair!
"Hi-ya!" Ed smashed through the log like it was – well, anything else he smashes through. He's an animal!
"Hallelujah!" Double-D waved the broken bits of wood around like they were cash or something. "Mind over matter triumphs!" Heh, who'da thought he could get so into the whole Kung-Fu master gig? It was almost enough to make me forget the time he sprained both his arms just tryin' to open the refrigerator. "Let's do it again!"
Yeah, like Ed needs practice breaking stuff – oh well, it was good for sales. Jonny looked pretty wowed at what Ed could do with his head; he must've been thinking of all the damage he could do with his own huge honking melon. Time to seal the deal!
"We can enroll you today for only a quarter, Grasshopper!" Oh yeah, I could taste the jawbreakers already…
Jonny was as excited as if I'd told him my shoes talk to me. "Now there's a deal, huh Plank?" Hey, wait a minute, was that too easy? Maybe I shoulda charged him fifty cents, or even –
Oh, great. Just then he got that look on his face, that look he always gets when the voices in his head start speaking up. I hate the voices in Jonny's head. Especially one in particular.
"Plank says make like a rocket and take off!"
Yeah, Plank's a riot, ain't he? Just gimme five minutes alone with that termite trap and I'll show you a real riot…
Ed would never forgive me if I did something like that, though – the big lump really thinks Plank is real! I used to try to tell him that Plank's just a piece of wood carried around by a full-bore nut-job, but all he'd ever do was laugh and say junk like, 'The sandpaper minions have poisoned your mind!' so I gave up. Eh, Ed's head is gonna be full of stupid things no matter what, I guess one more dumb belief ain't hurting anything. But it meant I couldn't mess with Plank then – uh, not that I'd let Ed tell me what to do, but you don't want an unhappy Ed on your hands, he'd have flooded the garage in no time with his blubbering, the big baby – but that didn't mean I couldn't have a little fun with Jonny. "I shall honor your decision, oh Head of a Thousand Gallons." Hey, if Jonny just happened to get himself bashed by Ed, well, it's not like I could help it, right?
"I am one with my shoe-size, Double-D!" Ed musta been talking about his IQ.
"That's nice, Ed. Just hit the danged thing!" Double-D was too busy trying not to get himself clobbered to notice my ol' switcheroo – one lump of wood, for one wood-lovin' lump, was this gonna be great or what?
Sock-head noticed a second too soon, though. "Jonny?!" He snatched Jonny back just before Ed would've hit him – man, what a lousy time for Double-D's reflexes to start working! "Eddy!"
That's when Jonny stomped off, as huffy as Jimmy that time I switched his hair-gel for shoe polish. "That was so funny I forgot to laugh." That's the same thing Jimmy'd said, too!
Man, can't anybody take a joke? "Let me remind you, ya wood-lovin…" Eh, forget it, he was too ticked off by then to fork over any cash anyhow. Time for a new sucker. And there are lots of things that bug me about Peach Creek, but a sucker shortage sure ain't one of them! You could spit out your window and hit one – and that's just what I wanted to do when I saw who was outside.
"Hey Kev!" I didn't have to run too fast to keep up with Kevin as he rode past on his rustbucket bike. "Ever thought of taking Kung-Fu lessons? Real cheap!" Cheap? Heck, I'd sign him up for nothing if it meant watchin' Ed head-chop that overblown jerk into next week!
But nooo, of course he had to be a bad sport about it. "Get away from me." Oh, boo-hoo, like I really wanted to hang out with him.
Forget Kevin, all of a sudden I was surrounded by new suckers-to-be – what'd I tell ya, Peach Creek's full of 'em! "Hurry, Sarah, I think it's started!" I was sure Jimmy would wanna sign up – that little twerp could use anything that'd make him less of a pansy. Heck, even Double-D could teach him a thing or two, and that ain't saying much!
"What is it?" I wasn't even gonna try to sign Sarah up – hey, I like cash just as much as the next guy, but I sure didn't wanna teach that she-gorilla anything more about how to hit people.
But Nazz, though – now she would've been a perfect customer! "It's supposed to be important or something!" And if I could've gotten Nazz signed up, Double-D would've been out of a job and I would've been her personal instructor – I'm sure that's what she would've asked for, anyway!
She never even got the chance, though. Everyone ran right past us as if we weren't the coolest thing to ever happen to Peach Creek – what was that all about? "Where're they going? I hate it when they don't tell us about stuff!" Talk about nerve! "What could be more important than Master Eddy?"
"Cookie dough! Yum-yum-yum!" Ed chased after everyone as if they'd offered him a lifetime supply of earwax – now come on, that just wasn't right! I'm the leader, how am I supposed to lead if Ed's already in front? But forget him, at least I could count on Sock-head to stick around and help me fleece the masses. Or so I thought.
"They say to gain knowledge, one must seek it!" Huh? Even when I understand all the words Double-D uses, I still don't get what he's trying to say half the time. "Shall we, Eddy?" All I know is that he was following right after Ed – yeah, like Ed could ever lead him to 'knowledge'.
That's when I realized I was alone – and with no suckers left to scam, what else could I do but go catch up with the boys? Man, what a gyp – in ten seconds I'd gone from being this close to cashing in on my greatest scam ever, to having to follow the Karate Klutz and the Sissiest Samurai (if it weren't for me, those two morons woulda worn their stupid Kung-Fu outfits all day, talk about no sense of style!) just to see what stupid thing the stupid neighborhood was all so stupid excited about.
The day just couldn't get any worse.
