The Ill-Advised Adventures
of Jim-Jam O’Neily
by Channie Greenberg
James Jackson Ariel (“Jim-Jam”) O’Neily is an adolescent virtuoso, a bright teenager who has a passion for invention. But he is also a loser who postures as a champion. He remains a regular target for his high school’s most popular kids and for his school’s fiercest intimidators.
Jim-Jam is nasty and sweet, vainglorious and insecure, book-brilliant and publicly stupid. He is often inadvertently funny. His life is far from perfect; he tiptoes around his disapproving mother and finds himself battling another highly capable nerd. He’s arbitrary in friendships, spews balderdash and focuses on profit margins. Jim-Jam is a rascal on the rise.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Social Unrest and Other Adolescent Hobbies
At George’s funeral, Lima was dumbfounded to learn that her archrival had known and had worked with the father. It wasn’t right that Jim-Jam O’Neily had had the opportunity to talk to Dr. George Q. Washington that she had never had. That offense made Jim-Jam’s earlier sins seem as puny as atomic weights and as easily rectifiable as breaks in classmates’ email accounts. There would be payback!
Also, at George’s funeral, Sebastian, his wife, and the psychiatrist whom they had hired, confronted Barbra. She allowed herself to be taken away for professional evaluation. Thereafter, she checked herself into the locked ward of Upper Buckwheat Hospital
Mrs. Preenberry — not Lima’s aunt and uncle, for reasons that few persons ever learned — was given temporary custody of Lima. Mrs. Preenberry, who had never had a daughter and who could not remember her own adolescent years, let Lima use Snorkel’s room. Already, at the prompting of Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Preenberry had commissioned Jim-Jam to fashion hats out of Khitty Khleen bags for Lima and had established a generous tab for the girl at Deli Deluxe.
Because of those many kindnesses, Lima accompanied Mrs. Preenberry to church weekly and read, daily, from the family hymnal. Although Lima had refused to give up her iPhone during services, she received a blue attendance pin from Mrs. Preenberry’s place of prayer.
To boot, to reward Lima for her noteworthy church attendance, Mrs. Preenberry had brought her to Go Girrl Glow, where the two of them selected Lima’s outfit for the final senior class dance. They bought a ruffled skirt and a half-sleeve sweater.
Buying contemporary clothing was a first for Lima. Most of her life, she had worn dungarees and plaid, flannel shirts.
Into the bargain, the night of the dance, Mrs. Preenberry played makeup artist. Lima had never before worn so many coats of gloss.
When she was finally satisfied, Mrs. Preenberry took picture after picture. Lima was as beautiful as Lynnie Lola. She might even become the dance queen or earn another church pin.
* * *
Barbra Quinn shut the book she was reading. The closed ward was fairly nice. Mornings, after breakfast, she had occupational therapy. Already, she had sanded and painted a chess board and two armies.
Afternoons, she had group and individual therapies. Prozac eased her when she had to talk, as did the applause she received from the other residents of her floor. It was warm, safe, and comfortable in the hospital.
Evenings, after dinner but before curfew, Barbra could choose among TV, computer games, and reading. She loved books. Almost always, she opted for reading.
The work that mostƒΩ held her interest was a picture book entitled The Mop, The Pail, and The Puppy. In that story, which takes place in midtown America, a mommy dog and her entire litter pretend to be sleeping. By the end of the story, though, the jingle-jangle of an ice cream truck “wakes” them.
Barbra remembered, vaguely, reading that tale to someone else. Yet, she had no ring on her finger and recalled no years of parenting. Shrugging, she opened her favorite book to the page where a pear tree full of sparrows hums along with the ice cream truck’s music.
* * *
The youngest members of Upper Buckwheat County’s 4H club were strategizing. They might riot. After their parents learned that they had briefly harbored Jim-Jam O’Neily’s dangerous, illegal pets, their lives had become filled with extra hours of bed making and dishwashing, but lacked time for collecting statistics on butterflies, learning about lead mares, equine nickering, tail swishing, and tickle eating, or studying how to cull rabbits. Not only had those 4H members been banned from their county extension service office; likewise, they had been stripped of all invitations to attend the national council.
The youngest children among them took those forfeits the least well. Those eight-, nine- and ten-year olds had not dedicated themselves to 4H to better their odds of getting accepted into college. They had not participated in the agriculture organization as an alternative to street gangs. Similarly, they had not forfeited hours of convergent media to muck stalls because they cared about the humanitarian impact of their completing those duties. Those elementary school kids cared nothing for the degree to which people could relate to their findings, the traditions of the club, or becoming experts at pest management.
On the contrary, those young kids liked decking each other’s hair with larva and liked witnessing the results of releasing creepy-crawlies into cattle feed. They thought that studying insects, especially learning about bugs’ body parts, and that being given the freedom, overall, to seek out small beasties, was exciting. Besides, the resulting unpleasant consequences suffered by livestock forced to eat bug-infested grain gave their older brothers and sisters admirable subjects for the Veterinary Science Achievement Program. Almost to a one, those little kids saw agriculture as fun. What’s more, fun — to them — was more valuable than state fair ribbons.
Ergo, it was that pack of young children, not the middle school or high school students, who were the most upset when their parents and other supervising adults limited the 4H activities of Jim-Jam’s co-conspirators. Those boys and girls had vowed never to disclose their role as accomplices in raising Komodo dragons, yet they were being punished for having helped with O’Neily’s lizards.
At a clandestine meeting of the local chapter, it was those youngest members who raised the matter of being able to decide how to react to inconsistencies between rules for animal husbandry and antiquated civil laws. Grownups had no business punishing them for noble acts. Whereas their mothers and fathers had lauded 4H’s reach and scope and had promised them extra cookies, supplemental games of softball, and extensions on bedtimes if only they’d accepted the challenge of “positive personal development,” now those same grownups were doing everything they could to keep their children away from 4H.
