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die-hard
Double Take
fans and had a pact to watch every episode together, even if we weren’t in the same room.
Double Take
was about these twin brothers who were total opposites. Buddy was the cool brother and Bailey was the dork. The best part
     was that they were both played by the same actor - Jeremy Jason Wilder. The luckiest kid on the planet.
    In our class, on Friday afternoons we had open discussion periods where Miss Honeywell would ask, “Okay, what do y’all wanna
     talk about today?” Wally and I would give each other two quick looks and shout,
“Double Take!”
Miss Honeywell never took us up on it.
    “Hey, Wal, before I forget - you wanna come to my gran’s birthday party? It’s three weeks from today, the seventeenth. It’s
     gonna be huge.”
    “Any food?”
    “Tons.”
    “Do I have to bring a present?”
    “Dunno. Probably.”
    “I’ll get back to you on that,” Wally said. “Oh, crud! This show’s not another rerun, is it?”
    “They’re all reruns now. When’s it gonna sink in?”
    Double Take
used to be on at eight o’clock on Thursday nights; then they stopped making new episodes and threw the reruns in with the
     Saturday morning cartoons. Not a good sign.
    “It’s the Follican one,” I said.
    “The what?”
    “That stuff for bald guys.” I chirped out another jingle. “’If your head can’t grow it, Folli-can!’”
    That’s probably why I couldn’t remember things like who Lewis and Clark were or what the capital of Pennsylvania is -too many
     jingles and sitcom plots were taking up valuable brain space.
    “Oh, yeah. Buddy’s head ends up looking like a giant eggplant,” Wally said. “So how’s
your
head?”
    “Fine.”
    “Quick, before it comes on, tell me again about the famous kid who’s transferring into our class! What did the nurse say,
     exactly?”
    “I already told you.”
    “Well, did she give you any hints, like -” Wally stopped talking and the sound got muffled. “Yeah, Ma? Okay, I’ll ask him.”
    “Ask me what?” I said.
    “My ma wants to know if you liked the costume she made you.”
    “Tell her yeah,” I said. “And tell her not to mention it to my mom if she runs into her at the grocery store or anything.
     Tell her she’s real sensitive about not knowing how to sew. She’s probably better off not even knowing about the play at all.”
    I heard phone-fumbling.
    “Dustin? It’s Wallace’s mom. Don’t worry, I won’t tell your mother about the play. We certainly don’t want to hurt her feelings.
     I just hope I didn’t work my fingers to the bone making all those costumes for nothing. You know Principal Futterman. He’ll
     put the play off till kingdom come.”
    “No, we’re definitely doing it, Mrs. Dorkin,” I said. “We’d
better
be doing it!”
    “All I know is, if it doesn’t involve sports, that man can’t be bothered,” she said. “He postponed the PTA bake sale so long,
     we had to cancel it - and now I’ve got a pantry full of coconut-almond hockey pucks. Oh, he’d like that!”
    “Ma, it’s your own fault,” I heard Wally say. “You know I can’t stand coconut.”
    Just then, the front door flew open and Gordy oozed in, dragging Sheila - straight out of the 1950s and into our living room.
     She wasn’t the poodle-skirt, ponytail variety I’dhoped for. More like a skanky greaser chick, with big hair, a pink leather jacket, and too much makeup.
    “Where’s Mom?” Gordy grunted.
    “Downstairs,” I said, putting my hand over the receiver.
    Sheila perched on the arm of the couch next to me, picking something out of her teeth, while Gordy dumped half a box of Dino-S’mores
     into his mouth.
    I hope he chokes on a stegosaurus.
    “Gimme the phone,” Gordy said.
    “I’m using it!”
    “I have to make a freakin’ phone call,” he said, ripping the receiver out of my hand. “It’s important!”
    He actually hung up on Wally’s mom and started dialing. I grabbed the remote control and turned up