You Think You Have Problems?

“You have got to be kidding me,” I wailed, my voice a piercing supersonic shriek. My parent winced, reflexively turning eye stalks away. “What do you mean, I’m going through puberty?”

“I’m sorry, honey,” my parent warbled sweetly. “You’ve hit it early. What can we say?”

“You can say make it go away!” I shrieked. “The dance is on Tensday! How can I go like this?” I waved two tentacles in disgust at myself. Instead of my normal mild pink hue, I had turned brilliant magenta. Tiny little tentacles sprouted from my head in varying colors. I was a mess.

“I’m sorry, Bubblegum,” my parent repeated firmly. “But you’ll just have to live with it. We can’t do anything. Once you hit puberty, you hit puberty. There’s nothing anybody can do about it.”

I shrieked again and fled to my room, my entire body wobbling in my distress. What was I supposed to do? My crush, the love of my life, my one and only, Radish, would be at the dance, only three days away, and he couldn’t see me like this!

I looked at my body in the flex-mirror again, willing myself to see the whole disgusting picture. Yellow, blue, purple, and green tentacles waving from my head. My lovely pink skin now virulent red. My main tentacles now a weird squiggly shape. My poor eye stalks turning blue. I couldn’t go to the dance. I couldn’t go anywhere like this.

“Bubblegum?” a tentative call from the voice displacer roused me from my stupor. “It’s me, Popsicle.”

“Oh, Popsicle, what am I going to do?” I sobbed, hiding my eye stalks in my pillow. “I’ve hit puberty,” my voice dropped dramatically. Popsicle gasped. “Yes, you see? How can I go and see Radish when I’m like this? I look like a monster!”

“Oh, it’s all right, Bubblegum,” Popsicle tried to comfort me, but I could hear the suppressed hopelessness in her voice.

“NO IT ISN’T!” I shrieked at the top of my now supersonic voice. It warbled right up through ten octaves until my flex-mirror cracked and I nearly fell off the bed. “Sorry,” I calmed down enough to mutter, flushing a bright crimson. “But it’s not all right, okay?”

“Okay,” Popsicle’s shaken voice came through. “But you have to go to the dance, Bubblegum. The whole Rubber Council is depending on you. You came up with the whole idea from watching those fantasy pictures about earth or whatever.”

“I know, I know,” I moaned. “But…”

“No but’s,” Popsicle overrode me, her voice firm. “You’re going, even if I have to make you.”

“No,” I grumbled, but Popsicle had already signed off, leaving me alone with my hideously bulbous, fuchsia body.

Tensday rolled around all too soon. I groaned as soon as I got up and saw myself. Unfortunately, puberty hadn’t miraculously come and gone, leaving me with a sweetly adult bubblegum-pink body and pretty vari-hued red tentacles to match. I was still my ugly, rainbow self.

“I’m not going,” I told my reflection, crossing my tentacles over my body. “Nobody can make me.”

“Oh, Bubblegum!” my parent called up from the down lounge. “You have a visitor!”

“Stupid Popsicle,” I muttered, heaving myself out of the bed and into a magenta sleeve, hoping that it might minimize my disgusting color. “I told you I wasn’t going.”

I rolled into the lounge and gasped. It wasn’t Popsicle waiting for me.

It was Radish.

“Aah!” I croaked, trying to hide behind a large piece of furniture that wobbled gently when I touched it.

Then I noticed something.

Radish was going through puberty, too.

“Popsicle told me that you weren’t going to the dance,” he said, his voice full of sweet, gentle concern that made me want to hug him with all my tentacles. “I thought maybe I could change your mind.”

“Yes!” I squeaked, making him wince. “Er, I mean, yes,” I said again, carefully modulating my tone down. He smiled at me, making me wiggle in delight. “I’d love to go to the dance with you.”

“Good,” he said, smiling again. “I’m glad that’s settled.”

As he rolled out, I melted into a warm, gooey puddle on the floor. Literally.

“Ew!” my parent yipped. “Clean yourself up, Bubblegum!”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, pulling myself back together.

“Where are you going?” my parent asked with surprise as I rushed back up.

“I have a dance to go to!” I yelled back. Puberty isn’t so bad, I mused.

Okay, yes it is.