Donny Osmond and Pudding
Had I known my words would start a riot, exhaust my supply of Snack Pack pudding, and cause my mother’s voice to quiver with emotion every time she spoke of the incident for the next thirty-plus years, I would’ve simply kept my mouth shut that fateful Friday morning when my turn for sixth-grade sharing time rolled around. But as a socially awkward kid with the need to fit in—to be popular—I opened my mouth. I opened it so wide that a lie came rushing out faster than common sense could stanch it.
“Donny Osmond is staying at my house,” I blurted.
It had all begun to percolate in my mind a few days earlier. A couple of my friends and I sat under the shade of a pie cherry tree in my dad’s orchard, trying to avoid the heat of the mid-September sun. I’d been regaling my companions with tales of how a pioneer family once resided in the orchard. As evidence, I proudly displayed a host of “artifacts” that regularly rose to the surface of the dry, dusty Utah soil when my father furrowed the ground between the trees with his tractor.
“. . . and this is called china. It was probably part of a plate used by the first settlers in the area,” I opined. “You’ve heard of Lorenzo Snow? Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if he ate from this very plate.”
My friends, Ruth and Natalie, were mesmerized. I was just about to deliver the coup de grâce when my childhood nemesis, Missy, came running into the orchard from her house across the street. Missy, who’d been born with vibrant red hair and a personality to match, was the one person I tried to avoid at all costs—especially when I entertained friends. Constantly in possession of some scintillating piece of kid gossip or some souvenir from her travels, she always managed to one-up what I had to offer.
Ruth and Natalie and I were sitting beneath the cherry tree on an old piece of machinery used for leveling farm ground. As Missy approached I made my gestures more exaggerated and my face more animated. Crescendoing my voice, I finished my pioneer story and prepared to produce a large rusty hinge that I intended to purport came from a trunk used to carry stolen gold after a wagon train ambush. No matter what I did, however, I couldn’t keep the attention away from Missy. Little tendrils of red hair bounced up and down as she danced around us holding an envelope. She was like a fire truck with lights ablaze and sirens blaring. Everyone had to look.
“Guess what I have!”
“Beat it, Missy,” I said.
Undeterred, she continued. “I just got another letter from my friend.”
“That’s great, Missy. You have a friend.”
“Don’t you want to know who he is?”
A year younger than my friends and me, Missy’s boy-crazy zeal had blossomed by obnoxious proportions. Nearly everything she did or said involved boys and her accounts of how much so-and-so loved her.
“No, Missy,” said Ruth. “We don’t want to know who he is.”
Good, I thought. Missy won’t take the spotlight after all. I figured I might be able to hold onto the hinge for a minute then continue to maintain interest as I showed a couple of rusty nails that I could speculate came from Brigham Young’s carriage.
“Donny Osmond.” Missy dropped the name like a giant water balloon.
All eyes were immediately upon her. Three voices—one of them mine—asked in amazement, “Donny Osmond?”
“Oh, Missy. Oh, Missy!” gasped Natalie. “Let’s see!”
Missy flashed the envelope a few inches from our eyes then held it fast in her hands.
“He says I have beautiful hair and he wants me to come and see him next time I’m in Salt Lake.”
“Wow! Ah, Missy, that’s so cool. You’re so lucky,” cooed my friends.
Smelling a rat, I said, “Let me see that letter.”
“No,” Missy replied. “I don’t want to get fingerprints on it.”
“Come on, Missy, I won’t get fingerprints on it.” I wiped onto my pants the rust and dirt my “pioneer” artifacts had left on my hands. Missy gave me a look of distaste. The lack of warmth we felt for one another wasn’t helped by the fact that I’d heard she was a frequent junior beauty pageant contestant. I was a confirmed tomboy.
She stuck her nose in the air. “I’m saving it for my hope chest.”
“Get off it, Missy.” I put my hands on my hips and leaned in toward her. “You know that’s not from Donny Osmond. You’re lying!”
The accusation hit Missy between her eyes, which flew open in anger. “I am not! It is so from Donny Osmond.”
“Prove it,” I insisted.
“OK, but you have to promise not to touch it. I’ll hold it out and you can just look at it.” Missy moved her mouth into a wide smile and, with dramatic flair, brought the letter up to eye level. Miss Missy Burridge. But what was that? The return address, right there emblazoned in pencil. Mr. Donny Osmond.
“Oh, Missy. I think I’m just going to die,” Natalie said, her palms pressed against her cheeks.
“Missy, Missy!” Ruth shouted, scaring a couple of robins from a nearby tree branch. “Can I be your friend?”
“Can I be your friend?” my mind screamed. What was this? Missy, who’d been known to exaggerate, showed my friends a dumb envelope and now they were falling all over her. I scuffed my foot against the hinge, which I’d somehow forgotten and dropped into the dirt when Missy made her revelation.