Sure, giant lizards constituted an atypical herd, but they were more useful than llamas in guarding against predators. Furthermore, the Komodo dragons could have been sold to captive breeding programs and could have thereby become a marvelous source of funding for 4H. Zoos, the world over, were known to pay large sums for proven brooders. In spite of those truths, the grownups had stolen the Asian beauties from their rightful owner, had failed to pay the Komodos’ care providers, and had deigned to discipline those care providers.
The children whispered until they shouted. Parents couldn’t be trusted. It followed that their revolt began with a fairly benign phone call, which they made to the head of a notorious, international ecological society, and ended with much local drama, the culmination of which took weeks to manifest.
As those children’s schemes were unfolding, their parents saw only that their sons and daughters were becoming interested in volunteering for community projects, including hauling trash out of the civic center, the police station, and the town library. Those moms and dads witnessed their kids jousting for turns to serve coffee at the local hospital, specifically in the employees’ cafeteria. Those parents also observed their offspring helping their older siblings set up for the senior class’ last dance, crepe paper and glitter banners, inclusive.
* * *
Jim-Jam was going to the dance! Somehow, Mom’s team had engineered the documents that allowed him that outing. Ever consistent and predictable in ways that mattered to him, Science Boy spent purposeful minutes in his research hut before walking over to the Giskins’ house to pick up Doris.
Something continued to be very wrong in his kingdom, not the least of which was the unanticipated demise of all of his crayfish and most of his oysters. Again, Jim-Jam walked himself through the steps of his experiments on crustaceans. There had been no contaminants. The critters had had their requisite light, food, and water. He had even bought all of his experiment’s necessary utensils instead of fashioning them out of the bits and pieces cluttering his shack.
Sabotage never occurred to Jim-Jam. No one, except for maybe a few folks sitting on journal review boards, cared about his inquiries. Truly, he would have to recreate his research to discover where he had erred.
Jim-Jam regarded his watch once more. He had been wrong to invite Doris to the dance. It would be unfair to her if they arrived late and it was unfair to him to have to put his social life before his floundering research.
Only one of the species of crayfish with which he had worked had been listed as endangered by the State Commission of Wildlife. The rest were common breeders, fairly low on the local food chain. It confused Jim-Jam why such hardy animals had died.
It was more disturbing, though, that the adults in his orbit had appropriated his incomplete missile-launching keychain research. Jim-Jam trailed his right index finger over the front of a carton housing a container of Polonium-210. To generate those few milligrams, an unnamed source on the other side of the globe had had to irradiate bismuth with high-energy neutrons. The resulting product had been, even for the King of Internet Commerce and Infinitesimals, very expensive. It was good as well as a mystery why neither Mom nor the government had discovered and confiscated that powder.
Jim-Jam still wondered what his investment in the keychain project would cost him. Even if he had never been charged with all manner of crime and had been allowed to live as a normal teenager, and even if he had never bought the expensive, radioactive isotopes, he would lack sufficient funds for room and board at any university, let alone an elite one. At least Mom had loaned him the cost of the dance tickets.
* * *
Many more minutes passed. Jim-Jam really ought to have already picked up Doris. Unbeknownst to him, she had begun to wilt under the influence of the canister of hair spray and the quarter inch of face powder that she had applied to herself to preserve her contrived beauty.
Jim-Jam exhaled. If he ran, he could still get to Doris’ doorstep quickly enough that they could enter the dance at a socially acceptable half hour after its announced start. Running, though, meant exerting himself.
The teen sighed. His lack of speed was the least of his tribulations. His college plans were stalled. Although Berkeley, Scripps, and John Hopkins all had accepted him on full scholarship, he would not be able to matriculate to any school until after all of his court appearances and then only if he didn’t go to jail.
Fortunately, Scripps had a deferred enrollment plan. However, Berkeley and John Hopkins did not, as they preferred to accept students from their wait lists rather than hold places for indecisive candidates. Nevertheless, given the unrelenting number of subpoenas Jim-Jam was still receiving, he doubted that he would see the halls of the La Jolla institute where scientists pursued regenerative strategies rooted in stem cell exploitation and where amyloid disease was no more mysterious than was buttered toast.
In fact, the last time that Jim-Jam had heard from Scripps’ admissions office, that school, too, had given him a deadline. They were not as insistent as the other elite centers, but they wanted an answer from him by the day after the dance.
Jim-Jam absentmindedly petted the ladybug crawling across his desk. Paying no mind to the fact that it ought not to have appeared at night, he watched as the spotted beetle flew away.
The teen speculated that if he could find his cousin Ralph, the grownups might leave him alone and might even remit some or all of his punishments. Although everything he knew about international laws on the illegal transportation of goods indicated that he ought to lose his freedom, it was also the case that grownups could be played for sentiment. Restoring a child to the bosom of that child’s parents might compensate for a lot. Jim-Jam had to find his cousin.
* * *
Jim-Jam didn’t know that Ralph was being hunted down by Billy Lou Giskin, who was acting at the behest of Snorkel Preenberry’s grandfather, the state congressman. Preenberry might not be able to restore his grandchild, Snorkel, to Raymond Charles High School, but he could help find Snorkel’s lost buddy, Ralph. “Helping” meant paying every backwoods-educated person, with whom he was acquainted, to pursue and capture that lad.
Congressman Preenberry had met his grandson’s bestie. Accordingly, he believed that the missing teen was every bit as stupid as his own scion. It was highly unlikely that Ralph had wandered too far off as he lacked outdoor survival skills, street wisdom and book smarts.
Copyright © 2020 by Channie Greenberg
