The Ill-Advised Adventures
of Jim-Jam O’Neily

by Channie Greenberg

Table of Contents

Chapter Three: The Unintimidatable Jim-Jam Ariel O’Neily

Bowing his head wasn’t his choice. Such posturing was never Jim-Jam’s idea of a good time. Regardless, Mrs. Preenberry insisted. More specifically, Snorkel P.’s mom accepted as true that children who skipped such acts would fail to achieve personal goals and would sire dwarves. She had, after all, read such blather in Homefronts, Ethical Abodes, Raising Lops and Little Children, and in similarly demographically-skewed trash.

Jim-Jam became acquainted with Snorkel Preenberry when that tall, wide, dull brute became his Social Studies affiliate. From then on, Jim-Jam spent Wednesday and Friday afternoons at the Preenberry household eating chips, playing Nintendo, and pretending to be disquieted by the inaccuracy of the maps, which he and Snorkel made, of global hot spots. Truth be told, the only hot spot of interest to Jim-Jam O’Neily was the space between Lynnie Lola’s arms.

* * *

For two consecutive weeks, he and Lynnie Lola had been on speaking terms. Apparently, the homage Jim-Jam had paid that gal’s lifeline, Ralph, aka Deli Deluxe’s french-fry foreman, by buying grownup-sized rounds of potatoes for everyone, in combination with Jim-Jam’s making YouTube posts of the entire student government dressed in the Khitty Khleen millenary of Miss Lynnie Lola, had won Lynnie Lola’s favor. She was especially pleased that by dint of omission on social media, her nemesis Marina looked ridiculous.

All that remained, for the Boy Sensation to fulfill his ambitions was for him to find a way to cuddle her. His trouble remained that Raymond Charles High School’s champion bb shooter, aka Ralph, still had the hots for Lynnie Lola and still was taller, wider, and more dully bestial than Jim-Jam. Ralph, too, remembered that Jim-Jam had sold him, at great cost, a mere Band-Aid to cover a blemish.

Jim-Jam deliberated that maybe Ralph’s sister, Marina, or that maybe Scooter, Marina’s boyfriend, could be persuaded to deter Ralph from freshly dogging Lynnie Lola. Failing those strategies, perhaps he, himself, could get Ralph drafted into the military and then sent to Hindu-Kush or to Tehran. Maybe he could cause Ralph to receive a limited months’ worth of high school detention. There had to be some way for Jim-Jam to rid the field of his rival.

* * *

For the moment, though, the Amazing Science Geek was stuck teaching Snorkel not only cartography but also basic composition. That fiend didn’t know an introductory paragraph from a conclusion and was entirely ignorant of any syllogism’s major premise. More maddening, Mom had insisted that Jim-Jam not charge Snorkel and baldly promised supplementary gardening duty for Jim-Jam if, “coincidentally,” her son applied fiduciary pressure to young Preenberry.

So, after stuffing one more miniature tortilla into his mouth, and after shaking and shaking the Cheese Whiz can to make plain that it, indeed, was empty, Jim-Jam spread his jotter and several of his least favorite writing implements on Snorkel’s dining room table. Their Social Studies teacher was wise to the ways of outright copying. That man had so successfully used Plagiarismchecker.com’s software on the entire brass section of the school marching band that Raymond Charles’ football games were devoid of Sousa marches for an entire season.

Snorkel would have to actually write his paper, not just cut and paste. If that young ogre persisted in continuing to fail to grasp the fundamentals of English, some sucker would have to do his work. Snorkel had in mind that the dupe ought to be Jim-Jam.

Seeking under the table for any spilled tortillas, Jim-Jam regretted having to labor, for free, for a goon twice his size, especially for one with a horrible case of halitosis. He regretted more strongly having to pray before and after each indentured task.

Jim-Jam had expected Mom, who represented many clients in freedom of religious expression cases, and in separation of church and state cases, to be compassionate. Contrariwise, she lectured at Jim-Jam’s to obey all of his elders, including and especially Mrs. Preenberry. She didn’t think a little prayer here and there would hurt her child and told him as much.

