One warmish November afternoon, Dad sat in his dark green lounger, its buttery-soft leather occasionally lulling him to sleep. His tortoise-shell glasses slid down his nose as his head bobbed forward. He jerked awake just in time to keep his indelible ballpoint pen and New York Times crossword puzzle from tumbling off his lap. With one finger, he pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

“Now, where was I?” he wondered aloud, though there was no one to hear him because Mom was downstairs foraging for family on the Internet. “Right. 32 down ... the clue is ‘pirates hid them’ ... 8 letters ... hmmmm ...” He scanned the white boxes to see if “eyeballs” would fit. But before he got to 32 down, he found himself falling headfirst through 2 across. Although a little dizzy at first, his muscle memory soon kicked in, and his college gymnastics techniques flashed back to his brain.

He was doing a swan dive as he fell past Mom in the basement. He wanted to wave to her, but as anyone who knows anything about gymnastics knows, one can’t very well wave while swan diving—at least if one wants to do a dignified, proper swan dive. So he called out “Hey, Jean, look at me!” Mom glanced up from her quest for cousins just in time to see Dad’s pointed toes disappear below the floor.

The next level down was dense and dark, so he thought perhaps the tuck position would work best. This gave him more momentum as he tunneled through mulch and topsoil. He glimpsed a squirrel digging up one of Mom’s tulip bulbs. He reached out and gave the squirrel so quick a thwack on the noggin that the dazed squirrel dropped the bulb and dashed up the nearest tree. Tucks don’t have to look graceful, so Dad felt he could afford to perform that one little service for Mom’s spring garden. As he cannonballed through seemingly endless soil, past sleeping earthworms and slithering slugs, he was just as glad to have his hands and feet and face tucked in close to his chest.

Since he’d left the first floor, passed the basement, and gone through the ground below the house, he couldn’t imagine what the next level down might be. He hoped he wasn’t barreling toward a layer of rock. But he did figure that since 2 to the 4th power was 32, and he’d gone into 2 in search of 32, that the 4th layer would be his final destination. “Oh no,” he suddenly worried. “What if I can’t get to 32 down by going into 2 across? What if the downs and the acrosses aren’t connected?” He decided to cross that bridge when he came to it. In the meantime, he mentally scrolled through his best trampoline tricks and decided that when he entered the 4th level, he would switch to his favorite—the back flip. Especially if the 4th level was to be his last, he wanted to be sure to get his favorite move in.

Just then, he felt sunshine on his back and saw a large green expanse looming toward him. A lawn? Down here? But he didn’t have time to figure what the green was, because he was quickly calculating the probability of reversing a hurtling forward-somersault into a back flip. The odds were against him. Suddenly he was sprawled on a huge net suspended from what he could not tell.

Boy-oy-oy-oy-oing ...
boy-oy-oy-oing ...
boy-oy-oing ...
boing.

The first bounce tossed him way high in the air, the next bounce a little lower, the next lower still, until he just lolled on what seemed to be a bridge made of ropes knotted in a criss-cross pattern. His left foot poked through an open square in the net. He pulled himself up into a sitting position, pulled his left foot out of the hole, and began to assess his new surroundings.

Dirt clods clung to his clothes, but thankfully, no slimy slugs. His left shoe was missing. And his pen. Something else too, but he couldn’t quite remember what. Otherwise, he seemed to be intact. The bridge that had broken his fall was suspended over a lovely kelly green pond, perfectly rectangular.

Sunbeams illuminated the depth of the pond, which Dad estimated to be at least 10 feet, judging from the distance between the pond’s surface and some bottom-hugging raspberry grasses shimmering wavilily like carnival mirrors. Just then, a milk chocolate turtle swam splashingly by, wearing Dad’s glasses. That must have been the other thing missing earlier. “Stop!” he called after the tortoise, who then began swimming both splashingly and thrashingly. Even if it had a mind to heed the call, it was unlikely it could even hear the call for all its crashing and burbling about. In an instant, Dad knew what he had to do.

He stood up as decisively as one can stand up on a swaying rope-net bridge; he bounced and boy-oinged, propelling himself to a respectable altitude; and he performed a perfect back flip into the cool, clean—although a bit roiled up by the tortoise’s cavorting—water. When he surfaced, he began swimming in the direction of the thrashes and splashes to retrieve his spectacles from the tortoise.

When he had almost reached the commotion, he was startled to see—not the spectacle-toting-turtle—but a floating cherry-red miniature 1932 Cord convertible—top down, of course, since it was a stunningly sunny day—bobbing in what was probably the turtle’s wake. “Excuse me, Sir,” he said urgently to the tall, distinguished-looking Bic-Stic standing in the driver’s seat frantically flailing a tennis racket the size of Dad’s thumb to keep his balance and the car from capsizing. “Did you see a chocolate turtle swim by? He’s wearing my glasses.”

