Dewey Fairchild, Teacher Problem Solver

by Lorri Horn

  “Really,” he reiterated. “Colin! Get up!” He poked Colin’s hip with the eraser side of the pencil.

  “Okay, okay, let’s hear it,” Colin said as he scooted himself up and rested his back against Seraphina’s dresser.

  Dewey told them all about how Clara’s cookie fries and how it had given him the idea. If the school seemed so set on them growing this garden themselves, then they’d just take the garden back into their own hands. He told them his vision for a vending machine garden.

  “This is good,” admitted Colin. “Really good.”

  “Yes,” agreed Seraphina. “We need more details.”

  “Thank you, thank you. You guys gotta think of some good ideas now.”

  Seraphina nodded her head several times.

  “Oh yeah. I just need some time to get my brain going. But now thinking is fun again and doesn’t hurt my head so much.”

  “Good,” said Dewey.

  “What about your t-issue, though?” Seraphina addressed Colin. “How does that fit into all of this?”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Colin assured her. “I’m not letting all that work we’ve done go down the drain!”

  “Haha!” laughed Dewey.

  Colin laughed too. “Good one!”

  “Yeah, good one,” acknowledged Seraphina, “but aren’t we supposed to say that?”

  “My dad always says, ‘you need to be able to laugh at your own jokes in case nobody else does.’ Of course, his jokes are usually pretty bad, so there’s that.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Seraphina smiling. “There’s that.”

  “Okay!” Dewey clapped his hands together and stood up. “We’ve got a plan. At least we’re on our way. Take away the vending machines,” he grumbled. “Hmph! I don’t think so!”

  Stick Figuring

  Dewey couldn’t believe what he observed during his research Monday. Kids coming out of Mr. Snow’s science class afraid to drink from the water fountain, some even afraid to use their water bottles!

  “They’re going to get dehydrated,” Dewey reported to Clara. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “I imagine you’ll begin with why he’s so obsessed with sharks,” suggested Clara, handing Dewey a chocolate cookie.

  “Right,” replied Dewey. He fixed himself to hypothesize on the shark issue when he hit the center of the cookie. “Whoa! Peppermint Patty?!” he exclaimed, astonished.

  “Yup. Snuck them right in there. Good idea, no?”

  “No. I mean, yes! Why do people say no when they mean yes?”

  “Why, indeed?” twinkled Clara as she sat down across from him and began to sketch out a picture.

  “Here you’ve got your teacher,” she drew a stick figure. “And your class of students,” she continued with some Xs and Os with curly hair, straight hair, or hats. “Now,” she paused. “Sharks.” She drew little fish with big sharp teeth all over the page and tapped her pencil tip as she appeared to contemplate.

  Then she turned the page over. “Before this scene,” she continued, “there must have been another,” and she drew another stick figure teacher, a toothy fish, and a big question mark inside the round head of the stick figure teacher. “Because,” she said, offering Dewey another chocolate cookie, “sometimes the inside of a cookie just might surprise you.”

  Concentric Circles

  Dewey’s dad would always say, “I’m not grumpy,” when it was as big as life to everyone that he was, most surely, surly.

  “Something in the kitchen stinks,” Stephanie complained as she breezed past the kitchen sink to grab toast out of the toaster.

  “Don, did you take out the trash last night?” asked Dewey’s mom from the bathroom brushing her teeth.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Stalling,” replied Dewey’s mom. Dewey’s dad always said “what” when he didn’t have a good answer lined up.

  “No, really, Karen, I didn’t hear you.”

  “Mom wants to know if you took out the trash,” Stephanie chimed in.

  “I heard her,” growled Dewey’s dad.

  He went to the kitchen and took out the garbage.

  “You know,” he directed his chin and words at Dewey, who sat at the table eating cereal when his dad came back in, “you could take out the trash sometimes.”

  Oh boy, thought Dewey. I gotta get out of here.

  Dewey’s mom came out of the bathroom and patted Dewey on the head. “It’s true. You could start taking out the trash sometimes. But it wasn’t your job last night,” she reassured him, pressing her hand on top of his. “Don, you’re obviously distressed about something. What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing,” pouted Dewey’s dad, and he sat down and slumped his face in his hands, so his whole family would know for sure it was something.

