Based on Hey Arnold! characters created by Craig Bartlett. Based on Rugrats characters created by Arlene Klasky, Gabor Csupo and Paul Germain. Author claims no copyright.
Mai Huynh had found a home in Nashville. She was born in Vietnam and was evacuated in her infancy during the chaotic Fall of Saigon. She was adopted by an American couple named Joe and Jane Smith, and moved with them to their home in small town Tennessee. Summer vacations always involved a trip to Nashville. The aroma of Nashville Hot Chicken from an early age never left her. Mai wanted to work with food and recreate aromas like that in the same place. Eventually she did, preparing sandwiches at a deli in the Nashville Farmers Market.
Although she knew that she was Vietnamese, she had put more energy into assimilating into American culture for the first 20 plus years of her life. That all changed one day when she got the Christmas present of a lifetime- a reunion with her biological father, who was living in Hillwood. Arnold Shortman, the then nine-year-old grandson of the couple that ran the boarding house where Mr. Huynh had lived, had facilitated the reunion as a Secret Santa present. Mai got to be friends with her father, picking up where they left off when he dropped her off in the helicopter when she was a tot. They eventually traveled back to Vietnam to revisit where they came from. Her mother had died shortly after birth while accidentally stepping into a grenade somewhere in the jungle.
Whenever he would visit his daughter in Nashville Mr. Huynh would leave with country music songs stuck in his head. Then he would warble them in the shower. He told those who heard him that he just sang for fun. But more specifically it reminded him of his daughter and the times they spent going to honky tonks and the Country Music Hall of Fame. He just didn't want to draw attention to Mai. Nor did he want to sing outside the shower as he did for a short period of time after agreeing to try it out.
Mr. Huynh did not want to be famous. But he did agree to the idea Mai had to name her restaurant after the one song he performed at the Great Ole Opry. The Simple Things. And so he moved to Nashville to start the comfort food diner- Simple Things, with her. Simple Things served two items referenced in the song- spicy chicken wings and french fried onion rings. True to their Vietnamese roots, hot chicken was offered in Banh Mi-like sandwiches.
Despite his relocation, Mr. Huynh did not completely leave Hillwood behind. Arnold and his wife Helga hosted an annual ugly sweater party at the boarding house before Christmas. They had taken over operations of the house when Arnold's grandfather died. Mr. Huynh and his daughter always attended and catered. It was eventually revealed that Helga had been responsible for the Huynh reunion. She had tipped off a private investigator to track down Mai in exchange for a pair of Nancy Spumoni snowboots. It was one of a few clandestine ways she had helped Arnold out long before she became Mrs. Shortman.
Taking Mai up on her offer to stay with her for a visit had been on the Shortmans' to-do list for a while. They thought about going when the Black Sox were in town for a game against the Nashville Stars. But Helga got there before Arnold, and not during baseball season. She brought her best friend Phoebe and made a girls trip out of it. Phoebe had a Nashville connection as well, having gone there for medical school at Vanderbilt. The plan was to stay with Mai and meet up with a med school friend of Phoebe's that still lived in the city.
Everything started fine. Helga and Phoebe met Becky, the med school friend, at a honky tonk across from the hockey arena. They went down to check out the Parthenon replica, which Phoebe nerded over the history and details of like she usually did. Then back downtown they tried a new hot chicken joint. Helga ordered the extra-hot variety to be adventurous.
"Criminy! It burns!," Helga shrieked as her head boiled up and started to turn a fiery orange. Then she apologized to Phoebe and Becky and got a cab back to Mai's house. She vomited once she exited the cab.
Back in Hillwood, Arnold had taken son Phil and daughter Amber to see the new Reptar movie. It was a reboot of the Godzilla-like franchise titled Reptar Returns, and directed by the Pickles brothers. Arnold had recently found out that the filmmaking Pickles brothers, Tommy and Dil, were childhood friends and neighbors of one of his clients. Small world. They went to the same theater Arnold had seen Killer Vegetables from Space with his friends in fourth grade before getting stuck on a broken down subway on the way home. Luckily this time the subway ride was fine despite the challenge of keeping his four and seven-year old from running too far off. When they got home he started a video chat with Helga.
"How was the movie?," asked Helga as Arnold's football head was front and center and the kids could be seen in the background on the couch. "It was good," he said, "Enough dinosaur roars to get a rise out of them. We fell off the wagon with popcorn, but we'll get back to eating healthier once you're back." "I'll hold you to that," she replied."
Helga then filled Arnold in on the extra hot chicken fiasco. By the time of the video chat she had recovered. "I felt like I never got to go wild and crazy on girls trips like I thought Phoebe and I would get to do," she said, "not drinking isnt a problem for me anymore, but I didn't think it would stop me from letting loose a little. Like my mom could do that like on our road trip that one time."
"I thought you didn't wanna be like Miriam," said Arnold. "And besides," he continued, "its not like you're going with Rhonda. Phoebe understands you well enough not to think you're a party pooper."
Phoebe, being the kind and supportive friend she had always been, checked in on her. Part of that involved assuring her that Becky was not off-put by her freakout and that she hoped to visit them in Hillwood someday. But before then Helga had some time to talk to Mai about it as well. "If it makes you feel any better," said Mai as they sat in her living room, "the extra hot chicken at that place doesn't sit well with me either. It took me a little while to get the chicken to be at just the right temperature for everyone."
Helga went on to tell Mai about how she felt freaking out over the spiciness had spoiled what would have been her best chance at having one of those action-packed, bachelorette-style trips Nashville was known for with her best friend. "Those trips people come here for are overrated," said Mai, "I doubt many can remember them so well."
Savoring the simple things in life was important to Mai. She took the message from the one-hit wonder of a song her father had crooned seriously. To her, friendship was one of those simple things. She understood that friendship was ultimately something Helga was good for.