The Inventing Room was vast. It was huge! It had to be big to fit in all the contraptions that were in it. There were machines and pipes all over, of all shapes and sizes. Mr. Wonka must like pipes. I couldn't see the room's ceiling, but Oompa-Loompas were walking on catwalks above the floor and pushing wheelbarrows across the floor. Where there weren't machines there were tables, and beakers, and Bunsen burners, and test-tubes, and the room wasn't quiet. There was percolating and bubbling going on, and hissing sounds from pots and kettles, and machines making clanking and clacking noises, and Mr. Wonka walked into the room as if he owned it.

He did own it, of course, but I mean when he walked into that room he forgot about us, and when he forgot about us he was a different person. Confident; in command; he surveyed the room and the Oompa-Loompas busy working in it, and then his eyes came back to us, and he remembered we were there, and he got nervous again. He had to raise his voice over the noise.

"Now, this is the most important room in the entire factory," he told us. "Now, everyone enjoy yourselves, but just don't touch anything. Okay?"

He told us to scoot, and I didn't wait this time, but if this was the most important room in the factory, why wasn't he telling us about it? Mike took off, and Mr. Teavee followed him with out-stretched arms. I guess he was afraid Mike would break something, and Mr. Teavee didn't want to have to pay for it. The machines in this room looked like they cost a pretty penny.

Mike was chasing after Violet, and Violet was running to a tank. She got to it, and peered into it through one of its glass windows. Mike caught up, and he looked in, too. I don't know what she saw, but it interested her.

"Hey, Mr. Wonka, what's this? she asked.

"Oh!" Mr. Wonka squeaked. He does have a high voice. But he strode right over. "Let me show you."

We all started to gather 'round. There was water splashing at the top of the tank, and an Oompa-Loompa swimming in the water popped up and handed Mr. Wonka something round and red. Mr. Wonka thanked him and told us it was an Everlasting Gobstopper. He said they were for people with very little allowance money, and no matter how much you sucked them, they never got any smaller.

I gave it a good look. I get no allowance money, so it was still out of my price range. It also looked pretty big: like a handball. Who wants to put a handball in their mouth and suck on it? Not me. What if you swallowed it? If it never gets any smaller, wouldn't it choke you? Wouldn't it be a choke hazard at any size? I guess if you can crunch it down to a smaller size…

"It's like gum," said Violet.

"No." Mr. Wonka was back to his bully-on-the-playground voice. "Gum is for chewing, and if you tried chewing one of these gobstoppers, you'd break all your little teeth off."

There goes that idea. No saving yourself by biting it into smaller pieces. Mr. Wonka needs to rethink this idea, however good it tastes. I can see a lot of headlines being made if he starts selling it the way it is, with none of them good. Mr. Wonka was off to another table, and Violet and her mom shared disappointed glances with each other. Mrs. Beauregarde looked angry, too, and I was glad I didn't have her for a mother.

Mr. Wonka wanted to show us another thing, and putting down the gobstopper, he picked it up. I guess that's why he hadn't told us anything at the start: he didn't know where to begin, but now that he had…

"And this is Hair Toffee," he said, sounding delighted. "You suck down one of these little boogers, and in exactly half an hour, a brand new crop of hair will start growing out all over the top of your little noggin. And a mustache. And a beard!"

Would girls get a beard, too? And a mustache? Mike beat me to the questions. I'd save mine.

"Who wants a beard?"

"Well." Mr. Wonka paused, thinking. "Beatniks, for one. Folksingers and motorbike riders."

Mr. Wonka is old if he's talking beatniks. Are there any beatniks anymore?

"You know. All those hip, jazzy, super-cool, neat, keen and groovy cats."

It clicked. Mr. Wonka talked to us this way because he thought he was speaking 'our' language. When in Rome, do as the Romans, and all that. Didn't he know adults who do that are square, square, square? Is there anything worse? He went on with more slang from way before my time, and at the end of that he offered his hand to Mike, who had got this started.

He offered his hand to Mike!

