We lose my brother on the airplane ONE So there we were on the day of our departure at the beginning of an incredible adventure as my mother would say but we were too disorganized to get out of the house As usual my family made a big embarrassing show for the whole neighborhood First Miro decided to hide He didn’t want to leave home either My mother and I walked around the house and up and down the alleyway calling his name Finally I discovered him underneath the front porch I crawled under and grabbed him But Miro can be really stubborn sometimes He dug in his paws and refused to budge When I finally managed to drag him from under the porch we
were both muddy and covered in cobwebs I had to change my clothes while my mother dusted off Miro Then my brother started to cry because he didn’t want to leave Miro even though our cat was going to be happy staying at my grandmother’s house Better than chasing French mice in some backward mountain village He would be treated like a king at my grandmother’s Round-the clock food All the petting he wanted He would be enormous by the time we came back Our friends who were taking us to the airport were parked outside honking their horn and pointing at their watches That’s because my father kept rushing back into the house because he forgot something The first time it was his glasses The second time it was find that penguin or we’ll leave without it My mother’s the kind of person who likes to be at the his typewriter and all the notes for the book he was supposed to be writing in France Believe it or not my father still uses a typewriter We were finally on our way when my brother realized he’d forgotten his penguin So we rushed back inside again Our friends must have wished they’d never offered to drive us to the airport My mother was looking more and more frazzled That’s enough she yelled You’ve got one minute to
airport early hours before the plane leaves That wasn’t going to happen today Of course I found the penguin under Max’s bed Then we rushed back to the car After we checked our baggage my father gave us a long speech about how we had to be serious at the security gate We weren’t supposed to say words like gun or bomb or make jokes about hijacking the airplane At the X-ray machine the guards made my father take off his cowboy boots I suppose a man who doesn’t look anything like a cowboy and who is wearing cowboy boots seems suspicious I knew it there were holes in both his socks The security guard picked up my brother’s stuffed penguin and poked it in the stomach Hmm This penguin looks rather fat Are you sure you didn’t hide anything in it Was that a joke From the security guard’s expression I couldn’t tell That must be the first thing you learn in security guard school how to keep a poker face no matter what My brother looked very insulted He grabbed the penguin from the guard’s hand and marched right past the metal detector toward our gate Good thing he didn’t have any metal in his pockets
