Some Pigtails

by Jonathan Eig

  “Of course,” Mr. Murch said.

  “What’s wrong with a little distraction?”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Mr. Murch said.

  Grampa started to laugh, but he pretended to cough to cover it up.

  “I mean, kids are always going to get distracted,” Lola said. “We’re distracted by passing notes to each other, or a bird at the window, or smells from the cafeteria, or someone sneezing—or coughing,” Lola said, glancing at Grampa. “And pigtails aren’t that distracting. So why don’t you let us vote on them?”

  “I don’t think a vote is appropriate in this case,” Mr. Murch said. “I think we know how the students would vote. This is my decision.”

  “And is there any way we can change your mind?” Lola asked.

  “I’m sorry, but no,” Mr. Murch said. “Any other questions?”

  “Not yet,” Lola said, rubbing her chin, “but I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

  “I’m afraid my decision stands.” Mr. Murch put his hands on his desk.

  Lola looked at her grandfather, hoping he would say something. He gave her a wink, but he didn’t speak.

  “C’mon, kid,” Grampa Ed said finally, standing up. “Let’s go. Good day, Mr. Murch.”

  When they were outside in the hall, Lola stopped walking and looked up at her grandfather.

  “Why didn’t you help me?” she asked. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “You didn’t need my help, honey,” Grampa Ed said. “You were great. You were really brave and really smart. Made me proud.”

  “But I lost,” she said.

  Grampa’s face loosened, and he bent over until his nose was almost touching Lola’s.

  “Trust me, kid, you didn’t lose.”

  “Yes, I did. I lost.”

  “Well, you don’t have to quit. If you want to keep pushing for pigtails, you keep pushing, and I’ll help. It might be fun.”

  “How?” Lola asked.

  Grampa smiled.

  “Distractions,” he said.

  The next day at school, Lola wore her white shirt and blue skirt, as usual. But she had no pigtails, no ponytails, no jewelry, not even striped socks.

  “My underwear is plain white, too,” she whispered when she met Maya and Fayth in front of her apartment. “I’m trying to make myself almost invisible. I don’t want Mr. Murch or anybody else to pay attention to me until I hatch my plan!”

  “Oooh, you’re hatching a plan?” Fayth said. “That sounds so exciting!”

  “Can we help?” asked Maya.

  “It is kind of exciting, but kind of scary too,” Lola said. “And, yes, you can definitely help. I need you guys.”

  “Awesome!” said Fayth. “What’s the plan?”

  The girls whispered as they walked to school. When they reached the playground gate, Grampa Ed handed Lola a big, brown envelope.

  “Good luck, kid,” he said.

  Lola nodded and gave her grandpa a hug. She turned to her friends.

  “OK, guys,” she said. “Let’s split up these flyers. There’s one for each kid in our class. Hand out as many as you can before everyone goes in the building.”

  The girls said they understood, and they began running around the playground handing out the flyers until almost all were gone.

  “We can do the rest at recess or after school,” Lola said.

  When the bell rang, all the children went inside. When Mrs. Gunderson took attendance, she almost marked Lola absent.

  “I didn’t notice you,” the teacher said. “You look different today. Did you get a haircut?”

  “No,” Lola said. “But I don’t have pigtails today. Maybe that’s why you didn’t notice me.” She peeked at Fayth and Maya and smiled.

  By the time recess came around, all the kids in third grade and lots of kids in other grades knew about Lola’s flyers. She didn’t have enough copies for kids in other grades. “But you don’t really need the flyers,” she said again and again to anyone who asked. “You know what to do tomorrow, right?”

  Everyone knew what to do.

  The following morning, the children entered the classroom and hung up their coats and put their lunches in the lunch bin. They sat down and slid their chairs in under their desks. Mrs. Gunderson looked up and made a funny face. There was something different about her classroom today. Everyone was quiet. That was unusual. But there was something else.