“Missy, you’re such a liar,” I said. “You wrote that yourself. See how the ‘D’ on Donny is? That’s just how you do your ‘D’s.”
Missy feigned a snivel. “I was just trying to be nice. I thought you’d all want to see it.”
“Go home, Missy,” I said, “and take your fake Donny Osmond letter with you.” I stood tall in front of my friends. “We don’t want to hear your lies.”
From behind me, something incredible happened. I couldn’t believe my ears—and my eyes—as first Ruth, then Natalie, spoke soothingly to Missy and stepped past me to stand next to the redheaded fraud!
“It’s okay, Missy,” said Ruth, “she’s just jealous!” My one-time best friend looked at me with disdain.
“Yeah, she is,” Natalie insisted. “All she has are a couple of Donny Osmond posters on the wall in her room. She’ll never have a real letter like you, Missy. Come on, let’s go over to my house and see if my sister will let us look at the latest issue of Teen Beat magazine—the one with Donny’s picture on the cover. He’s dressed in a white pants suit and he’s holding a puppy—he’s soooo cute I could die!”
That was that. Missy had stolen not only the spotlight but the spectators as well.
The incident must have burned a little deeper into my psyche than I thought, because as sharing time arrived that Friday morning I still had the impact of the Donny Letter in the back of my mind.
A boy named Mike shared that he’d gone to Disneyland. A girl named Pam shared that her dad had a steel plate in his head. That one got a lot of attention, particularly when she noted that he would drop dead if he turned his head the wrong way.
Then Natalie shared the fact she’d invited her new friend—Missy—for a slumber party. Natalie had never invited me over for a slumber party! Someone next to me shared that she’d let Missy ride her new birthday bike to school. That was too much! No one had ever been so interested in Missy before she’d come up with the letter. Couldn’t they see through her? Transparent as a pane of glass, Missy was just trying to get attention!
Suddenly, my turn arrived. I’d intended to tell about the rusty hinge from the supposed gold chest, or the fact that my family was planning a trip to Lagoon, or . . .
“Donny Osmond is staying at my house.”
“Nuh-uh!” resounded the chorus. My teacher, Mr. Bess, gave me a hard stare.
“My mother is friends with Donny’s mother. Her name is Olive.” I’d actually gotten that tidbit from a Teen Beat magazine. Like a hungry spider, I continued spinning my web of deceit. “She went to Idaho to visit her sister . . . who is sick. Donny needed a place to stay while she was out of town.” That sounded plausible, didn’t it? He was, after all, just a few years older than us. A kid couldn’t be expected to stay alone while his mother was gone, could he? “I couldn’t tell anyone before now—he’s so famous, you know. But now I can tell, because today is his last day here.”
That final part of my fabrication would shortly come to haunt me.
“Now who’s lying?” Ruth whispered sharply into my ear as we pulled out our math books. “You know you would’ve told me if he was really there.”
I looked at her with smug annoyance. “You were so busy with Missy I didn’t want to bother you.”
If I’d ever yearned for a place—not just in the spotlight but the full limelight of popularity—it had finally come to pass. All through math kids gave me admiring smiles. Some passed notes to me saying how much they liked me. Some of the notes had sticks of gum inside and many contained offers to play. It would’ve all been wonderful except for one problem: I was not socially mature enough to understand that my contemporaries would demand some sort of proof—just like I had with Missy.
Right before lunch, loud-mouthed Alan Whitaker had to spoil it all. “Donny Osmond isn’t at your house. You’re just making it up.”
“Yeah,” quipped one of his sidekicks. “Donny Osmond always stays in hotels. He doesn’t stay at people’s houses. Everybody knows that.”
Some of the admiring glances from the other kids turned sour. I was on the hot seat. I pretended to ignore the boys, then as soon as the lunch bell rang I headed out of the school as fast as my legs could carry me.
Running home, I felt the burden of proof chase me like a runaway freight train with all the kids on board, laughing and ridiculing me for my tall tale. By the time I flew in the front door of my house I felt sick and dizzy. My whole life was on the line. Fortunately, both my parents were at work so I could scheme unobstructed.
I dashed into the guest bedroom at the front of the house. Of course, my sixth-grade mind told me, this would be where Donny Osmond would stay if he were really our guest.
I rumpled up the bed, trying to form what looked like a human underneath the covers. No! That would never do. I ran for my room, gathered up some pillows and my Casper the Ghost doll, some magazines, and an old suitcase. I threw it all into the guest bedroom. Then I dashed for the kitchen, grabbed several containers of my favorite vanilla Snack Pack pudding, plus bags of chips and cookies, a glass of water, and my dad’s flannel shirt from the hook in the utility closet.
