“MOM! MOM! MOM!”
Mrs. Averagemom dropped her entire cup of coffee on the floor and raced from the kitchen in full-blooded panic. She stopped only long enough to grab a spare cup and pour herself another cup of coffee because if she didn’t have her daily recommended allowance of caffeine, there was no way she was getting through another day.
Mr. Averagedad had already headed off to work. “Early meeting,” he had mumbled, planting a kiss on her ear because he had the worst depth perception in the world, which is why she was constantly cleaning the floor around the toilet. Yet, he refused to get glasses, because he said they made his face look fat. “And I’ll be late today.”
“MOM! MOM!”
Speedwalking carefully towards Timmybilly’s room, Mrs. Averagemom slopped some coffee into her mouth and stopped at his door. What could it be? Spider? Prowler? Molester? Milkman? Of the four, milkman would have been the oddest, because there hadn’t been a milkman in Plaintown in about fifty years or so. She braced herself for the conspicuous site of a man holding a bottle of milk, trying as best as he could to harden her child’s bones.
But she could see now that there was indeed no intruder, nor was there insect, arachnid or anything at all. Her son was the only disgusting creature occupying that room.
Timmybilly stood hunched over his desk, gripping his unbuttoned pants with one small fist, and clutching the mouse with the other. His jaw was slack, his forehead contorted, his mood was agitated, and his IQ was spare change.
“What is it, Timmybilly?”
“It’s going up today!”
“It? Going up? Today? What?”
“Jimmy Crackcorn!”
Mrs. Averagemom took another sip of coffee. It was the third day of school. Timmybilly was in the fifth grade and had already had detention twice. After a full summer of doing nothing but playing video games, it was very hard for Timmybilly to break the habit. When “the incident” happened on day one, Timmybilly had calmy explained to the principal that he was just trying to level up. When the other “incident” happened on day two, Timmybilly had reasonably stated that he had been out of ammo and that Mr. Forkweasel’s head looked like an ammo crate.
“What’s a Jimmy Crackcorn?” Mrs. Averagemom said, draining the rest of her coffee. It burned her throat all the way down, but the caffeine surged through her veins like Popeye’s spinach. Two or three more cups and she might be able to lift a car.
“He’s the last member of the Thangbangers I need. He was a Generic Collector Convention exclusive, and he’s going up on the website today!”
“Ok,” Mrs. Averagemom said. “Then you can get it when you get home.”
“No no no!! You don’t understand. He goes up for a limited time. They only make about five!”
“So what time does it go up?”
“Sometime between 9 to 5.”
What a way to make a living.
“Um, Timmybilly, can you narrow that down?”
Timmybilly blinked. “… AM to PM?”
Mrs. Averagemom nodded, wondering yet again if that martini she had consumed in the first month of Timmybilly’s pregnancy had been a mistake. “And just how much warning did you have about this?”
“Well, first they said it would go up on a day that ends in Y, and then they said a weekday, and then they finally gave us a date.”
“So how much warning have you had?”
“A month?”
“And you’re just telling me now!?”
“Well at first I couldn’t remember which days ended in Y!”
Mrs. Averagemom sucked the edge of the coffee cup in case there were a few atoms of caffeine that she had missed.
“Ok, I’ll cancel Yoga,” she said.
“Aww, he’s my favorite Star Wars character!” Timmybilly said, before Mrs. Averagemom tossed him towards the school bus with a swift underarm throw.
Alone in the house, Mrs. Averagemom sat down at Timmybilly’s computer. She skipped the coffee cup and brought the entire coffee machine into his room, plugged it up, and connected the optional intravenous drip to her arm. Juan Valdez made sweet sweet love to her insides in a way that Mr. Averagedad never could.
She brought up Screwyounerds.com and headed for the exclusive page. She saw Jimmy Crackcorn’s listing. Not in stock, it said. $29.99, it said. For a second she wondered why it also said “HA HA,” but she decided to ignore it.
She logged in. Timmybilly’s password was buttcracker69. Reasonably, Mrs. averagemom guessed that to be another member of the Thangbangers.
9 AM.
F5.
She knew that businesses would respect the fact that people didn’t have all day to refresh a web page. 9 to 5 was just an estimate. It would definitely, positively be going up very soon.
9:00 and fifteen seconds.
F5.
Yep. Any time now. She might be able to make her yoga class AND pick up the toy for her son. Today they were going to be teaching the “reverse sleeping camel” position. The advanced class had the option of choosing one hump or two.
F5.
Maybe they were just a little slow. It happened. Delays are what made the world go around, except for the fact that if the world delayed in spinning we’d all go flying off into the sun and we wouldn’t have to deal with an inattentive husband and a less than superior child and a general lack of fulfillment and the creeping knowledge that she was getting older and older without really getting wiser and was this really what she wanted out of life didn’t she want to be an astronaut at one point or had that been a passing whim oh look at that she was out of coffee.
F5. F5. F5.
Jimmy Crackcorn was just taunting her now. Not in stock. F5. Not in stock. F5. HA HA. F5.
9:30.
10 AM.
Maybe he got it wrong. It was very possible he had gotten it wrong, because Timmybilly had once tied both of his shoes together, and that was before he had put his pants on, so him getting the day wrong wouldn’t have been what you could call “out of character.”
She refreshed the page. She peed into the empty coffee pot, terrified of leaving for half a second. She refreshed again. She grew to hate Jimmy Crackcorn.
1 PM.
2 PM.
The F5 key had been worn down to a shiny nub. There was no longer a visible F5. It was just a black key. But she loved her son and she continued to refresh that page.
When it happened, she almost didn’t realize it. She almost refreshed again, despite the fact that the Add to Cart button was a neon green that lacerated her brain.
Add to cart.
Credit card number.
Confirm shipping address.
Confirm purchase.
The page loaded.
Thank you for your purchase.
It was 4:59 PM.
Mrs. Averagemom stared at the computer like a penguin might stare at the refrigerator it just bought. Did that really happen? Had she really managed to buy it? Was her son the lucky owner of a Jimmy Crackcorn?
Her back sang a choir of pain as she peeled herself out of her chair. But it was all worth it when she saw the look on Timmybilly’s face. “You’re the best mom ever!” Timmybilly said, and Mrs. Averagemom agreed, even though she had no corroborating testimony from a coffee cup.
A week passed. A package came.
Mrs. Averagemom stood at Timmybilly’s doorway. He had been playing Isleptwichomamma 6 for two hours. She knocked to get his attention. “Look what just arrived,” she said, and held up the mint on card Jimmy Crackcorn.
He didn’t look up from his game. “What is it?”
“Look,” she said, and he punched the pause button right before he was about to impregnate his best friend’s mother. That was worth one million points.
“It’s Jimmy Crackcorn!”
“Oh, I don’t care,” Timmybilly said, and went back to his game.
Mrs. Averagemom wondered if the local adoption agency took drop-offs.