  Mrs. Gunderson began to take the attendance, starting with Anthony Adducci and then moving on to Lisa Brown and on and on through the alphabet. When she got to Fayth Rogers, she stopped.

  “What’s going on today?” Mrs. Gunderson asked. “Why is everyone looking so sloppy?”

  It was true. Everyone was messy. They wore their uniforms, but their shirts were not tucked and their collars were bent out of shape. Ben Chapman had one leg of his pants rolled to his knee. Terri Wallner’s hair was flat on one side and sticking straight up on the other, as if she had just rolled out of bed. The buttons on Lola’s shirt were in the wrong buttonholes and she had toothpaste on her chin. Maya was wearing mismatched shoes. Fayth had sidewalk chalk all over her pants. Peter Pincus’s shirt was sticking out of the open fly of his pants (although, to be honest, that happened to Peter Pincus a lot).

  No one answered when Mrs. Gunderson asked what was going on, but some of the children giggled and a few began talking. One person blurted out: “It’s a day of distraction!” Lola hoped that Mrs. Gunderson didn’t hear that.

  “OK, let’s settle down,” Mrs. Gunderson said. “I don’t know why you’ve all come to school looking so messy, but we’re going to get on with our work and I expect everyone to behave.”

  The class went quiet. Everyone loved and respected Mrs. Gunderson. They would never want to do anything to make her angry. The children behaved beautifully, even if they looked awful.

  When the school day was over, Mrs. Gunderson asked Lola if she would stay behind for a minute to talk. The teacher waited until all the other children were gone.

  “Is that toothpaste on your chin, Lola?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you have toothpaste for breakfast?”

  “No,” Lola said, “I just smeared some on there before I left for school.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Mrs. Gunderson said. “Would you like to tell me why you did that? And why everyone was so messy today?”

  “Do I have to?” Lola asked.

  “No, you don’t,” Mrs. Gunderson said. She smiled and looked at Lola. “But I think I have an idea of what’s going on. Anyway, you have a nice evening. And, if you don’t mind, would you give another letter to your grandfather for me, please?”

  “Sure!” Lola said. “He really likes your letters.”

  “And I like his drawings.”

  “Why don’t you guys just send text messages like everyone else?” Lola asked.

  “Oh, but I think text messages are dreadful,” Mrs. Gunderson said. “They’re such distractions…don’t you think?”

  “Um,” Lola said. “I…guess they are…um…distractions.”

  When Lola got home that afternoon, she stopped at Grampa Ed’s studio first.

  “How did the first day of your plan go?” Grampa Ed asked.

  Lola smiled big. “It was awesome! We had so much fun. The teachers knew something was going on, but they didn’t know what it was exactly. Wait until they see what we’re going to do tomorrow.”

  “That’s great,” Grampa Ed said. “It’s nice to see kids so excited about school.”

  These were the Days of Distraction. That’s what Lola and Grampa Ed called their plan to change Mr. Murch’s mind about pigtails and ponytails.

  After Messy Day came Face Paint Day. Lola painted her entire face green. Fayth drew whiskers on her cheeks so she looked look like a cat. Maya painted on a clown mask. Some of the boys drew mustaches and beards, and some of them smudged black paint under their eyes so they looked like football players.
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  After that came Sunglasses Day. Then Fake Tattoo Day. On Fake Tattoo Day, Grampa Ed drew a pair of braided pigtails that almost covered Lola’s entire right arm. On her left arm he wrote in black ink: “IS THIS A DISTRACTION?”

  The next day was Friday and it was the craziest day of them all: Really Bad Smell Day. Everyone arrived at school smelling as awful as they possibly could. The children ran around the classroom before the first bell sniffing their friends and trying to guess what was making each of them smell so awful.

  “I brushed my teeth with garlic!” Ben Chapman shouted.

  “I rubbed kitty litter on my shirt!” Tammy Logan said.

  “I put tuna salad in my hair!” Garth Collins screamed.

  “I used a whole bottle of my brother’s cologne,” Fayth said.