  “Karen, rub my back, would you?” Dewey’s dad like his back rubbed in big concentric circles when he felt upset about something.

  “There, there,” cooed Dewey’s mom. “Whatever it is will be okay. Were the big kids mean to you at school?” she asked, smiling.

  “Kind of,” moped Dewey’s dad, but he smiled now.

  “Really?” asked Dewey, intrigued.

  “No, not really. They’re fine. I just have a lot of papers to grade and a lot of my own homework to do,” his dad grumbled. “I’ll live. I just can’t wait until winter break!”

  “Ha! That makes two of us,” agreed Dewey.

  “Me three,” agreed Stephanie.

  “Me three too,” chimed in Pooh Bear, licking her fingers after sucking on a sausage.

  “Okay, well, how about you three clear your places, please, so we’re not late for school.”

  Leave for school already?! Shoot. Dewey had hoped to spend a few minutes on Mr. Snow’s background search. Ack! thought Dewey. Too many balls in the air! One was bound to drop.

  Gratitude

  During study hall, Dewey decided to focus on getting his homework done, so later that evening he could focus on some of his other work.

  He told his parents he had a lot of homework, and since his dad did too, the two of them got excused from after dinner clean up and went off to work. Well, Dewey rationalized, this certainly constituted work and he was at home.

  Dewey first looked up on his school’s website to find the staff list to get Mr. Snow’s first name. Brad. Brad Snow. He looks like a Brad, thought Dewey, his mind’s eye filling in where the camera’s lens cut off. If Mr. Snow’s entire body appeared instead of Ms. Webster’s headshot below him, Brad Snow’s bearded head would sit atop a square. He wore jeans, a collared, button-down shirt—always some shade of blue—and boat shoes. Yes, short and stocky, but solid of body and mind. He ran a tight ship, in-baskets, out-baskets, pen cups, staplers, everything labeled with his Baby Label Maker. He kept his brown beard trimmed close and hair neatly parted. Weird how people can look or not look like their names.

  Dewey wondered if he looked like a Dewey. He felt like a Dewey. He couldn’t imagine any other name for himself, really. Dewey didn’t know any other Deweys. Take a name like Colin, though. Lots of Colins ran around, and none of them seemed at all like one another. Yet somehow, Colin “felt” like a Colin to him. Did those other Colins feel like Colins too, once you got to know them? Did they feel like Colins to themselves? Or did they wake up each day feeling like someone else had their name—maybe Nash, or Aiden, or Lukas?

  Dewey brought his thoughts back to the present task and did some searches on Brad Snow. He showed up along with some other Brad Snows—a football player, some poster artist, a real estate agent. Dewey also found some Bradley Snows, so he followed those as well with some overlap. From what he could tell, his Brad Snow had taught in a couple different schools and had grown up here. He had a Facebook page which had good privacy settings because Dewey couldn’t get in beyond his profile pictures. He
owned a home.

  It took some time, but he finally hit his mark when he entered “Bradley Snow shark attack” as a search.

  His name didn’t come up, but someone else with the last name Snow did. A Timothy Snow lost his hand to a shark seven years ago. The article reported that he’d been preparing for a triathlon by swimming early mornings in the ocean. The water had been cold, and he swam in a wet suit and flippers. The shark, the experts concluded, must have mistaken him for a seal, and it took a chunk out of Timothy’s right arm. He had also lost his right hand.

  Whoa, thought Dewey. This can’t be a coincidence. He did a search for “Bradley Snow siblings” but that didn’t work. Then he tried it the other way around: “Timothy Snow siblings.” Nothing. There had to be some way to establish that Timothy Snow was related to Bailey’s Mr. Snow.

  Dewey read some more articles about Timothy Snow. He learned a lot more about the incident, but none of the articles mentioned a brother or Bradley Snow.