Gosh, Mike was in good! Mr. Wonka didn't like being touched, and here he was, offering his hand! To Mike! I had a ringside seat for this: I was standing right next to Mike. My breath caught in my chest. I didn't know what the special prize was, but suddenly, I wanted it. I wanted to win it, whatever it was. I don't know why exactly this came over me, but I know it did. Maybe it was because now I thought I wasn't winning, and I might have been, and I was tired of not winning.

Still holding my breath, I waited to see what Mike would do. I imagined the look of satisfaction on Mr. Wonka's face when Mike slid him five.

Mike didn't do it. Mike looked at Mr. Wonka's hand, and then into his eyes, and the look he gave him was … well, it was the look you would give a person who was asking you to clean a toilet with a toothbrush. Or your tongue. I started to breath again.

Mr. Wonka recovered the way he had at the tunnel: without missing a beat. He told us the mixture wasn't right yet. He told us an Oompa-Loompa had tried some, and the Oompa-Loompa who had tried it appeared, covered in hair, from top to bottom and then some. His hair dragged on the floor. It was curly, and thick, and with the right hat and sunglasses he would have been a dead-ringer for Cousin Itt on the Addams Family. I love the Addams Family. My family watches reruns of it on our little TV, with its broken, crooked rabbit ear antennas. Mr. Wonka told the Oompa-Loompa he looked great, and the Oompa-Loompa gave him two thumbs up, and left.

I thought about that. The Oompa-Loompa must have been standing by. He must have known Mr. Wonka was going to tell us about the Hair Toffee and show us it wasn't ready yet. Why else would he be so handy? It was something to think about. Oompa-Loompas started doing something overhead with wheelbarrows. We could hear them, and looked up. Mr. Wonka went over to a lever, grinning like the cat in Alice in Wonderland.

"Watch this," he said, and pushed the lever down.

Bells and whistles went off. Mr. Wonka scurried over to a machine away from the lever. It took awhile, but the machine spit out … a dull grey piece of gum. Violet, no surprise, took it.

"You mean that's it?"

As angry as Mike was, you'd think making him wait for this gum to be made was like making him do detention for a week. After the 'slide me some skin' incident Mr. Wonka wasn't going to take that tone from Mike. I didn't blame him.

"Do you even know what 'it' is?"

Violet answered. "It's gum."

Mr. Wonka agreed, and told us about the gum the way a kid would talk about the gum, because he was talking to us kids. Maybe that was a good idea. I lived with my grandparents, and my parents, so I had a big vocabulary, but maybe the other kids didn't. With the giggle I'd come to expect at the end of his explanations, Mr. Wonka told us the gum was a three-course meal. Mr. Salt wanted to know why anyone would want that.

That flustered Mr. Wonka. If one of us kids had asked him, I'm sure he would have gone into his snippy-bully mode, but it was one of the adults asking, so he regrouped and pulled out cue cards, like he had at the end of the puppet show. The gum would be the end of all cooking and kitchens, he told us, reading off the cards. This piece of gum, he told us, was tomato soup, roast beef, and blueberry pie. My Grandpa Joe spoke up.

"It sounds great!"

I thought so, too. Foods that aren't cabbage are a sure-fire hit with us Buckets, never fail. Veruca wasn't into it. She thought it sounded weird. Violet was into it. She said it was her kind of gum. She took out the gum she had in her mouth and began putting it behind her ear, a gesture I knew well.

"I'd rather you didn't," said Mr. Wonka, as Violet swapped sticks of gum. "There's still one or two things that are a little—"

Violet cut him off. She said she wasn't afraid of anything, and I shook my head. Is that any way to be? There are things in life I am afraid of, and I should be. Starvation is one of them. Freezing to death is another. A three-course gum meal sounds like a great idea, but if Mr. Wonka says he'd rather Violet didn't try it, Mr. Wonka oughta know. He made it. I thought of the Cousin Itt Hair Toffee, shown to us not five minutes ago. All that hair! A formula not right yet. If I was remembering that, why wasn't Violet?