“Is that what caused me to miss the last 3 points?” said the exasperated pen.

“Yes, I would guess so,” said Dad, who although treading water himself, was able to steady the Cord. Calmer now, the pen admitted that he’d been blinded by the sun while looking for a lob from his opponent and then doused with an unexpected undulating current. Alas, he’d missed both the lob and the cause of the current.

“What game are you playing?” asked Dad, always eager to try new sports.

“Why, tennis, of course,” replied the pen. “Don’t you recognize it?” With that, he grabbed what looked to Dad like a fuzzy yellow round birthday cake from the glovebox of the Cord, and whacked it good with his little racket. Dad watched it sail over the bridge. A few seconds later, a yellow fuzzcake came sailing back over the bridge a little to the pen’s left. Deftly, he used his racket to paddle the car toward the ball, and with just one little lurch, kept the cake in play without tipping the car over.

Dad politely waited till the end of the point, (which the pen won, by the way), to introduce himself. He half-wanted to ask if he could play the next game and half-wanted to pursue his glasses. But either way, it wouldn’t hurt to make a friend.

“I’m Umlaut,” replied the pen, “Umlaut the Editor.”

“You know, I met an Umlaut once before, in another crossword puzzle. A German fellow with beady eyes. Frankly, you look more like a Virgule than an Umlaut.”

“Well, nonetheless, my name is Umlaut.” Dad thought Umlaut sounded slightly irritated. “And by the way,” Umlaut added impatiently, sternly stressing nearly every other word, “It’s ‘whacked it well,” not ‘whacked it good,’ and certainly you must know that ‘wavilily’ would not be legal in any crossword puzzle. What on earth were you thinking?”

Dad had been thinking wavilily. He was no longer thinking about his glasses or his desire to play tennis in a floating 1932 Cord though. “You’re very clever with words and you seem to know what I’m thinking,” he cajoled. “Maybe you can help me with 32 down.”

“Eyeballs?” Umlaut asked. “Eyeballs??” His tone became more incredulous and insulting. “Why on earth do you think a crossword editor would give ‘pirates hid them’ as a clue for ‘eyeballs’?”

“Because the crossword editor might be obtuse, obscure, and obdurate!” Dad called over his shoulder as he breaststroked angrily away from Umlaut, who he’d decided was an insulting incredible indelible imbecile that he didn’t want to be friends with after all. But by the time he’d swum under the bridge, he’d forgotten the unfortunate encounter and just puddled around enjoying the sun and the day and the great exercise.

Plop! A yellow fuzzcake landed noisily next to him. He guessed Umlaut had served into the net, or in this game, into the bridge. Plop! “Double fault,” thought Dad. Umlaut and his phantom opponent didn’t seem to be retrieving their flubbed fuzzcakes, so Dad reached over and grabbed one before it sank to the bottom amongst the raspberry grasses. He licked the fuzzy frosting. Dandelion-flavored. Not his favorite, but he bit further thinking the cake itself might be chocolate. Ick ... ptui. He spat out what seemed to be at least 80 wax candles. What were they doing on the inside of the cake? Thankfully, they weren’t lit!

Well, the obvious next thing to do was to swim off in search of Umlaut’s phantom opponent. And since he’d crawled after the turtle, treaded water around Umlaut, breaststroked away from Umlaut, backstroked under the bridge, the obvious next stroke was the butterfly. But he had butterflown only 3 flutters when he heard a hoarse male voice singing a cross between a chuckle and a chant:

“igloosabee,
snowballallabee,
icicleticklesme,
goosebumpledee,
fiddledeedee.”

He drew the last “deeee” out at least 10 seconds. Then he repeated the whole thing. Dad listened through 3 choruses. He thought of suggesting to the singer that he shouldn’t quit his day job. Then when he saw what he saw over the crest of the next swell, he thought maybe he’d better suggest that the gravelly-voiced singer should quit his day job. The singer was a pint-sized pirate-squeegee, or squeegee-pirate (Dad wasn’t sure which) maneuvering his NewBalance shoe-boat by pulling left or right on giant shoelaces.

“Ahoy there, Matey!” the squeegee-pirate called to Dad. “Mind your p’s and q’s there. I don’t want to knock you silly with this big bow.” When Dad looked up at the reallybigshoe-boat bow and saw the two-headed Venus and Serena figurehead, he knew instantly that he’d found Umlaut’s opponent. Sure enough, just then, the squeegee-pirate whacked a flying fuzzcake with a flick of his wrist. Dad stifled the urge to correct his form. “Don’t bend your elbow. Your racket should be an extension of your arm,” he imagined himself saying. He nixed the thought though. After what had happened with Umlaut, he didn’t want to say anything contrary. Besides, he was dealing with a pirate, for pete’s sake, a pirate with a patch over one eye.

