Time for 'The Vacant Lot'! Anyway, enjoy!
"CAR!"
We all groaned as we went out of the way to wait until all the cars went past. After me, Arnold, Gerald, Phoebe, Nadine, Sid, Stinky, Harold and Curly went back home Tuesday morning, we arranged to have a baseball game along with our other friends. We sighed as we waited for the cars to pass by until a red light came on.
We tried to resume our game as best as we did, but every time we tried to get the game going, a car would just want to go through.
"Someday, we need to get a new field..." I sighed as Arnold hit the ball into a dump truck.
"Sorry, folks, game's been called until we find a new ball..." Nadine called. "...or a better field, whichever one comes first..."
"Sorry about the game..." Arnold sighed as me, him, Gerald, Nadine and Phoebe were walking alongside each other.
"Eh, that's all right." Phoebe shrugged. "We kinda knew this would happen anyway."
"It stinks though! I just wish we had a good field to play in!" Gerald frowned.
"Well, what can we do about it? Every field gets owned by a special team, and they never let us kids use it." Nadine said.
"You know, if we had our own field, we can play on it whenever we want!" Gerald said as we kept walking.
"Yeah... our own field would be pretty nice..." I smiled. I then snapped my fingers. "I got an idea! You guys remember that little lot that was always full of trash that was never gotten rid of?"
"Yeah, I remember passing it a few times." Arnold paused as he smiled. "Hey, I get it. If we can get rid of the trash in the area, we can have that as our own baseball field!"
"Yeah!" Gerald smiled. "And we can call it, "Gerald Field"!"
Arnold smiled as he nodded, "Yeah, that's what we can call it!"
"Actually, Gerald, we were thinking alongside with you..." I pointed out as Phoebe and Nadine looked over to them.
Gerald paused. "Hmmm... yeah... I could call this the 'Gerald and Phoebe Field'..."
Phoebe gave a little beam of a smile.
"...if 'Gerald Field' didn't sound better, which it does!" Gerald said. "So, Gerald Field it is."
Phoebe sighed, a little depressed. "Oh, okay..."
I looked towards Phoebe and whispered, "Don't worry, Gerald will probably change his mind later."
"Well, no time to waste!" Arnold smiled. "I'll gather the others and we can get started on clearing that small lot."
I smiled as I said, "Okay, buddy, we'll be right alongside you!"
Pretty soon, me, my friends, and our fellow classmates were busy clearing out the lot as we smiled, getting everything all prepared... and all while listening to a good tune from the radio.
(To the tune of 'With a Few Good Friends' from 'Piglet's BIG Movie')
(Singer)
With a new outlook on your fashion life,
Your friends and you can take it in strife,
Plucking out some weeds, two, three or four,
A field is built where it wasn't before!
I smiled as I pulled out some weeds that were around the area using some protective gloves, Phoebe helping me out as she was bobbing her head.
With the bases here, all made of rock,
And around the rocks, white lines made of chalk!
We all smiled happily as we were done with cleaning. Now to build up the home field!
With a new outlook on your fashion life,
Your friends and you can take it in strife,
Plucking out some weeds, two, three or four,
A field is built where it wasn't before!
Some of our friends smiled as we set up some bases around the area as Arnold built the white lines around the area. As soon as we were done, we were excited to start the game. Unfortunately, Gerald decided to keep the name 'Gerald Field', much to Phoebe's disappointment, but she decided it was the final decision, and respected it.
Batter up, or batter down,
Swing high and low, bring it around town!
We played all day until the sun was almost down. All in all, it was a pretty good day for all of us kids, playing in our brand new field.
With a new outlook on your fashion life,
Your friends and you can take it in strife,
Plucking out some weeds, two, three or four,
A field is built where it wasn't before!
It was around that time, I decided to shut my radio off and take it with me. "Sorry guys. Didn't realize I had it on the whole time."
"That's all right." Arnold said. "At least we have our baseball field now..."
"It's so cool!" I smiled. "I can't wait to play in it tomorrow!"
"We all can't wait!" Nadine smiled as we all left. Our own field for kids, nothing would take it away.
"Yeah, nothing can take it away from us!" Phoebe smiled.
"Nothing can take it away from us, my rear end!" I glared at Phoebe as we kids arrived at the new Gerald Field the next morning to witness some of the adults in Arnold's neighborhood, the people that worked in nearby areas and members of Arnold's boarding house were taking over our field with their own daily activities.
"...well, maybe except for the people who wanted an open space for their daily activities?" Phoebe said nervously as the kids groaned.
"Okay, don't worry. I know there are a few changes, but we should see if we can still play." Arnold said. "Just give it a shot, all right?"
"I have a bad feeling about this..." I groaned.
Sure enough, our teams couldn't handle the new changes pretty well. Harold threw the ball in between a checker game played by Mr. Hyunh and Arnold's grandfather, Sid and Gerald couldn't tell their strikes from the balls from Mrs. Vitello's plants, Eugene was surrounded by Harvey the mailman's chickens, I was too near Mr. Potts' tomato plants (as he so clearly reminded me of it), but eventually, we couldn't get through with it. It was then and there we decided to have a meeting.
"We cleared the junk, we pulled out the weeds, our hands..." Arnold angrily muttered as he held out his hands. "THESE hands, look at these hands! They cleaned that lot! It's not fair!"
"Life isn't fair, Arnold. What can you do? Adult tyranny, that's the problem." I sighed.
"Yeah, grown-ups are always telling us what to do!" Gerald frowned.
"Yeah, brush our teeth!" Sid mocked.
"Comb your hair!" Sheena whined.
"You can't play baseball here! Rules, rules, rules, they got rules for everything!" Arnold complained.
"Welcome to reality, Arnold!" Harold frowned. "In this reality, grown-ups make the rules, they follow them to a tee, they're always well-behaved."
I looked back and paused for a moment at the sight I was seeing. "Maybe they're not well-behaved. Look over there."
All the kids turned to where I was pointing. Over on the field, the adults were starting to argue over rights to the lot... well, Gerald Field as we want to call it.
"Whoa, I never knew Mrs. Vitello had a strong right hook." Sid said, wincing a bit.
Arnold paused as he looked over to see a dumpster full of trash. He looked over at me, smirking. I think he got an idea. If the adults want the lot so bad, they can either give it to us, or they can keep it and clean it themselves. We all turned to the other kids, who had got the same idea.
"Hopefully, this works..." I muttered as we started pushing the dumpster over towards the field.
Sure enough, the next day, after Arnold and Gerald's little explanation, the adults started to feel bad and cleaned up the lot and gave the baseball field back to us... where it can be both for kids and adults, no matter what the cost. In fact, they even made it better than what we originally did. From that day forth, Gerald Field became our official field.
Personally, it was a good experience for us kids, and we all had fun on the baseball field. Maybe someday, we can have the name of Gerald Field changed, but hey, it's their decision.
And when Harold decided to invite us to his Bar Mitzvah on Saturday after the game, we were all pretty much excited.
There's the forty-sixth episode! How do you like it? Yeah, I know it wasn't much, but I just felt I needed a bit of a breather episode/short chapter. But I hope you like it regardless.
The song that was parodied here is the song called 'With A Few Good Friends' by Carly Simon from 'Piglet's BIG Movie'. Anyway, read, review, criticize and suggest, folks!