  “I haven’t had a bath in three weeks,” Peter Pincus said.

  When Lola pointed out to Peter that the Days of Distraction had only been going on for one week, Peter shrugged. “So?” he said. “What’s your point?”

  Everyone was laughing and shouting and sniffing and gagging when Mrs. Gunderson arrived. She walked a few steps into the classroom, stopped, and covered her nose and mouth with her hands.

  “Oh, my!” she said, her voice low and muffled. “Oh, oh, my!”

  She staggered to the window and opened it wide to let in some air. She looked at the children, who were dressed neatly in their uniforms, but who smelled like a garbage truck or a large family of frightened skunks.

  “Listen carefully, class,” she said. She coughed twice and wiped her watering eyes. “Row one, please go to the restrooms and wash as well as you can to remove your foul odors. When row one returns, row two can go, followed by row three. Please do it quickly, class.”

  Lola was in row one, but before she could make it out the door, she heard Mrs. Gunderson’s voice: “Lola, not you. Please come to my desk.”

  She wrote a note and handed it to Lola.

  “Take this to Mr. Murch’s office, please.”

  Lola swallowed hard and tried not to cry. She had never been sent to the principal’s office before. Visiting Mr. Murch with Grampa Ed didn’t count. This time felt like a punishment. Being the leader of the Days of Distraction made her feel important. It made her feel great. But now she wondered if all this was a bad idea. Would she get in trouble? She felt scared and lonely, like Wilbur the pig when he first arrived in the Zuckermans’ barn before he met Charlotte.

  With her shoulders slumped and Mrs. Gunderson’s note in her hand, Lola walked out of the classroom and down the hall to the principal’s office. It was a long hallway, which gave Lola a chance to think. Last night, in the chapter of Charlotte’s Web that Lola read before bedtime, Wilbur was so upset about something that he flopped down in the mud and cried. Lola felt the same way now. But Wilbur had the help of his friends and decided to give it his best shot. Lola knew she had to try to do the same. No matter what happened to her in the principal’s office, Maya and Fayth would still be her friends, and they would always make her feel better. As she walked, she thought about their faces instead of Mr. Murch’s face.

  “Well, Lola,” Mr. Murch said. “It’s been a very interesting week, hasn’t it?”

  Lola nodded, still trying not to cry.

  “Would you like to tell me what’s been going on?”

  Lola shook her head, no. She knew if she spoke the tears would flow.

  Mr. Murch waited for Lola. After a minute of silence, he made a funny face and asked: “Do you smell bologna?”

  “Oh, that’s me,” Lola answered, patting her pockets.

  Mr. Murch grimaced. “So here’s the thing, Lola,” he said. “I know you were upset about my pigtail decision. And I know that you’ve been organizing the students to raise a fuss because you want me to change my mind. Is that true?”

  “Yes,” Lola said.

  “So what happens next?” the principal asked.

  “I don’t know,” Lola said. “I guess you could let us have our fun pigtails back. That would be good. Or at least let us vote on it.”

  “And what if I don’t?”

  “Well…” Lola took a deep breath. “On Monday it’s going to be Inside Out Clothes Day. On Tuesday it’s going to be Whispering Day. On Wednesday I think we’re going to do Really Bad Smell Day again because this one is really popular…”

  “And what if I ask you to stop?”

  “Well, I can’t really stop, Mr. Murch, unless you give us a vote or give us the pigtails back. See, I’ve been telling my friends that we were doing this to show that kids have power. That we can change things if we stick together. It’s called persistence. I can’t just stop. That would be giving up. Charlotte would never stop writing in her webs after she promised to save Wilbur’s life!”

  Mr. Murch lowered his pointy chin and looked at his hands.

  “And what do you suppose would happen if we voted?” he asked.

  “Well, Mr. Murch,” Lola said. “I’m pretty sure everyone would vote for fun pigtails. You can’t really expect kids to vote for more rules, can you?”

