by Steve Cotler
When I got to room 220, Mr. Amato was waiting by the door, smiling at everyone who entered the science lab. Remember Mr. Amato? He was the very short, very round teacher who saw me digging through the recycling for Eddie’s blue slip. Mr. Amato also has a shiny bald head.
“Please sit anywhere you wish,” he said as we filed into the classroom. When I passed by, he said, “Nice to see you again.”
The first thing I noticed about the science lab was the posters covering the walls: a rocket ship blasting off, Saturn and its rings, a spider eating a moth (my favorite), an X-ray of a human head, and lots of famous scientists. Also, the desks were different from the ones in a normal classroom. The kids sat on tall chairs at long tables with black countertops and sinks. There was science equipment on the tables and all around the room: racks of test tubes, balance scales, glass beakers, rubber hoses hooked at one end to gas-supply knobs and to Bunsen burners at the other, and cabinets filled with bottles of chemicals.
I like experimenting. Sixth-grade science looked like it was going to be a fun class.
Mr. Amato closed the door and moved to the front of the room. “I do not use a seating chart,” he said. Right away, I noticed that he is one of those people who talk with their hands. “One at a time (pointer finger in the air), please stand (both hands went up) and tell me your full name (arms went wide), and I shall memorize them (tapped his head).”
Mr. Amato pointed at Glenn, who was sitting in the front row on the end. “Let’s start with you,” he said.
Glenn stood. “Glenn Kareem Philips.”
“Middle names are not necessary,” Mr. Amato said, wagging a finger from side to side.
One by one, my classmates stood, said their names, and sat down. When the last kid sat down, Mr. Amato took a deep breath, put his forefinger to the side of his head like he was thinking really hard, looked at Glenn, and said, “Glenn Kareem Philips.” He went down the rows, pointing at each student and saying that kid’s name. When he got to Lana, he paused, started to call her Laura, then corrected himself and went on. Near the end he started going slower, but eventually he got every name correct, and the class cheered.
I just smiled because I knew he had tricked us. (How did I know? Just wait.)
Then Mr. Amato put on a long white lab coat and did some really cool experiments—liquids changing color all by themselves, water disappearing as he poured it from one beaker to another, hammering a nail with a frozen banana, and blasting smoke rings out of a cardboard box all the way across the room! (Descriptions of these are on my website.)
Just before class ended, Mr. Amato hung up his lab coat and said, “In science one should never believe anything without proof.” He laughed and waved both hands. “When class began, you witnessed me memorizing all your names. Right?”
Lots of kids nodded. I didn’t.
“I have amazing mental powers, correct?” Mr. Amato tapped his shiny head with one forefinger, and then said, “Or do I? Is that what really happened?” He hunched up his shoulders and stuck both arms out wide.
I looked around. Everyone—even Glenn—seemed confused. Not me. Earlier that morning when I’d met him in the hall, he’d given himself away. I raised my hand.
“Aha!” he said with a grin. “Has Ronald Mack solved this mystery?”
I had.
I told him what I knew … and totally busted him! He laughed. Can you guess what I said? Turn to the next chapter for the answer.
My Wet Butt
Did you notice the title of this chapter?
While I was writing the previous page, Georgie, who has been lying on my bed reading a science fiction novel, told me it’s important for an author to grab the reader’s attention when he starts a new chapter.
“How about calling the next part ‘Attack of the Slime Monsters’?” Georgie suggested. “That would definitely get my attention.”
He is right about chapter titles, but since I’m writing about what actually happened at the beginning of sixth grade—and there are no slime monsters at RLS (except maybe Goon!)—I will tell you instead about my drippy behind.
I hope you like it.
The chapter, I mean.
Not my drippy behind.
But first, here’s the answer to Mr. Amato’s trickery.
How did Mr. Amato memorize all the kids’ names?
When I was in the hall digging through the recycling bin, it was the first time I had ever seen him and the first time he had ever seen me. But he said, “See you in third period,” which means he recognized me and knew I was in his science class. Therefore he must have studied our photographs and memorized our names prior to the first day of school.
