Maragold in Sixth Part Four
- billsheehan1
- Jan 2
- 93 min read
CHAPTER 13
Martin Luther King’s holiday weekend came and went quickly. It turned out to be a quiet weekend spent with Maragold’s maternal grandparents.
I went with Maragold and Mr. Shane for a walk through the field on Putt Hill. The wind, like an air-brush, had swept the snow off this high field and deposited it at the field’s lower elevation.
The wind increased and became bitter cold so we only went to the pond. It looked like a bluish-white, hard disk. Cattails stood frozen in the ice at the edge of the pond. Bare trees surrounded the pond like protecting soldiers.
Mr. Shane threw a stick onto the ice and it skidded out into the icy middle of the pond like a miniature ski. Maragold and her dad followed the progress of the sliding stick, looking at each other and smiling as puffs of white condensation, from their breathing, surrounded their heads like fog.
The frigid air stung their lungs. Instead of walking into the woods, Mr. Shane decided that it was best to go indoors. He and Maragold returned to the house.
The remainder of the weekend was spent mostly reading—Maragold read Black Pearl by Scott O’Dell—watching TV, playing board games, shopping at Arnot Mall, near Elmira, and visiting Mrs. Shane’s brother, Bob, and sister-in-law, Barbara.
A few days later, and the night before the classroom poetry reading, I observed Maragold sitting at her desk inside her bedroom. Her tongue was sticking half way out of her mouth. It was a familiar habit of her’s when she concentrated on something. She was preparing for her poetry reading, so I did not interrupt her.
The next day Mr. B. started the shared poetry reading. There were many nervous stomachs in his classroom. But then Mr. B. picked up the classroom phone and invited the other sixth grade teachers to bring their students to the poetry reading. I thought for sure that I’d see vomit on the floor at any time.
Mr. B. hung up the phone and said to his students, “If I’d told you ahead of time, you would have been nervous for the past two weeks. This way you’ll only be nervous for an hour or so.
Actually, I agreed with him. He probably just saved some kids from having premature ulcers. No one vomited.
When the other sixth grade students arrived, they stood at the back of the classroom, or they sat on the counter-top that ran the length of the windows.
Mr. B. got everyone quiet, then asked for a volunteer to start the poetry reading.
Eric shot his arm up so fast that I thought he was trying to catch a fly as it passed over his head.
Eric’s was the only hand raised, so Mr. B. asked him to come to the front of the classroom, to introduce himself, state the title of his poem, then read it aloud.
Once Eric got to the front of the room, he said, “My name is Eric. I had fun writing humorous limericks. Mr. B. taught us that, in limericks, the first, second and fifth lines rhyme, and the third and fourth lines rhyme. The title is, ‘Teacher.’
“There is a teacher at Kroy,
Who turned out to be a joy,
But when he was young,
I’ll bet he threw dung,
And was a very naughty boy.”
There were giggles, with a lot of students looking at Mr. B. Many students were wondering what “dung” was.
Eric avoided looking at Mr. B. and said, “Here’s another limerick called ‘Principal.’
“Kroy’s principal is very smart,
Her mind is as sharp as a dart,
She made me feel silly,
About eating chilly chili in Chile,
But she did it with a kind heart.”
“This limerick is about a nice girl that I know,” Eric said as he looked at his paper with growing nervousness. It’s called ‘Graceful.’
“There’s a girl I know at Kroy School,
She’s so pretty she makes me drool,
The day she said she liked me,
I was so nervous I could pee,
But I didn’t and I stayed cool.”
“My last limerick is called ‘Tree,’” Eric stated with a tight-lipped and mischievous grin:
“In my family tree, there’s a peach,
And an oak whose branches reach.
One cousin is a maple,
And another one an apple,
While I’m a son-of-a-beech.”
Two of the sixth grade teachers were apparently bothered by Eric’s usage of the words: dung, pee, and beech, which Mr. Bunnlow had already found acceptable, considering the alternative words, and considering the creativity involved in Eric’s poems. Television had gotten more and more liberal with words that could never be mentioned ten years ago. By comparison, Eric’s word were harmless.
Oh, well, Mr. B. thought, another call from a parent who will reprimand him or call Mrs. Plum in protest over words that are far less offensive than the angry words those parents commonly use at home, or let their children hear on the radio, TV, video games, songs and movies.
Next, everyone was surprised to see Charlie raise his hand. He came to the front of the room where the bright sunshine, entering the windows, outlined him. He looked different to me. He was different. He had slimmed down. He had replaced much of his fat with muscle, and had a confident smile.
Even his chubby face had slimmed down, with no double chin or flabby cheeks. His hair was combed and parted neatly, his clothes fit well, not baggy, and he stood straight, not stooped.
Matt and Robby had recently lost track of Charlie’s weight loss and weight lifting progress, mostly because Charlie was making new friends who were forming their own close group, like Maragold’s gang.
I guess not many people noticed Charlie’s great progress because it was happening so slowly.
He looked at his audience, smiled and said, “Hi. I’m Charlie. I also wrote some funny limericks. The first is called ‘Parrot.’ Here it is:
“I have a parrot named Bob,
Entertaining me is his job,
But sometimes he’ll just sit,
Looking as dumb as a twit,
Then suddenly laugh like a slob.”
“My second limerick is called ‘Mr. Bunnlow’:
There is a teacher named Bunnlow,
He’s nice, that we all know,
He makes school seem like fun,
Even makes us laugh a ton,
So from Kroy we hope he won’t go.”
“Here’s my last one. Eric gave me the idea for this one. It’s called ‘Mrs. Plum.’
We have a principal named Plum,
To her office we don’t want to come,
She’s strict but she’s fair,
And her friendliness is rare,
And she tells us, be smart, not dumb.”
Maragold wanted to get her poetry reading over and done with, so she volunteered next.
Mr. B. was very happy because he had been hoping that members of Maragold’s group would volunteer to be first He knew that they were a confident group of students. That’s why he wanted them to read their poems first. He wanted his other students to see them so they would have a model for their own poetry reading behavior.
Maragold went to the front of the room and said, “I only have two poems. The first one is long. The title is, ‘We Love a Rainy Night.’
My dad and I love a rainy night,
The tap-tapping of the falling rain,
Like pebbles on our window pane,
And as soothing as summer sunlight.
We love a gentle, rainy night,
Resting to the rhythms of the rain,
Making a stressful day seem tame,
So sleep comes without a fight.
We love a rainy night
In our beds and feeling all right,
Wrapping ourselves in blankets tight,
Drifting off peacefully like a kite.
We love a rainy night
The hypnotic dream-song of rain tapping,
While we doze and go-a-napping,
When thunder seems like a friend clapping.
We love those rainy nights,
The sky flashing bolts of lights,
Just the opposite of frightening,
That light from sleep-inducing lightening.
We love those rainy nights,
With their many happy dreams
Like refreshing, fragrant creams,
So soothing and calm, it seems.
We both love the rainy nights
And will throughout our life,
Cutting stress away like a knife,
And erasing a bad day of strife.
We love a rainy night,
Lightening turning the sky white,
Helping to make our dreams bright,
Forcing our worries out of sight.
Yes, we share a love for rainy nights,
And just before we fall asleep
I think of him, he thinks of me,
And we both fall asleep so happily.”
“My next poem is—”
“Mara, your rhyming pattern sometimes changes in that poem. May I ask why?”
Maragold paused momentarily, then responded, “That’s just the way my thoughts went, so I wrote them the way they appeared in my mind. Was that wrong?”
“No, Mara. Just different. It’s OK. Please continue,” Mr. B said with a smile.
“My next poem is shorter that my first one. I wrote it last weekend, but I was thinking of a walk that I took, last summer, in the field that’s in back of my grandma’s and grandpa’s farm. Oh, and it’s an alternating rhyme poem. The end of the first and third lines rhyme and the end of the second and fourth lines rhyme. The title is, ‘Walking in a Field.’
Walking in a field,
Admiring the ground,
My knees yield,
To a daisy found.
Pressed to my fingers,
As if growing there,
It’s fragrance lingers,
In the still air.
Walking in a field,
Of colorful buzzing bees,
I watch them yield,
To the nectar in the daisies.
Walking in a field,
I see a field mouse,
I see the ground did yield,
So he could build a house.
Walking in a field,
Weedy carpet of green,
Gladly did it yield
So beauty could be seen.
Walking in a field
Acts as a sure cure,
When we all yield,
And learn from nature.
Walking in a field,
An experience so pure,
I would gladly yield,
To the harmony of nature.”
Matt was chosen next. As he approached the front of the classroom I could see that there were very few restless students and very few bored ones. Most of them looked interested and many of them showed expressions that Mr. B. interpreted as joy and a desire to try writing poetry.
I read their minds and knew that Mr. B. was correct, except for a couple of thoughts that some boys had, and which I can not mention here.
The interested students anxiously waited to hear more poetry.
Matt looked a bit nervous, but not enough to hamper him. He said, “I only have one poem,” then looked at Mr. B. for reassurance
“That’s fine, Matt. One poem is all that is required” Mr. B. said, then added, “Go ahead and read it. Give the title first, OK?”
“Sure. OK, the title is, ‘The Elephant’s March.’” Matt saw curious looks on many faces, so he explained. “It’s a humorous poem about elephants. I went to the Shriner’s Circus in Rochester. They had a line of elephants walking in a straight line while holding the tail of the elephant in front of them with their trunk. I thought it was a funny scene, so I wrote this funny poem. It’s written in alternating rhyme, with the second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyming. A stanza is where a poem is divided, like a paragraph.
“So here’s The Elephant’s March.’
The elephants are marching
Ten in a straight line,
And the first one staggers,
After drinking a barrel of wine.
The elephants keep marching,
As they watch elephant number two,
And the elephants that follow,
All step in his doo-doo.
The elephants march on,
Following the trail,
As naughty elephant three,
Bites number two’s tail.
Then elephant three farted,
With such a bad smell,
That number four elephant,
Got dizzy and almost fell.
Then number five elephant,
Got such a big whiff,
It shocked his trunk,
And made it turn stiff.
Number six elephant
Laughed for a mile,
Then started to dance,
With a goofy smile.
Number seven elephant,
Ran into a tree,
Then did a weird dance,
Due to his hurt knee.
Number eight elephant,
Started having some fun,
Crashing into jungle trees,
To see the monkeys run.
Number nine elephant,
Blew his long, juicy nose,
And thick, slimy, green snot,
Splashed all over his toes.
Number ten elephant,
Was as bored as could be,
So he measured to see,
How far he could pee.”
The same two sixth grade teachers looked shocked and Mr. B. noticed them whispering to each other. It must be the “doo-doo, farted and pee” words this time, Mr. B. thought. The students are being highly creative and are obviously censoring their own words into much less offensive ones, but that was overlooked. Their focus was on the border-line offensive two or three words in some of the poems. Mr. B. just shook his head and wondered how much wasted time and frustration he’d have to put up with when an angry parent called. But then he smiled, knowing that he’d put up with parents like that for half his career, so he could put up with a few more.
Then he thought of times when he really did make wrong decisions and the parents and principals were correct when they reprimanded him. He often felt guilty about those times. It seemed that, sometimes, common sense was a stranger to him, especially during the times when he felt depressed. He started second-guessing himself. No, he thought. The words spoken so far, in the poems that have been read were not words to feel guilty about. The creativity that had been shown so far was worth the risk of offending out-dated, Puritan ears.
Mr. B. snapped out of his thoughts when he saw that Cheryl had walked up to the front of the room and was ready to read her poems. Mr. B. was surprised because Cheryl was not usually this bold. She had come a long way from her very shy days in fourth grade. That thought brought a smile to him. He and Cheryl smiled at each other for a moment, then Mr. B. said, “Thank you for volunteering, Cheryl. I appreciate it. You may read your poems now.”
Cheryl said, “Hi, I’m Cheryl. The name of my first poem is, ‘Have a Lice Day’—”
“Ah … Pardon me, Cheryl,” interrupted Mr. B. “Did you say the title was ‘Have a Nice Day?”
Cheryl giggled and said, “No. It’s ‘Have a Lice Day.’ Instead of nice, I used the word lice. You know … like the ‘head lice’ that the nurse checked us for.”
At Cheryl’s mention of the school nurse, Eric’s smile grew from ear to ear.
Joyful laughter filled the classroom as Mr. B. responded, “Oh. I see. Have a lice day, instead of have a nice day. Very clever, Cheryl,” Mr. B. said with a smile. “Please continue.”
“OK. Here’s my poem called, ‘Have a Lice Day.’
Mary had a little lamb.
Its wool was loaded with lice.
She brought the lamb to school one day,
And each kid hugged it twice.
One day later eggs were laid,
Under the students’ clean hair.
The scratching started soon after that,
And their teacher began to stare.
The students scratched their hair all day,
But the itching just got worse.
Soon their scalps were red and raw,
And the students did silently curse.
Letters went home to embarrassed parents,
Saying, “Please medicate for lice.”
But the lice ate the medicine like candy,
And they grew as big as mice.
The next day the lice ran and jumped,
From each kid’s head to his nose.
They slid off noses and onto chins,
Then dove off chins to land on toes.
The terrible foot smells drove them away,
As they prayed like a holy preacher.
They leaped high and the students all laughed,
As the lice landed in the hair of the teacher.”
There were cheers and clapping and laughter from nearly all the students. Mr. B. clapped and laughed, then started feeling his hair with a serious expression, as if he’d really found something in his hair. That made the laughter and clapping even louder.
Cheryl stood proudly and smiled. Her face turned red, but not from embarrassment. The redness was the glow of happiness. She looked at her closest friends and saw all of them happily laughing and clapping for her and she felt a “forever” bond with them.
When the room got quiet, Cheryl said, “My second poem is about the students in this classroom.” She actually meant Mr. B.’s students, but the other sixth grade students were happy to think that she included them.
“The title is, ‘My Friends.’ Oh! I forgot to mention that my first poem had alternating rhyme with the last word in the second and fourth lines of each stanza, but this poem has repeated rhyming with the first and second lines and the third and fourth lines of each stanza.
My friends make me feel healthy.
To me, that’s better than being wealthy.
When I sometimes feel sad,
They help take away the mad.
Mara and I are good friends.
Friendship and kindness she sends.
