There's a fine line between genius and insanity and I think I just crossed it. Actually, I think I sped right over it and off a cliff. Or maybe I just ate an expired bag of Chips Ahoy and dreamed the whole thing. I'll let you decide.

It all happened a few days ago. My aunt and uncle felt sorry enough for me, their date-less wonder of a nephew, to ask me to babysit my cousins Teegan and Josh while they enjoyed their first night out in a month. "We figured you could use the cash since you're paying your way through school," my uncle said. Like the two dollars an hour they pay is going to put me through UCLA. Hell, at that rate, I'd be 70 before I could pay off clown college.

Anyway, I decided to humor them and go over to their house on my only evening off in two weeks. I kind of felt sorry for them, actually. I hadn't finished ringing the doorbell when they shoved me aside and ran for their BMW.

"Thanks," I muttered when I saw what caused the stampede; 10-year-old Teegan trying to shove a piece of Lego up seven year-old Josh's nose in the family room. "Hey!" I snapped, grabbing it out of her sticky hands. "That's not a very nice way to treat your brother."

"Blue!" Josh shouted, coughing up a Lego Indiana Jones.

Oh, I forgot to mention, Blue's my nickname. I won't tell you my real name. Any parents who'd name their child what mine named me should be tried for human rights violations.

"Hey kiddo," I said, mussing his hair while returning Teegan's stuck-out tongue greeting. "You guys ready to have some fun?"

Josh's eyes widened the way they did when it was Christmas or a birthday party. "Yeah! You wanna play hide and seek?"

I yawned. "Not tonight, pal. I'm pretty tired."

His eyes filled with disappointment. "Oh, okay."

Great, Josh, way to make your cool cousin feel like a shmuck. I reached into my babysitting bag, a waterproof sack I also put my wet bathing suit in when I swim laps on campus. "Well, I've brought something special for you guys. I like to watch this when I want to relax." Like I was going to do until your parents called. But when they told me you guys just got a 3D TV and a Blu-ray player with a 2D to 3D converter, I could hardly refuse the opportunity to watch my favourite TV show on it.

Teegan folded her arms as she took on her pouty kid stance. "Mom says you're not supposed to bring things to watch anymore after last time."

Right, I'd forgotten about that. The last time I came over, I brought the Beatles movie Yellow Submarine, which my roommate Kevin lent me. "The kids'll love this," he said. "It's a cartoon classic." Unfortunately, the 'cartoon classic' sent them into hysterics and gave them acid-esque nightmares for a month. As it was, I spent the rest of the night trying to rip throw pillows from their faces. The kinky boot beasts in the Sea of Monsters scene disturbed Josh in particular. He made me look under his bed five times to make sure they weren't getting ready to step on him once he fell asleep.

They must have been on his mind, as he trembled when I pulled out my DVD set. "Is that the bad movie?"

I raised my left hand. "Swear to God, Josh, this isn't the bad movie. I promise this won't give you nightmares."

Teegan squinted as she studied the set's green cover. "Hogan's Heroes," she read. "What's that?"

"A very funny show from the 60s."

She scrunched up her nose as if I'd told her we were going to watch rotting bananas all evening. "What's that? Is it, like, really old?"

I frowned. "Yes, but, old doesn't mean bad. This show's about good guys who live in a prison camp during the Second World War. They play all kinds of tricks on the bad guys."

Josh perked up, though Teegan remained unamused. "Mom says we shouldn't watch anything that makes fun of war heroes," she said curtly.

I sighed as I popped the disc into the player. My aunt would say something like that. She thinks MASH should have been cancelled after the first episode because it was insulting to sensible, rational guys like Frank Burns. "Well, Mom's not here right now, so it's okay."

I took a pair of 3D glasses for Josh and I and offered one to Teegan, who decided she'd rather watch a spider crawl up the wall. Josh started bawling as soon as the piracy warning came on screen. I couldn't really blame him. Those warnings kinda scared the crap out of me too at his age.

I hugged him and sat him down on the couch with me. "Awh, don't cry. This isn't sad. There's lots of funny characters, like Newkirk, Klink, Schultz and Carter." Better make sure I don't play any of the Hochstetter episodes. That guy would give a kid like him night terrors until he turned 17.

Josh nearly jumped out of his skin when the siren announcing the menu wailed, but did a little butt-wiggle dance when the drums started playing. Unfortunately, he was bouncing up and down on my lap while he was doing it, but, hey, at least he'd stopped crying.

I looked at the episode menu. In your face Kevin. You said the converter wouldn't make it 3D, but it did. In fact, it's showing an episode here I never saw before. I squinted. Those glasses really take getting used to. Funny, I don't remember this one, Codeword Love. Huh.