  “That’s true,” Mr. Murch said. “And that’s why I made the decision on my own. I’m afraid the rule stays.”

  Lola rose from her chair and left the principal’s office. She walked down the hall with her head down and her shoulders hanging low, and when she passed a garbage can, she removed the bologna slices from her pockets and threw them away.

  The Days of Distraction continued. Inside Out Day was fun. Whispering Day was kind of boring. Really Bad Smell Day was really smelly but not as funny and not as smelly the second time.

  “I think the Days of Distraction are going to be over soon,” Lola told Grampa Ed one morning as she made his coffee and as Grampa Ed made a pair of plain pigtails for her hair.

  “Does that mean you’re giving up?”

  “I don’t want to,” Lola said, “but I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Well, what would that spider of yours do? The one from your book?”

  “Charlotte? She’d use words,” Lola said. “That’s her secret power.”

  “Ever heard of a petition?” Grampa asked.

  “I don’t think Mom’s going to let me have a pet,” Lola said.

  Grampa laughed.

  “No,” he said. “Not a pet…a petition. It’s a humble request that you make in writing. You can use a petition to try to change a rule that’s not fair.”

  “But I already tried to change Mr. Murch’s mind! A letter’s not going to help!”

  “Well, maybe you can impress him by getting a lot of people to sign your petition.”

  “Petition. Petition. Petition.” Lola rolled the word around in her mouth. “Hey, if you say it over and over it becomes repetition.”

  “I suppose it does.”

  “Petition…petition…petition…petition…”

  “Can you stop saying that now, please?”

  Lola kept saying petition, petition, petition, but she said it softly so her lips moved but Grampa Ed couldn’t hear. Then she spoke up:

  “Hey, Grampa. Pete and Repeat are in a boat. Pete falls out. Who’s left in the boat?”

  Grampa scratched his head. “Uh,” he said. “Repeat.”

  “Pete and Repeat are in a boat. Pete falls out. Who’s left in the boat?”

  “Repeat.”

  “Pete and Repeat are in a boat. Pete falls out. Who’s left on the boat?”

  Grampa shook his head. He moaned as he rose from the edge of his bed.

  “Go to school,” he said.

  “Who’s left on the boat, Grampa?”

  “Go to school!”

  Lola giggled. “Who’s left on the boat, Grampa?”

  “You never give up, do you, kid?” Grampa chuckled. “The boat was attacked by a bunch of sharks and it sunk. Now go to school!”

  Lola wrote a petition. It said:

  Dear Mr. Murch,

  Our teachers say America is the land of freedom. We learn to celebr
ate that everyone is different and different is good. That’s why rules about hairstyles don’t make sense to us. We are signing this letter to say kids should have a choice about how they wear their hair. Teachers don’t have to obey rules about how they wear their hair. Why should kids have to? We ask you to let kids vote on the rules. We think it’s important to let kids and adults think for themselves and be creative. Do you agree? Please answer.

  Your friends,

  Lola, Maya, and Fayth spent all week asking students to sign their petition. There were 390 students in their school. By the end of the week, they had 400 signatures, because some teachers and janitors and cafeteria workers signed too.

  One morning before the bell rang, Lola, Maya, and Fayth showed their petition to Mrs. Gunderson. They had fourteen pages of signatures attached. Some of the signatures were in crayon. Those were mostly the kindergarten kids.

  “We want to take it to Mr. Murch,” Maya told the teacher.

  “But we’re a little scared,” Fayth added.

  Mrs. Gunderson read the petition. She smiled. “I’m proud of you,” she said. “This is an excellent petition. Why don’t you take it to the principal’s office right now? I’m sure Mr. Murch won’t mind.”

  “Do you think he’ll change his mind about the pigtails and ponytails?” Lola asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Gunderson said. She paused. “May I sign it?”

  The girls said yes. Soon they were on their way to the principal’s office, holding hands as they walked.

  “You’ll do all the talking, right?” Fayth squeezed Lola’s hand.

  “You can talk, too,” Lola said.