Violet, the Champion of the World Gum Chewer, made a show of crumpling the new gum into her mouth. Mr. Wonka did a little dip that made me think he was doing his best not to shrug his shoulders, but the dip was the same thing. Violet started into her chewing. Her mom asked her, and Violet gave us a report. She said the gum was amazing. She could feel the tomato soup going down her throat.

"Yeah," said Mr. Wonka, not kidding. "Spit it out."

My Grandpa Joe used to work with Mr. Wonka. He knew when Mr. Wonka meant something and when he didn't.

"Young lady," my Grandpa Joe said, "I think you'd better—"

Violet cut him off. The gum was changing. Now it was roast beef, with baked potato, with crispy skin and butter. My mouth was filling with saliva. Mrs. Beauregarde didn't listen to Mr. Wonka at all. She was all for Violet getting to be the first with this gum, and said so. Mr. Wonka continued to express concern. Violet was up to the dessert. Blueberry pie and ice cream she said. Mr. Wonka said that was the part he was concerned about. Veruca saw it before the rest of us.

"What's happening to her nose?" she asked.

"It's turning blue," said Mr. Salt.

Violet's nose was turning blue, and it was spreading. Mrs. Beauregarde wanted an explanation, and Mr. Wonka gave her one. Didn't we go through this sort of thing with Mrs. Gloop? Mr. Wonka told her the gum goes "a little funny when it gets to the dessert" and I guess he knew how funny it went, because when he got to the end of saying that, he said he was sorry and ducked behind the machine he was standing near.

Seeing Violet turn violet was weird, but what happened next was worse. Violet got bigger and bigger, and rounder and rounder, and we all backed away, because Mr. Wonka was right, you needed to get out of the way.

"She's swelling up," said my Grandpa Joe.

"Like a blueberry," I said.

She'd have been okay if she'd spit out the gum when Mr. Wonka told her to. Or left it alone when Mr. Wonka said he'd rather she didn't try it. Or gone with what he'd told us when we came into the room: 'don't touch anything'. It wasn't like she hadn't had time: she wasn't turning into tomato soup, or a slice of roast beef, or even a potato, with crispy skin and butter. Could a person survive turning into tomato soup? All red and runny? Or into butter? All yellow and runny? Or into the crispy skin of a baked potato? All thin and wrinkly? These other possibilities... I shuddered thinking about them. My skin crawled. The hair on my arms stood up. Poor Violet! But she was lucky, really. Blueberries are round, and so are people, some of them. Augustus had been working on getting that shape. Now Violet was way ahead of him, but thank God, she'd stopped growing.

Mr. Wonka decided it was time to fill us in. He snuck-up on Mrs. Beauregarde, because I figure, he figured she'd be the most interested, and spoke into her ear, but we could all hear him. Yup, he snuck-up on her, on purpose. He wasn't an inch from her back and shoulder. Pretty close, I'd say, for someone who doesn't like to be touched, but not too close for a boyfriend. They get close like that. Mrs. Beauregarde didn't like it, but it was what she'd been going for in the Chocolate Room, so how could she object? I smiled. Gotta watch out for what you ask for…

"I've tried it on, like, twenty Oompa-Loompas, and each one ended up as a blueberry. It's just weird."

Yes, it was Mrs. Beauregarde's turn to be Mrs. Gloop now, and get answers from Mr. Wonka, but they were different. Mrs. Gloop had been upset. Mrs. Beauregarde was angry. Was that because her daughter wouldn't have been the first person to have a three-course gum meal? She'd be the twenty-first? This daring-do ballooning had been for nothing?

"But I can't have a blueberry as a daughter," she said. "How is she supposed to compete?"

I sucked in my breath, but I don't think anyone heard me. I hoped not. I hoped Violet hadn't heard what her mother had just said! Could Violet hear us? With her head so high above us? Surrounded by the ball of blue that was her now? I hoped not. To hear that all her mother cared about was whether Violet could compete or not? I'd never want to hear my mother say such a thing about me, and I knew I never would.

Veruca, so polite, she'd have you think, went in for the kill.

"You could put her in a county fair."