  He tried just researching Timothy Snow. I’ll try his social media. And there he appeared—right on Instagram. Timothy Snow had pictures of Mr. Snow. Cousins maybe? Probably brothers. Mr. Snow had a shark obsession because someone he loved got chewed up by one!

  Dewey wanted to tell Clara what he’d discovered, but he looked at the time, and it read half past ten. He felt surprised, come to think of it, that no one had come to tell him to turn off the lights yet.

  Dewey tiptoed to the bathroom to get ready for bed. Suddenly, for the first time ever, he appreciated his right hand and how hard it would be to floss without it. Weird, he’d never thought about that before. He flossed and brushed his teeth then padded off to bed.

  Galeophobia

  When Dewey came in after school Tuesday, carrots, broccoli, green snow pea pods, zucchini, and red bell peppers covered his desk.

  Wolfie, alert and staring, positioned himself right in front of Clara’s feet. Wolfie loved carrots, but he loved cookies even more, and each and every one of these vegetables was just that.

  “Amazing!” Dewey marveled as he held a zucchini in his hand and gently turned it around.

  “They’re just prototypes,” Clara noted.

  “They’re perfect! Can I show them to Colin and Seraphina?”

  Clara nodded, her cheeks turning a shade of red just short of her bell pepper cookies.

  Clara stacked them up carefully for Dewey in a plastic Tupperware container. “Just be sure I get my Tupperware back. That’s real Tupperware. We used to have to go to parties to get these, you know.”

  “Tupperware parties?” Dewey asked incredulously.

  “Yes! Tupperware parties.”

  “Boy, you sure knew how to have a good time, Clara!” Before she could reply, Dewey switched to a more thoughtful tone. “Hey, Clara, I figured out the Mr. Snow thing. His brother—or cousin maybe, but I think it’s his brother, looks like him—anyway, a shark attacked him about seven years ago!”

  Clara stood nodding. That made a lot of sense to her. “What’s next?”

  “Next, I gotta get him to understand he’s scaring the pants off his students. I worked late last night. I think I’ve got the start of a plan.”

  “Want to tell me now or let me see it unfold, and tell me if you need me?”

  “Let’s let it unfold. I’ve got this, the t-issue, the garden, homework, and Mom still keeps thinking I have time to watch Pooh!”

  “Unfold it is.”

  Dewey sat on the floor to give Wolfie some belly rubs. Wolfie made some noises that sounded like “Arr, rrrrarr, rarrrr, rarrrr, rarrrr,” to let Dewey know his belly rubs felt marvelous. Somehow, Dewey never felt too busy when he buried his face in Wolfie’s belly.

  Then Wolfie rolled over, jumped up, and gave a fake sneeze.

  “What do you want, Buddy?” Dewey threw his skunk, but Wolfie just stared up at him, still in anticipation of something.

  “Oh, the cookies?” Dewey had the Tupperware of vegetable-shaped cookies next to him on the floor.

  “No, sorry, Puppy. I’ll get you a real carrot, though.” Dewey went to Clara’s fridge, took out a carrot, and broke it in half. “Here you go, Wolfers. Chew on this for a while.” He stuck half the carrot in Wolfie’s mouth. The carrot’s thickest part was about an inch-and-a-half around, and Wolfie took it over to his bed to work on it like a big chew stick.

  “Okay, Clara; I’m off. Talk later. Thank you so much. These look great. I’ll give you the go-ahead soon!”

  Dewey rode up the Gator and climbed out with the cookies. He walked over to Colin’s and knocked at the front door, but no one answered.

  He texted Colin: Left the live samples for the garden at your door don’t eat! show Seraphina

  Colin replied: K

  Then he had to run back home to watch Pooh. Dewey’s mom had a book club, and Dewey’s dad had a class.

  “I gave Pooh a snack,” reviewed Dewey’s mom as she prepared to leave. “I told her you have homework to do, and she has projects to keep her occupied, but you do need to check in on her now and again, okay, Dews?”

  “Yup,” he agreed.

  “I’ll be home before dinner, but I’d like the table set, and you can have her help you. Stephanie won’t be home until after dinner, so it’s just the four of us.”

  “Yup,” Dewey acknowledged.