If you need help, she won’t pass,
Because she’s a friend with class.
Matt, Eric and Grace have been great.
Meeting them must have been fate.
They are loyal, smart and funny.
They make most days bright and sunny.
I like it when Robby holds my hand,
And sees me with eyes that understand,
That liking boys is new to me,
So he treats me with much courtesy.
My classmates have all been fine.
They are all good friends of mine.
This is such a friendly class,
And that makes me a lucky lass.
And Mr. B. makes school such fun.
He even helps us get homework done.
I like our class, it’s really cool,
So I’ll hate to leave for middle school.”
Maragold smiled proudly, feeling wonderful about Cheryl’s words of friendship.
Matt smiled at Cheryl.
Eric was shocked. He and Cheryl had always been friends, but they always teased each other and he often wondered how she really felt about him. His head was twisting back and forth as he looked at Matt and Maragold. Finally, before his head came unscrewed, he smiled and winked at Cheryl, who winked right back at him.
Grace’s eyes were moist. She felt very special to have been included in Cheryl’s poem of friendship, especially since she had not even been part of the group in fourth and fifth grades.
The room was quiet. Just the opposite reaction from her first poem. But there were many noiseless smiles; broad, knowing smiles, even envious smiles. Why? It was the mention of Robby, the fifth grade boy that Cheryl liked so much. Cheryl stared at the students, not knowing what to do or say.
Eric quickly yelled, “Hey Cheryl! How’s Robby doing?” Then he made loud and funny kissing noises as he kissed the back of his hand to tease Cheryl. He saw her freeze when everyone was staring at her. He knew she would snap out of it, and avoid embarrassment, if he teased her, and she did find the words to tease him back, which she never failed to do.
But Eric hadn’t planned on quite such a revealing come-back from her as she said, “He’s just fine, Smarty Pants. I hope you don’t kiss your new girlfriend like you just kissed your hand, Slobber Lips. She’ll drown if you do.” Then she smiled and teasingly winked at Eric.
Eric’s head was like a turtle’s; it slowly sunk into his shoulders as if trying to hide from everyone, even though he knew that Cheryl’s wink meant friendly teasing.
“Have you anything else to add, Eric?” Cheryl said, now that she was relaxed.
Eric saw an opportunity to get back at her, so he said, “Oh, yes, your Majesty. Your wish is my command. I’d like to add eight plus seven to get your shoe size of fifteen. You could be a clown and never have to buy fake shoes.” He smiled at Cheryl whose laughter was not heard because of all the other laughter in the classroom.
Cheryl thought about mentioning Grace and teasing him about his girlfriend in front of all the sixth graders, but she thought it would be too embarrassing for Grace and, for her sake, Cheryl decided not to do it.
Grace was much more shy than the others. When Mr. B. chose her to read next, she walked slowly to the front of the room.
I could tell that she was both very nervous and embarrassed, because she did not make eye-contact with her sixth grade audience. She had to clear her throat several times. Her mouth got very dry and I knew that she would have a difficult time reading her poem. So I put a spell on her so that she would relax, and read her poem confidently with no problems from a dry mouth, shyness or nervousness.
Grace said, “Hi. My name is Grace. The name of my poem is, ‘Flower;’ flower, like a rose, not like for baking. My poem has alternating rhyme, with the last word in the first and third lines of each stanza rhyming, as well as the second and fourth lines.
What do you think of a flower?
Tall and straight, saluting the sun.
Natural beauty in a tower of power.
Colorful, graceful, delightfully fun.
I like the red rose best.
Its thorns don’t bother me.
Each thorn is not a pest.
It’s just the beauty that I see.
In spring when flowers come out,
And the earth again turns green,
I know without a doubt,
That Mother Nature is a queen.
Flowers always brighten my day.
They lift my thoughts and mood.
They send me merrily on my way,
Filled with emotional food.
I love to see a flower,
In garden, sill or lawn,
Change moods that once were sour,
To smiles with all frowns gone.
Flowers like an artist’s brush,
Use colors to show their beauty.
A beauty so wonderfully lush,
It even attracts the honey bee.
So when you see a flower,
Stop to look and see,
The beauty of Nature’s power,
So colorful and free.”
The remainder of the class took turns reading their poems to the sixth grade students. They seemed to be more relaxed now that the Maragold gang had gone first. Mr. B. alternated the readings from boy to girl, but always asked for a volunteer before he chose someone to read next.
Two of the three other teachers said they had to leave to get their students started on their own assignments. One teacher stayed a little longer, with enthusiasm and motivation, to ask Mr. B. all about teaching poetry. She wanted to do the same thing that Mr. B. had just done. They made arrangements to talk about it after school.
The readings took most of the morning to complete, especially since there were questions and discussions about some of the poems. During those discussions I sometimes drifted. My thoughts were of Ireland, home, relatives and friends. Then an Irish friendship poem that I learned long ago appeared in my head. It goes like this:
May there always be work for your hands to do,
May your pockets always hold a coin or two,
May the sun always shine on your window pane,
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain,
May you have many friends, all of them true,
May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.
When all his students had read at least one poem, Mr. B. asked all of them to pass the poems that they read, to the front of the room. When he collected all the poems he said, “Your grades will not be number grades. They will be either ‘satisfactory’ or ‘unsatisfactory.’ And since I heard all the poems read aloud, I can tell you that everyone will receive a satisfactory grade. Nice job.”
Cheers and smiles dominated the students faces and Mr. B. was happy that all his students felt good about the poetry reading, especially the boys, who normally don’t like poetry writing or reading.
As the other sixth grade class was leaving, Mr. B. looked happily at his students and saw Maragold’s hand raised.
“Yes, Mara,” he said.
“Mr. B., Is it plagiarism if someone uses just the rhythm of someone’s song or poem? You know, like just the sound of it? The way it’s sung or read?”
Maragold saw that Mr. B. still did not understand.
“OK,” she said, “here’s an example. Cheryl and I took the sound of the song, ‘On Top of Old Smokey,’ and mixed it with the poem, ‘On Top of My Spaghetti, All Covered With Cheese,’ then we made the poem longer, … Ah, with more stanzas. About ninety percent of the poem is original with Cheryl and I. Is that plagiarism?”
“I don’t think so. I think that’s considered ‘public domain,’ which means that it’s OK for anybody to use. I’m not absolutely positive, but I think that’s the way it is. You and Cheryl took the musical rhythm and not the words of ‘On Top of Old Smokey,’ then you used that rhythm to write ‘On Top of Old Smokey, All Covered With Cheese,’ and you added more stanzas? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes,” Maragold answered. The first couple of stanzas are standard, and we thought we remembered them, but after that Cheryl and I wrote more stanzas. We just made them up for fun.”
“Why don’t you and Cheryl come up and take turns reading stanzas so we can all hear it?” Mr. B. asked.
Cheryl and Maragold came to the front of the classroom. They looked at each other and grinned as if they were getting into mischief. Maragold started the poem, then she and Cheryl alternated reading stanzas.
“On top of my spaghetti,
Covered with sauce and cheese,
I lost my slippery meatball,
When somebody sneezed.
It rolled on the table,
Then onto the floor,
The last time I saw it,
It rolled out the door.
It rolled down the sidewalk
And onto the road,
Then into a mud puddle,
And hit a poor toad.
It bounced off the curb,
Then rolled into a bush,
Then under a car tire,
And now it is mush.
Again it hit the curb,
And bounced into the road,
Then under a big truck,
With manure for a load.
It missed the truck’s tires,
And gave a meaty grin,
Then shot onto the grass,
Where it started to spin.
A boy came running,
Who thought it was a ball,
So Mr. Meatball jumped high,
And over a tall wall.
It landed on soft grass,
In somebody’s back yard,
Then saw a fat, little dog,
And yelled the word ‘lard.’
Mr. Meatball tried to roll away,
Then heard that dog’s yips,
Then I saw my poor meatball,
Sucked into the dog’s lips.”
When Maragold and Cheryl finished reading their poem, the class clapped and cheered.
Mr. B. had a pleasant, joyful smile, so the girls knew that he liked it too.
“OK, now, people,” Mr. B. commented, “I have to tell all of you that I am very pleased with your efforts and your poems. It all turned out much better than I thought it would. Again, congratulations on a fine job.
“Oh, by the way. There’s one person in this class who did not read their poem. Now you know that I can’t let them get away with that, right? So, the person who did not read their poem please raise your hand. I already know who you are, so you may as well be honest about it,” Mr. B. added.
Everyone began twisting in their seats to get a look at who did not read their poem, but they saw no one with their hand raised. Then very slowly, as students straightened in their desk seats, they saw Mr. B. with his hand raised. Mr. B. started laughing, proud to have tricked the whole class.
Eric said, “Wait a minute. Didn’t you say it was a student who did not read their poem, Mr. B.? You ain’t no student.”
“Nope,” Mr. B. replied. “I said one person in our class, and that person is me. And don’t say ‘ain’t.’ It sounds terrible.”
The students focused on Mr. B., who said, “Would you like to hear my poem?”
The students cheered, then got quiet.
Mr. B. said, “The title of my poem is: ‘Teacher Creature’—after he said the title, he made a low, growling sound like a creature might make in a horror movie. “The poem has alternating rhyme, with the last word in the second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyming.
Ever since I was young,
I’ve wanted to be a teacher,
Even though friends thought,
I was a really strange creature.
But I did it anyway,
Then taught at Nova and Kroy,
And all my elementary students,
Have mostly been a joy.
They sometimes make me sad,
But mostly I’m very happy,
Sometimes they get confused,
And think I’m their pappy.
My hobby is self-defense,
With a black belt in martial arts,
But I find myself defenseless,
When Eric blows his farts.”
The class went hysterical with laughter when Mr. B. said “farts.”
Mr. B. continued:
Cheryl used to be quiet,
And really very shy,
She’s bubbly now in sixth grade,
Because Robby is her guy.
Matt is good at karate,
He’s handsome, strong, and tall,
If trouble comes and you need help,
He’s the guy to call.
Robby and Matt are partners,
During karate and lifting weights,
Although Robby is in fifth grade,
With Cheryl he highly rates.
Grace is patient and charming,
With a very happy mood,
She’s had a good effect on Eric,
And now he’s not so rude.
My thoughts are now of Mara,
Pretty, charming and smart,
So friendly to her classmates,
It warms this teacher’s heart.
Then there’s the whole class,
The best I’ve ever had,
You’re all such a pleasure,
When you leave, I’ll be sad.”
During the second half of January, Mr. B. reminded everyone about the upcoming, February talent show. He said that it would be conducted just like last year’s talent show. Anybody wishing to be in the talent show needed to sign up for it within the next three or four weeks.
The remainder of January flew by as fast as fierce winter winds fly over frozen ground.
BERT’S QUESTIONS
If you sneeze and fart at the same time, does a vacuum form that will
collapse your lungs?
When you eat a hard-boiled egg, which end do you start at? Why?
CHAPTER 14
February came with a frosty blast of cold air. The Rochester area was in a deep freeze. Only young children wanted to go outside. Older students and adults only wanted to be outside long enough to get to their warm cars or buses. Heavy coats, hats and mittens were the rule, except for the totally unbuttoned or unzipped coats of middle school and high school girls who wanted to show off their developing curves.
The gray clouds had sprinkled the land with a couple of inches of snow over night and made the earth look like a cake with a thick layer of white frosting on it. The angry clouds were still spitting snow, and a couple more inches was expected throughout the day.
Mr. B. looked out of his classroom window and saw large icicles gleaming brightly due to the warming rays of the sun. He stood, as if in a trance, staring at them.
He snapped out of his trance suddenly as his talkative students entered the classroom with their wet sneakers squeaking on the tile floor.
Mr. B. heard some students bragging about their much improved grades and how pleased their parents were about how smart they were getting. Discussions of soaring IQs and chest thumping were contagious, especially with the boys who strutted around the room like roosters with 180 IQs. The girls’ bragging was almost as bad.
Some of the girls were bragging that they certainly were not blondes; not with their high grades. One of them joked that they all may become red heads from all the heat generated by their furious and ingenious brain activity.
Mr. B. thought, with such high IQs, I wonder why these students are still wearing their athletic shoes—sneakers—in winter, especially in bad weather. Then Mr. B. smiled and wondered if he did the same thing when he was a kid. Then he thought, trying to figure out the minds of sixth graders was like trying to count the number of quills on a porcupine by touching each one of them. A smart person would take a guess. Anyone else who’s not thinking clearly and didn’t understand the danger, would get the “point” really fast, and have to stop counting.
At one point, Mr. B. almost laughed aloud. It took great effort for him not to burst into laughter. But he thought he’d wait until math class to try and kindly burst a few balloon-heads that were swelled with hot air.
At the beginning of math class, Mr. B. said, “Pretend that you are in a race and you overtake the second person. What position are you in now?”
Hands shot up all over the classroom.
“Too easy,” was said by several students.
With most of his students staring at him, Mr. B. said, “Oops! Too easy, huh? Well, let’s check. Keep your hand raised if you already know that the answer is that you’d be in first place.”
Mr. B. did not see any hands lowered and even the couple of students who did not raise their hand, seemed confused and hesitant.
“OK,” Mr. B. said with a smile, “hands down. Here’s another problem that may be too easy, but let’s try it. I already know you are all too smart for these easy questions, but try them anyway, please. So, tell me what position you’d be in if you overtake the last person in the race?”
Again, hands shot into the air like Fourth of July fire crackers. Mr. B. looked surprised and said, “Wow! So many of you figured out the answer so quickly. You are really sharp today. But let’s be sure. I don’t want any arguments later. So, keep your hand up if you figured that you’d be in the next to the last position in line.”
Nearly the whole classroom had their hands raised.
“Wow!,” Mr. B. said, again. “I’m extremely impressed. Put your hands down and let me give you a harder problem. These have been too easy, so far. Don’t use paper and pencil or calculators; just do this problem mentally, OK? This will give you a chance to show me that you are really as smart as you already know you are. Here’s the problem. Mentally take one thousand and add fifty to it … Now simply add another one thousand to your total … OK, now add thirty more … Add one thousand more … Add another one thousand … Then just add twenty more. Too easy, huh? Anyway, raise your hand if you have the answer already.”
