Chapter eleven, in which we have another breakfast with Mum and Dad
(And the children of the Mahoe tree appear in a dream)
Bonk! “Owwwh.” Dave the Cleaner had no idea where he was when he awoke. He had sat up and whacked his head so hard on the underside of the bed. He sagged back down onto the floor moaning in pain and rubbing his sore head. He now remembered it had been this turn to sleep under the bed while the other Dave the Cleaner slept in the bed.
” Oh, Man, did you feel me hit my poor suffering head on the bed?” he called up to him.” And I was just having this amazing dream in which the children of the Mahoe tree had come to me and were about to tell me how I can prove to everyone that Global Warming is completely different to Global Warming Up when something woke me and I belted my nut…”
“PSSST! Shut up, you idiot. Forget about the Mahoe children. I just heard the BONK BONK BONK of Mum’s wooden spoon scraping the porridge onto our plates. Dad will be in here any second.”
Sure enough there was a knock on the door and it opened. Dad popped his head in the bedroom and yodeled, “Wakey wakey, Davey my boy. It’s a great day for the race.”
“What race, Dad?” Dave the Cleaner groaned, as he most always did.
“What race, Dad?” giggled an echo from under the bed.
“The human race, of course, the human race.”
There was a cheery shout of laughter “Hahaha” from under the bed. Dave the Cleaner in the bed quickly thumped the mattress with his foot and pretended to roar with laughter. “Hahahahahaha, that’s funny joke, Dad, where did you get it from” he choked and chortled.
“Same place as I got it from yesterday and the day before that,” Dad replied and then he peered at the bedside table. “I never noticed before. Why have you got two sets of false teeth in two glasses of water?”
Dave the Cleaner was already feeling grumpy that he had woken up to find the other Dave the Cleaner had not vanished like the bad dream he was. Now he struggled to think up a funny, cover-up explanation. “Hahaha, why do you think I have two sets of false teeth? It’s so I can talk twice as fast and people think my smile is twice as handsome as ever.”
“Haha, very good,” said Dad and, leaving the door open, he headed back out to the kitchen. Thus both Dave the Cleaners were able to clearly hear Dad say to Mum in a puzzled voice, “There is something distinctly funny and strange about our boy today. He not only laughed at my joke just as he did when he was a five year old. He also tried to make a joke himself”
“Maybe our David had a good night’s sleep. Happy dreams can do wonders for anyone,” they heard Mum suggest, though she too sounded a little puzzled.
“Huh! Oi! You just listen to me!” you-know-who commanded you-know-who in an urgent whisper, “When you go out to breakfast, you must act like a grown-up! You must try to be serious and be more adult like me”
With that Dave the Cleaner threw his clothes on, grabbed the nearest set of false teeth, stuffed them in his mouth and skipped out of the window while Dave the Cleaner crawled out from under the bed, got dressed, popped the other set of false teeth in and walked out to the kitchen.
“Hmmm, yes,” Dave the Cleaner thought to himself as he sat down to his steaming bowl of porridge, “I must, I must, I must, must, must act more serious and grown-up like the other Dave the Cleaner!”
Well, you know what it is like. You make a solemn promise to act differently. Then almost straight away something happens and “pop”, your memory of the promises vanishes like bursting soap bubble in the sky. So it was now.
“You seem all bright and bubbly this morning,” Mum remarked as she handed him the milk for his porridge, “Did you have beautiful dreams?”
Before he knew it Dave the Cleaner was reliving the dream as best he could remember it. Soon he was waving his arms around with such enthusiasm he more than once nearly fed his spoon of porridge into his ear. “I had this great question… a superdooper question …The question is, “What is the really true story of Global Warming?” …And, and, and in the dream the children of the Mahoe Class knew the answer to the question and they were laughing and pointing at me, especially the boy who saved me when I turned into a liquid, he was the one who suggested putting me special sealed pipes shaped like my bones… oh and now I remember in the dream they waved jars of water at me and kept pointing up to the sun in the sky and they chanted “What if? What if?” but then I woke up just before they could say what if what and now I still don’t know what if what?”
