"What if she follows us all the way up? You don’t know what she’s like. The woman’s dangerous— aaaaaaaaaaaah!"

ARON, a slow-moving fellow who likes to take life easy

BORUCH, trying to cope with a big sister who always knows better

NOSSON, clever and articulate, often talks in italics to make a point

GERSHON, creative and quick to think of new ideas

The B.A.N.G. Gang’s boating expedition ended with them falling into the pond and coming home drenched. They are reliving the experience on the phone.

GERSHON: Wow, that was some adventure last week!

BORUCH: Adventure? I had to sneak into the house through a back window so my big sister wouldn’t see my dripping clothes — otherwise I’d never have heard the end of it.

NOSSON: Well, when I came home, my kid sister wanted to know why I’d gone swimming with my clothes on.

ARON: Ha! You guys got off lightly. When I walked through the hallway, a few measly drops of water dripped onto the floor, and our cleaning lady nearly clobbered me.

[The other boys make sympathetic noises]

ARON: [seizing the opportunity]: All of which makes me think we should stop doing trips. I vote we spend our next outing going no further than the nearest comfortable couch. Aah! Bliss!

NOSSON: But what’s the point? We’re the B.A.N.G. Gang. We do stuff!

ARON: Relaxing on the couch is doing stuff.

GERSHON: Not that sort of stuff. It’s vacation time, we wanna be out there, exploring the big wide world!

BORUCH: Yeah, I’ll second that.

NOSSON: I’ll grant you some of our outings were a bit — um, hair-raising. Let’s look for something fail-safe this time.