When fast hands shot into the air, like missiles, Mr. B. looked amazed and said, “That’s really incredible! How many of you got five thousand for your total? Please be honest.”
Mr. B. glanced around the classroom and saw hands still raised all over the room. He saw confident, almost arrogant smirks, smiles and sarcastic looks that showed that those students were way too smart for his problems.
“Wonderful! Just wonderful! You’re even smarter than I thought,” Mr. B. complimented the students.
Finally, Mr. B. saw genuinely puzzled looks on the faces of Eric, Cheryl, Matt and Maragold—I did not mentally communicate with Maragold on any of these problems. They all hesitantly raised their hands, when the other students were asked to lower theirs.
Mr. B. saw their hands rise, but said, “No questions now, please. We’ll talk about these problems in a couple of minutes, OK?”
Eric, Cheryl, Matt and Maragold lowered their hands in a state of confusion. They thought something was wrong with the math answers, but they would have to wait to ask about it. The mixture of confusion and doubt still showed in their facial expressions.
Grace and Charlie were suspicious, but not confident enough to raise their hands to question Mr. B. about it.
On the chalkboard, Mr. B. wrote the numerals: one, two and three vertically. He placed a period after each numeral. Then, next to the numeral one, he said and wrote; “You are in first place.” After numeral two, he said and wrote, “You are in the next to the last place,” and next to numeral three, he said and wrote, “The total is 5,000.”
Then he turned to his students and said, “These are the three answers that the great majority of you figured out so easily, right?”
Yeses echoed throughout the classroom. Happy, smiling faces of pride could be seen … until Mr. B. sternly stated, “These three answers are wrong.”
Stunned expressions of disbelief took control of so many faces that most students looked as if they had just seen someone walk through a glass window, with neither the window, nor the person being damaged.
Eric, Cheryl, Matt and Maragold showed pleased looks of satisfaction, as did a couple of other students.
Mr. B. smiled at his students and said, “I heard too many of you bragging this morning about how smart you are. I thought I could actually see some heads swelling up with the hot air of self-importance. I was wondering if some of you, with swollen heads, would even be able to get through the doorway during our bathroom break. Anyway, yes, you’re a group of smart students. Yes, you have learned a lot and, yes, you have worked hard to get very good grades. And, of course, I’m very proud of all of you, but please don’t let your success go to your head. Sure … be proud of yourselves, but don’t be an arrogant braggart about your accomplishments. Continue to learn as much as you can and work hard because I’ve always believed that there is a reason that earning is in the word learning. In the future, when you seek jobs, the more you learn will be closely associated with the amount of money you will earn.
“OK. Let’s look at all these wrong answers and see why they’re wrong. The answer to the number one problem is really second place, not first place. If you overtake the second person, then, now you are in second place. Understand?
“The answer for the number two problem was tricky because there can’t really be a logical answer, although most of you thought that if you overtake the last person in the race, then you’d be in the next to last place in the race. But, don’t you see, that’s impossible? Why? Because, I ask you, how is it possible to overtake the last person in a race? If that person is the last person, then there is no one behind them that could overtake them. Understand?”
Embarrassed grins and frowns, as well as tortured, twisted lips of disbelief showed on most students faces. Then there were noises that sounded very much like, “duh!”
After Mr. B. gave his students time to think about trying to overtake the last person in a race, he continued with, “And most of you thought the answer to the third problem was a total of 5,000, when the answer is really at total of 4,100. Watch this.”
Mr. B. turned to the chalkboard and did the problem so that every student could see that the total was really 4,100. “Think about the facts, review those facts, think about possible solutions, review those solutions, solve the problem and double-check your answer.
“If I told your that I was five feet and fourteen inches tall, what would you say about my height? Would you figure out that five feet, fourteen inches is the same as six feet, two inches?”
Mr. B. said, “Now let’s get back to our regular math lesson, without the thought of bragging and self-congratulation.”
Mr. B. walked to his desk to get his teacher’s manual, saying, “Please take out your math book.”
At lunch time Eric mentioned the fun he had listening to car tunes—music on the car radio—then swayed his head, shoulders and arms as if a favorite tune was playing in his head.
Robby had just joined the group so he could be with Cheryl, mostly, but he also wanted to talk to Matt about karate. Robby heard Eric’s comment about listening to the car radio. Robby said, “Eric, don’t you mean that you were watching cartoons?”
Eric said, “No. I was definitely listening to car tunes.”
Robby stated, “Well, weren’t you also watching the cartoons?”
Eric shouted, “Of course not. Duh! … You can’t see them, just listen to them.”
Robby replied, “Well, cartoons can’t be much fun if you can’t see them.”
Eric’s frustrated voice said, “Man! You can’t see them even if you tried. You can only listen to them, dummy.”
Grace placed her hand lightly on Eric’s forearm, leaned toward his ear, then whispered, “No name calling among friends.”
About that same time, Robby gave Eric a hard look.
Eric apologized, saying, “Oh, sorry Robby. I didn’t mean that.”
Robby smiled, then said, “Is your TV broken so that you can’t see the cartoons, only listen to them?”
Eric replied, “Who the heck said anything about TV? I was talking about listening to car tunes on the radio.”
Now Robby understood what Eric was talking about, but pretended not to. He wanted to tease Eric a little, so he said, “Radios don’t have cartoons because there’s no pictures to see.”
Eric said, “Of course there’s no pictures. It’s car tunes that I listen to. They don’t have pictures, just sound.”
Robby stated, “But you keep saying that you enjoy cartoons, then you say that you can’t even see them. Well, then how do you know what’s happening?”
When Eric bowed his head and shook it as if talking to an idiot, Robby winked at the rest of the group to let them know he was just teasing Eric.
The friends sitting closest to Eric started laughing.
Eric grunted, “Oh boy! Here we go again. Robby, naturally I can’t see them. No one else can either. You can’t see sounds, can you?”
Robby’s surprised voice said, “Of course I can’t see sounds, but cartoons are pictures that have sounds.”
When Robby looked at the ceiling and rolled his eyes, Eric winked at the group to let them know that he knew Robby was teasing him and that now he was teasing Robby. Eric wanted to take him for a joy ride to the state of confusion.
Robby really didn’t know Eric all that well, but he’d heard many stories about him being a jokester and prankster. Robby thought it would be great to tease the teaser and play a prank on the prankster.
Eric was really glad that he had snared, or so he thought, Robby into this joke.
Eric was having fun teasing Robby and Robby was having fun teasing Eric, and neither of them wanted the fun to stop.
Eric grimaced and said, “Robby, you just don’t understand. You see, I was in a car, listening to the radio.”
Robby added, “OK, then how could you by watching cartoons on a radio?”
Eric stated, “I didn’t say I watched cartoons. I said I was listening to car tunes.”
Eric was trying real hard not to smile, giggle or laugh and Robby was doing the same thing.
Robby said, “Man! You’re one darned confusing guy, Eric. You got me all mixed up now.”
Eric smiled, then said, “Of course you are. I should have expected that you wouldn’t understand.”
Robby gave in and said, “I knew what you were talking about all the time. I was just teasing you.”
Eric said, “I figured that you were teasing me, so I started teasing you back. But you did good, especially for a lowly fifth grader.
Eric giggled when Robby smiled and held up his fist, in mock anger.
“OK,” Eric said, “I’ll be really big hearted and say that we both came out even with our joking.” Eric gave Robby the “thumb up” friendly sign and Robby returned it.
Maragold added, “We had fun listening to Robby fooling you, Eric, and we also had fun listening to Eric fooling you, Robby.”
The afternoon lessons went smoothly and quickly.
At the end of the day Mr. B. said that he needed to know how many students in his classroom intended to perform, or help, at the talent show, and what talent would they be performing or job that they would be doing.
Cheryl raised her hand and told Mr. B. that she was not performing, but she was going to be the stage manager this year because of Mrs. Plum’s request. Cheryl smiled broadly; it was a real honor to be asked to do that job.
Other students raised their hands and Mr. B. wrote the information on the chalkboard,
1. Cheryl = stage manager
2. Grace = assistant stage manager
3. Mara = solo magic show
4. Eric = comedy routine
5. Matt (and Robby) = karate demonstration
6, Mark = impressions of child actors
7. Tony = Elvis impersonator
8. Mike = clown/mime act
9. Gus = violin solo
“Anybody else?” Mr. Bunnlow asked.
When no one raised their hand, Mr. B. stated, “OK then. Put your chairs upside-down on your desks, clean the floor and get ready for home.
A week went by. In math class Mr. B. said, “Class, you’ve learned about statistics, you had an introduction to algebra, studied decimals, perimeter, area, metrics measurement, and now you will be learning more advanced addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of fractions and mixed numerals. It’s a lot of information and will take two chapters in your math books. It will also take determined effort and extra study because some of this stuff is difficult.” Mr. B. gave the class a serious look.
Mr. B. noticed that Eric was not paying attention. He looked like he was trying to dig enough wax out of his ear to build a tall, yellow candle.
Mr. B. wrote the numbers: 8, 10, 13, 21, 31 on the chalkboard. He turned to face the class and said, “May I have your attention?” When Eric still did not pay attention, Mr. B. said, “Eric! Pay attention to math class. Tell me what these numbers are?”
Eric snapped out of his candle-building daze, wiped his finger on his pants and said, “Ah … What? … Oh, I believe the total is eighty-three, Mr. B.”
“Is that right? I don’t remember asking for the sum of those numbers.” Then Mr. B. turned to the chalkboard once again and wrote bold capital letters next to each of the numbers, like this:
8 = CBS
10 = NBC
13 = ABC
21 = PBS
31 = FOX
“Oh. I thought you wanted me to add’em for you,” Eric said with the blush of embarrassment.
“No, Eric, I didn’t ask you for the sum of those numbers. I asked what they are. I did that to get your attention focused back on math class instead of digging a larger hole in your ear. Who’s Adam?”
Eric said, “What?”
Mr. B. replied, “You said you thought I wanted Adam.”
Eric stated, “No. You pointed to those numbers and I thought you wanted me to add’em mentally.”
Mr. B. restated, “There, you just said his name again, Eric. Is Adam a friend of yours? He can’t help you to pay attention to my question and even if he could, he wouldn’t be allowed to give you the answer.”
Eric’s agitated voice said, “No! No! Mr. B. See, I said ‘add’em’ and I should have spoken more clearly because I really meant to say ‘add them.’ Understand?”
Mr. B., looking stern, said, “So you’re still trying to get Adam to add them? Well, I still want to know who this Adam guy is. There are no Adams in our class.”
Eric impatiently replied, “Geez, Mr. B., I don’t know anybody named Adam.”
Mr. B. calmly and quietly answered, “Well, Eric, it’s obvious that you know someone named Adam. And since you won’t tell us the truth about who he is, then your extra assignment for tonight is to write a five hundred word essay telling me as much about this Adam guy as you can. I’ll expect it to be very neat and it must also be signed by both your mom and dad. Understand?”
Eric shouted, “What? That’s not fair! I don’t know anyone named Adam. OK, I admit that I wasn’t paying attention, and I should have been, but how do I write five hundred words describing a person I don’t know? And my mom and dad will ground me for a month. I’ll miss the talent show. Geez, Mr. B., you aren’t being fair.”
Mr. B. said, “But you are paying attention now, right?”
Eric replied, “Yes sir. I certainly am … now.”
Mr. B. smiled, then said, “Well, good. That’s what I wanted. I was just teasing you to get you to pay attention. You don’t really have to do that assignment, but now that I have your complete attention, make sure you keep focused.”
Eric looked relieved. He wasn’t even mad when his peers laughed. Mr. B. grinned at him with one of those special ‘teacher grins’ that mean ‘gottcha, dude.’
All of a sudden Eric felt that he had to pee. His nervousness must have caused his bladder to fill quickly. He thought that if he did not go very quickly, his eyes would turn yellow. He had to go too badly to laugh at his own joke. He raised his hand and asked, in a hurried, demanding voice, “Mr. B? May I leave the room?”
“Well, you certainly can’t take it with you, Eric,” Mr. B. replied.
More laughter exploded in the classroom. Then Mr. B. noticed Eric’s hand in his lap, and the painful expression on Eric’s face.
“Eric. Do you need to use the bathroom?”
“Yeah! I sure do.”
“Go!” Mr. B. said.
Eric got up and ran for the door as the echo of laughter followed him like the tail of a kite.
At lunch time, some students were still talking and laughing about Mr. B’s trick on Eric.
Eric said, “Yeah. OK, he nailed me. I wish I’d paid attention. Maybe if he hadn’t caught me off guard I could have made some funny come-back remarks.”
“Mr. B. wasn’t trying to be mean. You know that, right, Eric?” Maragold said.
“Oh, heck, yeah. I know that. I just hate getting caught off-guard. For a teacher, he’s OK, you know,” Eric stated with a friendly smile. “So, just eat your chili and forget about it,” he added.
“Speaking of chili. Remember that time in fifth grade when we ate chili for lunch, then went to gym class about an hour later?” Matt asked Eric.
Eric shook his head vigorously. His startled eyes found Matt’s. Eric was trying to tell Matt not to tell that story. He didn’t want Grace to hear it. But it was no use. Matt was determined to talk about it.
Eric put his elbows on the lunch table and covered his eyes.
Matt said, “Eric got a cell phone for Christmas and carried it in his pants pocket to hide it from teachers. Eric had eaten his chili and a lot of mine because I wasn’t hungry. When we got to gym class, in the locker room, Eric was full of gas. Every few steps he’d take, he’d squeeze out a chili fart. So he got his cell phone out of his pants pocket, walked around the locker room farting, then saying into the cell phone, ‘Can you hear me now?’ It was like that TV commercial with the guy walking around to see how good his cell phone reception was by saying, ‘Can you hear me now,’ only that guy wasn’t farting as he walked around. Eric had all of us laughing so hard we almost peed our pants.”
Eric was embarrassed, but quickly responded, “Yeah, well you were snorting so hard that you were blowing slimy-looking, nose-bubbles. That was snot like you at all. But it did get a lot of laughter, especially when you added the comical touch of running around the locker room trying to find toilet paper to wipe your dripping snot box.”
