“There’s only one problem,” he says. “It’s your name. Brenda Thompson. It’s so ordinary.”
“I know what you mean,” she agrees. “I’ve always hated it.”
“How about if we call you Ruby Goldmine?”
“I love it!”
But all Brenda’s daydreams were about to go up in smoke, because the last time she had checked, not one single person had signed up to be in the talent show. She herself wasn’t going to sign up for it until some other kids did first.
Imagine how embarrassing it would be, she thought, if she was the only one in the talent show.
When recess ended, Gary was waiting by the door to Miss Langley’s room.
“Gary? What are you doing here?”
“I want to be in the talent show,” he blurted, almost shouting.
Miss Langley smiled. “Okay,” she said quietly.
They went inside. She handed him a clipboard with a piece of paper attached to it. “Sign your name on the list, and next to it put down what you’re planning to do in the show.”
Gary looked at the blank piece of paper. “There are no other names here.”
“You’re the first,” said Miss Langley.
He smiled as all his worries vanished. He no longer even knew why he had been so worried. After all, there was no reason why he shouldn’t be able to sign up for the talent show, just like anybody else.
He held the clipboard high over his head.
“What are you doing?” asked Miss Langley.
“I’m signing up!” he said.
He wrote:
Gary W. Boone Tell jokes
(Gary’s middle name was Arthur.)
5.
Why did the boy wear a diaper to the party?
Because he didn’t want to be a party pooper.
No matter how many times Gary read it, that joke always made him laugh.
He was sitting in his room going through one of his jokebooks. There were twenty-eight books in Gary’s bookcase. Twenty-five of them were jokebooks. He also had a dictionary, a book called Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School, which he didn’t understand, and a novel about a pirate that Angeline had given him a long time ago and that he’d never read.
“Can I say ‘pooper’ at school?” he asked aloud.
On the walls of his room were posters of famous comedians: W. C. Fields playing poker, Woody Allen playing the clarinet, Whoopi Goldberg jumping in the air, and one of Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters standing side by side, each trying to look sillier than the other.
He’d once noticed that many of his favorite comedians had a name that began with the letter W. That was why he always signed his name Gary W. Boone. If anybody asked, he would say his middle name was Wolfgang, but nobody ever asked.
“Maybe,” he considered, “I could get up on stage wearing a diaper! ‘Hi, my name is Goon. It’s wonderful to be here today.’ Everybody would already be laughing because of the diaper. ‘You’re probably wondering why I’m wearing this diaper.’ (Pause: One … two … three.) ‘I don’t want to be a party pooper!’ ”
He had once watched a television show where four real comedians talked about how to be a stand-up comic. They all agreed that timing was the most important factor. You should never rush your punch line. As one of the comedians said, “No matter how funny a joke was, it would bomb like a rotten egg if the timing wasn’t right.” He said that he always paused and counted to three before delivering the punch line.