I selected the episode and hit play. "Teegan, come watch." She was studying the carpet now.

"I'd rather watch Sponge Bob Square Pants," she mumbled under her mop of straightened hair. My aunt kills me. She objects to her children watching classic TV, but she's styling Teegan's hair like Jennifer Aniston's. I tell you, there's no accounting for taste.

"Fine." I turned back to Josh, whose eyes had widened again. That's when I got my first clue something wasn't right. Instead of the show cutting directly to the credits like normal, the screen filed with a shot of the guys in the barracks. Hogan paced, looking ready to throw in the towel, while the rest of the gang watched.

"If any of you fellas have any ideas, I'd be glad to hear them," Hogan said.

Carter stepped forward. "Let me get this straight. London wants us to rendezvous with an underground agent coming to camp to pick up the Enigma code book we swiped from that Admiral at General Burkhalter's party last week?

"That's the demolitions guy," I whispered. "He gets really excited about blowing stuff up." Maybe a little too excited. "The other guy's Colonel Hogan. He's in charge and comes up with all these great plans to fool the Germans. I wrote a story about him once."

Did I mention I write fan fiction? Well, I do. Ever read Hogan's Heartache? Or LeBeau's Longing? (For France, by the way. You wouldn't believe how many people thought it was about something dirty.) Anyway, I started telling Josh about Hogan's Heartache when I got my second clue. It happened so fast I wasn't sure I'd seen it, but I could've sworn Hogan glanced over and glared at me. I shook my head. Freaky shot. Who does the director think he is, Alfred Hitchcock?

The screen cut to Newkirk as he continued Carter's train of thought. "And London wants us to come up with a diversion for every ruddy Kraut in camp while we pull off the exchange?"

"The English guy's the tailor and thief," I said. "He's always stealing things."

Josh frowned. "Doesn't that make him a bad guy?"

"Not really. He uses his bad skills for good."

"That doesn't make sense!" Teegan protested.

I rolled my eyes. "Well, it would if you'd watch!"

Hogan raised his voice. "Like I said, if anyone's got any ideas, I'd be glad to hear them."

"I suppose this means LeBeau and I aren't going on leave tonight, are we?" Carter asked.

The Colonel nodded. "As of right now, all trips into town are cancelled."

LeBeau ripped his beret off his head. "London's gone too far this time! It's been almost two months since we've been able to leave camp. I've been here so long it's amazing I know what girls are anymore!"

Hogan sighed. "I had plans tonight too. Believe me, I'd much rather be attending to them. The sooner we come up with a plan, the sooner we'll be off the hook."

"I've had it," the Frenchman muttered. "I really mean it this time. I'm sick of this place and I'm sick of London's impossible demands!"

I grabbed the remote, disappointment setting in. "Who wrote this script? It's garbage! Nobody's in character, especially Hogan! C'mon Colonel, you can do better than that! You robbed a bank and made a hot air balloon under the German's noses for God's sake. This is nothing."

The choochoo train of sanity derailed when Hogan turned towards us, his hands on his hips. "Alright, hot shot, if you're so smart, you figure it out."

My jaw dropped. "You can hear and see me?" How is that possible?

"Unfortunately." His scowl deepened as the other heroes stared at us. "You said you write fan fiction? You wouldn't happen to be one of the authors we took to court, would you?"

I broke out in a cold sweat. I'd managed to escape a summons for the last trial. Now, it looked like my luck had run out. I shook my head. "No sir. I don't write any angst stories. In fact, all my stories are happy." My mouth started telling them what I thought they wanted to hear before I could stop it. "Right now, I'm working on a romance story."

Teegan grabbed her 3D glasses as the gang started jostling each other.

"Who gets the girl?" LeBeau asked, poking his head around Hogan.

Great. The truth was I didn't have any romance story. In fact, I hate writing romance stories. "I don't know," I stammered, as the gang got a hungry look in their eyes, kinda like the cheesy Eric Carmen song. "I haven't decided yet."

The men burst out in angry chatter, a few terse words in French and British English coming my way, while Hogan stared me down. I was full of it and he knew it. I suddenly cursed the people who came up the stupid idea of creating 3D TVs. They never mentioned crap like this happening in the ads. Dizziness and motion sickness, yes, but not characters coming to life.

Newkirk flashed me his best lopsided smile. "Make the bird English and send her my way."

LeBeau elbowed him out of the way. "Make her French with an affinity for short men."

