Read Online Guinea Dog by Patrick Jennings - Free Book Online
Authors: Patrick Jennings
Tags: Ages 8 and up
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the open road.
Maybe it’s the freedom to go where you want to as fast as you want to. Maybe it’s all the oxygen and the sky and your heart and your muscles all pumping hard. (Yeah, okay, I know your heart is a muscle, so that wasn’t really necessary to say. But not everybody knows that.) It’s so totally amazing that a bike stays up like it does while going so totally fast, and making sharp turns and even catching air, too, if you can do that kind of thing. I can.
It’s like when you think about yourself and realize how incredible it is that you can do the things you do all at the same time. Walk, talk, run, eat, taste, see, pedal, jump, kick, blink. The brain is this amazing computer and the body is this incredible machine, and they just run and run and run on, like, fuel that other machines (other people) grow or kill (animals, which are machines, too!) for you. Computers have to be plugged in or have batteries, but we just go and get our own fuel. Our body does, our machine. No machine can move the way ours does. Yeah, there are robots, but no robot can, like, play soccer, even. Or ride a bike as good as me.
Most of the time you don’t even think about how it all works, how your brain and your body are constantly doing all these amazing things. Most of the time you just think about stuff you’re not doing, or watch stuff or read or do stuff for school or just hang out. But your computer and your machine are working 24/7.
So what I think happens when you work your body real hard, like riding your bike or playing soccer or whatever, is that you don’t have very much energy left over in your brain for other kinds of thinking, like worrying and dreading and stuff. Which is why riding your bike is so good at clearing your head.
Even if all I do is bike around the curvy streets and cul-de-sacs of my neighborhood in the flat little town I live in, my problems start seeming really unimportant and dumb. What if word got out that I had a pet guinea pig? Would I be teased to death? Should I just give—or sell—Fido to Lurena? Why was I even hesitating? Didn’t I still want a dog?
All these questions buzzed around my brain for the first couple of blocks. Then they didn’t, and this is what I figured out:
It was fun being a kid on a bike with nowhere to go. Everything else could wait till my bike and me were back in the garage.
15. I wasn’t really thinking about where I was going.
Eventually, I rode by the park. Not that I meant to. Our park had basketball courts and tennis courts and a baseball field and a playground. Tons of kids were there hanging out. I wasn’t going to stop. I was happy. But—wouldn’t you know it?—my good ole worst friend Dmitri spotted me and started running over. I pedaled faster, but then, realizing he was going to cut me off, I slammed on the brakes, did a one-eighty, and started off in the opposite direction. Big mistake. Before I could get going again, he caught me, grabbed hold of my handlebars, and straddled my front tire.
“Dude!” he said, huffing and puffing in my face. His breath smelled like ranch dressing. “Dude, you seen Murph?”
There are members of tribes living deep in the jungles of uncharted islands in isolated sectors of the South Pacific who have never had contact with the outside world who knew he was going to say that.
“Nope,” I replied. “Just out riding. See ya.” And I started to step down on my pedal.
That’s when Mars galloped up—Mars, the big black puffball of death. His paws were as big as a panther’s. His muzzle looked like a lion’s. So did his mane. He was as big as a black bear, but only because of the poof. White slobber oozed over his white teeth. And he was unleashed.
“Mars doesn’t want you to go yet,” Dmitri said.
“No?”
“He wants to know what’s in your backpack.”
Mars was snarling at my backpack. I felt his hot breath on my neck.
“What’s in your backpack, Roof?” Dmitri asked smugly.
“Nothing,”
Maybe it’s the freedom to go where you want to as fast as you want to. Maybe it’s all the oxygen and the sky and your heart and your muscles all pumping hard. (Yeah, okay, I know your heart is a muscle, so that wasn’t really necessary to say. But not everybody knows that.) It’s so totally amazing that a bike stays up like it does while going so totally fast, and making sharp turns and even catching air, too, if you can do that kind of thing. I can.
It’s like when you think about yourself and realize how incredible it is that you can do the things you do all at the same time. Walk, talk, run, eat, taste, see, pedal, jump, kick, blink. The brain is this amazing computer and the body is this incredible machine, and they just run and run and run on, like, fuel that other machines (other people) grow or kill (animals, which are machines, too!) for you. Computers have to be plugged in or have batteries, but we just go and get our own fuel. Our body does, our machine. No machine can move the way ours does. Yeah, there are robots, but no robot can, like, play soccer, even. Or ride a bike as good as me.
Most of the time you don’t even think about how it all works, how your brain and your body are constantly doing all these amazing things. Most of the time you just think about stuff you’re not doing, or watch stuff or read or do stuff for school or just hang out. But your computer and your machine are working 24/7.
So what I think happens when you work your body real hard, like riding your bike or playing soccer or whatever, is that you don’t have very much energy left over in your brain for other kinds of thinking, like worrying and dreading and stuff. Which is why riding your bike is so good at clearing your head.
Even if all I do is bike around the curvy streets and cul-de-sacs of my neighborhood in the flat little town I live in, my problems start seeming really unimportant and dumb. What if word got out that I had a pet guinea pig? Would I be teased to death? Should I just give—or sell—Fido to Lurena? Why was I even hesitating? Didn’t I still want a dog?
All these questions buzzed around my brain for the first couple of blocks. Then they didn’t, and this is what I figured out:
It was fun being a kid on a bike with nowhere to go. Everything else could wait till my bike and me were back in the garage.
15. I wasn’t really thinking about where I was going.
Eventually, I rode by the park. Not that I meant to. Our park had basketball courts and tennis courts and a baseball field and a playground. Tons of kids were there hanging out. I wasn’t going to stop. I was happy. But—wouldn’t you know it?—my good ole worst friend Dmitri spotted me and started running over. I pedaled faster, but then, realizing he was going to cut me off, I slammed on the brakes, did a one-eighty, and started off in the opposite direction. Big mistake. Before I could get going again, he caught me, grabbed hold of my handlebars, and straddled my front tire.
“Dude!” he said, huffing and puffing in my face. His breath smelled like ranch dressing. “Dude, you seen Murph?”
There are members of tribes living deep in the jungles of uncharted islands in isolated sectors of the South Pacific who have never had contact with the outside world who knew he was going to say that.
“Nope,” I replied. “Just out riding. See ya.” And I started to step down on my pedal.
That’s when Mars galloped up—Mars, the big black puffball of death. His paws were as big as a panther’s. His muzzle looked like a lion’s. So did his mane. He was as big as a black bear, but only because of the poof. White slobber oozed over his white teeth. And he was unleashed.
“Mars doesn’t want you to go yet,” Dmitri said.
“No?”
“He wants to know what’s in your backpack.”
Mars was snarling at my backpack. I felt his hot breath on my neck.
“What’s in your backpack, Roof?” Dmitri asked smugly.
“Nothing,”
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