Mrs Freakle Finally Freaks Out!

Mrs Freakle looked like everyone else’s mom. In fact people were always stopping her and saying, “Aren’t you Mrs Smith” or “Aren’t you Mrs Jones” and she would say politely, “No I’m Mrs Freakle”.

Then they would say, “Who?”

Mrs Freakle was a very good mom. She cooked wonderful, tasty dinners. She washed the very dirty clothes of her four very naughty boys and she even cleaned up the dog poop!

But one day, Mrs Freakle finally freaked out. It wasn’t anything big. It was just one of those little things that made her finally explode like a volcano.

Mrs Freakle had been busy experimenting with her plant extracts in her basement. She had mixed special ingredients for a spray that would make her flowers bloom beautifully.

There was a puff of pink smoke, then a puff of purple smoke and a weird goopy green liquid oozed into her spray bottle.

“Hmm, not quite what I expected,” Mrs Freakle said, “But I will test it out.”

She hurried outside to try out her new garden spray. It was kind of oozy and instead of spray, it puffed out a yellowish vapour.

Then, before Mrs Freakle’s surprised eyes, the flower she sprayed shrank smaller and smaller until it was the size of her little finger.

“My goodness!” she said.

Charlie the little boy next door was peeping over the fence. He grinned with no front teeth because he was only five.

“Wow!” he said.

“Ssh Charlie,” Mrs Freakle said.

She heard Charlie’s mother yelling, “Charles Stromberg! You get off that wall right this minute!”

Charlie’s mother was not very patient.

“Bye,” Charlie said.

“Bye,” said Mrs Freakle looking at her plant spray.

That evening, Mr Freakle, came home from work as he usually did. He sat in his favourite armchair with a six-pack of Icy Pops – his favourite sodas and said, “What’s for dinner?” as he usually did.

Little Tommy Freakle said, “I hope it’s not that disgusting meatloaf again.”

And Mr Freakle and the four little Freakles all laughed very rudely.

Mrs Freakle’s dinners were always good and tasty. But that day at the school bake sale, her cake had been the last one to be sold and all the ladies had left her to do all the cleaning up and so Tommy Freakle’s rude words were the last straw.

Mrs Freakle shouted at the top of her voice, “You are the rudest most horrible, mean family in the world!”

She still had the goopy plant spray in her hand and she sprayed all of them. Instantly the whole Freakle family shrank to the size of your little finger and Mrs Freakle popped them all into a shoebox.

“Now you can learn some manners!” she said.

They squeaked and hopped like little mice, but it was no good. Mrs Freakle gave them a cupcake to share and a thimble of milk and then she left the shoebox on the table and went to bed.

The moon was a silver slice in the dark sky and thousands of stars were shining. Mrs Freakle thought how beautiful they were and how peaceful her house was and she fell fast asleep.

The next day, Mrs Freakle went back to her basement to work on an antidote to her shrinking spray. She was a good mother after all and didn’t mean to leave the family shrunken forever.

But she forgot that Mrs Meddle was popping over to collect jumble for the church bazaar.

“Hello Mrs Freakle,” Mrs Meddle called as she walked in through the front door, “Just collecting for the church bazaar.”

“It’s all in the hall,” Mrs Freakle called back, “Can you take it? I’m just in the middle of something.”

Mrs Freakle was in fact in the middle of a huge vat of dandelion flowers that she was stomping. She was covered in green goop.

“Thank you,” Mrs Meddle called and off she went.

Mrs Freakle didn’t think about this until later in the day when she decided she had finally got the antidote right.

She went outside to test the spray on her flowers. She sprayed the one she had shrunk and a greenish vapour covered it and it grew back to normal size.

“Hooray!” she said. And got a fright when Charlie from next door said, “Wow!” again.

“Charlie, you must stop spying on me,” Mrs Freakle said.

“I’m bored,” he said, with no front teeth, “Come over and spray my mom!”

“Charlie!” Mrs Freakle said, “I can’t do that! At least, not today. Bye!”

And she rushed back inside to spray her family back to normal size.

It was then she realized that Mrs Meddle had taken the shoebox containing her family to the church bazaar.

“Oh dear,” said Mrs Freakle.

She had a cup of tea and decided what to do. Did she really want her family back? She thought of her husband and his Icy Pops and her children with their rude shouting and the dogs that pooped in the hall.

“Right,” she said to the empty house, “We have to do it. Goodbye peace and quiet.”

And Mrs Freakle took her antidote spray and rushed off to the church bazaar.

The church was very busy. There were people having tea and cake and selling second-hand books and brand new vegetables.

Mrs Freakle looked and looked. No shoebox.

She saw kids playing games and grannies gossiping. No shoebox.

She saw pony rides and toys. And then she saw the shoebox.

It was under the arm of a little girl with brown pigtails who was holding onto her mother’s hand. The little girl and her mother were having a big argument.

“But I want the little dollies,” the little girl was crying.

“No, Samantha,” her mother said, “You have too many dolls at home.”

“But these are the best,” the little girl cried, “They’re alive.”

Mrs Freakle could see the mother was just about to give in because she was tired and fed up, so she rushed over and said,

“I’m so sorry, this was my box. It was collected by mistake – it’s not supposed to be for sale.”

“You see,” the little girl’s mother said and tried to take the box. But the little girl hung on tightly. “They’re real!” she yelled.

It was a shoebox tug-‘o-war! And then the shoebox broke in half.

Mrs Freakle gasped. Her tiny family and dog fell out onto the grass.

Quickly she picked them up and popped them all into her pocket.

“So sorry,” she said to the mother and the crying little girl and hurried home.

She could hear squeaking noises from inside her pocket, but she didn’t stop until she got home and shut the front door.

Then she put her noisy, rude family on the carpet and sprayed them with the antidote.

They all shot up to normal size and were amazingly quiet and well-behaved.

After all, as Mrs Freakle reminded them, they could have ended up in a little girl’s dolls’ house – not much fun for four naughty boys – or their father – or their messy pups!

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