Taking the Boys to Dinner
I take over babysitting for Candace one night, and the boys drive me absolutely bonkers.
I took my seat in the wooden chair, trying my best to appear enthused. The two ten-year-old boys across the table grinned at me excitedly. When I had asked them where they wanted to eat for dinner, I'd had no idea they would've suggested this uptight place.
"So," began the short one, "how long are you watching us for?"
I shrugged and examined the menu. "Just until your mom gets your sister back from therapy, but that could be awhile." A chattering sound was heard, and I dropped the menu in exasperation. "Did you seriously bring that fleabag here?" I cried.
"Perry's not a fleabag!" Phineas replied indignantly. "We bathe him once a week. Besides, it's a platypus themed restaurant; why wouldn't we bring him?"
I turned to the one with green hair. "This was all your idea, wasn't it?" I accused.
Ferb looked at me blankly and said nothing. He may have been quiet, but I knew he was the real brains behind all these operations. Just that day, the boys had made a racket worthy to raise hell, complete with delivery trucks, cranes, and a power drill. But every time I went out to check on them, I saw nothing.
Phineas pet Perry, assuring the platypus that I wasn't that bad, and that I really didn't think he was a fleabag.
"So what were you two doing earlier that made so much noise?" I questioned.
"It was an invisible battleship," Phineas answered. "Ultra stealth, you know?"
I was fumbling with a way to respond to that when the waiter arrived, complete with a French mustache and accent.
"Bonjour, welcome to Platypus a la Mode. What may I serve you tonight?" he asked.
To my utter shock and confusion, the boys both filled their orders in perfect French, even striking up a conversation with the waiter that was evidently humorous. I immediately felt left out, because the extent of my French vocabulary goes to "Je t'aime" and back.
Abruptly, the three of them seemed to remember I was there, and turned their impending stares on me. The waiter said something to me, but as it was in French, I understood nothing.
"I just want the steak," I said, embarrassed by my clear non-French-ness.
He blinked, evidently confused. "Non les escaragots?" he questioned.
At this, Phineas laughed openly, and Ferb smiled a little. "Non, non," Phineas insisted, and he continued too quickly for me to follow. By the end of this, everyone was grinning (except me, who was still as lost as a goldfish in the ocean) and bidding "Au revior!" and stuff like that.
"He's a good guy," Phineas chuckled after the waiter left.
I gaped at the little kid. My mouth moved, and I meant to say something, but nothing came to mind, so I remained silent.
Without saying a word, Ferb tapped his brother on the shoulder and directed his attention to the fork on the table. Before my very eyes, Ferb had constructed a working catapult made from the fork, a loose end of the tablecloth, a wine cork, and his water glass. He wound the fork tightly, held in place by his glass and given a center of balance from the wine cork. Ferb then took an ice cube from his water, set it on the pronged end of the fork, and let it fly. Three pairs of eyes watched the ice cube soar through the air and land in someone's soup a few tables away.
Immediately, we all looked distinctly the other way in hopes that the man wouldn't see us. "Smooth," I hissed at Ferb.
"Well, perhaps if you were more conversational, this wouldn't have happened," he snapped.
I was taken aback. "Me? Not conversational? I'm a teenage girl! How dare you call me not conversational?" I accused. When he did not reply, I turned to Phineas. "Okay, shorty, tell me about what you did this summer."
Phineas blinked at me. "Hm… what we did this summer… Ferb, the notebook, please." He held out his hand, and Ferb placed a tattered notebook in it. I watched Phineas flip it open and clear his throat as he prepared to read. "We: built a roller coaster, scaled Mt. Rushmore, made a haunted house, became a local superhero, constructed a building that reached the moon, circumnavigated the globe in forty hours, created an animal—."
I held up my hands. "Stop!" I exclaimed, interrupting him. "You went around the world in forty hours? Is that even possible?"
Phineas exchanged a look with his brother. "We did it," he said to me.
I continued to gape at the small boy. "No way," I breathed.
"Hey Ferb," said Phineas, giving the notebook a confused face. "Why does 'helped Vanessa get Pizzazzium Infinionite' have a bunch of squiggles around it?"
Ferb snatched the notebook back so quickly I merely saw a blur. His expression was slightly annoyed as he stuffed the notebook back in his shirt. In an attempt to distract himself, he loaded the fork catapult with another ice cube, clearly intending to launch it.
"Ooh, who's Vanessa?" I inquired.
"A girl who likes to wear all black," Phineas answered for me.
I paused, a sly smile creeping up my lips. "Aren't squiggles the guy version of hearts?"
"Please excuse me," Ferb said firmly. He removed Perry from his lap and left the table, heading in the direction of the restrooms.
"Little people love is so cute!" I exclaimed. "Like the Spanish girl. The way she looks at—." I broke off, noticing the expression Phineas was giving me.
He cocked his head to the side. "You mean Isabella?" he questioned.
I looked around wildly. "Where on earth is the waiter?" I wondered. "Um, le waiter!" I tried.
"Isabella is in love?" Phineas continued, still bewildered. "With who?"
"No one!" I nearly yelled, slamming my fist on the table. Unfortunately, I slammed my fist right on the fork catapult Ferb had made earlier, launching the ice cube into a graceful arc and landing it in the same man's soup.
"Hey!" he cried. He stared down at his shirt in horror, examining the soup stains now settling in the fabric. To my horror, he moved his gaze to me. "You! You threw an ice cube in my soup!"
I blanched. "Huh?" I gasped.
The man—a big, burly man at that—started making his way over to me, and in his eyes I could see every method he would use to cause me pain.
"Oh snap," I whined as he approached.
"Hey, where's Perry?" asked Phineas.