“Oh!” Matt said, “And remember when the gym teacher came rushing into the locker room to see what all the noise was about? He got right in our faces and was shouting at us for being too noisy and too slow getting ready for class. But that was no big deal until the spit started flying from his mouth. Almost had to take another shower. But even that was only half bad. What was really bad was that Eric and I darn near suffocated from the gym teacher’s thick clouds of bad breath. Ugh! It was like he’d just eaten the rear end of a skunk, you know?”
Everyone who was listening screwed up their faces with a burst of disgusted laughter at the picture Matt had just created for them.
Eric added, “It’s not as good as Matt’s description, but I thought the gym teacher had eaten his month-old, dirty socks. Maybe his wife got mad at him and gave him a sock in the mouth, twice.”
More laughter continued in the comical atmosphere of the cafeteria.
Maragold said, “If a skunk is religious and goes to church every Sunday, where should it sit? In it’s own pew(PU), of course.” More laughter.
“Oh! Man! Farts and smells! Can we please tell different jokes?” Cheryl asked with a distasteful expression. She continued, “How about this joke about Eric? Hey, Eric, your mind was wondering in math class today. Take some good advice and don’t let it wander any more. It’s too little to be out alone.”
Eric and Cheryl glared at each other, but them both smiled.
Eric who admired his uncle for his grand vocabulary, saw the opportunity to get even with Cheryl. Quickly he said, “Cheryl? You look surprisingly nice today. You must have been farding all morning. It makes you look nice when you have farded. Really, when you fard, your face looks very plain, instead of ugly. So please, keep farding. Do as much farding as you can before school. Being plain-looking is sure better than being ugly. And farding every morning will help you a lot.”
Cheryl, unusually sensitive, said, “You jerk! I wasn’t farting all morning. You just have such a big hang-up about farts. You should go to a psychologist and work that out with him. I’ve never seen anyone who loves to talk about farts and farting as much as you do. And it’s usually more gross than funny, but you don’t notice that because of your blown up ego. Everybody farts, but we don’t brag about it and make disgusting jokes about it. Grow up!” Cheryl replied, angrily.
“Wow! You sure misunderstood me. I never said anything at all about farting, I was talking about farding, with a d and not a t. That must be so embarrassing for you. I hope you get over your anger and your lack of vocabulary real soon … Hey, remember, our insults to each other are just jokes. I like you; didn’t mean to make you angry. But you’re right. I do think that farts and farting are very funny,” Eric said.
“Well, then, Big Chief Thunder Pants, what the heck does farding, with a d mean?” Cheryl said in a much calmer voice.
“It just means putting cosmetics—make-up—on your face to improve it’s appearance. So, when I said that you were farding, I was saying that you were applying make-up to your face, OK?” Eric responded.
“Yeah, well, you wanted me to believe that you were saying farting, not farding, so it’s just as bad. And you sounded very serious when you called me plain, then ugly,” Cheryl said, with hurt feelings.
“I never did say that you were ugly. I said that being plain is better than being ugly,” Eric responded.
Grace put her hand on Eric’s knee and squeezed gently to remind Eric not to get angry.
Eric said, “Perhaps I owe you an apology. I thought I was just joking with my insults, like you do to me. I can tell I hurt your feeling, so I apologize, Cheryl. You’re not ugly, plain, or average. You’re pretty and I like having you for a friend.”
Cheryl and Robby, especially, but everyone within hearing distance was shocked to hear the sincerity in Eric’s voice. Most of them thought, “Wow! Thank God for Grace. She’s had a wonderful affect on him.”
But just as everyone was admiring the pleasant change in Eric’s behavior, he stated, “I really should ask Mrs. Plum if she farded every morning. Yeah. I should do that. And the cafeteria ladies, too. They definitely should be farding every morning. And how about the lady teachers. Maybe I should stop by the teachers lunch room and look them over and say, ‘Hey! Great! Glad to see that some of you ladies farded today, and the rest of you should definitely start farding. It’ll give your face a healthy glow.’ No! Maybe that’s not such a good idea.”
There was a rare silence at the table.
To break the silence and change the subject, Grace said, “I remember something funny that happened to me in first grade. We were just getting back to our classroom, from music class, and there was an announcement that my teacher didn’t hear all of. So I told my teacher that Tommy was supposed to go to the principal’s office.
“Why?” the teacher asked me.
“Because he’s a following person,” I answered.
“He’s a what?” she asked me.
“The announcement said that he was a following person,” I repeated.” Then I told my teacher that the announcement said, ‘The following persons should come to the principal’s office, and Tommy’s name was said. I didn’t even get the joke until later when my teacher explained it to me.”
Comical moans and groans escaped the group’s mouths.
“Oh! I have a good one; kind of like Grace’s,” Robby said. “When my little brother was in kindergarten, the teacher was teaching the kids about the American flag. His teacher pointed to the flag and asked what it was. My brother excitedly shouted that it’s the flag of our country. His teacher smiled and praised my brother, then asked him what was the name of his country.”
Robby started laughing before the end of his joke, then finished it by saying, “My brother said that the name of his country was ‘Tis-of-Thee.’ You know? Like in the song, My country, Tis-of-Thee, Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing, … And when my brother brought a note home, explaining what happened, we all died laughing.”
When Mr. B. arrived to get his students from the cafeteria, he heard all the laughter and told his students that he had a joke to tell them when they finished their bathroom break.
When everyone was settled down at their desks and quiet, Mr. B. said, “We have a science lesson about exploring the universe. However, I have one joke to tell you before that lesson begins … but only one joke.
“OK, then. One early morning, a mother goes into her son’s bedroom to wake him up for school. She shakes her son’s shoulder and tells him that it’s time to get up. Her son says, in a whiny voice, that he doesn’t want to go to school. The mother asks him to give her two good reasons why he shouldn’t get up and go to school. The son tells her that all the students hate him, and so do all the teachers. His mother says that he must be brave and get up, then get ready for school. The son, trying to be a wise-guy, asks his mom to give him two good reasons why he should get up and get ready to go to school. The mother stares at here son angrily and shouts at him that he should go to school because he’s fifty-two years old, and he’s the school principal.”
Mr. B. thought, I’ll have to tell that one to Mrs. Plum. She’d like it.
The classroom filled with the joyful sounds of laughter. Mr. B. studied the smiling, healthy faces and thought of budding spring flowers; innocent, delicate, all different and all waiting to blossom with the help of the sun. Mr. B. thought of teachers being the sun for their students. Then he thought about how lucky he was to be a teacher.
The science class was about outer space, the sun, moon, planets, stars; the solar system in general.
I could read Eric’s mind when Mr. B. talked about suns that became red giants and white dwarfs. What a wonderfully explosive battle it would be, Eric thought, the red giants versus the white dwarfs, and a good idea for creative writing.
Mr. B. informed the class that our sun was the closest star to Earth, and that our sun was very small compared to most other stars in the universe. That fact amazed the students. They were also amazed by the fact that of all our nine planets, Venus was the only one that revolved around the sun in a clockwise direction. The other eight planets revolved around the sun in a counter-clockwise direction.
After the social studies lesson about the Cultures of Medieval Europe, and the regular twenty minute homework time, Mr. B. had a bathroom break that took longer than usual. He was now in a hurry to get his students ready for home.
The classroom was cleaned up quickly, chairs were placed upside-down on desks, and they students were lined up. Then Eric raised his hand.
Seeing this, Mr. B. said, “Anybody who has a question right now should raise their hand … and place it over their mouth. Follow me to the buses, please.
Valentine’s Day, plus President’s Day holiday came and went.
The coldness of February chilled even bone marrow. The frigid winds were constantly swirling with snow flurries and icy rain. The constant snow build-up, and the long hours of darkness made it seem an especially dreary time of year.
As if the weather wasn’t bad enough, the subject matter got harder and harder. Mr. B. tried to perk up his students’ school lives by being cheerful, using motivational stories, and with his own sense of humor.
Some student grades started going lower, but not too seriously. Still, Mr. B. worried about stuff like that; trying to figure out why, and what to do about it. Mr. B. started using the last twenty minutes of the school day for tutoring students that he thought needed the extra attention. Luckily for him, there were only four of them; an easy group to handle, while the remainder of the class worked on their homework, independently.
February was the shortest month, but still didn’t seem to go by quickly enough for most of the students, even with the long weekend for President’s Day.
Mr. B. had been reminding the talent show students to practice every night and on weekends, if possible, so they would do a good job.
Maragold had her dad helping her on her magic routine every night, after homework was completed. She was doing her act to music, not talking to the audience like she did last year. She wanted to keep the magic tricks flowing entertainingly, just like the music. It seemed an ideal way to fit more magic into a routine in the short period of time that the talent show allowed her. Also, Matt would not be helping her this year, so she looked forward to doing a different kind of magic show.
Matt and Robby worked hard each night on their karate demonstration. Their karate teacher—sensei Dorsey, a sixth degree black belt instructor—often helped them with tips and suggestions for bettering their routine.
Eric was unusually nervous about doing his stand-up comedy routine in front of so many students, teachers and parents. But he told himself that he would not quit. He challenged himself, but he didn’t think he was ever this nervous, in his whole life. He thought, “I usually do jokes quickly, when something comes to my mind, when I see something, when I hear something that I can twist around in an unusual way. God, I’m not used to prepared jokes to memorize and say them one after the other. It’ll be a big audience, too. I hope I get some laughs.”
Cheryl and Grace were back stage. Cheryl accepted the duties and responsibilities of the stage manager and Grace was Cheryl’s assistant. Neither girl wanted to be in the spotlight, but they were hard at work preparing to make the talent show very successful.
Cheryl asked Grace why she didn’t do her ballet dance routine for the talent show, especially since Grace was taking advanced dance lessons.
Grace said that she honestly thought that ballet was not something that most elementary girls or boys would be interested in. “They wouldn’t know an arabesque from a pirouette,” Grace said with a silly giggle.
“They don’t need to know the names of the ballet movements to enjoy it. I know that it takes hard work and good physical conditioning to do it,” Cheryl stated.
“Maybe. Maybe I’m just afraid of embarrassing myself on stage, and then having to face the teasing and the jokes, especially from Eric. I wish I were like Eric. He doesn’t have a lot of patience, but he always seems so confident,” Grace said.
Cheryl quickly said, “No. Not always. You don’t know him as well as we do,” meaning Maragold, Matt, and herself. “He has a lot of self-doubt, but he’s really good at hiding it from everyone. He’s able to bury his doubts under a think coat of laughter and sarcasm. Besides, he worships the ground you walk on. He would help you and support you, even if you made a mistake that was embarrassing. I doubt that he would laugh at or tease you. He’d rip the rest of us to shreds, but not you.”
“So how come you’re not performing,” Grace asked Cheryl.
“Poetry reading and writing are not exactly talent show entertainment, if you know what I mean,” Cheryl said with a laugh.
“I like your poems, and you have a great voice for reading them aloud.”
“Well, I do have another reason, also.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Same as your reason. Just substitute Robby for Eric,” Cheryl replied with a shy and sly grin.
Grace and Cheryl both laughed, then hugged each other. Grace thought that she was very lucky to be a part of the Maragold gang. It made her very happy to have such great girl friends as Cheryl and Mara, and the boys, too.
BERT’S QUESTIONS
If a turtle has no shell, is it homeless, naked, or both?
If George Washington was so honest, how come all the banks close
on his birthday?
CHAPTER 15
It was the last day of February; the day of the talent show.
Cheryl and Grace had the stage, lights, curtain, electronic equipment and necessary stage equipment ready. Cheryl and Grace stood by the electronic console ready to flip levers and pull switches to get the show started.
A line of performers was back stage. The performers were hidden from the audience by the stage curtains. They were nervous as they heard the audience of fourth, fifth and sixth graders noisily talking and laughing. Some performers’ nervousness caused them to be very quiet, while others who were nervous became talkative. A couple looked pale, like they were either going to puke, faint or both.
Mr. B. came back stage and talked to the performers, trying to calm them. He could see that Maragold was very nervous; Matt and Robby too, but Eric was smiling and humming quietly.
“Not nervous, Eric?” Mr. B. asked.
“Gosh no,” Mr. B. “It’s a big audience and the bigger they are, the worse they smell, right? Take a whiff. Am I right?” Eric replied as he sniffed the air.
Mr. B.’s eyebrows rose as he said, “I don’t smell anything … and I don’t want to smell anything, either … understand?” Mr. B. asked Eric, who smiled and nodded.
“You memorized all your jokes, right? Going on stage and reading the jokes from cards won’t work. You need eye contact with the audience to be a good comic. They need to see your facial expressions to make the jokes funnier,” Mr. B. lectured.
“Oh, sure. Of course I have them all memorized. I have a few extras, too, just in case I need them. But I didn’t work very hard at memorizing them. Hard work is just for people who are short on talent; don’t you think so?” Eric said, trying not to laugh at Mr. B.’s serious expression.
“Well, I hope you do well, Eric. We all need a few laughs.”
“No problem, Mr. B. I’ll be funnier than lumpy clown vomit.”
Mr. B. stared at Eric, then grinned. “As long as you aren’t the clown that’s doing the vomiting, right?”
Then Mr. B. told Cheryl and Grace that he’d be up in the spotlight booth and when they saw him turn on the spotlight, they should open the curtains. Then Mrs. Plum would make the talent show introduction to the audience.
Before he left the stage, he pointed to Matt and Robby so they would carry Maragold’s magic equipment table out onto the stage before the curtain opened. Maragold was performing first, then Matt and Robby.
Five minutes later the spotlight came on and Cheryl opened the purple and gold curtains. Mrs. Plum walked confidently on stage. The students got quiet as she made the introduction to the talent show and quickly departed.
Dear readers, I noticed that Maragold and most of the other girls who were performing must have spent extra time farding this morning. Their skin, eyes and lips showed evidence of careful farding. I wondered how much time they had spent this morning farding so that they would look nice on stage. Maragold and Mrs. Shane probably farded together. They may have even helped each other fard this morning. What do you think? I’m getting to really enjoy this American humor. But I promise not to fard. No farding for me. I never heard of a leprechaun that farded. Our females do not fard and our males have no need for farding either. Only humans need to fard.
Gee! When Mrs. Plum was on stage, she looked good. She must have farded.
Grace, who had the order of performances on her clipboard, whispered, “OK Mara. Go ahead, and good luck.”