Head bowed, Jim-Jam mumbled some of the words on the yellowed pages of hymnal open before him, poked Snorkel’s fleshy bicep, and then began to divulge the dissimilarity between overarching ideas and supporting notions. If timed correctly, he would be able to get the would-be gangster all the way to a rough outline in little more than four sessions.

Snorkel, however, could not have cared less. He hoisted the TV clicker off of the table, then vaulted the sofa, and landed, solidly, in front of the tube.

Earlier in the afternoon, before knocking off the cheese spread and finishing the frozen Mexican treats, Snorkel had insisted on showing Jim-Jam all of the geckos that had drowned in the inflatable pool Mrs. Preenberry had left outside to cool down their Doberman-Cocker Spaniel and their wiener hound. To Snorkel, homework was less important than was scraping fly carcasses off his home’s walls, and Jim-Jam knew that the other boy would more than willingly leave splats wherever he swatted them.

Of some interest to the hoodlum, who was already on his third trip to the fridge, was dialing the Social Studies teacher. The large teen flipped open his cell phone as dextrously as had a certain space captain on a long-forgotten television series. Snorkel fancied himself as adept as that fictitious leader who had been famous for exploring strange worlds and for commandeering the affections of alien beauties. In a squeaky voice, on his teacher’s unlisted line, Snorkel left the message that the teacher’s eight year old daughter had been taken to the county hospital.

Snorkel spent about eleven minutes in front of the flickering screen. While watching tosh, he removed all of the grime from beneath his encrusted fingernails with a paperclip, tried to increase the decibels of his burps, and insisted that Jim-Jam join him in watching a rerun of a pride of lions mauling a zebra. Snorkel was intrigued with the idea that he could accomplish all three goals simultaneously. Contently, he belched even louder.

Mrs. Preenberry, who just then peeked into the room, smiled at Jim-Jam. She didn’t see her beloved child on the other side of the sofa, but she did note that her boy’s study buddy was making good use of one of her books of proper songs. Maybe that lad knew how to play the organ. There was one in the family’s basement, a leftover from the days when Snorkel’s father had sold disposable cups and holiday napkins door to door. These days, he traveled around the globe distributing cargo planes’ worth of ant farms, Pet Rocks, and related products. When home, Mr. Preenberry had played exquisite ecclesiastical music.

Young O’Neily, who was ever preoccupied with gadgets, contraptions, and doohickeys, had seemed the right young man to befriend her shy, small boy. Snorkel’s lack of interaction with other youngsters had caused Jim-Jam to seem very attractive to Mrs. Preenberry, who knew nothing of the gilded pens featuring decorative girls that lost more than pounds when turned upside down, or of the URL links to Taiwanese anime, such as Hana Kimi or Uchiha, that her husband maintained for their son.

While Mrs. Preenberry fantasized inviting Jim-Jam for Sunday dinners, for June fishing trips and for weekday sleepovers, Jim-Jam surreptitiously reached into his left front pants pocket for his decoder ring. He turned its main dial to green. If it worked, he could be back in his sanctuary, beneath his potpourri of found and repurposed objects, snugged up to his umbrella/computer thingummy.

Fatefully, nothing happened. Jim-Jam was left babysitting the man-child with a unibrow and chopped-liver breath. He would continue, too, to have to kowtow to a midlife mom more worried about building mores in future generations than about the means by which pop artists ought or ought not to make political statements through music and through their producers’ accesses to international decision-makers.

If only Jim-Jam’s mom stopped wielding her always powerful, sometimes painful oratory — that is, if only she stopped abetting no-goods — Jim-Jam would be able to shadow the instigators of pulsing automobile windshields, of those vibrations hidden from all but pedestrians stuck at intersections and sending messages to the USA’s Middle Eastern foes. He would likewise be able to continue his research on how prunes could be synthesized to rid the neighborhood of rabid squirrels, of golden jackals and of little sisters. As it were, however, all of his dangerous missions were curtailed until he redirected a young troll away from its electronic trough and toward a pile of books.

