Forum Thread

Summary:
While feeling the effects of laughing gas, Helga leaves a confessional message of love on Arnold's phone machine.

Story:
Helga is at the dentist. He says that she should get a new filling. Helga inhales nitrous oxide (laughing gas) as an anesthetic. After the treatment for 20 minutes Helga still is a little euphoric because of the gas, and tells the doctor and all the people in the waiting room of her love for Arnold. When she sees a phone, she comes up with the idea of Arnold and calls him to confess her love. Arnold does not pick up the phone, and her confession is recorded by the answering machine. Just as her confess is said aloud, the effect of nitrous oxide disappears, and Helga is panicking.

At the moment Arnold comes home from the baseball game. He tells Grandpa that in half an hour his friends arrive to them. Helga has also arrived and feverishly thinks about how she could get the tape from the answering machine. At that moment Helga meets Camp Fire Lass who's selling chocolate turtles. Helga leads her into a dark alley and takes away the girl's uniform and the chocolate turtles. After dressing into the uniform, Helga rings the doorbell of the boarding house. Grandpa opens it. He calls for Arnold, so this comes to the door and tells him whether he wants to buy the turtles. While Grandpa does not look, Helga rushes into the boarding house and hides in a large wall clock. Grandpa is confused and walks away.

After Arnold and Gerald have gone upstairs, Helga climbs back out of the clock and runs to the phone downstairs. She's disappointed, this phone does not have an answering machine. At this moment Mr. Hyunh comes from the bathroom next to her and asks what she's doing. Helga explains to him that she's a student of a telephone school and that she checks the wires. Mr. Hyunh thinks it's very strange, but he buys her explanation. When the path is clear, Helga sneaks upstairs.

She sees the answering machine and almost manages to grab the tape, when Arnold and Gerald enter the hallway. Helga's barely in time to hide in the dish elevator shaft, and from it she gets into the ventilation shaft, just above the answering machine. Hanging on a rope she tries to get to the answering machine, when suddenly Arnold comes into the hallway together with a bunch of his friends in the hallway. They stand in the hallway to test Stinky's new glider plane. Helga, can't wait too long, so she picks out her cellphone and calls Phoebe. She asks Phoebe to catch the Jolly Olly Man on his daily route and talk to him into stopping his truck in front of the boarding house. Phoebe does what she's told to do.

After the boys run away to buy ice cream, Helga tries to steal the tape again. However, Grandma comes along to mop the hallway and Helga barely manages to hide in the ventilation shaft. Grandma sees the incoming call and plays the tape. She writes down a note.

When the boys appear, Grandma tells that a young lady had called for him. Helga thinks her darkest secret is about to be revealed. But Grandma says that she had a call from Helen of Troy who was selling a kind of fruit drink of passion. Arnold is surprised and goes to his friends in his room. When all are gone, Helga finally gets the tape, and retreats to the ventilation shaft. Now all she has to do is to get out of the boarding house. It climbs from the ventilation shaft into the attic and attempts to swing into the window using a rope. However, she slips and lands on Arnold's pivoting sofa, which snaps into action and brings her into Arnold's room.

Many boys are there, and they stare at in shock. Without a word, Helga slowly walks from the room — and the boys resume their discussion as if they have not seen anything unusual.

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