As Maragold walked on stage, she heard the voices of all her friends, mixed together, wishing her “good luck.”
She wore shiny, black shoes, that made her look taller, with black pants, and a black vest over a white, ruffled blouse. Her long brown hair was pulled back into a pony tail so it would not bother her while performing.
Maragold blushed when some boys in the audience started whistling at her, but she stood quietly by her table of magic tricks until there was silence. Then she said, “My magic show will be done to music. Once the music starts, I will not speak until the end of my performance. The magic tricks will be performed to the beat and rhythm of the music.”
She paused in the spotlight, looked off stage and nodded her head to signal for the music to begin.
As soon as the music started, Maragold raised her right hand, head high, and a four feet long, black cane with white tips appeared with her hand wrapped around the middle of it. When she appeared to be dropping the cane to the floor, it started dancing in front of her even though she wasn’t touching it. The cane bobbed up and down and sideways, about two feet away from her outstretched hands. It appeared that Maragold had full control over the cane’s movements with her finger tips, but there was no visible contact between her and the cane.
The audience of students looked at each other with expressions of disbelief. Their eyes strained to look more closely, jaws dropped and lips formed into the large ovals of disbelief. The auditorium grew unusually quiet.
Then Maragold made the cane land in her hands. Each hand held one end of the cane so the cane was horizontal to the floor. She started to casually throw it, under-handed, into the audience, but the cane vanished. Maragold was now holding two bouquets of flowers; one in each hand.
There was furious clapping and whistling from the audience.
Maragold placed the bouquets in a large silver vase that was on her table. Then she grabbed that day’s edition of the morning Democrat and Chronicle newspaper. She showed the front section of the newspaper slowly, then the back. After that she showed all the individual pages.
Hundreds of curious eyes followed her every movement as she opened the newspaper and started to rip it apart, vertically, from top to bottom. She continued to rip the newspaper into strips that were about four inches wide and twenty-two inches long, until the whole newspaper was torn. She held up the torn pieces with both hands so the audience had a clear view of them.
Maragold placed all the ripped strips in one pile and ripped them in half, horizontally. Again she ripped the strips in half until she had the newspaper completely ripped into short, small-envelope size pieces. She held that pile of pieces in the air, showing it to the audience as she swayed to the beat of the music.
Her long, delicate fingers brought the pile of newspaper pieces to chest level. She grabbed the pile with both hands, then stopped as if frozen in place. She knew that stopping and standing still would make the whole audience focus on her and the torn pile of newspaper, with curious anticipation. She looked down at the pile of newspaper strips, then let go, except for the very top. The bundle of ripped pieces fell downward, but never reached the floor because they were not in pieces any more. They were connected. Maragold unfolded the newspaper and it was completely restored. She even showed each page as she had done before the trick started.
The audience was stunned into silence. Students’ eyes popped open. Then one voice said, “No way! Man, that’s impossible.”
Maragold smiled with satisfaction then placed the newspaper on her table, picked up four large silver rings and showed them to the audience. She counted them separately to show that they were not connected. The rings rang as they came into contact. She took two rings and pulled them up her left arm because she didn’t need them yet. Now she held one ring in each hand. She ran her fingers around both rings so the audience could see them clearly. Then she took the right hand ring and struck it hard against the left hand ring. They hooked together, as if the metal of one ring melted and allowed the other ring to pass through it. Now Maragold grabbed the bottom ring and spun it around on the bottom of the top ring to show there was no gap in the ring.
Maragold then pulled one of the other two unused rings down her left arm and showed it to the audience. The spotlight gleamed off its highly polished surface. It was like looking at the fiery rim of the sun during a full eclipse. She tried to pass this third ring through the top ring by banging it onto the top of the top ring. However, this third ring just bounced off the top ring with a solid, metallic clang that echoed through the audience. Then Maragold dramatically held this third ring over her head and slowly brought in down onto the top ring again. A dull, metallic tap was heard and now three rings were connected. She held this connected chain of three rings in her outstretched right hand and let the ring on her left arm fall into her left hand. She then switched the left hand ring to the right hand and the right hand rings to the left hand.
Now her left hand raised the three connected rings so the top ring was at head level. She took the right hands unused ring, placed it under the chain of three rings, then moved that single ring upward. It appeared to pass through all three chained rings, then connected to the top ring, replacing it as the uppermost ring.
I looked at Maragold with jealous admiration for her superb skill. She made the audience, and me, believe that she had actually passed metal through metal. Her beauty was natural, but the skill she had with magic was sometimes unbelievable. This was definitely one of those times. The show wasn’t over and she had already performed a more amazing magic routine than she did last year.
Needless to say, the students stared silently. Most of the teachers leaned forward, trying to study her movements more closely. They, too, were completely baffled and amazed.
As the music continued, Maragold replaced the rings on her table and showed the audience a bright red ball, which glowed in the spotlight. The spotlight made it look like a two inch diameter fireball in Maragold’s hand. She held the ball between her right index finger and her right thumb for all to see.
With a slow downward, then upward motion of her arm, two red balls appeared. This second ball was resting between her index and middle fingers. After another downward and upward motion, a third ball appeared between her middle and ring fingers before the audience had time to adjust to the shock of the appearance of the second ball. Then Maragold made a fourth red ball appear between her ring finger and little finger. She raised her hand to head-level so the four balls could be plainly seen.
She lowered her right hand to shoulder level, passed her left hand in front of the ball for a fraction of a second and showed that one of the four balls was now missing. Then she smiled and showed that her left hand was empty.
Maragold did this two more times until she was back to holding just one red ball. She made a fist of her left hand, placed the ball on top of the rounded fist. Slowly she grabbed the ball with her right hand. She blew into her right fist and a shower of confetti sprayed out of it. She opened her right hand and it was empty.
I couldn’t help reading some teacher’s thoughts just then. There were thoughts of, “Wow! She’s so good,” and thoughts that expressed, “Incredible for a twelve year old,” and “Fantastic!”
The vast majority of the students thought that she was just unbelievable. They envied her without realizing how much effort, patience and long hours of practice it had taken to do a magic show like that. Maragold had practiced about forty hours over the span of a month to do those magic tricks perfectly in a fifteen minute performance. It reminded me of mothers all over America working for hours to get the Thanksgiving meal ready, then it took only fifteen minutes or less for people to eat it.
I saw Cheryl giving hand signals to Maragold, telling Maragold that she was running out of time. Maragold nodded in acknowledgement, then quickly lifted up a colorful tube that was standing on her table. When the tube was removed from it’s stand, there was another clear tube inside of it. This inner tube was sitting on a black base so it would not tip over. The clear tube had three large, four inch diameter balls that fit snugly inside of it. One ball was bright red, and it was the top ball; the middle ball was bright yellow, and the bottom ball was bright green.
Maragold took the three balls out of the clear inner tube and showed them to the audience. She then covered the clear inner tube with the colorful outer tube and replaced the balls in the tubes in the same order they were before. She wriggled her finger at the tube, instead of saying “Presto,” then lifted the outer tube. Now the red ball, which had been the top ball in the tube, was the bottom ball in the tube.
Maragold replaced the outer tube again, waved her hand magically over the tube again, then lifted the outer tube. This time the red ball was the middle ball, not the bottom ball.
Those same actions were repeated and the red ball was once again the top ball, as it was originally.
Maragold removed the red ball from the top of the clear, inner tube then showed a black, wooden box that was shaped like a cube with a hole in the top. Maragold dropped the red ball into the hole.
She held the black box high for everyone to see, then brought it down to chest level. When she opened the front door and the back door of the box so the audience could see right through it, the red ball was gone. In its place was a large red scarf which Maragold pulled out, unfurled, and place over the box.
Usually someone will yell, “Where’s the red ball?” and sometimes no one will, but Maragold faced her audience, waiting and hoping. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw Cheryl holding up her right index finger. Maragold had one more minute.
Then, from the audience came several loud yells that overlapped each other. Basically, the yells said, “Where’s the red ball?” and Maragold smiled at this expected result. She reached for the outer tube and said, “The red ball, of course, went home. Where else?” Then she lifted the outer tube and showed the audience that the red ball was, once again, sitting on top of the other two balls, inside the inner clear tube, where it was originally.
The audience went nuts with excitement. There were loud cheers, clapping and whistling. Several teachers got out of their seats to “shush” their students, but it was no use. The applause remained loud, appreciative and showed the pure joy that a good magician can bring to an audience.
Maragold bowed to her audience, thanked them, then smiled and waved to them as she walked off stage.
Cheryl closed the curtains as the audience continued clapping.
Grace reminded Matt and Robby that they needed to go out onto the stage, carry off Mara’s magic table, then bring their own equipment onto the stage.
Matt and Robby were dressed in their white karate uniforms, with orange belts, and were bare footed, which is the way that Japanese karate is practiced.
Cheryl opened the curtains. Matt and Robby stood side by side, about six feet apart. They both bowed to the audience and started performing the four hundred year old Seisan kata which originated on the Okinawan Islands of Japan—a kata is an elaborate series of prearranged defensive karate techniques that may be used if a person is attacked. However, in the kata, the attacker is imaginary. Katas are also an excellent form of exercise and conditioning for the karate student because they are strenuous.
Matt and Robby were doing the kata techniques together, with such fine precision, that they looked like each other’s shadow.
When they finished, their foreheads gleamed with moisture and sparkled in the spotlight.
They each picked up a long, wooden staff. Matt spoke to the audience. “This is called a bo. It’s a rounded, six-feet long, hard-wood staff.”
Then Robby added, “Besides rocks and clubs, it is the oldest known weapon.”
Matt spoke again, “The bo was used by Japanese farmers. They placed the bo across their shoulders”—Robby demonstrated—and carried things, usually pails of water, at each end of the bo. When they were attacked, they could easily slide the loads off the ends of the bo and then use the bo as a very dangerous weapon.”
Robby said, “We shall now do a bo kata for you.”
The two boys stood about ten feet apart this time and began the bo kata. When they swung the bos in a sideways strike the tremendous force of the bo could be heard from the whirring, swishing sound of the bo cutting a path through the air. The thrusts with the end of the bo and the downward and upward strikes happened quickly and with much more bone-breaking force than a punch or kick could have.
Again the boys had nearly perfect timing doing the bo kata simultaneously.
When the bo kata was over, Robby held up a one foot square and one inch thick board. He held it with two hands, at arms length. He held both arms straight out, away from his body. Matt lunged and struck the board with the tip of the bo. The board broke as easily as a dry twig.
Then Matt held out two of those same sized boards, two inches thick. Robby thrust his bo with blurring speed, shattering both boards with ease.
Robby put down his bo and grabbed three boards, pressed them tightly together so the thickness was now three inches. He held them at arms length, looked at the audience and said, “This is three inches of wood. Imagine if the wood was your ribs.”
Robby shouted, “Ready!” to Matt, and Matt’s bo flashed out towards the boards, plowing through the three inch thickness with incredible ease. The shattering sound of the boards was not, however, as loud as the loud, clapping sounds that came from the impressed audience.
Then Matt placed his bo on the floor and both boys pushed the pieces of broken boards out of their way.
Cheryl and Grace came out on stage. Cheryl picked up the two bos and Grace, with a broom, quickly swept the broken boards and pieces off stage so the boys bare feet would not get slivers in them. Both girls left the stage quickly.
The boys in the audience were entranced by the speed and power that Matt and Robby demonstrated. The girls were mostly impressed by how cute both boys were.
Matt and Robby then bowed to each other—a sign of respect and friendship.
Matt picked up another unbroken board and held it outstretched in front of him. Robby backed up, then thrust a front kick at the board with the ball of his right foot. The board split cleanly into two pieces.
Robby did the same for Matt. Matt used a side kick, with the edge of his right foot, to break the board cleanly.
In a similar manner Robby broke a board with a straight punch, using the right hand knuckles from his index and middle fingers.
Then Matt broke a board using a palm-heel strike—the palm heel is an open handed strike with the padded part of the hand; the part next to the thumb.
When they were done, they bowed and waved to the audience. They were both sweating heavily, their hair stuck to their foreheads
As the curtains closed and they were walking off the stage, Matt slipped on a wet spot from sweat and got a minor friction burn on his foot. Matt walked with a slight limp as he reached the side of the stage.
Maragold asked with concern, “Accident?”
Matt replied, “No thanks. I just had one.” He smiled at Maragold letting her know that it was nothing to worry about.
Maragold, and those who heard Matt, smiled at his semi-funny joke. It did help relieve some of the pressure that was felt by those students who had not performed yet.
Robby looked at Matt with a big smile. “That was a lot more fun than juggling.”
“I liked it better than magic, too.” Matt responded, then asked, “You’re not going to quit juggling, though, are you?”
“No. I still like it. I’ll do it as a hobby, but karate will have most of my interest from now on. Will you stop learning magic tricks?”
Matt paused and thought. “No. I like it when Mara teaches me card and coin tricks. It’s fun, but I probably won’t perform. I’m like you. Karate is what I’m serious about now.”
They both shook hands and patted each other’s back in friendship.
When the curtains opened again, Eric stood at the center of the stage. He saw all those faces staring at him and almost froze. Then he looked at the audience again and imagined that they all had donkey heads, with yellow lipstick, then burst out laughing, which confused the audience.
Cheryl whispered, from the side of the stage, “You gotta tell a joke first before you laugh. Go get ‘em clown.”
“Do you think moths and butterflies fart?” Eric asked the audience with a confident smirk. “And if they do, how could you tell? Well … I think I figured it out. Now, you can’t follow them around with your nose next to their butts, right?”
Tremendous laughter flooded the auditorium.
“What you have to do is watch them closely. They will fly in all directions, turning, circling, zigzagging, and swooping up and down, but keep watching them until they suddenly fly straight for a couple feet. That’s when they farted!” Eric yelled. “You see, what happened was that the thrust of their gassy explosion sent them in a straight path for a couple feet. After that they go back to flying like they were drunk … until the next fart.”
Renewed laughter boomed off the walls.
“Hey! You know what? Most teachers don’t think kids know what they’re doing. Maybe it’s true, but don’t you think that if we are extremely good at not knowing what we are doing, that we should get excellent grades for it? For sheer effort and courageous determination? That’s worth superior grades. We gotta get some rewards, right?”