When I returned to the guest room, I jumped into action. Casper and the pillows made for a believable form in the bed. The food, magazines, and glass of water on the nightstand, plus my dad’s shirt on the floor next to the old suitcase, gave the room a lived-in feel. I stood back.
Perfect. I would invite old Alan to climb up the small tree in front of the guest bedroom window and see for himself that Donny Osmond was taking a nap—right here in my house!
I returned to school and finished out the day, satisfied I’d covered all my bases. Though I garnered a few sneers and accusatory comments, most of my peers continued to treat me with adulation. After school, Alan approached me again. I was ready.
“You’re such a liar, telling everyone Donny Osmond is at your house. Do you think we’re all that dumb?”
“Yeah,” added the scrawny kid, who always seemed to finish Alan’s thoughts. “Anybody who knows anything about Donny Osmond knows he’s having his servants feed him dinner in a hotel in Salt Lake right now.”
“Actually,” I smiled, “right now he’s taking a nap in the guest bedroom at my house.”
“No way!” shouted Alan for the whole playground full of departing kids to hear. “No way!”
“If you don’t believe me, come and see for yourself.”
Faster than a wildfire in tinder-dry sagebrush, word spread through every kid in the school that Alan was coming home with me to see Donny Osmond.
“Now you have to promise you’ll be quiet. You can’t wake him up. It’ll ruin his voice if he doesn’t get his sleep,” I advised.
“Yeah, yeah. I promise,” said Alan as we made our way along the sidewalk toward my house.
Matching our gait, other kids joined at our side. Soon, more kids walked behind us—so many that they spilled into the street where yet more joined on bicycles. I cast a tentative glance over my shoulder. There were dozens of kids in tow! OK, I told myself, I’ll ask them all to wait in the street while Alan looks in the window. He can go back to them and report.
No sweat . . . no sweat!
When we got to my house a hush came over the crowd. I explained that only Alan would be allowed a peek. Everyone waited. Alan strode to the window. He climbed the few small branches of the tree that would afford him a view of the sleeping Donny. The onlookers held their collective breath.
I didn’t breathe at all.
Alan looked in the window. He turned and gave a wide grin and a thumbs-up to the crowd. I drew a breath and issued a sigh of relief.
Then a little freckle-faced third-grade girl yelled, “Tell him to come to the window, Alan. I want to see him!”
Undoubtedly desirous of spending his own time in the popularity limelight, Alan waved at the crowd, then proceeded to pry the screen off the window with his pocketknife. My eyes must have been as round as our class’s new soccer ball when he opened the window and climbed inside the room. A rush of kids mobbed the yard. Dragging Natalie and Ruth with me, I sprinted to the front door. The last thing I remember seeing as we went inside was Alan leaning out the window waving Casper the Ghost.
Not yet understanding the implications of what Alan had just done—that the production of a fake Donny meant there was no Donny at all—the kids surrounded the house and began beating on the doors and windows chanting, “We want Donny! We want Donny!”
The sound was deafening.
“OK, you’re right,” I said to Natalie and Ruth. “I lied. But now you’ve got to help me before they tear the house down. My parents will kill me!” We raced for the guest room where Alan, having seen the food, was now chomping cookies and handing Snack Pack pudding through the window. The food seemed to calm the angry mob.
I went to the pantry and gathered up all the pudding I could find, plus additional cookies, chips, and sodas from the fridge. I began handing the treats out through the front door while trying to explain to everyone how sorry I was that Donny had . . . ah, left the house.
That was about the time my mother drove up.
My father spent the weekend replacing all the screens on the house. For the next several weeks my mother fielded calls from other mothers and people wanting a story on Donny Osmond. I was grounded for months. My mother never again bought me Snack Pack pudding, and she issued a new rule: no Teen Beat magazines allowed in the house.
Convinced something had snapped in my youthful mind, my parents sent me to a therapist. “Just how long have you had this obsession with Donny?” I felt like a slice of bread being scrutinized for signs of mold. Comments from other kids didn’t help. “Ooooh, Mrs. Donny. You love him, don’t you?” In truth, after the experience I couldn’t even look at a photo of Donny Osmond without wincing.
Years later, on a weekend getaway, a few friends and I swapped stories of youthful foolhardiness. One told of tipping over an outhouse, another of taking her brother’s car without permission. My face grew red. What would they think of the Donny saga? As I spoke, then finished the tale, I joined the laughter over my adventure on the road to becoming older and wiser.
Utah resident Lori Nawyn blogs at www.heartsandhands.blogspot.com and is the co-author of three inspirational short story collections. Her gift booklet, Three Angels for Christmas, will be released in November. She has still never met Donny Osmond, but her Casper the Ghost doll is in a box in her garage.