Carter frowned. "What about me? I'd like a girl from Alabama. Then I could kiss her before I take her home every night and see if the stars fall."*

Kinch's face wore a disgusted expression. "Hey, I'd appreciate the company the most! I'm the one who gets out the least!"

Hogan cupped his hands to his mouth. "Fellas, that's enough. We've got bigger problems right now." The men ignored him, their discussion growing louder and angrier. "Fellas?" He put two fingers between his lips and whistled. That failing to get their attention, he fixed me with another glare. "Look at the mess you made! Now what am I supposed to do with them? I can't expect them to focus on anything when they're like this."

I started to push the eject button on the remote. "I'm sorry this is getting too weird. I don't know what went wrong the day you filmed this, but this shouldn't be happening."

"Drop it!" he barked. I let the remote fall, even though I knew he couldn't hurt me. Or could he?

Hogan paced back and forth, rubbing his chin the way he did whenever he was thinking. "I can't carry out this mission by myself." He gave his now quiet men the evil eye. "And you guys won't be of any help to me until we get a straight answer out of this clown."

"Well," I huffed. "Slap a red nose on me and call me Bozo. What do you want me to do, hold a Love Olympics and the guy who wins the most competitions gets the girl?"

Hogan snapped his fingers. "That's it!"

Oh, perfect, I thought sarcastically. Why didn't I suggest picking names out of a hat like any normal person would've done? Then again, any normal person would've checked into the nut house by now. "What do you mean, that's it? It doesn't make sense. You should be worried about getting that code book out of camp, not holding Olympics."

He grinned. "Isn't it obvious? This is the perfect cover. It'll keep the Germans busy until our contact gets here. It'll be so unusual around here they won't notice anything else strange, like us passing on the codebook."

I started to protest, but realized there was no turning back. Hogan was in full scheming mode now. "We'll have different competitions judged by people in camp."

I held up a hand. "Hold it! I make up the prize, I pick the competition categories and judge them."

Hogan shook his head. "Absolutely not. Not unless we get veto power on what events we compete in and our own judges."

I sighed, feeling as exhausted as I did whenever I negotiated with Josh about his bedtime. "How about I give you veto power, I judge everything and you pick your judge for each event? We'll combine both scores to determine the winner. We can use a 1-10 scale, like they do on Dancing With the Stars."

Teegan stared at me like I'd just said I fell off the moon. I guess it's not every day their cousin, with an aversion to anything feminine, admits to watching ballroom dance-based reality TV.

Hogan turned to his men. "What do you think?" They nodded as they mulled the idea over. Their leader looked back at me. "Okay, you've got a deal. What do you have in mind for the events?"

"Well, uh, how about we start with opening ceremonies, like the real Olympics. Everyone could…." My sentence trailed off as I started to snort back a giggle.

Hogan folded his arms. "What's so funny?"

The giggles turned into full-blown laughter. Teegan and Josh started laughing too, though they sounded more like hostages laughing at a machine gun-wielding maniac's bad joke. "I'm sorry," I gasped. "I was going to say you guys could carry a torch."

Okay, insert muted trumpet sounds here. What can I say? I was raised on The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and The Muppet Show. I like cornball humor.

Evidently, Hogan didn't. "You were saying?"

I wiped tears from my eyes. "You could do opening ceremonies and light the Olympic flame. I mean, if you actually intend on going through with this, you may as well do it right."

Carter leaned closer to his commander. "Boy Colonel, it sounds like fun. I've got a really great idea for how we can light the flame."

Newkirk's face lit up as he produced a nickel out of LeBeau's ear. "And I could have a go at some magic tricks to start the party."

Josh clapped and laughed as LeBeau swatted his friend away.

"There's just one problem," I said. "If you get approval for this, just who's going to compete?"

Hogan tilted his cap back. "Since Kinch, Carter, LeBeau, Newkirk and I are the five Allies with top billing, that should qualify us to compete."

The supporting players, led by Olsen, booed.

"C'mon fellas, you all can't compete!" Hogan protested. "It would be too hard to pick a winner. How about you draw straws to pick a special judge for each event, and this slob here will write the winners their own love story?"

The boos subsided. "Okay," Olsen said, turning to me. "So you'd judge, we'd judge, and Colonel Hogan and the guys would pick another judge. What about the Germans?"

I tapped the remote. "Well, I'll leave that up to the Colonel, but I don't think we really want them competing. After all, you're the guys who stick your necks out the most in this series. " I turned to Hogan. "Well?"

Hogan nodded. "I agree. Let the games begin and," His eyes twinkled. "May the best man win."

*Reference to the song, Stars Fell on Alabama.