Hi website visitor! If you have found yourself on this page you must be interested in hearing more about me and my super friends Sue and Isaac. Awesome!! I thought I would pass along a few pages for you to check out while you are waiting for your very own copy of A Worm Named Hank to be shipped. If you haven’t ordered it yet, you can do so by simply clicking the Order Now button at the top of this page. Hope you enjoy the story!
-Hank
The Missing Octopus
Sue has this somewhat weird, somewhat cool thing her dad got her. It’s an octopus. Not a living octopus, but a stuffed animal octopus. I didn’t know about it for years. I guess she felt like she was too old for a favorite stuffed animal and was ashamed to tell Isaac and me about it. In fact, if it hadn’t gone missing I’m not sure she would have ever told us.
This is how it all happened. One day we were all riding our bikes around the neighborhood. It was the beginning of summer, which is by far the best part of summer. Now don’t get me wrong; all of summer is amazing, but there is something special about those first few weeks of freedom. The air is crisper, the sun shines just a little more brightly, the grass rises up just a little higher to meet your feet and help carry you along to the freedom that comes with day after day of no school. The middle of summer is a time that flows fast like quarters at an arcade, and before you know it you are left with no more time and you have no clue what happened to all those summer days. Then there is the end of summer where you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, the knowledge that school is hiding right around the corner.
There are a few times where a kid falls into the trap of thinking he can’t wait to go BACK to school. These things can happen, usually to the younger generations of children who haven’t yet learned the horrors of school, but in rare times it happens to all age children. Late one summer Isaac once said that he was actually looking forward to school starting. As soon as he said it out loud he grabbed his hands and threw them over his mouth. Look, a kid is allowed to like school, but he is never supposed to admit it and he is NEVER EVER supposed to miss it.
This day was the perfect start to summer. There were no clouds anywhere, Todd was hanging out with his friends down at the movie theater and that meant we didn’t have to worry that they would try to mess with us, and Isaac’s Grandpa had invited us all over for some space spaghetti. Isaac’s grandpa is the coolest guy ever! He may be old, but he is the best kind of old . . . he’s space old. Isaac’s grandpa used to be an astronaut. I mean a real life, go into a rocket ship, fly to the moon, do spacewalks, collect rocks (according to his grandpa astronauts collect a lot of rocks), wear a space suit, float in space, see other planets, ASTRONAUT! His name is Roger, which he thinks is funny because I guess a hundred years ago or so they had these phones that people would talk back and forth on and when they wanted to say, “I hear you” they would instead say “Roger that.”
So Isaac’s grandpa tells us people used to call him on these phones and always say, “roger that, Roger.” I guess the moral of that story is that all old people have dumb stories they think are funny . . . even when they are astronauts. Sue, Isaac, and I have to put up with those to get to the really cool space stories.
A couple times a year Isaac’s grandpa will make us his famous space spaghetti, and those are the best days because as soon as we finish the space spaghetti he will tell us a new space adventure story. The last one he told us was about how he threw up in the spaceship once and because there was no gravity it was floating all over the place for days. Sue got sick two weeks later and threw up in a bag, and we all stared at it imaging what it would be like to see it floating around our heads. So gross!
“What do you think your grandpa is going to tell us this time, Isaac? Has he given you any hints?” I asked.
“I don’t know, all I know is it is going to be good! He’s been working on the space spaghetti all day,” Isaac replied.
We all know that the space spaghetti is just normal spaghetti with extra meatballs that Isaac’s Grandpa calls asteroids, but we never say anything because it’s obvious how much Roger likes us all pretending the spaghetti is special. Plus, we don’t want to be rude.
Isaac slowed his bike and stopped. We all stopped next to him, and he turned his head really slowly to us and whispered, “Maybe today he’ll tell us about the aliens.”
Nobody said anything. We have been patiently waiting for years for Isaac’s grandpa to tell us about the aliens. We know they are up there, that’s a given, and it’s only a matter of time before Roger tells us about them. Isaac and I made eye contact and got that super excited look, then we turned to Sue and instantly knew something was wrong. She was just staring at the ground. We were talking about aliens right then and that means business and for Sue to not be acting excited, well, something was up.
I decided to try to find out and in an attempt at being subtle asked, “What’s wrong with you, Sue?” I know, not exactly my best attempt at the art of subtleness.
She looked up and made eye contact with me and then started crying, “He’s gone! He’s gone, and I don’t know where!”
Isaac and I both jumped off our bikes and put our arms around her. That’s what Super Friends do when one of us has a breakdown.
“I didn’t know how to tell you about Ralph. It seems like ‘little kid’ stuff, but to me it’s more than that. Ralph helps me.”
“Who’s Ralph?” Isaac asked.
Have you ever had a friend about to share a HUGE secret with you? You know how their eyes get this super intense look, forceful almost, and they stare at you with this deepness, like life is about to change once you hear this? Well, that is exactly how Sue looked right then. She slowly opened her mouth, Isaac and I raised onto our tippy toes, leaning closer . . . closer . . . closer. And then the words starting shooting out of Sue’s mouth.
“When I was little, I mean can’t ride a bike yet little, I was sitting in my room crying. My dad came in, and he rushed to me and said, ‘What’s wrong, Sue?’ I looked up at him and realized I didn’t know what was wrong. I just needed to cry, I guess. So I told him the truth.
“‘Dad, sometimes girls just cry.’ He stood up tall and just stared at me like I was an alien. He stood there for what felt like an hour, and then without saying a word he turned around and left the room. Two days later I came home from school and went to put my book bag in my room. On my bed was a stuffed octopus with a note. I touched the octopus. He was soft, and I totally liked the way he felt. Then I picked up the note:
Sue. Crying is okay. Dads don’t get girls sometimes, but Ralph here always does. So when you need to cry hold his crying leg and let it out. When you get angry, grab Ralph’s angry leg and slam him against the bed. It’s okay, Ralph is there for you. When you are sick, hold Ralph’s sick leg, and he will comfort you. Happy, sad, excited, or mad, Ralph is always here for you.
Isaac and I looked at Sue. She thought we were judging her. Her face got defensive, and she almost shouted, “What are you guys thinking? You better not make fun of me, or I’ll call you both Worm until the day you die!”
Isaac and I said it almost at the exact same time, “I wish I had a Ralph.”
Sue held our arms and whispered, “Sorry, I thought you were going to make fun of me.”
Isaac said, “No way.”
“So what happened to him?” I asked
“I don’t know. He’s missing. I searched the entire house. I looked in my dad’s truck, under seats, I checked the washing machine, the back yard. He’s gone.”
A Worm Named Hank 