Inspiration, providentially, never left home without Jim-Jam. Whereas he couldn’t contact his international research colleagues, the academics he had befriended via Facebook and LinkedIn, such as the young professor, who was up for tenure in the Department of Sustainable Living at the Maharishi University of Management of Fairfield Iowa, and such as the untenured, adjunct instructor, in the Microcomputer Support Certificate Program at Montana Great Falls College of Technology, Jim-Jam could, by turning a gage on his watchband and by twisting a knob on his iPod, cause the screen with which Snorkel was obsessed to be filled with static. Sighing, he mulled over how much easier it might be to ask his adult wardens to send him accesses to their libraries so that he could finish Snorkel’s homework for him.

Jim-Jam let his fingers walk along his stylus. Snorkel screamed. Faster than he had initially bounded over the sofa toward the television, Snorkel leapt to the table where Jim-Jam was fooling around with dials. Though the goodwife’s son judged much of secondary education to be no more than gibberish with which he had to contend, he correspondingly knew that he did not have to tolerate his companion’s mischief. Snorkel was no candidate for the scholarship monies awarded to children, who collected the seeds of giant cucurbitas, or who played the four-mallet marimba while tooting along on the harmonica, but he was not as much of a fool as his peers alleged him to be.

Snorkel was aware that the adhesive bandage that Jim-Jam had sold to Ralph had been unloaded at great cost. He knew that Jim-Jam had emboldened Slug-Faced Samantha, Missy Lynnie Lola’s arch-rival. Snorkel was aware, to boot, that Jim-Jam had taught Mac and Doris, the Giskin Twins, enough “etiquette” to get them grounded forever.

Snorkel adopted the only reasonable action for someone in his position; he lifted Jim-Jam up by Jim-Jam’s shirt and hurled the teen brain against the floor. The sight of Jim-Jam’s crooked glasses and the look of the other boy’s blood-colored drool dripping from his mouth made Snorkel Preenberry chortle. He laughed so much that it took him five entire minutes before he could spit on the pathetic critter who was supposed to be his easy pass to graduation.

It took Snorkel another five minutes before he could focus on kicking Jim-Jam full throttle. After leaving his “study partner” slumped in a pile, Snorkel gamboled down his home’s main hall, walked out the front door, and headed in the direction of Deli Deluxe. He needed another snack.

* * *

An hour later, Jim-Jam The-One-and-Only Ariel O’Neily stood at the entrance to that popular eatery. He scowled. In intentional falsetto, the academic paragon exclaimed, as he pointed to the table where Snorkel was fisting fries and onion rings into his mouth, that if Snorkel hit him again, Jim-Jam would be forced to hit back.

Lynnie Lola feigned a faint. Ralph grunted from behind the counter, his soda jerk cap less twisted than his expression. Others of the student body of Raymond Charles High tittered at the thought that the person who regularly swindled them by means of tricks played with drugstore supplies or Khitty Khleen hair accessories might taste comeuppance alongside his shake and burger.

Snorkel spit again, aiming as expertly as a camelid.

Jim-Jam stomped into the burger bar. Having noticed Lynnie Lola, though, he paused for a few seconds to smile at her before he resumed stomping.

Snorkel stood up, bits of fried dough, splashes of ketchup, and chewed ice cubes spilling from his maw. Jim-Jam took another pace toward the bully.

Snorkel shoved the table aside, sending salt and pepper, relish, mustard, and a canister full of napkins to the floor. Jim-Jam folded his glasses and placed them in his button-down’s front pocket. He twisted his decoder ring until the face of his ornament glowed yellow.

Lynnie Lola screamed.

A cockroach, excited by the plunder on the floor, had scuttled between the contenders. Those bugs typically waited until closing hours to feast. However, the sight of half of a jelly doughnut, frosting side stuck to the tiles, was more than the poor insect could abide.

Snorkel had been making his way through the menu, item after item, courtesy of the money Mrs. Preenberry had stashed for that week’s church collection basket. When he had tasted the circular pastry and had found it lacking, Snorkel had driven it over the side of his table.