Fourth period was math. We reviewed fractions, percents, and areas of triangles. I was assigned to a group with Glenn, Lana, and a girl named Rita Pimental. Our teacher, Ms. Hammerbord, didn’t say it, but if Glenn is in a group, it’s the top group. Not bragging, but I’m good at math.
Lots happened at lunch.
Georgie and I met at the cafeteria door, just like we’d planned.
“Big news, Georgie,” I told him confidentially. “I’m going to run for class president.”
“Awesome,” Georgie said. “I’m hungry.”
Georgie is always hungry.
Both of us had brought lunch from home. Goon had been complaining for two years about how bad middle school food was, so we both decided we needed to check it out first. We passed by a table of girls from Rocky Neck. I ignored them (even though Lana was waving). Georgie and I sat on the far side of the room with Glenn Philips and two other boys from my math class. All three had purchased the school lunch—tacos, which looked delicious—and were already eating.
“How’s the food?” I asked.
“Good,” one kid mumbled, chomping big bites.
“Really good,” the other boy said.
“Perfectly seasoned,” Glenn offered. “I’m getting another.” He stood up and got in line for seconds.
As usual, Goon had given me bad advice. Actually, it’s mostly my fault. She’s a vegetarian, so I should’ve realized she wouldn’t even have tasted most of the lunches.
When Glenn returned, he explained how different taste buds on your tongue sense different flavors: sweet is detected at the tip of the tongue, sour on the sides, etc. I had a pickle in my lunch, and Georgie had a hunk of fudge, so I tested my taste buds by touching pieces of them to various parts of my tongue. As usual, Glenn was right. If you want to try this yourself, I put a taste bud diagram on my website.
Georgie and I finished eating quickly and decided to explore the school for the remainder of the lunch period. As we stood up, Goon motioned to me from a table on the other side of the cafeteria. Instead of ignoring her as I should have done, I walked over. Georgie followed. When I got close, my Goon-Alarm began clanging loudly inside my head because both she and her boyfriend, Drew, were grinning big-time.
“Sit down. I have something important to tell you,” Goon said, pointing to the empty chair next to her.
I plopped down, and wet my pants.
NOT!
I (Cheesie) did not wet my pants. Goon wet my pants. She had poured water into the hollowed-out part of the chair, and I sat in it.
Most kids would’ve yelped or made a face or jumped up or something. I didn’t. Even though she had tricked me, I was instantly and completely aware of the Point Battle. If I got embarrassed and she saw that, she’d win points, doubled because other kids in the cafeteria would laugh. So I sat absolutely still (even though cold water was soaking through to my underwear) and said, “What’s up?”
She stared at me. Her nose got all wrinkly and her eyebrows got all bunchy. If I had a brain-wave translator, I bet I would’ve heard her thinking, Huh? Why isn’t he screaming? I know I put water there.
“What’d you want to tell me?” I continued.
“Stand up,” Goon said.
“Stand up,” Drew repeated. Goon’s boyfriends always seem to do whatever she says.
I didn’t move. “You just told me to sit down. C’mon, what’d you want?”
“Stand up,” she insisted.
“Do what she says,” Drew said.
“You guys are just messing with me,” I replied, turning away. “Georgie, grab a chair. Let’s work on the vocabulary for Mrs. Wikowitz.”
“Do we have an assignment?” Georgie asked.
“We have to come up with some new words.” I slid a napkin to him and winked so that Goon couldn’t see. “Remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Vocab. Thanks for reminding me.” Georgie pulled over a chair from the next table and sat down next to me. He pulled a pen out of his pocket.
Of course we didn’t have any such assignment. But Georgie knew I was up to something and played along. That’s what is great about having a best friend.
“Stand up!” Goon yelled in my ear. She screeched so loudly, a teacher standing two tables away looked over.