Much agreement and more laughter occurred.
Eric continued, “I wonder why our report cards don’t show those superior grades? Do you suppose that it’s because the teachers don’t know what they’re doing? Just kidding, teachers.”
Eric grinned with lips curved in mischief as the audience roared and looked at their own teachers’ red faces.
Mr. B. ran his hand over his face as if cleaning it and thought, “Oh, no. I’ll get a lot of dirty looks in the hallway from teachers now. But, I must admit, it was funny.”
“Hey! Listen,” Eric continued. “Have you ever noticed that all the brands of toilet paper that there are in the stores. Which ones are the best? They all lie and say that they’re the best. Well, I’ve thought of a contest to find out which toilet paper is really the best. The contest simply involves using the process of elimination.” Eric paused for the students to get the double meaning, then continued. “However, I decided not to have the contest because it would be a crappy job to organize; know what I mean?” Then Eric looked at his hands with disgust. He was holding a fake, rubber turd. He dropped it like a hot potato, grimaced, and stepped away from it.
More roaring laughter from the audience, but sour, pickled faces from most of the teachers.
“You know what?” Eric went on. “My mom and dad told me that they can remember when fast food was really fast. They’d order it and by the time they paid for the order, their food was delivered to them. Well, it certainly isn’t fast food any more. You wait in line for ten minutes, if you’re lucky, then there’s a good chance that the order was filled wrong. The only really fast food now is in Africa, where the cheetah chases a gazelle.”
Laughter continues.
A wise guy in one of the back rows yelled, “Come on! Tell a good joke, Shorty!”
Eric saw that it was Lee, one of the three trouble-makers from fourth and fifth grades. He also saw Harvey elbowing Lee to make him be the heckler. Eric didn’t want Lee to get him frustrated and say something he shouldn’t say in school, so he quickly responded, “When the girls look at you, they all realize that Mother Nature has a really good sense of humor. So, see? You are the good joke.”
Lee got laughed at, loudly. Fingers were pointed at him and his face turned scarlet. Anger rose up his neck to his scalp like the red liquid in a hot thermometer. He sat back in his seat and said no more.
“I don’t know about you, but I like Mrs. Plum,” Eric said to the audience.
“Oh, God, no! He said he wouldn’t say anything bad,” Mr. B. said to himself.
Eric paused to let his reference to Mrs. Plum sink in.
The students were wondering if he would really say something unkind.
Eric continued, “But I really do feel sorry for Mrs. Plum, you know. I feel sorry for her because, eventually we will all drive our teachers crazy. Then Mrs. Plum will get stressed and frustrated and the pressure will cause her to lose her faculties. Then she’ll be the only teacher in school. That’s a shame, you know?”
Most student understood the faculties joke and burst into giggles of joy and pleasure at Eric’s boldness to pick on the teachers.
“OK,” Eric said. He was feeling very comfortable now. “Some of you probably have an older brother. Well, I do and the over grown jerk is always picking on me. I got so mad at him one day that I got even with him by putting Super Glue inside his Preparation H tube.”
Eric paused to see how many students would get that joke. He had a tendency to tell jokes, sometimes, that were over-the-heads of some students. But there was laughter enough for him to know that most students understood the joke. However, he saw some teachers cringe with disapproval so he changed the topic of his jokes.
Quickly, over the laughter, Eric pointed to a sixth grade girl and said loudly, “Hey you! Yes, you, the pretty girl with the gold necklace, red hair and yellow dress! What’s your name?”
“Kelli,” she answered shyly.
“May I call you Kelli,” Eric asked.
“Sure,” Kelli said with a giggle.
“OK, then, Kelli. Give me your phone number and I’ll call you tonight.”
As the laughter erupted, Eric winked at Kelli and saw her blush.
Then Eric heard a noise from off the side of the stage; like someone clearing their throat, loudly. Eric did not dare turn and look to see who it was; he knew. It was Grace giving him a warning.
Eric recovered his wits and said, “Just kidding, Kelli, but thank you for helping me get a nice laugh.”
Suddenly Eric saw some guy yawning in the audience. Eric pointed at him. “Hey you! Stop that yawning! Am I keeping you awake? Oops, please don’t answer that. Oh! I know what it is. You’re so tired that you can’t pay attention. Yeah, I know. If teachers had to do the homework assignments that they give us, they’d be tired the next day too.”
More joyful laughter.
“OK, then,” Eric continued, “I forgive you. Go back to sleep. Say your prayers first. Nope. Never mind. Don’t say any prayers or we’ll both get in trouble. We have to follow the Separation of Church and State rule, you know. But secretly,” Eric seemed to lower his voice in a whisper, “we all know that as long as teachers give tests, make report cards, and students have to report to the principal’s office, many students will be praying in school, right?”
This time the teachers were laughing with their students.
Eric held up his hand for quiet. “OK. A little boy asks his mommy, “Mommy, ‘Where do we come from?’ No! No! Forget it. This joke isn’t going in the direction that some of you are stinking … I mean thinking. You think I want Mr. B. and Mrs. Plum mad at me? No way. So pay attention.”
Sounds of disappointment floated up from the audience.
Eric continued, “So this boy asks his mommy, ‘Where do we come from’ and his mommy tells him that we come from dust. The little boy thinks about that, then asks, ‘Where do we go when we die?’ His mommy said that we all go back to being dust. The boy is really confused and makes a really ugly face. Then he tells his mommy that he’s not going to bed at night. His mommy asks him why he’s not going to bed. So the little boy, with tears in his eyes, tells his mommy, ‘Because there’s a lot of people being born or dying under my bed.’”
Eric laughed with the audience and twisted his face in a funny way, as if his skin were soft rubber.
Suddenly, over the loud laughter, Dan shouted, “You’re not funny!”
Eric saw and heard right away that the heckler was in the same area as Lee was sitting. Eric raised his right hand to shade his eyes from the spotlight. He looked closely and saw that it was Dan. It looked like Harvey was now elbowing him so he would do the heckling. Harvey looked angry about something and his anger made his whole body and face look twisted, like he was a tornado trapped in a glass jar.
Eric’s smile fell away. He said, “I guess you must be deaf then, or very envious, perhaps extremely jealous that I’m getting all the laughs. Anyway, let me ask you this. Tell me, all-mighty-wise -one, which way does a donkey’s tail move when it walks? Would it be clockwise, or counter-clockwise?”
Dan just sat, frozen to his chair, not responding, even though Eric could see Harvey angrily whispering to him.
Students were turned around in their chair, staring at Dan, pointing at him and laughing.
“Never mind. You don’t have to answer that question because we’ll all see the answer when you walk out of the auditorium,” Eric joked.
Crazy, zany, unrestrained booms of laughter bounced throughout the auditorium, like the numbered balls in the Lotto machine. The students and teachers looked at Dan, Lee, and Harvey and burst into laughter that was so loud that their chairs vibrated.
“However, I want to be as fair as I possibly can to you,” Eric laughed, “so if this next joke does not get a laugh, then I won’t tell it, OK? Ah … Do you need some extra time to figure that one out?”
Dan’s face changed from red to a pale, pasty white.
Backstage, Grace was thinking, I don’t know what those guys’ problem is, but I’ll bet the name of it is long and hard to pronounce.
Eric’s heckling of the heckler caused more laughter to spread through the auditorium, like flooding water over a river bank. The students were having so much fun that many of them were swaying back and forth in their seats.
Eric saw this and staggered as he said, “Whoa! Please sit still! You’re making me seasick and I don’t want to puke on the front row.
“You know,” Eric spoke, “I had a teacher once who was so tall and skinny that if he walked into a room where the guys were shooting pool, one of those guys would have grabbed him and put chalk on his head.”
Laughter floated like light snowflakes around the auditorium as someone in the audience yelled, “Must have been Mr. Bunnlow.”
Eric looked at Mr. B. who was staring back at him—but he was laughing inside. Eric didn’t know what to say. He didn’t mean Mr. B. at all, but it sounded like he did.
“Ah … Nope … No way. I didn’t mean Mr. Bunnlow at all. Never even thought of him when I told the joke.” Then Eric just couldn’t help himself. The idea just appeared in his head and his mouth stole it, so he said, “Although … ah … from up here on stage, it does look like there’s blue powder on Mr. B.’s head. Oh, Geez! I shouldn’t have said that, because it certainly isn’t true. It must have been one of my lady teachers … Yeah, that’s it! It was a tall, skinny lady teacher.
“And you know what? She was also so skinny that her legs looked like ropes. She had to tie knots in them, half way up her legs, so she could say she had knees.”
Eric had the audience in stitches. Just the thought of a lady teacher with legs as skinny as ropes and knots for knees caused explosive laughing.
“But that’s not all, you know,” Eric added, “She was really sneaky. She could sneak right up on you, when you’re messing around, and you wouldn’t even see her. That’s because she was so skinny that when she turned sideways, you actually couldn’t see her.
“And her face was kind of strange too. Well, actually, she wasn’t kind but she was very strange. I’m positive that if she ever went to a zoo, the animal trainers would grab her immediately and put her back into her cage.
“Yep. She was the skinniest person I ever saw. You know what the word asinine means? It means something is foolish or stupid. But, anyway, this teacher was so skinny that she could have had nine of them and you still wouldn’t see her if she turned sideways. Don’t get the joke? Just think about the first part of the word that I said means foolish or stupid.”
Eric waited for the laughter and thigh-slapping to quiet, then seriously said, “OK now. Forget that teacher. I’ll tell you about my uncle. He’s got a really terrific job; very important in thousands of people’s lives. But like a teacher, he doesn’t get paid nearly as much as his job’s worth. My uncle’s a diamond cutter … Really … He’s a diamond cutter and things have to be perfect when you have a job like that … especially at Yankee Stadium where he cuts the grass. The owners, the players and the fans always expect perfection, and my uncle gives it to them when he mows the infield diamond area. Oh yeah, he’s a very important guy.”
Eric’s serious face then turned to a huge smile as the audience laughed even harder. Eric paused, then heard a voice from the side of the stage. He did not turn away from his audience, but he heard Cheryl whisper that his time was almost up. He was having so much fun that he didn’t want to leave. He liked all the attention, but he was determined to tell one more joke.
Eric said, “OK. Let me leave you with one more thought. Did you know that nervousness, frustration, headaches, and anger are really educational? Yep. They sure are. You get them mostly in school; from your teachers, right? So, whoever said that teachers are a pain in the … ah … butt, should change that to teachers being a pain in the head.
“Hey, it was fun being here. Thanks for being such a great audience. I’m so glad that I could give you the pleasure of my company and my wonderful sense of hilarious humor.”
Eric walked off the stage waving to the clapping, cheering students; all but Harvey, Dan and Lee. Dawn was nowhere in sight.
The students started standing and clapping, so Cheryl and Grace pushed Eric back out onto the stage to take another bow and wave to the students and good-humored teachers, who were still laughing and clapping.
When Eric returned, tears and surprise washed over his eyes. He was stunned and so happy that he couldn’t hide it. He looked at Grace with joyful eyes and whispered, “That was slicker than snot, ya know?”
Grace just nodded at him, and was happy for him.
Eric still felt dazed, but very pleased, and maybe for the first time in his life he felt humble, modest and very grateful to be appreciated. It was a strange feeling for him. All his friends came to him and hugged him, showing him that he did a superb job. He blushed as a smile froze on his reddened face.
Dear reader, there’s not enough time to tell you about the remainder of the talent show contest, but some of the performers were very good and deserve recognition. A couple of days later, the winners were chosen by a vote of the students. Mrs. Plum announced the winners after morning announcements.
The fourth grade winner was Faith Knoll. She played the piano.
The fifth grade winner was Jodie Fost. She surprised everyone with her ventriloquist comedy routine.
The sixth grade winner? It was Eric, the stand-up comedian. It surprised him, but not his close friends who were all very happy for him.
And, guess what? Mrs. Plum and Mr. B. got together and bought trophies for the winners; engraved, too. They said that trophies were also being made for last year’s winners and that they would get them soon. Then, they continued to surprise everyone by announcing that Cheryl and Grace would receive a framed, certificate of appreciation for being excellent stage managers.
So, my dear readers, February came and went quickly. February was fun and had strong hands for pushing boredom away with the talent show, Valentine’s Day party, and a long weekend for President’s Day.
BERT’S QUESTIONS
Can a teacher give a homeless student homework?
What would happen if someone broke a mirror with a rabbit’s foot?
CHAPTER 16
March stormed in like a police SWAT team, dumping several inches of snow, then glassy ice and sleet that stung exposed skin.
Snow plows were out regularly in the early morning hours. Huge mounds of snow lined both sides of the main roads and some side roads. Traffic slowed, students got to school late, and lesson schedules had to be altered.
The classrooms were colder than usual. The ice and frost on the windows was so thick that the students couldn’t even see out of them. The west wall of the classroom was mostly windows, so the west wall looked like one side of an ice castle.
The hallways were wet and puddles collected inside lockers from melted snow brought into school on hats, coats and shoes.
For some students, the best part of all was that they got some “snow days” off from school. Now, instead of just looking at the snow from bus windows, they could play in it all day.
Old Man Winter likes kids. He delights in making their cheeks look like red roses on fresh white snow.
Basically, March was a long, boring month without any special holidays. It wasn’t just students that didn’t like March for its lack of holidays; the teachers felt the same way.
Mr. B. was helping his students with words that have the same spelling, but different meanings. Mr. B. said that those kinds of words were called homographs.
Mr. B. read some of those words aloud, then wrote them in a sentence across the chalkboard. While looking over his shoulder at his students, Mr. B. stated, “Here’s one of the many reasons that the American language is so difficult to learn, especially for adult immigrants.”
On the chalkboard he wrote three sentences:
1. Please polish the Polish table.
2. The weird soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
3. The picture of a bass was painted on the bass drum.
Mr. B. asked his students to think of some homographs. He placed his students in pairs and asked them to help each other put those words in sentences.
Mr. B. spent more time on this exercise than he had intended, but thought it was a worthwhile activity. He thought it would show his students that their language was much more complex than they might think, and that it only seemed easy to them because they grew up hearing it, learning it and using it. It would show them that an adult immigrant would have a hard time learning the American language.