Lynnie Lola screamed once more.

Stepping through the eatery’s doorway, close behind Jim-Jam, was Mrs. Preenberry. Her arms were filled with an empty charity canister, a copy of the boys’ Social Studies assignment, and a CD upon which had been burned several cuts of adult anime.

That wife of the often absent traveling salesman strode to the mess on the floor, clumped on the beetle, thrust Lynnie Lola aside, slapped Ralph for good measure, and then pulled her towering son, by his ear, toward her. It was in that inappropriate embrace that Mrs. Preenberry took Snorkel home.

As she left Deli Deluxe, that matron glared at Jim-Jam and threatened to serve him with a lawsuit unless he created and copied, in triplicate, papers that would appear to have been scripted by her son. Particularly, legal persons, beholden to Mrs. Preenberry, would tolerate no more of Jim-Jam’s acts of academic thievery. “In a normal state of affairs,” she hissed, “you and your wretched family of brainiacs would never again see a library, a computer screen, a domestic helper, or a tax rebate.”

Jim-Jam shuddered. The entire town knew that Mrs. Preenberry enjoyed the backing not only of the local church, but, more importantly, that of her father, a state congressman.

The woman continued to rant. Neither Jim-Jam nor his inventions were ever to appear in the Preenberrys’ consecrated home again, except to rebind the copy of Pilgrims’ Progress from which Snorkel, just that afternoon, had torn a small number of pages when looking for something in which to deposit a large clod of snot and when seeking something with which to kill the ants that had begun to trail over the empty Cheese Whiz container.

The nerd boy, with whom her sterling child had made ill-fated associations, would have to immediately remunerate her by providing her scion with large hunks of correctly formatted scholarship and by teaching him, on any premises but the Preenberrys’, how to present his homework in such a way as to convince Snorkel’s teachers of Snorkel’s authorship. As for the bonus tutoring services, which Jim-Jam was understood to be providing in mathematics and in German syntax, neither she nor her son wanted any more of them.

* * *

It came to pass that Snorkel Preenberry failed Algebra and German II. He did, however, ace Social Studies.

As for Jim-Jam O’Neily, his mother, Counselor O’Neily, blocked his reach to any snacks except for tofu, whole wheat gruel, chard, and similar gubbins. She credited Mrs. Preenberry’s graphic disclosure of her son’s afterschool eats with helping her right her child’s nutrition.

Sometime after that Deli Deluxe shakedown, Jim-Jam surreptitiously dialed, while seated safely in his hidey hole, the unlisted number of his Social Studies teacher. In a voice mismatched to his own gender and age, Jim-Jam hinted that the instructor might want to run students’ homework through an application for detecting breach of copyright. Jim-Jam left the URL for an updated version of the software on the teacher’s answering machine.

Next, he interfaced with a yacht moored in Shanghai. A young woman, who claimed to be the boat owner’s daughter, answered. She quickly located Mr. Preenberry. The latter promised to jet home immediately to attend to his ailing wife’s hospital bed.

Before taking his family’s garbage cans to the curb and before gathering their week’s worth of errant newspapers from the bushes, Jim-Jam scrolled through his PayPal balance. It was low.

Opportunely, there remained a large number of nervous students in the local university’s MIS Department. If those students could be convinced to code Internet documents and to pilfer data from the school’s Engineering library for him, Jim-Jam could continue to study fissionable stuffs. All he had to do was to help them, one way or another, improve their grades. Jim-Jam smiled. The servers on which the school stored students’ grade point averages were easy to hack.

In the interim, Jim-Jam’s control of his school’s student body was dependent upon his being able to leash anti-tank missiles and upon him making himself useful to his school’s janitor. Despite the exclamations of the likely Homecoming queen, the star athlete, and the spelling bee champ, Jim-Jam still had ways of influencing high school’s concerns. Janitor keyrings opened all doors.

Proceed to Chapter 4...

Copyright © 2020 by Channie Greenberg