(Not Just Any) Day At The Park

     “But Sam, couldn’t we go to Meridell and play Ultimate Bullseye? And we don’t have to do that. We could do other stuff!”

     “We could hit Faerieland too. Faerieland is nice.”

     “No, we are going to the park, and that is final!” I covered my ears so that my pets didn’t have a chance to argue. Summer days were meant for fun games of tag and sliding down slides, not taking thousand-Neopoint vacations to faraway lands, and I was going to show them that. Year after year we went to different places around Neopia. Krawk Island, Tyrannia, the Haunted Woods were all our former vacation spots, but I was going to show them, all three of them. Life in the summer can be just as fun sitting under a shady tree, sipping a tall glass of lemonade.

     Astroy groaned. Although he was the oldest of the family, he was much more playful than the others. He was a red Xweetok, so it was in his nature. “I still think Meridell is a good idea.”

     Jhinni the brown Ixi skipped out of the room. “You can go, Sam, but I’m staying right here in this house. There is no way I am playing with those two,” she said, referring to her brothers. She was quite smart, and nice when it really came down to it, but if it had anything to do with her brothers, she despised it. I’m sure deep down in her heart, she loved them, but the rest of her loved it when she heard something involving her brothers and a hospital.

     “Yeah, you can count me out too. My friend is going to Faerieland, so I’ll ask his owner if I can go too.” Arrozo whipped his Christmas Zafara tail around and followed Jhinni out of the room. He was very naïve and curious, and he made the perfect playmate for Astroy. He wasn’t very immature; in fact, I found him quite lovable for his age, but sometimes he could be a handful.

     “No. You are all coming with me to the park. I remember my days at the park, when I was younger. It’s fun, trust me; you guys will have a blast! You haven’t been to the park since you were little!” I argued, a last attempt to get my Neopets to finally agree with me for once.

     “No.”

     “Count me out.”

     “Yeah... good luck with that.”

     I had to use the last resort. “We can go out for ice cream after.”

     “I’ll put on my shoes!” I could hear Arrozo shout, as all three of them readied themselves to go outside. If there was anything in common between them, it was their love—scratch that—addiction to ice cream. Their favorite flavors, however...

     And just like that, we were off to the park, my place of childhood memories forgotten. I imagined it, them looking in awe at the amazing slides and the huge climbing webs. They would marvel at the wooden pirate ship that stood in the center of the park, complete with escape slides and working telescope. They would bounce up and down on the teeter-totter, trying to bounce the others so hard it hurt. They would have so much fun.

     I couldn’t wait.

     *

     “Wow, Sam. This is really, really lame.” Those were the first seven words anyone said when we arrived at the park. It was Astroy, who often had a snide comment ready for shooting in his arsenal.

     But, sadly, he was right. The park wasn’t as I had imagined it. The pirate ship was gone. The teeter-totter was gone. Even some of the slides were gone. I looked down at the ground, now filled with artificial woodchips instead of real ones. I took one last look at the park, and then turned to the others. “I’m sorry, guys. A lot has changed.”

     “Okay! Faerieland, here we come!” Arrozo turned around and started to walk back to our house.

     I grabbed the scruff of his neck, and held him in place. “No can do, buddy. I said we’d have fun, and you know my way.”

     “You don’t have a way,” Jhinni commented, looking at me strangely.

     Disregarding her comment, I continued. “When I say we’re going to do something, we’re going to do it. And we’re going to have fun—”

     “—in Faerieland. Let’s go.” Astroy started to pull me the other way, but, with my incredible strength, I managed to keep Arrozo by my side, and stand my ground against Astroy’s claws.

     “No, here. At the park. Trust me, guys, if you set your mind to it, you can have fun anywhere. And remember, there’s ice cream.”

     All of them groaned, but I knew they couldn’t resist. “Now, we only have to spend one hour here, and then you’ll get your delectable treat,” I told them. “Now go off, scatter, have some fun!”

     All of them smiled menacingly and looked at me. “Oh no, you’re not going to sit your bottom on a park bench,” Jhinni told me, and they all advanced. “You said we’re all going to have fun, including you.”

     “And we know your way. When you say we’re going to do something, we’re going to do it.” Astroy took another step towards me.

     Curse you, wordplay.

     *

     As soon as my three pets managed to physically convince me to play with them in the park (I didn’t include this scene due to the actions that took place during the time-period in which the scene occurred. I hope all of you can forgive me for leaving out some of the story, but I’m sure you would all be happy about this edit if you knew what really happened), they decided to try one of the two climbing webs. More like, they decided to have me try one of the two climbing webs.

     Despite the fact that I was clumsy, had no hand-eye coordination, and was scared of heights (okay, fine, only the first one was true), I made it to the top of the climbing web. Of course, when I looked down, I found my Neopets gone. “Oh, you want a game of hide-and-go-seek, then. Fine, I’ll find you with ease!” I shouted. At least they were having fun. Emphasis on the ‘they’.

     “Wait, they probably used the climbing web as a diversion and ran back to the house to book a trip to Faerieland. Why didn’t I think of that earlier?” I started to run for the exit of the park, when a sound stopped me in my tracks.

     Laughter.