Someone crashed through the kitchen, tumbling out the doors. I saw what looked like a pharmacist wrestling with… a platypus in a fedora? What the—?
The man grabbed me by the shirt. My eyes went wide as his soup breath was suddenly all I was breathing. "You are gonna regret the day—."
Suddenly, there was a zapping sound, and a strange beam lit up the restaurant. "Behold!" exclaimed a German accent. "The powers of the chaos-inator!"
The waiters began to trip, dropping their plates and glasses with tremendous crashes (hey guess who's a poet?). The man tried to swing a punch at my face—never mind the fact that I'm a teenage girl—but I managed to duck in time. I twisted around in his grasp, revealing to my eyes the havoc that was now the restaurant.
People were throwing food and leaping across tables. I heard things breaking. More rays from whatever was firing them lit up the dining room. Frighteningly close to my ear, there was the chattering of the platypus and a heavy German accented voice.
"What? That is not even fair! When did you get a platypus double to confuse me, Perry the Platypus?" cried the German voice.
"This seems like a good time to use the Perry Locator," I heard Phineas say.
"Ice in my soup," growled the man.
I tried to scramble away from him, and wound up hitting a table leg. The table then fell over, causing someone to cry out in horrified French. I crawled out from the wreckage of our table, only to be leaped over by Phineas. "Leap frog!" he exclaimed happily.
Before I knew what was going on, three guys in tuxes and a few fancily dressed women were bounding over me, whooping like savages. I gave an incredibly girly scream and managed to get to my feet. "What in the world is going on!" I shrieked.
"Look!" called Phineas. I looked around, searching for the source of his voice. It was with a terrified heart that I gazed at the ceiling. "You should try this. It's fun!"
"You get off that chandelier this instant!" I screamed. "Or else I'll… I'll tell your mom!"
He swung upside down and hung by his feet, low enough that we were face to face. "Tell her what?" he inquired.
I glared at his upside down face and pushed it. "Get outta here," I snapped. He laughed as he swung back and forth. Furious, I pulled out my phone and dialed Mrs. Flynn-Fletcher's number.
"Sam?" she answered. "What's the matter?"
"Your sons are insane!" I yelled at her. "They built a catapult, and made this giant guy chase after me, and now Phineas is quite literally bouncing off the walls."
"Extra rubbery shoes!" he explained to me as he boinged from wall to wall. "I think we have a pair in your size, but Ferb is still in the bathroom, and he's the one who has everything."
I gaped at him, watching him bounce with disbelief. "Are you hearing this?" I cried to their mother.
"Did you say something? It's awful loud on your end," she told me.
It was all I could do to keep from crushing the phone in my hands. "Never mind!" I yelled. "I'll just show you." I hung up. "I'll just take a video of this on my phone," I laughed maniacally. "It will go splendid-leeeeeeeeee!" I screamed, for Phineas had latched onto me and taken me for a ride in his rubber shoes.
"Lucky you're so light and short," he was saying, "or else I don't think the shoes would hold you."
"LUCKY?" I yelled. "PUT ME DOWN RIGHT NOW!"
"I didn't catch that, what?" he said.
We were bouncing all around the restaurant, and my vision was a total blur of color. I think I saw the pharmacist at one point. He was getting pounded by a familiar blue blur, though I could not place what it was. We were moving too fast.
"Isn't this fun?" I heard Phineas ask at some point. And, yeah, it was fun, but it was also insanely dangerous and I was starting to feel sick. Not to mention the awkward hold Phineas had on me. My ribs were really starting to hate him.
Suddenly, the German voice exclaimed, "No! Not the reverse button!" and we started to slow down. Everything seemed to get less and less energetic and chaotic.
"Guess that means the ride is over," Phineas stated, and when we landed on the ground, he let me go. I stumbled away, desperate to remember what it felt like to not be bouncing all around the room. Behind me, the triangle shaped boy was sitting on the ground and untying his shoes.
Most everyone had left the restaurant, leaving me and the kid alone in the mess. "Great," I said, exasperated. "They're going to think we did this." I stepped over to Phineas. "Hurry up and put your sneakers back on. We need to leave now."
At that moment, the door to the restrooms swung open, and Ferb stepped out. He looked around at all the mayhem and blinked several times. "Hm," he said. He looked at the door, examining it curiously. "This door is remarkably soundproof."
"So, did the boys behave?" asked Mrs. FF as she was unloading her groceries.
I looked to the living room where the boys resided on the couch, watching the television. Candace, having just returned from her shrink session, appeared utterly peaceful with her phone in her hand. No doubt she was telling Stacey all about the shrink session. Or Jeremy. I looked past her, through the window, and saw—.
"Sam? Did you hear me?" questioned Mrs. FF.
Blinking, I looked back at her. "Yeah," I said distantly. "Sure. Look, can you give me the number for that shrink Candace is going to? I'm pretty certain fedora-wearing platypuses is something I should get checked out."
Candace's phone buzzed. "Oh my gosh, Vanessa! I haven't talked to her in forever!"
I snickered lightly as Ferb looked over with interest. Apparently, he heard me, and went back to staring at the television.
There was a chattering noise, and in walked our favorite semi-aquatic, egg-laying, possibly fedora-wearing mammal. "Oh there you are, Perry!" announced Phineas.
*AN: So this started out in Creative Writing, where the prompt was "If you could take anyone to dinner." So this was born. Yay. I had a lot of fun writing it. Hope you had fun reading it! And it's not depressing, like my other P&F fic! I did such a good job, breaking the mold. Well, tell me what you thought, cuz your thoughts mean lots. Look, I'm still a poet! Haha :) See ya.*