My Life As a Tarantula Toe Tickler

By Bill Myers

Boy-genius Wally McDoogle makes one very minor mistake…and decides to hide the truth from his parents. What harm could come from hiding one tiny mistake? Much more than Wally bargained for! Junior Genius (the spoiled, super-inventor from My Life As a Sky Surfing Skateboarder) turns Wally into a human guinea pig for his latest creation-the Mind Magnifier. And something goes terribly wrong. Instead of a dramatically increased brain size, Wally ends up with ears big enough to use for hang-gliding!

When you mix in giant flying snails and Tina, a giggling tarantula the size of a small house, you've got problems of major proportions. Now, our boy blunder must save Tina, his life, and the entire city! In this life-and-death struggle, Wally learns the importance of admitting mistakes and not hiding the truth from his parents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Jun 17, 2003
• ISBN: 9781418535254

Bill Myers

Bill Myers (www.Billmyers.com) is a bestselling author and award-winning writer/director whose work has won sixty national and international awards. His books and videos have sold eight million copies and include The Seeing, Eli, The Voice, My Life as, Forbidden Doors, and McGee and Me.

Book preview

MY LIFE

as a

Tarantula

Toe Tickler

Tommy Nelson® Books by Bill Myers

Series

SAD

. . . and his trusty dog, SPLAT a

The Case of the . . .

Giggling Geeks • Chewable Worms

• Flying Toenails • Drooling Dinosaurs •

Hiccupping Ears • Yodeling Turtles

The Incredible Worlds of Wally McDoogle

My Life As . . .

a Smashed Burrito with Extra Hot Sauce • Alien Monster Bait

• a Broken Bungee Cord • Crocodile Junk Food •

Dinosaur Dental Floss • a Torpedo Test Target

• a Human Hockey Puck • an Afterthought Astronaut •

Reindeer Road Kill • a Toasted Time Traveler

• Polluted Pond Scum • a Bigfoot Breath Mint •

a Blundering Ballerina • a Screaming Skydiver

• a Human Hairball • a Walrus Whoopee Cushion •

a Computer Cockroach (Mixed-Up Millennium Bug)

• a Beat-Up Basketball Backboard • a Cowboy Cowpie •

Invisible Intestines with Intense Indigestion

• a Skysurfing Skateboarder • a Tarantula Toe Tickler •

a Prickly Porcupine from Pluto • a Splatted-Flat Quarterback

• a Belching Baboon • a Stupendously Stomped Soccer Star •

WMD_22_TXT_0002_002

•The Portal • The Experiment • The Whirlwind • The Tablet

Picture Book

Baseball for Breakfast

www.Billmyers.com

the incredible worlds of Wally McDoogle

MY LIFE

as a

Tarantula

Toe Tickler

BILL MYERS

WMD_22_TXT_0003_001

MY LIFE AS A TARANTULA TOE TICKLER

© 2003 Bill Myers

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [e-mail].

Verses marked (TLB) are from The Living Bible. © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Myers, Bill, 1953–

      My life as a tarantula toe tickler / Bill Myers.

           p. cm. — (The incredible worlds of Wally McDoogle ; 22) Summary: Rather than facing the consequences of breaking his mother's incredibly expensive new vase, disaster-prone Wally McDoogle becomes involved with Junior Whiz Kid's zany experiments and must face a giant flying snail and a tarantula the size of a small house.

      ISBN 978-0-8499-5993-6 (pbk.)

      [1. Responsibility—Fiction. 2. Conduct of life—Fiction. 3. Humorous stories.] I. Title. II. Series: Myers, Bill, 1953– . Incredible worlds of Wally McDoogle ; 22.

PZ7.M98234Mylf 2003

[Fic]—dc22

2003004132

Printed in the United States of America

08 09 10 11 12 QW 13 12 11 10 9

For Sue Holtsnider:

A role model of love and

commitment.

Admit your faults to one another . . .

—James 5:16 (TLB)

Contents

1. Just for Starters . . .

2. Let the Failures Begin

3. Junior to the Rescue!

4. Dumbo Jr.

5. Sealed Lips

6. Reunion Time

7. Ride ’em, Snail Boy!

8. Will I Ever Learn?

9. An Itsy-Bitsy . . . MONSTER!

10. Wrapping Up

Chapter 1

Just for Starters . . .

Look, I know it was wrong. I know I should have told my folks. But when a guy gets older, there are some things he likes to work out on his own.

And some things he should never try!

(Sorry, didn’t mean to yell. I only yell when things get to me. So . . .)

And some things he should never try!

(If you guessed this one got to me, your guesser guessed the right guess.)

It all started innocently enough—which should have been my first clue something was wrong (at least in these stories). Mom had just bought this incredibly expensive vase and put it on this incredibly expensive vase stand.

Now everyone be careful, she said. This is an incredibly expensive vase, and I’ve just put it on this incredibly expensive vase stand.

(Told you.)

Yes, Mother dearest, little sister Carrie sweetly answered. (An obvious clue she was heading to the mall and needed money.)

Umph, my twin brothers, Burt and Brock, grunted in unison. (An obvious clue they were watching football on TV.)

Snork—wheeeeze . . . , Dad answered. (An obvious clue he was lying on the sofa examining the inside of his eyelids.)

Then there was my own answer, which I saved until she’d left the room:

AUGH!

K-Thud!

For you newbies, that’s the sound I make when stepping on our cat, Collision (who did not get his name by accident). You see, he has this bad habit of sleeping at the top of the stairs, which is no problem, except I have an even worse habit of tripping over him—which led to the rest of my answer

k-bounce, k-bounce, k-bounce

sprain-a-wrist-here, bruise-a-face-there

as I tumbled down the steps, managing to break numerous body parts along the way.

Oh, and there were two other things I included in the answer for good measure. The first, was my world-famous

K-rash!

(which is the sound of an incredibly clumsy human slamming into an incredibly expensive vase stand).

And finally (don’t pretend you didn’t know this was coming), the ever-popular

K-shatter

tinkle, tinkle, tinkle

(which, of course, is the sound of an incredibly expensive vase shattering into a thousand incredibly little pieces).

Now it was time for