“Well,” laughed Dad as he stood up, “What if the sky does fall down and the sun goes out? I had better get the breakfast dishes done before it happens.
“Hahaha, your father is such a jokester,” said Mum tying on her apron.“I had better dust and cover all the ornaments with a cloth in case there is a lot of star dust in the crash if it happens.”
Mums can be very good with hugs that mean much more than words and, before departing, she gave him a big, fat hug and chuckled, “Your Dad and I helped you to learn to read with the story of Chicken Licken who thought the whole sky was falling down because an acorn fell on her head. The Mahoe children probably learn to read with the story of Maui taming the sun.
Who really knows the difference between what is a pipe dream and what is true?”
Dave the Cleaner sat alone at the kitchen table playing with his porridge. What a lot of stories a bowl of porridge can tell. He made an ocean with the milk so the porridge floated on it like islands of land.
He wondered what might happen if he took out a spoonful of the edge of an island to make a harbour. The island began sinking and, before he had finished eating the mouthful of porridge, it had vanished.
The same occurred with when he dug a hole in the middle of one to investigate a little steaming volcano. Clearly a small change can have a big impact he concluded.
One island reminded him of the sun and, for no reason he knew, he poured milk on it with his spoon until it too vanished.
Clatter, clatter went the washed dishes into the dish rack. That’s Dad.
Plink, plonk. Plink, plonk. Yes, that was the sound of Mum lifting up the ornaments, dusting them and replacing them on the shelves and window sills.
It all felt somehow most familiar and relaxing to him. His mind wandered easily. Clonk. Clonk. This was another reassuring, familiar sound to him – the sound of the spoon tapping his false teeth. Were they real or unreal? Were they false or true? Most of the time they were just there. He did not even notice them chewing and chomping – just like he never used to notice the teeth that grew in his head. And what if part of him really was made of pipes? What if he was really a pipe dream? He saw the Mahoe boy in his dream waving pipes and laughing.
An idea began to grow. It grew bigger and bigger with every mouthful of porridge. In fact it got so big he forgot where he was and what he was doing. He stood up, put his empty porridge bowl in the oven, hung the jug of milk on the hat hook behind the door, stored the hats in the fridge and wandered out the door humming and clapping his hands together.
He did not see Dad take his porridge plate back out of the oven to wash it though he vaguely heard him call out, “I think our boy David is away with the fairies again. I wonder if he will ever grow up? “
“Now, now. We all know the world is a bit of a mess at the moment and maybe we could do with a few more dreamers.”
Dave the Cleaner wandered outside into the backyard and went behind Dad’s tool shed. “Ah, beautiful, you are still there,” he said to the plastic bag full of park litter. “For certain, you have many more stories to tell us.”
The previous evening he had given care to hide the bag out of sight there because he knew Dad, being a very tidy person, would instantly put it in the street bin for the rubbish truck if he saw it.
The bag felt cool to his touch and his breath formed little puffs of white steam in the cold early morning air. He stood fascinated by the tool shed watching his puffs form out of nowhere, do a little dance and then vanish. “Ah, yes, all is change.” he said and, even as the words floated out of his mouth, they too informed a long, dancing squiggle of white puffs and evaporated.
He was so entranced by this display he did not notice for some time that the sun had risen. It was only when he felt a warm glow flow over him did he become aware of it. He closed his eyes so he could better enjoy the blissful feeling of being warmed up this chilly morning. “Ah beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,” he exclaimed. “This early morning sunlight feels just like one of Mum’s big fat hugs.”
How is it Mums can sometimes make you feel anything is possible, he wondered, and why did her mention of pipe dreams ring so many bells with him?
This made him think of the school bell of Haewai and the children of the Mahoe tree. Could it be in his dream they were telling him he already knew the answer to this big question about Global Warming?
Even as this thought occurred to him, he noticed the tool shed door was open and there stacked in the corner was a couple of buckets and some pipes that connect together so you can reach up and clean very high windows and roof gutters. They are also very good for poking balls free that are stuck in the top branches of the tallest trees at the school.