I ignored Goon. “I just thought of a good word. How about obtuse?” I said to Georgie. “It’s a math word, but you can use it in other ways.”
Georgie nodded, wrote the word on the napkin, and showed it to me. “Is this how you spell it?”
“Uh-huh.” I glanced at my sister. She was puffing and huffing, which meant she was getting flustered and agitated.
“What’s the definition?” Georgie asked.
“It’s a perfect description of the people around us,” I said, not looking at my sister on purpose. “Just write simpleminded and thickheaded, with a semicolon in between.”
That pushed Goon over the edge. She jumped up, shouted, “You’re an idiot!” and tried to tip me out of my seat. Drew jumped up, too.
“Stop it!” I yelled, knocking her hand off the back of my chair. Almost immediately the teacher who’d noticed us before came over to our table.
“What’s going on here?” he asked. I didn’t know it then, but it was Coach T, my PE teacher.
Goon immediately backed away and mumbled, “Nothing. He’s my stupid brother, and he’s a stupid jerk.”
“I’m just trying to do my homework,” I said innocently.
“This family argument is now over,” Coach T said. “Time to make nice.”
Goon blushed. Not a lot, but I saw it.
Point Battle victory!
“Why don’t you move along and leave your brother alone?” the coach continued.
Goon gave me a super-mean look, spun around, and stormed out of the cafeteria. Drew followed at her heels just the way my dog, Deeb, follows me.
Coach T gave me a look like he was waiting for me to say something.
“It’s vocabulary stuff,” Georgie explained, pointing at the napkin with his pen.
Coach T nodded and went back to his post.
“Wow! What flew up your sister’s nose?” Georgie asked.
“I’ll show you in a minute,” I said. Without getting out of my chair, I took off my sweatshirt and tied it around my waist. Then I stood up. “Follow me.”
I walked quickly to the boys’ bathroom, lifted my sweatshirt, and turned my butt toward Georgie.
His eyebrows shot upward. “Holy moly! What’d you do? No, don’t tell me!”
“It’s not what you think,” I said. Then I told him the whole story. What I didn’t tell him, because not even Georgie knows about the Point Battle, was that I had turned an eight-point wet-butt loss into a four-point victory. The Point Battle score was now 694–677.
Running for President
I sat on my sweatshirt all through fifth-period Spanish. Al momento que la clase terminó (by the time the class was over), my pants had gone from drippy to barely damp. In a way, it was a science experiment. I had proven that body heat can help dry out clothes.
When I got to the PE locker room for my final class of the day, I changed into shorts and an RLS T-shirt. Then I joined the rest of the boys in the gym, where we sat in the stands. Coach T had switched from his teacher clothes to sweatpants and a T-shirt with GEORGETOWN written on it. (That’s a university in Washington, DC. They usually have a good basketball team. I looked it up.)
“My name is Coach Tunavelov,” the coach said. If you want to know what Coach T looked like, imagine what a PE coach would look like if you were watching a movie about a PE coach. Big, strong, square-jawed—that’s Coach T.
He turned sideways like he was talking to an imaginary guy next to him and said, “Why is there a fish on the floor?”
Then he faced the other way. “Because the ‘tuna fell off’ the table.”
It took us a minute, but then everyone laughed—the coach was making a joke about his name. He smiled.
“Look, Tunavelov is a fine Slavic name,” he said. “But it’s a mouthful, so you’re going to call me Coach T. And by the way, I’ve heard every fish joke in the world, so don’t even try.”
Everybody nodded.
(I have not heard every fish joke in the world, so if you know any good ones, please go to my website and tell me. I’m building a collection.)
“If you call me teacher or teach or mister—or if I hear a fish joke—you’ll be doing push-ups. It’s Coach T. Got it?”
Alex Welch raised his hand. “I have two questions. Can we call you Mister Coach? And what does the T stand for?”
Alex was not trying to be funny. He just sounds like a dope sometimes.
Coach T gave him a long, hard look.