Mr. Wonka gave a half-hearted laugh at that, but his tried-on smile soon faded, and the Oompa-Loompas took over. They had a song. Another original song. It was about gum chewing. They didn't approve of gum chewing. They said Violet's chin would 'stick out like a violin' if she kept it up. They might not like gum chewing, but they weren't against rolling things around. They rolled Violet around like a ball. They jumped on her, and did acrobatics on her. Violet was bouncy. The Oompa-Loompas are small, but that's how big Violet had gotten: big enough for Oompa-Loompas to jump on her. More than one Oompa-Loompa, at that.

It hurt to watch. They'd treated the cow better. I was beginning to wonder if I liked the Oompa-Loompas. Mr. Wonka was into it. He was letting the music move him. I was beginning to wonder if I liked Mr. Wonka. Maybe I didn't want to win the special prize. My Grandpa Joe had always told me about the things Mr. Wonka had done. He didn't talk about what Mr. Wonka was like, and maybe this was why. The song went on.

"…Her jaws get stronger every day, and with one great tremendous chew they bite the poor girl's tongue in two; and that is why we try so hard to save Miss. Violet Beauregarde…"

They're trying to SAVE her? From her chewing gum habit? My eyebrows climbed, but I had to agree with them: biting your tongue in two is not a good thing. Was being a blueberry a better fate? I guess that depended… Was this for all time? The Oompa-Loompas didn't seem too concerned, and neither did Mr. Wonka. They'd already had experience with this—twenty different times—so they must know about it. It would be hard to sew a tongue back together.

"Mr. Wonka!"

That was Violet. She must think Mr. Wonka had the answer. She'd been saying 'help', and now she was calling to him. He didn't answer her, but he had a plan.

"I want you to roll Miss. Beauregarde into the boat and take her along to the Juicing Room at once."

'Miss. Beauregarde' Mr. Wonka had called her, and not 'little girl'. If nothing else, Violet had earned herself some respect from Mr. Wonka, or maybe she'd earned his pity. Whichever it was, I felt better about how this would turn out. He'd make it right. He had to.

"'Kay?"

The Oompa-Loompa saluted. They'd already rolled Violet to the door: the plan all along.

"The Juicing Room? What are they gonna do to her there?"

If they were taking the boat, they weren't going to the Beetle Juicing Room. That room was up-stream. Mrs. Beauregarde finally had some concern in her voice, but Mr. Wonka must have specialized juicing rooms.

"They're gonna squeeze her, like a little pimple…"

I felt the corners of my mouth lift, although I knew I shouldn't smile. Mr. Wonka doesn't worry too much about saying things in a nice way. Pimples; boogers; broken teeth… I kinda liked that. There was no pussy-footing around. You knew where he stood. And it showed a certain fearlessness. Erp! There was that short little giggle again. That nervous giggle. He did that all the time when he spoke to the adults. I guess his fearlessness doesn't include them.

"We gotta squeeze all that juice out of her immediately."

So that's what it was! Juice! Fluid under the skin! Like a blister! I've had blisters before, mostly from my shoes being too small, and some of them have been pretty big, but Violet chewing that gum had turned her into the biggest blister ever!

At the door, the Oompa-Loompas were pushing and pushing. Violet wasn't the neat fit Augustus had been in the pipe, and Violet wasn't going through. For a minute I didn't think Mrs. Beauregarde was going to go to her daughter and help, but then Violet called out to her, and Mrs. Beauregarde went and helped. Maybe if Mr. Wonka had said it was a pushing competition Mrs. Beauregarde would have helped sooner. They got Violet through the door—juice is squishy—and then they were gone. Mr. Wonka smiled, his eyes narrowed.

So much for that love affair.

Mr. Wonka wasted no more time. Through a different door he led us out of the room. There were three of us winners now, and candy-apple-plucking boasting about being a champion aside, Violet wasn't one of us.

Are these my characters? They are not. Is this purely for entertainment? It is.
Thanks for reading.
Have your reviews made my day? You betcha! Fav and Followers? You also, and I thank you, one and all.
As it ever is in my stories, direct quotes from the 2005 movie are in italics.