An eyepatch! This was the break he needed to figure out 32 down. “I’ll stay out of your way, Sir,” he started, “only please tell me what is under your eyepa ...”

The squeegee-pirate interrupted him. “I didn’t say to stay out of my way. I said to mind your p’s and q’s. There’s a difference, you know. Now come aboard and we’ll talk.”

Dad was not sure how to “come aboard” a boat that was no bigger than—well, his shoe. More importantly, he was sure he did not want to be on the same boat as a pirate. He decided to agree to come aboard, but poke poke poke getting there, all the while chatting in hopes of getting his one burning question answered so he wouldn’t have to pal around with a pirate. For this, he invented a new swim style which he called the poke-stroke. With his right arm he crawled, then twisted his torso so that his left arm could backstroke. As he slowly rotated through the water toward the shoe-boat, he asked again, “Sir, would you please tell me what is under your eyepa ...?”

The pirate prattled on as though he hadn’t heard Dad at all. “Now it depends on whether ...
p and q are true,
if p, then q,
fiddledeedoo.”
Gleefully he exclaimed, “I made another rhyme! Shall I sing it this time?”

Dad decided to change the subject. “Why are you wearing a Yankees cap?” he inquired. He thought it odd that the pirate’s hat was not at all the shape of a traditional pirate’s hat. It did, however, have a rather grand pirate-y plume of soft whipped cream curls. And then, too, if a pirate is going to wear a baseball cap, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to sport a Pirates logo? If it hadn’t been for the skull-and-crossbones tattoo on the end of the rubber squeegee blade that protruded out the hole in the back of the Yankees cap—and of course, the eyepatch—Dad might not even have recognized him as a pirate.

“Why, I’m from New York!” answered the pirate proudly as he pinged another yellow fuzzcake back to Umlaut. “Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of root beer! Shall I pour you some? Are you coming or not?” He stared at Dad in disbelief that his new friend was taking so long to swim up to the shoe-boat. “I say, ahoy again, Matey. You look like a chicken on a rotisserie spit. Wouldn’t a simple sidestroke be faster?”

Well, yes, indeed, thought Dad, who by this time was beginning to trust the pirate and his own taste for root beer. He’d forgotten about the sidestroke, which he hadn’t done all day, so he switched and straightaway arrived at the shoe-boat. The pirate dangled one of the shoelaces down to him, and after only 3 hand-over-hands, Dad was up and on deck, sipping chilled, frothy root beer with his pirate pal. Dad sat in the heel and flopped one leg over each side of the shoe-boat so as not to spill his root beer. They talked baseball awhile. Then the pirate handed him his tiny tennis racket and let Dad return a few of Umlaut’s volleys. Dad won every point. He taught his pirate pal how to rush the net—only he called it storming the bridge—by paddling rapidly forward with the push broom the pirate kept on board for emergencies like spilt root beer and such.

It was turning out to be such a pleasant pastime that Dad nearly forgot why he came. “You know, I was wondering what might be under your eyepatch,” he ventured.

“Why, a cherry, of course,” said the pirate.

“A cherry??” queried Dad, eyebrows raised in amazement. “Cherry eyes?” screamed Dad. “That almost makes me cry. I came all this way, positive pirates hid eyeballs behind their patches,” he explained.

“Funny you should mention crying,” continued the pirate. “That is precisely the advantage of cherry eyes, for when I cry, my tongue catches the tart, tasty tears. It is for the love of cherry juice that I have considered putting cherries in both eyes, but then of course, I couldn’t see to play tennis, and that wouldn’t do. But having one cherry eye is quite nice. You should try it sometime.”

Dad liked cherry juice too and told the pirate it was a positively prime idea, but what then do pirates hide? The pirate didn’t want to give away too many trade secrets, but he thought a general answer would be safe. “Well, treasure for one thing, and themselves for another.” With that, he disappeared.

Dad figured the pirate had suddenly stormed the bridge so fast that Dad had fallen overboard. He couldn’t see the shoe-boat, but everything was green and seemed to be swimming in his head. When he opened his eyes, he was back in his easy chair. He rubbed his left foot awake. He found his glasses on the floor and put them on. His pen and New York Times crossword puzzle had slud off his knee. Quickly, he jotted t-r-e-a-s-u-r-e in the white squares of 32 down and trotted into the kitchen. He called down the stairs to Mom. “Jean, come up and have some New York Cherry ice cream with me.” Mom responded sadly that they didn’t have any in their freezer. But in his heart, Dad knew they did.

© November 5, 2001 Jane Hoppe
A heartfelt Happy 80th Birthday to dear Dad
with sincerest thanks and apologies to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson a.k.a. Lewis Carroll.