  “Give me a kiss,” his mom ordered, pointing to her cheek.

  Dewey gave the kiss. He didn’t mind kissing her when she asked, but he didn’t seem to do it on his own as often these days. She always said, “In our family, we kiss hello and goodbye. Get used to it.”

  As soon as she left, Dewey wanted to go up and do some more research on the Mr. Snow case. Of course, Pooh Bear had other ideas in store for him.

  “Wanna do something with me?” she asked.

  “Naw, Pooh, I gotta do homework. Didn’t Mom tell you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Oh, she knew. She just wanted to torture him. She always did this. He felt guilty turning her away, and she knew it.

  “How about if you work on your—what is it you’re working on?”

  “My dollhouse.”

  “Right. How about you work on your dollhouse for a while, and then in a little bit I can play with you. Could that be okay?”

  “Yeah, okay. That could be okay,” she agreed and bounced out of the room announcing she’d become a kangaroo.

  Dewey sat down to research more about the fear of sharks which he soon learned psychologists called galeophobia.

  “Interesting,” Dewey said aloud to himself. He’d discovered that one of the main ways to overcome galeophobia is to research sharks. Well, clearly, Mr. Snow was doing a lot of that.

  He even showed the students shark entertainment films during his Friday Films at lunch. In Sharknado a disaster like a tornado hits Los Angeles, and the ocean spews out shark-infested ocean all over the place. Dewey and his friends couldn’t believe they got to watch it at school. The entire premise of the movie seemed totally ridiculous, and not at all educational, but far be it for them to complain about something so great. Limbs got ripped off left and right. Sharks got shot and chainsawed. Blood and guts splattered all over the screen. Dewey and all his friends who didn’t even have the class would come in on Fridays to eat their lunch and watch the carnage in Mr. Snow’s classroom.

  The script was so preposterous that none of the kids outside of Mr. Snow’s class got scared—they just laughed and screamed and enjoyed the lunchtime entertainment. But some of Mr. Snow’s students had bad dreams after watching it, despite all the diversion it seemed to provide.

  Thinking back, Dewey could remember one of them talking about his bad dreams from it.

  “I had this dream that when we went to Hawaii, this volcano had sharks spewing out of the lava,” Dewey had heard one of the kids telling another kid at
lunch after the movie day. “I’m on the sand at the beach, and they start swimming out at me from the water one way, and from the other way, the lava and sharks flow toward me down from the hotel!—I told my parents I don’t want to go on that Maui trip with them anymore.”

  At the time, Dewey didn’t give that story much thought; he didn’t even really know the kid telling it. He just remembered thinking it was pretty dumb to worry about sharks swimming around in lava considering they would cook before they even got anywhere near you . . . and the fact that no shark had ever seen the inside of a volcano.

  All this got Dewey thinking. Mr. Snow’s classes received a lot of shark information and facts, but research about sharks that dispelled the myths about their danger to humans seemed to be missing.

  The way Dewey figured it, the two people who would need to fear sharks the most would be fishermen and surfers. They were obviously not afraid—or they were just really stupid—because they were in the water all the time.

  So, he sat down and began to discover why they weren’t scared to swim in the ocean with sharks, when he suddenly remembered Pooh Bear. She had been awfully quiet.

  Dewey went in to check on her and was trying to think of something they might do together that wouldn’t take too long. He didn’t want to break his promise to her.

  When he stuck his head into her room, she wasn’t there, so he called out for her. He didn’t feel worried as she often got lost deep in her play and didn’t reply. When he found her, he let out a small gasp and whispered, “Yes!” to the room, fist bumping the air. She had fallen asleep on their parents’ bed.

  He pulled a folded afghan off the chair and draped it over her ever-so-gently.

  “Yes!” He did a little jig and went back to his computer.

  He searched: “Reasons you don’t need to fear sharks,” “Fisherman don’t fear sharks,” “Surfers aren’t afraid of sharks.” He gathered as much information as he could. Yesterday he was a Dewey who knew very little about sharks. Today, and forevermore, he was a Dewey who knew a lot about sharks.