Uh-oh, I thought, here come a thousand push-ups. But Coach T just sighed and turned back to the rest of us. Maybe, like Mrs. Wikowitz, he was giving Alex a first-day mulligan.
“All right, listen up. The elementary school phys ed you boys did last year was just a bunch of horsing around. Now you’re sixth graders, and you’re going to do things the right way. The Coach T way.” He lifted both arms and flexed his muscles. “Let’s get started on your baseline physical fitness test.”
For the rest of the period we did chin-ups, sit-ups, and push-ups, and climbed a rope. He and another PE teacher wrote down what everybody did.
I had never done the rope climb before. And maybe you haven’t either. Here’s how it works. A rope hangs from the ceiling. You have to climb the rope using your hands and feet, touch a small plastic ball twelve feet up, and then come back down.
I did great because I’m strong and light. It’s harder for big guys. They weigh too much.
“Go, Georgie!” I shouted when it was his turn. Georgie is really big, but he’s also really strong. It took him a while, but he made it to the top.
“Good job, Sinkoff!” Coach T said. I saw him put a big check mark next to Georgie’s name.
Then it was Glenn Philips’s turn. He’s never been very interested in sports, but he scampered up the rope like a monkey. Afterward he told me, “I intend to increase my physical prowess this year.” (Prowess means skill or expertise. Glenn has an excellent vocabulary.)
The last thing we did was shoot free throws.
“Basketball is not part of the baseline physical fitness test,” Coach T announced, “but I intend to have a winning season. Let’s see how you guys do.”
Eddie Chapple made four out of five. (I was not surprised. Remember his wadded blue-slip toss?) Georgie made three. I made none. Neither did Glenn.
Since one of our math homework problems was to do a survey of something and put the results into a bar chart, I asked Coach T for the free throw data. Here’s what I turned in to Ms. Hammerbord the next day.
After class was over and we were back in the locker room changing into our regular clothes, Georgie said, “I’d like to have a basketball hoop in my driveway, but my dad thinks I’d break windows.”
“You broke two already,” I said. I wasn’t being mean. It was a fact. Georgie can really peg a baseball.
“Your fault. You could’ve caught both of them.”
“Yeah, if I had an extendo-arm.”
Georgie ignored me. “If I could practice free throws at home, I bet I could make five out of five.”
; “Yeah, probably,” I replied. Maybe you think he was bragging, but Georgie was just telling the truth. He’s a terrific athlete.
“We have a basketball hoop at our house,” Alex Welch said, jumping out from behind a row of lockers where he’d obviously been eavesdropping. “I’m going to practice until I can do six out of five.”
“I’ll buy you a gold-plated, diamond-studded basketball if you do that,” Georgie said.
“Really?” Alex replied.
Georgie just grinned.
On our bike ride home from school we talked about our classes.
“That new girl Oddny sits next to me in science,” Georgie said.
“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked.
“Race you home!” he replied, and pumped hard.
I won.
At dinner that evening I was ready to make the big announcement that I was running for class president, so I picked up my fork, waved it dramatically in the air, and began. “I have something big to—”
But suddenly Goon zipped in from washing her hands, slid into her seat, and interrupted. “Hold it! You guys have to hear this first!” She gave me an I-just-cut-in-front-of-you-ha-ha look.
I kept my mouth shut and dug a trench in my mashed potatoes.
“In my ballet class, I’m trying out for a show in Boston. It takes place over Christmas vacation.”
She began bouncing up and down in her chair.
“They’re only picking one girl. If I win, I get to stay in a college dorm for a week. And I get to dance in The Nutcracker! Onstage! In Boston!”
“That’s terrific, sweetheart,” Mom said.
Goon rocked her head back and forth happily. “All I have to do now is write an essay. It’s due in a few days.”
I scooped a huge glob of mashed potatoes into my mouth and sat there with my cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk’s.
“You’re a shoo-in,” Granpa stated. “Dancing talent is thick in this family. My sister danced her way across Europe after the war.”