A cleaner’s suit and cleaner’s goggles and mask hung on the wall beside them.
There on the floor beside them was a pile of firewood. He looked more closely. It was no ordinary firewood. No. He could see Mum or Dad had carefully cut dead branches off the old Mahoe tree that had grown at the back of the garden since way back when. There were also trimmings from the Pohutukawa tree from where it had been growing too close to the house drains.
Now he knew why in his dream the children of Mahoe were waving jars of water at him and pointing to the Sun. He climbed into the cleaner’s suit, strapped the goggles and mask on his head, put some Mahoe and Pohutukawa firewood in one bucket, the extendable pipes in the other bucket and set off down the road to the park.
As he went past the open windows, he could hear the clatter clatter plink plonk of Mum and Dad cleaning in the house and snippets of their conversation.
‘I wonder if I will ever really understand our son David. He is such a puzzle to me today.”
“I admit he was strangely more bouncey and cheerful than normal this morning but then again we all can be a bit puzzling at times.”
“Well I am not sure it is normal to go out to the tool shed, pick up a bag of rubbish and start talking to it, then just stand there just nodding at the Sun and now here he going off up the road towards the park all dressed up like some kid going to a fancy dress party who doesn’t know whether he wants to be a creature from Outer Space or a fireman….”
“Now, now, they say there are some things we can never know and its good to free the imagination with a bit of play.”
Meanwhile, Dave the Cleaner had bought a takeaway breakfast and was now seated on the bench in the Park. He finished eating, stood up walked over to the park rubbish bin and stuffed the waste packaging in it. He was feeling a little grumpy. He had forgotten how cold it can be at this early hour in the morning. He marched back and forth banging his hands together in an attempt to warm up his fingers and to express his frustration.
“Bah! Blowed if I know what I’m doing back at this stupid park bench again. That idiot Mahoe Dave the Cleaner is bound to turn up with all his non-stop pesky questions. I know I know best and he always comes back with another annoying question! I seem stuck with him, no matter what I say and do. Can’t take ‘No!’ for an answer. Doesn’t take ‘Impossible’ for an answer. Always embarrassing me no end. Constantly wrecking my Clean Clean Image! So boring, boring, boring. I blame those kids in Mahoe Classroom for my plight!”
Early morning mists drifted through the trees and the chilly dawn air made him shiver some more. The mists turned pink, then reddish, then glowed as the Sun rose over the trees. Its first rays stretched across the park, lighting little rainbows in the dew drops on the grass. The little steam puffs of Dave the Cleaner’s breath now glistened white. They trailed behind him like a train of pure white goslings as he marched up and down.
He was so busy arguing with himself he saw none of this.
Suddenly he felt a flush of warmth and to his surprise he noticed the sun was up and had cleared the tops of the trees and mists. “I have to admit to myself, that feels nice.” he said sitting down on the bench, closing his eyes and turning his face to the Sun.
He felt a gentle tingle on the chilled skin of his face and hands.
A soft, comfortable feeling spread around his body and he stopped shivering.
“Just what I need. I needed warming up like this. Wait! No! No!” He stopped himself abruptly. He had said that pesky word. He corrected himself and started again “Just what I need. I needed warming, warming, warming. I refuse to say warming up. It is needless. Warming says all what I need. Just keep it simple, stupid…
Oh, no. Speak of stupid. Here comes idiot Mahoe Dave the Cleaner now looking a real clown. This is so embarrassing. If anyone sees us together, then my keen Clean Clean Image is gone forever.
End Chapter Eleven
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Please note: this is a first draft script (Jan 2020) and prototype format of How the Children of the Mahoe Tree Saved Our World. I plan to create illustrations to complement each chapter as soon as possible.
Please enjoy tolerance – my diplopia means I struggle to read what I write.
This story is based on a true event. A class of five-year olds created the central plot. In the process they showed young children, unlike many adults, retain the vital spirit of inquiry and comprehension of the fundamental thermodynamics required to care for Earth’s atmosphere.
Some grand ideas and questions from Chapter Nine
Idea: pending
Question: pending