Based on Hey Arnold! characters created by Craig Bartlett. Author claims no copyright.
Gerald Johanssen had three lifelong goals: make lots of money, play a sport professionally and get the girl. He eventually achieved all three to varying degrees of success.
Getting the girl was by far the easiest of his three goals. He may have boasted about flirting with sixth graders when he and Arnold were in fourth grade. But all along Gerald knew there was only one girl for him. Phoebe Heyerdahl. His kind, soft-spoken, highly intelligent bespectacled classmate and neighbor. Other than his parents, no person connected with Gerald as well as Phoebe did.
Phoebe and Gerald were a foil to their best friends, Arnold Shortman and Helga G. Pataki. They met on the same day and same place Helga and Arnold had met, at Urban Tots preschool. But unlike Helga and Arnold, who went through a few ups and downs as a couple, Phoebe and Gerald were steady. Even while Phoebe went from Boston to Nashville for her medical schooling and Gerald played a few seasons in the NBA, they kept it going long distance.
In sports, Gerald was a state champion basketball player at South Hillwood High School and NCAA champion at the University of Connecticut. He was a second-round NBA draft pick by the Pittsburgh Pipers, and ended up playing parts of three seasons for them before succumbing to knee injuries.
When his basketball career ended sooner than expected, Gerald returned to Hillwood and settled down with Phoebe. That was where money came in, also not exactly how he had drawn it up. The money came from Phoebe. He got his bachelor's in econ at UConn, and had entrepreneurial aspirations for when he was done playing. But his wife brought home the bacon. Phoebe had a prestigious job as a neurologist at Hillwood hospital. Gerald was thrust into the role of stay-at-home dad for their son and twin daughters. It was not his ideal role, but Phoebe and their family was too important to him. In his spare time he took online classes to get an MBA in hopes that he could start his own shoe company once the kids got older.
One year before Gerald did, Arnold had returned to Hillwood after a few years away. Not only did Arnold return, but he also got back together with Helga and married her. Their son Phil was born just a few days before Phoebe and Gerald's son Gerald Jr. Ellie and Kellie Johanssen, Gerald Jr.'s twin sisters, arrived a year after Helga and Arnold's daughter Amber. And so the Johanssens and Shortmans were settled back where it had all began. Best friends married to best friends. The families went on camping trips together and babysat for each other at times.
Gerald didnt know how to ride a bike until Arnold taught him when they were kids. He got over his initial fear and won a bike-a-thon. Bikes were also involved in a ritual Arnold and Gerald would start many years later. While Helga and Phoebe stayed with the kids, they met up and rode up and down the city bike and pedestrian path. The path let to a city park that boasted panoramic views of the Hillwood skyline and waterfront, and of Elk Island.
On this particular day, the panorama was visible despite some morning fog Arnold and Gerald pedaled through on the way up. "I would never have biked if you hadn't helped me that one time," said Gerald as they parked their bikes on the grass, "or have got as far in basketball as I did if you didn't tell Coach Wittenburg not to pass to Tucker every time." "Well what can I say," Arnold replied, "I'm bold, right?"
These bike rides ending in the park were the times when the two old friends contemplated life and what was on their minds in their brief breaks from parenthood. Helga and Phoebe got together on similar occasions when it was their turn and the guys stayed with the kids. They were in their mid-30s. Neither were graying or balding but Gerald's afro was cut a few inches shorter than it was when he was younger.
"Phoebe always got me to more optimistic and less pessimistic. But lately she has been talking to me about how she's worried," said Gerald as he sat on a nearby park bench and drank from his water flask. "Worried that the kids won't see her as the fun parent and just go to her when they need help with homework. I try and reassure her that it won't end up like that." "Well I'm sure she could make some time for fencing with them when they are all old enough," said Arnold.
Fencing was a hobby Phoebe took part in with her father. Gerald had told Kyo Heyerdahl of intentions to propose to and marry his daughter while trying fencing out in a duel with Kyo.
"That's one example," said Gerald. "Well yeah," Arnold replied, "you know how Helga is, she has kind of the same thing going on. She gets anxiety about how she thinks Phil and Amber only see her as the disciplinarian. The one that gives them timeouts when they are naughty. I have to remind her of the cakes she bakes them on their birthdays, the halloween and XMas stuff she does for them, and this and that."
For the rest of their conversation Gerald talked about the shoe company he wanted to establish. It would be named Fuzzy Slippers, after the confidential informant that tipped him off with intel on the Pigeon Man, Stoop Kid, Monkey Man, Wheezin' Ed and other eccentric characters around town. It would have types of shoes ranging from slippers to basketball sneakers like he wore when playing. "Just don't run it the way you ran the flower shop when we were kids," said Arnold, remembering the time when they worked for Mrs. Vitello and Gerald bossed him around.
Who Fuzzy Slippers actually was remained unknown after all these years. Not even Arnold or Phoebe had found out. They were convinced that Gerald would never tell.