A Day in the Life of Gulíble

“If you don’t have the Super Awesome Shampoo of Wonder, you aren’t living! Go buy some now!” The television screen sparkled with a fabulous array of neon colors. The lights danced around the room, and a seventeen year old boy named Gulíble stared in awe.
Almost as fast as lightning, Gulíble snatched up his car keys and seized a scrap piece of paper that was lying on the kitchen table. On the paper he wrote a note to his family saying that he was going shopping for his life. A huge smile was plastered on his face as he bounded into his car, started the engine, and drove off. The poor boy was mesmerized by the shampoo commercial.

Gulíble knew one store that was guaranteed to have the shampoo, and that store was Super Wall World. Many a day Gulíble had gone to Super Wall World, always looking for one item: an alpaca. Other people would look at him with strange expressions whenever he asked the store clerks for the South American camelid. Even though the store never had any alpacas in stock, Gulíble was always hopeful that someday a shipment would come in. Of course, he was certain that day would come because Super Wall World’s slogan was: “We have everything, so come in and buy stuff.” Gulíble knew that there was no way that Super Wall World would ever disagree with its slogan.

After Gulíble opened his car door and stepped out, he basically teleported himself to the shampoo aisle. His left eye twitched with excitement as his pupils sporadically skipped from one shampoo to the next. After a good second of looking, Gulíble laid his eyes on the Super Awesome Shampoo of Wonder. He loudly uttered a girly squeal. Taken by surprise, he slapped his hand to his mouth and twisted his head around, looking to see if anyone else in the store had heard him. Luckily, no one was snickering in his direction, so he quickly made his way to the checkout counters.

Before he could officially own a bottle of Super Awesome Shampoo of Wonder, Gulíble ran into his classmate, Jarod. Jarod wasn’t a very good-looking boy because he was just too ordinary. He was six feet and four inches tall with pure white hair. He also had a glass eye, four toes on his right foot, and webbed hands. When Jarod called out a greeting to Gulíble, the shampoo-crazy child yawned and flicked his eyes to the self-checkout machines. He obviously wanted to buy his shampoo and hightail it out of there.

“Hey, Gulíble, what are you here for?” Jarod asked with a flash of his pearly white smile. Gulíble shuddered at his normalness, but he answered the question anyway.
“I’m going to buy some shampoo. I saw a shiny commercial and that means that the shampoo must be amazing” He flicked his eyes to the checkout again, hoping that Jarod would take the hint. Apparently he did because he ended the conversation quickly.

“I heard it was going to rain cats and dogs soon, so I better get home with these groceries. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.” Jarod waltzed off, leaving Gulíble wide-eyed. He had always wanted a puppy, and since dogs would soon be falling from the sky, his wish could be granted! First he had to buy his shampoo. The lady behind the desk overlooking the self checkout machines stifled a giggle fit as she watched Gulíble hopping up and down like a hyper toddler.
When he was finished checking out, Gulíble rushed out of Super Wall World and stared at the sky. Dark clouds were looming above him. Thunder rolled in the distance, shaking Gulíble’s heart. He was wired on the thought of finally having a puppy. The only thing he was a tad worried about was being smacked by a falling Chihuahua. Other than that, he was ready to get his puppy and give it the coolest name on the planet: Dr. Beat.

Attached to a window in his house, Gulíble gaped at the sky through the glass. He could see the fur through the clouds. Somebody approached him from behind and asked,
“What are you doing?” The voice came from Gulíble’s father. His son answered frankly,
“I’m waiting for it to rain cats and dogs.” The statement was true in a sense. His dad sighed and looked out the window with Gulíble. The sky was covered by dark clouds, but he did not see the fur that his son was seeing.
“I just watched the weather channel, and the weatherman said that there is a huge chance of rain.” Gulíble’s dad murmured, “I don’t know what you are excited about, though. Maybe you’re just bored. When you don’t have school, you’re bored, so you should always have school so you can stop bothering the windows.” His dad shrugged and went about his own business in another room.

Suddenly, the home phone’s ringer rang around the residence. Gulíble let himself be taken away from the window to see who was calling. The voice on the other side was unnaturally high-pitched and squeaky. There was a hushed laughing in the background, but Gulíble did not think anything of it.
“Hello, this is Madame Mousille. Congratulations are in store because you have just won one million-billion-garillion dollars worth of ham!” The laughter in the background got louder as the voice was speaking, but it quickly died afterwards. Gulíble was shocked motionless.
“No way!” He gasped.
“Yes!” The voice sang happily, “Now all you have to do to receive it is to go take a shower right now! The ham will appear in a flash of pink when you have washed your hair!”
“Okay!” Gulíble hung up the phone, grabbed his Super Awesome Shampoo of Wonder, and fluttered in a jolly chaos up the stairs to his favorite shower in the house. He paused before turning on the water because he had forgotten to read the directions on the shampoo bottle. They read: Lather, Rinse, Repeat. That seemed easy enough.

For what seemed to be an eternity, Gulíble continually lathered, rinsed, and repeated, wondering where his ham was. He was following the directions, but something seemed to be wrong. There was no pink flash or a scent of salt or honey. So after washing his hair several times, he decided to give up for a while. The only reason for his forfeit was to make sure that he wasn’t missing his chance to get his puppy.
As soon as Gulíble stepped out of the shower, he heard a downpour outside. In a rush, he finished grooming himself, put on some clothes and glued himself to a window. He searched the view dramatically, his mouth open, ready to gasp when he saw his perfect puppy. However, the only substance falling from the sky was water. The simple compound made Gulíble groan in annoyance.

A foul mood swept over the boy almost like he had taken a cloud from outside and forced it to hang over his head. This cloud was very apparent when his sister approached him, trying to find out why he was looking like an angry goose.
With a flash of dark eyes, Gulíble hissed, “It’s drizzling.” Leaving his sister with that, he trudged to his room and flopped down on his bed. The old mattress seemed to be eating Gulíble, so he jumped up, frightened. He knew that the day was not going well for him.
He said aloud, “I’m going to be stuck in this house forever without a puppy or ham with this man-eating mattress. Now what?” His eyes drifted to a clock that read 8:12 pm. Gulíble gasped, wondering where the day had gone. The whole day had not been totally worthless; he knew that for a fact. The Super Awesome Shampoo of Wonder had given him life, and that was all that mattered to Gulíble. He accepted his temporary failure at obtaining a puppy and his ham. He decided that he would just have to keep trying to obtain his dreams just like he always tried to get his fluffy alpaca.