     They were still at the park, and I was pleasantly surprised. I looked around to see where the laughter was coming from, but I could only spot five sources. There were a few kids on the merry-go-round, giggling their little hearts out, laughter was emanating from all three of the slides, and there was laughter coming from the swing-set.

     This was going to take a while.

     And then I felt a tap on my back. I whirled around to see who was there, but to my dismay, I found no one. It happened again, but again, there was no one behind me. The third time was enough for me. “You can stop, anytime now!”

     “No thank you,” I heard a voice from behind me.

     I turned around fully this time, and I found Astroy crouched down to the left side of me, otherwise known as the side he didn’t tap me on. I want you to know that this occurred some time ago, when the tapping joke was brand new. I did not fall for it for the fiftieth time that week.

     “Well, at least I found you,” I said, the slightest hint of triumph in my voice.

     “Actually, we’ve been following you the whole time.” Astroy pointed to Jhinni and Arrozo, whose heads were poking out above a nearby rock.

     “Oh.”

     “Yeah, we know you’re gullible, but we love you for it!” Jhinni tried to comfort me as she and Arrozo came up to me.

     “So, what do you want to do next?” the Zafara asked, his halo glowing brighter than before.

     “Well, we’ve got just about half an hour left, so, I say we take a vote.” Finally, something that I knew that couldn’t have possibly backfired. Maybe.

     “Okay, let’s play Kill the Carrier,” Astroy suggested. Despite its name, Kill the Carrier does not actually involve killing the carrier. I thought I might just let you know that. Instead of killing the carrier of whatever there is to carry, it is tackling the carrier violently.

     One hand shot up into the air. So did two paws and a hoof. Kill the Carrier was a go. “So, what’s the thing to be carried?” I asked innocently.

     All three of my pets looked at each other, a bad omen in my book. “Hair,” Jhinni told me.

     “Wait, but you three all have fur, so that just means Kill the Sam, right?” I asked, not realizing exactly what I had gotten myself into.

     “Precisely,” Arrozo answered as he nodded.

     Well what do you know? It backfired!

     *

     I had been running for twenty-five minutes. Five more minutes and there would be freedom! No more pranks, no more tricks, and no more wrestling to the ground. Enough was enough.

     I had been tackled far more times than I could count already, and I was becoming increasingly tired. Lucky for me, so were my pets. To others, we might have looked like marathon runners who had just sprinted their last miles. Or, we could have looked like three pets and an owner running around for twenty-five minutes. It all depends on the way you look at it.

     Either way, my goal was to evade being totally harassed by the three of them for the last five minutes. I had found Jhinni to be the most painful. She had hooves, after all, and a hoof is not something I would recommend for an afternoon snack. Astroy came in a close second. When he tackled me, I got a bonus: an instinctive claw to the stomach! Arrozo wasn’t all that bad when tackling; it was his running that was the problem. He was faster than all of us, so he would slow me down so one of the other two could catch up and pummel me to oblivion.

     I glanced at the park’s clock. Four more minutes to survive. Only four more minutes. Out of nowhere Arrozo barreled towards me, catching me off guard. He swiped my arm, enough to get me off balance. I fell to the ground, but rolled before the Zafara could pin me there. I got myself up and started to run again, just before Astroy and Jhinni had almost caught up. But now, they were closer behind, and if I was knocked down like that again, they would be on top of me like hot fudge on a sundae.

     I thought about my current strategy. Running wasn’t going to do the trick. Although my amazing human instincts might have been enough to keep me going until that point, I knew that I had to use my cunning, devious side. I scooped up a few artificial woodchips from the ground and chucked them at the three pets. They all shielded themselves and I inched farther ahead. I kept this up, running and scooping, throwing and running again. I did it for two minutes. I only had to do it for two more minutes. I hurled another handful of chips at them again.

     And I heard the sound of crying. Immediately, my fraternal instincts told me to turn around. I found Arrozo sitting down, tears streaming down his face. “What’s wrong?” I called from a distance.

     “You’re an absolute genius, Sam. You hit Arrozo in the eye,” Jhinni said. I knew that inwardly, she was smirking, slightly glad to see her brothers in pain. I also knew, however, that this time in the park had increased their bond as siblings, and I was happy about that.

     “Is he okay?” I asked, starting to run to the site of the incident. I snuck a glance at the clock. There was one minute left.

     “He’s crying. What do you think?” Astroy asked, drawling sarcasm imminent in his normally not-drawlingly sarcastic voice.

     “Are you alright, little buddy?” I asked as I crouched down to his level. For a split-second I knew something was very wrong with this situation.

     In all of one second, all three of them were on top of me, flailing and pounding me with their weapons of doom. By some miracle I was able to keep my right eye on the clock. Five, four, hoof in the face, two, one, “Time’s up! You guys have to get off now!”

     By some force of nature, they obeyed me on my first try. I stood up, feeling my face to see if it was numb. When I found that at least three parts of my face were fine, I gave a thumbs-up.

     “That was actually kind of fun, Sam,” Jhinni remarked, heading for the exit. Astroy nodded in approval.

     “Can we come back tomorrow?” Arrozo asked. The million-Neopoint question.

     “Only if there’s ice cream,” I moaned, and we all laughed as we walked down the pathway, into the setting sun.

The End

Author’s Note: No Neopets were harmed in the making of this story, only me. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Feel free to Neomail me with comments.