Mr. B. gave the students ten minutes to work while he walked around the classroom helping the students who needed it. After ten minutes he asked for volunteers to tell him their homographs, then their sentence. He wrote the sentences on the chalkboard for everyone to see.
Mr. B.’s volunteers gave these sentences:
4. There is no time like the present to present me with a present.
5. The dove quickly dove into the trees to get away from the hawk.
6. Why did he object to that object?
7. The kid’s mother wound the bandage around his wound.
8. Mr. B. had to subject his students to the subject.
9. A tear came to my eye when I heard my pants tear.
10. The wind was too strong to wind up the rope.
11. A buck does a dance when he finds the does.
12. The two girls were too close to the door to close it.
Mr. B’s students had fun with that activity, but Mr. B. had to stop asking for volunteers because he wanted to give his students a bathroom break before lunch.
Matt looked at Eric and whispered, “Do farts have lumps in them?”
Eric was totally surprised to hear Matt ask a question like that. Eric smiled, saying, “No. They shouldn’t have lumps. Why do you ask?”
Matt replied, “Well, if Mr. B. doesn’t pick our row to use the bathroom real soon, I think I’m going to have a fart with a wet lump in it. Know what I mean?”
Eric burst into laughter and everyone looked at him, even Mr. B. Eric stopped laughing, then whispered, “Yeah. I know what you mean, but I wish I didn’t. Just before lunch, that’s not an image that I want in my head. Yucko Matto.”
Mr. B. looked at Eric and Matt, then called Matt’s row to use the bathroom. Eric giggled as he watched Matt squeezing his buttocks and walking funny.
At lunch Eric asked Matt and Robby to come to a quiet corner of their table and whispered, “I didn’t want to gross-out the girls.”
“What are you up to now, Eric,” Matt stated with suspicion.
“Yeah,” Robby added. “What is it now; a dirty joke?”
“No. Listen. Matt got me thinking—”
“Oh, no!” Matt interrupted quickly. “We’re in trouble now. Eric’s been thinking; a sure sign of trouble.”
Matt and Robby laughed as Eric stared at them straight-faced.
Then, as if Matt and Robby had not laughed at him, Eric said, “Anyway. I was thinking of how many names people use for the word fart. It sounded like it would be fun to make a game out of it; just the three of us.”
Robby scowled at Eric. “You want us to think of other names for a fart? That sounds like a fun game to you?”
Matt said, “Isn’t just plain old ‘fart’ good enough for you?”
“Not if you can have fun being creative and have fun thinking of different names for farts. Geez, can’t we at least try?” Eric said, with disappointment in his voice.”
“OK, then, Eric. You go first,” Matt responded, sounding impatient.
“I already have a couple to get us started,” Eric said enthusiastically. “How about gravy pants or a turd missile or even butt perfume?”
Matt and Robby grinned, even though they did not want to encourage Eric.
“OK. Let’s see,” said Matt. “How about underwear wind? That OK?”
Eric, “Yeah sure. Keep it going.”
“Maybe boxer burp for guys and panty burp for girls,” Robby stated.
Matt and Robby saw Eric writing. Matt said, “What are you doing now?”
“Duh! I’m writing them down so I don’t forget them,” Eric stated with sarcasm. Then he said, “Oh! Oh! Oh! I got one. How about pants polluters or jeans stainers? What do you think?”
Matt and Robby both nodded their head up and down with acceptance.
“Let’s see,” Robby added. “How about a butt cough?”
“Eric said, “That’s good, Matt. So butt burp would work, too.”
“Sure. If you say so,” Robby said without enthusiasm.
“Everybody knows cut the cheese, but you can add it to the list,” Matt said. Then added, “Oh yeah. How about break wind?”
Eric stated, “Already did those two.”
Robby grinned and said, “You already cut the cheese and broke wind?
“Wish I had. How about fanny wind, or fanny bubble. Oh! Oh! I got it! How about butt wind? No! Make it butt breeze,” Eric added with a smile, then said, “Ting.”
“Yep. How about crack gas, crack wind, or even crack splitter?” said Robby.
“Yeah! That’s good,” Eric said, excitedly. “And guess where you would probably buy those jeans stainers and jeans polluters?”
“Darned if I know,” Matt responded.
“In the K-Fart store, of course,” Eric said as he slapped the table.
Slapping the table got the attention of Maragold, Cheryl, and Grace. They all stared down the table and heard Eric, Matt and Robby whispering.
“Hey guys! What’re you doin’, Why all the whispering?” Maragold inquired.
“Just joking around,” Matt answered.
“Come back and tell us the jokes,” Maragold said.
Eric whispered, “Don’t tell them. Don’t tell them. They’ll get mad.”
“What? You don’t want Grace to find out that you’re a pervert?” Robby teased.
“Hey! That’s not true. Fart jokes don’t make a person a pervert,” Eric replied to Robby’s insult.
“Just kidding you. Don’t get all upset,” Robby stated, rolling his eyes.
“OK. Knock off the fart talk with the girls,” Matt said to Eric and Robby.
The boys moved back near the girls, and when Cheryl asked about the jokes, Matt just said, “You don’t want to know.”
“Oh! That bad, huh?” Cheryl answered.
“Yeah. They were just stinky jokes that we were testing to see how funny they were. They weren’t worth repeating,” Eric said with one of his innocent smiles.
“Well. If they were that bad, then we don’t need to hear them. Right, Cheryl, Grace?” Maragold asked.
“Yes,” Cheryl and Grace both answered at once.
“Excellent choice,” Matt said.
Wonderful! Eric thought.
March was passing so slowly that it must have been riding on the back of a turtle. However, Mr. B. tried to keep the students busy and have fun, too.
One day he finished his reading, math, social studies and spelling lessons earlier than usual. Since he had extra time before lunch he had a volunteer “joke time” or “funny story” time.
A boy named Brandon volunteered first and came to the front of the room with a shy, embarrassed expression. He stammered, at first, but once he got his story started he did a splendid job.
Brandon began by saying: “A couple of years ago some kids put a tack on my chair as a joke. I didn’t see it so I sat on the darn thing. I jumped up so fast that I tipped over my desk.”
Quiet laughter began.
“Well, anyway, it didn’t really hurt much after the first bit of pain. But later it started itching real bad”—more laughter—“so I kept having to scratch my butt more and more.” Mr. B. rolled his eyes hoping Brandon would keep it a clean story. “Well, I have to admit that it was funny, at first. But then it started hurting to itch it. At gym class, Coach noticed a stain on the back of my gym shorts. It was blood. I told him what had happened and he sent me to the nurse.” Boisterous laughter broke out. “Well, believe me, when the nurse said she had to check my butt because the stain on my gym shorts was blood, I almost died of embarrassment. But that wasn’t the worst part of it either. See, it was infected and I had to go to the doctor. I’ve gone to him for a long time, and it was better than having a lady check my butt again. Anyway I’ve been going to Dr. Benjamin Dover for a few years now and I never realized until my mom teased me, that when he had to check my butt, and he said, ‘Bend over,’ he was also saying his own name, Ben Dover. My mom said that it was a common joke with his patients, but I’d never heard it. I’ll bet he didn’t like being called, ‘Bend Over,’ any more than I wanted to ‘bend over’ for him to check my butt.”
Even Mr. B. was laughing and clapping loudly with his students.
Brandon returned to his seat with encouraging smiles and “thumbs up” signs.
Charlie volunteered next. He walked to the front of the room.
Now, dear reader, first I must mention that Charlie had always worn real baggy clothes to hide his over weight problem. He also seldom volunteered for anything because he didn’t want to call attention to himself. He had friends, but usually didn’t say a lot. Occasionally he would break out of his shy shell and talk quietly.
But the Charlie standing in front of the room now was a different Charlie. No baggy pants. No baggy shirt. Nice, clean shoes. Smiling. He had lost a lot of flabby weight. His face was thinner. His stomach was no longer hanging over his belt, and his hair was long and combed neatly. His longer hair drew attention away from the facial weight that he has lost over the last few months. He looked good.
Charlie said, “I had a birthday party last year and I guess I had about six or eight friends over to my house. I had a lot of soda, too. I was drinking a Pepsi, but a little while later, after I had set the can down to do something, my Pepsi can would suddenly start overflowing. Bubbles and foam got all over the table, the counter top, the floor. So I’d clean it up and throw the Pepsi can away. I got more Pepsi and drank some. Nothing bad happened. Must have been a bad can, I thought. I set the new can down to talk to someone and the can started overflowing with bubbles and foam again. I thought, “Did I shake the can by accident or were they defective cans? Well, to make a long story much shorter, I had six cans of Pepsi and had to throw all of them away, then clean up the messes they made. I had no idea what was going on. All my Pepsi cans turned into Pepsi volcanoes.
“Then all the guys at the party started laughing all at once. My mom and dad too. You know what they had done? My dad bought some Alka-Seltzer tablets that are really for head aches and stomach aches. They fizz a lot when put into water, but they fizz even more when put into carbonated soda. My mom and dad had told all my friends about the trick they were playing on me. So all my friends would try to distract me, and they did, while my mom and dad took turns putting the Alka-Seltzer tablets in my Pepsi cans. Then all the fizz and fun would start; for them, not me. But it was fun and funny once I knew what was happening.”
Charlie brushed the hair away from his forehead using the fingers of both hands, like the teeth of a comb.
A female voice yelled, “Hey! Charlie. Cut your hair. It’s as long as a girls.”
Charlie’s whole relaxed attitude changed immediately. His face dramatically saddened. He swallowed hard and looked at his feet. His face turned red as he shuffled back to his desk, not saying another word.
Mr. B. stepped to the front of the room and sternly said, “I don’t want to know who said that ‘long-hair-comment’ to Charlie, … but whoever you are, I’m terribly ashamed of you. You should be ashamed of yourself also. Even if you aren’t a friend of Charlie’s, you can’t deny that he has been nice to everyone in this class. I’ve never seen him be mean or heard him be mean to anybody in this class. So whoever you are, you can’t possibly dislike him. So, why would you embarrass Charlie with that mean ‘girlish hair,’ comment? If you were a girl with short hair, would you want someone to say, in front of the whole class, that you should let your hair grow longer because you look too much like a boy? For goodness sake, having long hair doesn’t make a boy look like a girl any more than having short hair makes a girl look like a boy
“Is that all you see in Charlie? Just his hair? Don’t all of you see that he’s lost a lot of weight and gotten stronger by lifting weights? Did you notice how well his clothes fit now? Has anyone noticed how much better he is in gym class now? How much more athletic he is now? I have notes from Coach telling me how pleased he is with Charlie improvements. The changes he made took a lot of very hard work. Could any of you do that? He has become a much more confident student. Embarrassing him only weakens those good feelings that he has about himself and that he has worked very hard to get. He’s earned my complete respect. I honestly admire Charlie. He saw something he wanted to change about himself, and he struggled to change it, and was entirely successful. Nice work, Charlie, and a darn good joke, too.”
Mr. B. started clapping his hands and looking at Charlie, congratulating him for his determination to lose weight.
The Maragold gang was quick to clap vigorously in support of Charlie.
Then the entire class applauded him, loudly.
Over the loud, clapping noise, a female voice said, “I’m very sorry, Charlie.”
Charlie looked at Mr. B., then Matt, then broke into a big grin and said, “Thank you. That’s very nice of all of you.”
When the clapping stopped, Mr. B. said, “I’m not supposed to say anything about this, but I feel that I must tell all of you something. Charlie has been working-out with Matt and Robby. He’s not really into karate like Matt and Robby are, but they exercise together, and they lift weights together. You may have noticed that Charlie is now very careful about what he eats and how much he eats in the cafeteria.
“That was supposed to be private, a secret. Yes, I feel guilty for telling the secret. However, I really believe it was worth it because I think, in this case, that it will do much more good to tell about it than to keep it a secret. I also apologize to Charlie, Matt and Robby for letting the cat out of the bag.
“OK, Enough about that. We’ve run out of time. Everybody get ready for a bathroom break, then lunch.”
At the cafeteria a girl sat close to Charlie. When she was done talking to Charlie, they both smiled at each other.
Robby joined Mr. B.’s sixth grade students just as Eric was saying, “My mom and dad went shopping last weekend and I had to go with them. They said this is a windy month, you know, it’s the ‘In like a lion, out like a lamb’ month that adults are always talking about. My mom and dad agreed that I’d need a wind-breaker coat, even though I didn’t want one. But it turned out to be pretty funny.”
“What happened,” Matt asked.
“Well, I got the coat. Then we went home. It was windy outside and my mom told me to go outside to test the coat,” Eric said. Then, “I stood outside for about five minutes until my hair looked like a ruined, wind-blown bird’s nest. I had an idea, plus I got too cold so I came inside with a disappointed look on my face.
“My mom and dad saw the look, and dad said, ‘Didn’t work, huh?’”
“I told them it didn’t work at all because I didn’t hear the jacket break wind a single time while I was out there. They stared at me as I hung the wind-breaker over the back of a chair. Keeping a very serious expression on my face, I turned around to face them and said, ‘Well, at least the jacket didn’t allow the wind to penetrate it. So I guess it was good for something, although I’d much rather have a wind breaker that can really break wind.’ Instead of staring at me, they stared at each other with their mouths open. But they never said a word to me.”
Cheryl said to Eric, “Boys’ minds are in the gutter a lot, but yours is in the toilet a lot, isn’t it?”
“You’ve always said that I have a crappy personality, right?” responded Eric.
“See what I mean?” Cheryl said, shaking her head. “Back in the toilet again.”
“OK! OK! You’re right. No more toilet humor from me … honest … until tomorrow, anyway,” Eric said while laughing.
The class had been studying Organisms in the Environment in science class. They learned about ecology, ecosystems, the water cycle, carbon dioxide cycle, nitrogen cycle, food chains, energy, and were about ready to start a new lesson concerning Relationships Among Organisms.
But Mr. B. noticed the class was unfocused, sleepy, and there was a lot of yawning. He told the students to put their books away. Then he said that he’d like to read to them, which surprised everyone.
“I’ll be reading some weird and funny answers to test question that I’ve gotten over the years.” Mr. B. stated. Then he paused and added, “Of course, I will not tell you the names of the students who wrote these answers. It would cause embarrassment, and that would be very unkind of me.”
