Chapter thirteen Big melt down in a warm up
Dave the cleaner sat hunched on the parkbench with his eyes screwed tight and his hands blocking his ears. “I am only dreaming and Mahoe Dave the Cleaner is not real either.” he kept telling himself. “He is just something that kids in the Mahoe E classroom made up. He is just their fantasy story. I need to somehow get rid of this boring, bothersome, unwelcome companion! “
However, try as he might, he could not get rid of the pesky presence of Mahoe Dave the Cleaner. “Bah! I feel like a cat with a bell around its neck, a large cowbell at that, no, a church bell. Wherever I go it clangs and bangs and chases all my thoughts away just like birds and lizards flee from a cat bell.”
He pressed his hands even more firmly over his ears and found this made his situation worse. “It is difficult enough putting up with all his pesky questions any time. At least I can argue about them and show I am boss.” he told himself. “This silence is unbearable. That clown, Mahoe Dave the Cleaner, could be getting up to all sorts of crazy experiments in this silence and finding out what I don’t want to know. I already know all there is I need to know!”
Have you ever noticed that if you make boxes over your ears you begin hearing a roaring sound. If you squeeze your eyes very tight you start seeing tiny, flickering patterns of lights. So it was that day on the park bench.
Dave the Cleaner felt a few puffs of wind on his skin. Each one felt slightly warmer than the last.
He then began to notice a distant roaring in his ears. It was like the sound of ocean waves breaking on a far off beach after a storm. It also reminded him of a large approaching forest fire. The tighter he squeezed his eyes the more he began to see flickering flames. Each gust of wind felt stronger and hotter. Finally he could not resist taking his hands off his ears and cupping them to make little peepholes through which he could peer out to check what was going on.
The park trees were still there and each time he looked in branches and and leaves seemed to droop even more as though they were desperate to shield their trunks from the Sun. No frog croaked “ribbet.” The only duck on the pond sat unmoving, its head tucked under its wing. Most worrying of all was the way each time he squinted through the peephole at the Sun it seems to have grown larger and each time he felt hotter and hotter. Firstly he removed his jacket, then his shoes, then his socks and then his shirt. Still he warmed up and so he rolled up his trousers.
By now he dared not look up, for he was sure the Sun must fill half the sky. He could feel beads of sweat running down his body. “Ugh! I will boil over I heat up more more. I will turn into a puddle and then into a puff of steam.” This thought so alarmed him he forgot his Keen Clean Clean Image and took off his trousers, not even noticing the dog poop and grass stains on their seat. He sat on the park bench in his underpants with mops and buckets printed all over them.
Still he heated up further. He thought of going home to Mum and Dad but then remembered his deal with Mahoe Dave the Cleaner. “Oh curses! My turn to sleep under the bed tonight.”
This gave him an idea. “I know what I can do,” he exclaimed, “I will lie under the park bench and shelter from this nasty, fiery Sun there.” The bench had boards around the legs but he managed to squeeze under them. For a while, he found it to be a lovely shaded, cosy world there. The breeze felt sweet and cooling on his skin. However after a while the breeze became more gusty, causing dust and a few yellow leaves to swirl through into his little world. “Oh nooo!”, he squargled in alarm,”This means the burning blast of the sun is even killing all the trees.”
He became certain the Sun was now as large as the sky because he could see it through every crack and knot hole in the park seat. The wind now began to whistle and scream through the cracks and crannies too as the gusts outside became a gale. He found it impossible to decide whether
the crackling sound was the sound of piles of dried leaves blowing in circles or a raging forest fire or the looming Sun above.
Just when he thought his situation could not get much worse he became aware of another most unwelcome sound floating through his little world under the parkbench.
“Oh I am so glad my body is warming
just the same is its cooling somehow.
Oh I am so glad my body is cooling
just the same as it warming somehow
why am I so glad I am cooling and warming somehow?
Cos that’s why I am right here just now right now.”
The songs seemed to be coming from anywhere and everywhere. “You and your confounded, childish singing. Bah! Just leave me alone!” he shouted up at the Sun through a large crack in the bench seat. He hoped no one was around. He would feel so silly if they saw him lying under a park bench in his underpants shouting at the Sun. He knew the Sun is normally so far away it would take fastest rocket ever made at least twenty five days. However anything seemed possible with Mahoe Dave the Cleaner.
”Warming and cooling
Can’t have one
without the other
That’s the way
Everything goes
That’s the way
It ever will be.”
This last verse made him feel like exploding. ‘”I will climb out from under this park bench, go over and kick your stupid pipe ladder to bits,” he raged. One thought occurred that stopped him. The magical buckets. If Mahoe Dave the Cleaner was up there throwing an endless supply of firewood on the Sun, then he would just use his endless supply of pipes to rebuild the pipe ladder. “Woh! He might even pour an endless supply of water down upon my head. I could drown.”
In that moment, something profound shifted in Dave the Cleaner. As though suddenly wakening from a dream, his whole world changed. Everything seemed more real and true. ”Its true. Its true,” he exclaimed at the top of his voice, “There is a whole world of difference between warming and warming-up. How did I not see it? Why could I not say it before?”
Well, who can know the true reason for what happened next. Maybe Mahoe Dave the Cleaner ceased throwing endless firewood into the Sun. We may never know. For whatever reason Dave the Cleaner heard the gale sounds go quiet and the wind started coming from a different direction. No longer was his body being warmed up and up and up. Now the air was cooling down his overheated body. No words could express his relief. He simply lay under the park bench humming ‘”Ah bliss. Thank you universe. Thank you universe.”
His sense of relief soon vanished when he remembered where he was. He scrambled out and stood blinking in astonishment. All the trees remained upright and still covered with leaves. The frogs on the edge of the pool croaked “ Ribbet” while the ducks swam in lazy circles as usual. “Whoops” he said, noting he was only dressed in his underpants with pictures of buckets and mops. He managed to get his clothes back on just before a family came strolling by.
“A very good day to you all,” he greeted them.
“Yes, indeed it is now,” replied the father. “Thank goodness it has cooled down again. It was so hot before we all had to lie in the shade of some trees. We think such sudden extreme heat is indeed very weird and strange.”
“Don’t worry,” Dave the Cleaner assured them in his best know-it-all manner. “It was just my companion, Mahoe Dave the Cleaner. He climbed up a magical pipe ladder to the Sun and threw a whole lot of firewood on it.”
“Why would he want to do that?” asked one of the children.
“He wanted to heat the Sun up to prove warming and warming-up are two different processes. A lot of people do not understand that, you know.”
“What a funny old man,” one child said as the family hurried away.
“Yes, isn’t he.” said the other child. “I can’t see no pipe ladder up into the sky anywhere in the park”.
“It is OK, my sweets. Some people can act a bit weird when they overheat.” explained their mother.
Dave the Cleaner overheard this and realized the child was correct. There was no pipe ladder to be seen. “Oh dreary me, my poor image. What is happening to my Keen Clean Clean Image? I am not so sure now I want to go around telling everyone that Global Warming is very different to Global Warming-Up. I fear people may say I am weird or something.”
From somewhere way up on high he heard a voice singing
“When there is no warming
there’s only cooling down, down, down…”
End Chapter thirteen
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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 One
Idea: Pending 30 April 2020
Question: Pending