Instantly the students were alert. Eyes sparkled and smiles appeared. They sat up straight and there was no more yawning.
Mr. B. said, “I hope I don’t have to add to this list of funny answers when you take your science tests.
“OK. Here’s the first one. The test question asked the student to explain the difference between H2O and CO2. The answer given by one of my past geniuses was: ‘H2O is hot water and CO2 is cold water.’”
Hesitant laughter slipped out.
Mr. B. said, “Next. Someone explained, on a test, ‘When you smell an odorless gas, it would probably be carbon monoxide.
“Next. The three kinds of blood vessels are: arteries, vanes, and caterpillars. Veins was misspelled like the vane in ‘weather vane,’ and the third kind of blood vessel is supposed to be capillaries.”
Now the laughter was contagious.
Mr. B. waited for the laughter to die down, then continued, saying, “Next. ‘The moon is a planet just like Earth, only it’s much deader.’ Next. ‘Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines down on them and makes them sweat.’ See? Marking test papers isn’t always boring for teachers.”
The students were laughing hard now.
“OK. the next one. ‘Mushrooms always grow in wet places. That’s why they are shaped like umbrellas.’ Wrong, but very creative, huh?”
The whole class was laughing very hard now. Mr. B. heard several people yell, “Ting.” It sounded like the ching-ching sound of a cash register.
He refocused, then said more loudly, “Next one. ‘The pistol of a flower is its only protection against insects.’ You guessed it! The word ‘pistil’ is spelled as if it were a handgun.
“And, how about this one. ‘A fossil is an extinct animal. The older it is, the more extincter it is.’”
Some students were laughing so hard that they began slapping their desks, thighs, and tapping their shoes on the floor. Mr. B. closed the classroom door and the students thought he was finished. Some of them said, “More, more. Please.”
“Ah, … Yes. I seldom have a boring class. Think. Which of you will get added to this list of funny answers to test questions? Funny, huh? No? We’ll see.
“OK. I’m going to continue, but you’ll have to be more quiet. Also, please don’t tap your feet on the floor because you’ll disturb the classroom that’s underneath us. Quiet! Listen! Someone wrote, ‘A liter is the number of poopies that a dog has.’
“Next. ‘A magnet is something that you find crawling all over a dead animal.’”
“Ting!” Cheryl yelled, and Mr. B. smiled at her.
“Not so noisy, please,” Mr. B. had to remind his students. Then, “Next. Someone wrote, ‘A vacuum is a large empty space where the Pope lives.’ The Pope doesn’t live in a vacuum. He lives in the Vatican, which is located in Rome, Italy.”
Some students were blowing their noses, and others were wiping laughing tears from their eyes. The room was full of hilarious sounds.
“Next,” Mr. B. continued. “When you breathe, you inspire, but when you do not breathe, you expire. Inspire means to encourage someone to use greater effort or creativity. Expire means to die. This student got mixed-up trying to explain the simple acts of inhaling and exhaling air.
“Now here’s the last one I have for you. The test question was about respiration, which you should know has to do with how you breathe. This student said, ‘Respiration is made up of two parts. The first part is inspiration and the second part is expectoration.”
When Mr. B. got a lot of curious looks from students, he said, “Expectoration really means ‘To cough up and spit out phlegm.’ You could say that expectoration simply means to spit.”
Many students stopped laughing to say, “Yuck,” or “Gross,” or some other word to express their disgust.
Now the lazy, tired clouds that filled the students’ minds a little while ago, gave way to a bright mental sunshine.
Mr. B. was pleased because the remaining lesson, social studies, went very well. He would make up for the lost time in tomorrow’s science lesson.
The next week passed quickly, and without much “ting.” Not in the classroom, anyway. It was in the cafeteria, during lunch that “ting” was almost always present.
A few days after St. Patrick’s Day, Mr. B’s students went to their gym class. Eric stood by his locker, next to Matt. Everyone else was noisy and that’s just what Eric wanted. He lowered his voice and asked Matt how to go about kissing Grace for the first time.
Matt started to grin, but stopped quickly when he saw that Eric was being extremely serious; very unnatural for him.
“Do you think she wants you to kiss her?” Matt inquired.
“How should I know,” Eric whispered impatiently.
“It’s just a feeling you get when you look at each other and it looks like you’re sharing the same thoughts and feelings. It’s hard to explain. But you can find out by simply asking her if you can kiss her,” Matt responded.
“Simple, huh. I’ll get scared, embarrassed and ting, all at the same time,” said Eric as he and Matt both put on their gym shorts.
“Yeah. I know what you mean. It’s not easy. It was a lot easier for me, but it happened by accident. Still, before it happened, I couldn’t help feeling full of huge doubt, and fear of rejection. Maybe all guys get that way before their first kiss. I guess it can’t be easy for girls either,” said Matt.
“Yeah, like if you get along really well with someone, and you want to kiss them real bad, then you kiss them and find out that they have breath like number two in an unflushed toilet,” Eric said. Then he smiled and whispered, “Let me kiss you, then you tell me how my breath smells, OK?”
“You do and I’ll stick your head in the toilet and hold it there. I mean it,” Matt sternly stated so Eric would take it as a very serious warning.
“Well, you’re right. I’d have to stand on the bench to do it anyway. Man! You know I was just kidding,” Eric said as he tied his gym shoes.
Matt looked into Eric’s eyes. “Some times I’m not sure about you. Never can tell for sure what weird thing you’ll do next.”
“OK. What do you mean about kissing by accident? Your first kiss with Mara, I mean,” Eric asked.
“Honestly,” Matt said, “it just happened by accident, at the school dance. We were dancing a slow dance. We were dancing cheek-to-cheek when I whispered something into Mara’s ear. Before I was done whispering she turned her head to face me. Our faces were so close together that our noses touched. I could feel her sweet breath on my face and I thought I’d melt into a puddle. Suddenly our lips touched, then pressed together. It just sort of happened like that. It was a great feeling. Maybe we were lucky that it happened that way, and extra lucky that no one saw us kiss. Now we don’t have to worry about that first kiss.”
“You were dancing cheek-to-cheek?” Eric asked.
“Yeah. It was a slow dance.”
“How could you kiss Mara if you were cheek-to-cheek? You know. When you’re dancing with your butts touching,” Eric asked.
Matt rolled his eyes up into his head, then ignored Eric.
After Eric pulled his gym shirt over his head, he said, “But what if I try to kiss Grace and one of us has a whistling booger? You know what I mean; a hard, crusty, dry snot that whistles when you breathe, especially when you breathe hard. How do I politely stop trying to kiss her? Do I just stop and say, ‘Oh! Wait a second so I can dig out this hard, green nugget.’ Then what? What do I do with the booger? Wipe it on my pants, then pretend it’s not there? I’m doomed no matter what.”
“Come on Eric. How many times have you ever had a booger like that? Not very often, right? If you know when you want to try to kiss her, then go somewhere, like the boy’s bathroom, and blow your nose. You’re making a big deal out of something that’s not ever likely to happen.”
“She’s beautiful, huh?” Eric said of Grace.
“Yeah. For a midget, she’s very pretty. As a matter of fact, that’s why I wonder what she sees in you,” Matt said teasingly.
Eric scowled at Matt.
Matt laughed heartily, then said,” Eric. I’m just kidding. Actually, for a midget, you’re a handsome guy too. OK, I’m just kidding about the midget part. You two belong together.”
“Yeah … I know,” Eric replied.
Matt patted Eric on the back as they finished tying their gym shoes. Then they both ran to the gym.
The weather turned wet and windy. If it had been a little colder, all the rain would have amounted to a few inches of snow.
Maragold loved the rain, especially the sound of it on the house windows and the roof. She loved to look up at the sky and see trillions of angel tears falling toward her, splashing as they hit the ground. She assumed that they were always tears of happiness because without water, the earth would die. Water provided life for everything.
Maragold also felt as if the rain water was pure; as if God was in the rain itself. The rain cleaned the earth and gave forgiveness, renewal, cleanliness and peace to everything that lives there. Maragold also loved the clean smell and freshness of the air after the rain acted like a filter to clean the air of dust, pollen and flying insects.
In school, Maragold constantly stared at the classroom windows, lost in the thoughts, sounds and images that the rain helped create in her.
Nearly the whole day slipped by as she felt dazed by personal thoughts about the wonders of rain, and how it made her feel.
At two-thirty, Mr. B. announced the beginning of the St. Patrick’s Day party. It was just cookies and cup-cakes with green frosting, but the students loved the freedom from work and being able to talk freely. They washed the food down their throats with green lime-aid and chatted with friends.
Maragold’s friends noticed the quiet mood that she had been in all day. They had seen it before, so they tried not to bother her.
Maragold’s images and thoughts about rain turned to her dad. For some reason she was thinking about the walkie-talkies that she and her dad used in an indoor hide-and-seek game, when it was raining outside. She was remembering how much fun it was to play with her dad, and what a good playmate he had been. A loving smile spread across her face at the fond memories of other games they played on rainy days.
Rainy days were also times for joke sessions with her dad. She remembered one time, when she was in second or third grade, and she asked her dad if being a teacher was a hard job. She was surprised when he said, “Not really, Sweetheart. You see, we teachers have an agreement with our school’s Board of Education. They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” Maragold and her dad laughed, then Mr. Shane told her that teaching was a difficult job, if it was done correctly and with concern for students.
Drifting thoughts lead Maragold to remember one afternoon when her dad arrived home late because he had chaperoned a roller skating activity at his school. Maragold remembered her dad looking at her and her mom with a startled, big-eyed, smiling expression, as if some remarkable thought had just occurred to him. Then, excitedly, he asked Maragold and his wife, “What if the Hokey Pokey really is what life is all about?”
Maragold remembered one day when she came home with a science test paper that had a grade in the eighties. She usually got grades in the nineties, so she thought her mom and dad might be mad at her. Her dad looked at the grade, then the questions, then her answers. He paused, then said, “Well, Maragold. To make an error is only human, but to forgive it is against parent and school policy. So, you will only be allowed spider, fly and chunky worm soup for dinner. Then you must go to your bedroom and stay there until you kiss a four-eyed frog, and turn it into a clown.”
Maragold told her dad, “Well then. At bedtime all I have to do is kiss you, right?” Mr. Shane wore glasses, sometimes referred to as four-eyes. “You’re a clown, right Papa?”
Maragold, and her mom and dad, laughed together.
Maragold was glad that her dad wasn’t mad. She guessed that in his own funny way, he was telling her that it was OK if she slipped-up once in awhile.
Now she had an image of her dad laughing. She enjoyed hearing him laugh. She thought that he sounded like the old-time comedian, Red Skelton. Mr. Shane had video tapes of the very old Red Skelton TV comedy shows. Her dad and Red Skelton were both the first ones to laugh at their own jokes. It was as if it was just as important to make themselves feel good as it was to make their audience feel good.
Then there was the time when it was the first day of school for Mr. Shane’s students. Before her dad went to work, he said to Maragold, “Well, Maragold, everything is neat and organized in my classroom. I child-proofed the room, but I’ll bet the kids manage to get inside anyway.” Then they both left for school with bright smiles. Maragold saw her dad get into his car and he was still laughing at his joke, just as Red Skelton would have done. Then her dad started beeping the car horn and she did not know why.
Then she snapped out of her thoughts of the past and realized that there was no car horn beeping. It was Cheryl and Grace shouting at her to get her attention.
There were two cookies, a cup cake, lime-aid and a napkin on her desk. She wasn’t even aware that they had put them there.
Cheryl and Grace stood by her desk, then Matt and Eric showed up with crumbs falling off their lips like pebbles off a cliff. They were about to asked Maragold what she was day-dreaming about, when Mr. B. called for the attention of all his students. He told them that he had a problem that he would like them to help him solve.
Mr. B. said, “Let’s say that I want to walk from this chalkboard to the door. Now the door looks like it’s about twelve feet away. I can’t go twelve feet unless I first go half way, which is six feet. But I can’t go six feet without going to the half way point which is three feet. Nor can I walk three feet without going halfway, which is one and one-half feet.
“You see my problem now? I can’t move forward because whenever I try, I end up going backward. Think about this problem, just for fun. Not homework, just a fun problem to make you think. Let me know what you think, if you come up with a way to solve the problem, or explain it. Yes, it’s voluntary.”
The classroom became a bee hive, buzzing with quick chatter. Some students were talking about the problem and how strange it was, while other students just kept talking about their favorite topics. Mr. B. was glad to see that there were some students who seemed challenged, curious, motivated, “ting.”
Soon Mr. B. said, “OK people. Let’s get cleaned up and ready for home.”
When the room was cleaned up, the chairs picked up and placed on desks—upside-down—Mr. B. called rows of students to line up at the door.
After everyone was lined up, he said, “I hope everyone has their social studies books so you can finish your assignment to write a one page essay on how Mohandas Gandhi helped lead India to independence from Britain.
“And that essay is due … Please listen and stop talking. Your essay is due three days after the day before yesterday.” Mr. B. repeated that as if it were normal to talk that way.
Several surprised students said, “It’s due when?”
Mr. B. said, “OK. I’ll say it one more time … Your Gandhi essay is due three days after the day before yesterday.”
The room was now as quiet as a midnight cemetery.
Maragold, Cheryl and Grace looked at each other, rolling their eyes as if straining to think, then Cheryl said, “Oh! You’re just confusing us on purpose, Mr. B.”
“Why would you say that, Cheryl?” answered Mr. B.
Confused heads were turning to look at Cheryl, then to look at Mr. B.
“You know, Mr. B. Three days after the day before yesterday is tomorrow. You’re saying that our essay is due tomorrow.”
“Oh yeah!” Mr. B. said as if he was surprised. “Well that’s what I meant to say. Your essay is due tomorrow … Ah, thank you, Cheryl.”
Mr. B. laughed and lead his students down the hallway.
A voice said, “But Mr. B., what’s the answer to that walking problem?”
Mr. B. looked over his shoulder and said, “Just don’t stop half-way and you’ll get to where you’re going.” He laughed and took his students to their buses.
BERT’S QUESTIONS
If corn oil comes from corn and vegetable oil comes from vegetables,
where does baby oil come from?
How much deeper would the ocean be if it didn’t have sponges?
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