by Lorri Horn
“Is that it?” Julia asked.
Ben nodded.
“Okay, thanks,” she said.
Colin’s hand shot up again, and she nodded for him to come up.
“Lights, please,” Colin requested after he set up his Google Slides. He began to share the history of toilet paper.
“As long as there have been humans, there have been people peeing and pooping,” he began.
The audience of students laughed. Principal Mayoral fidgeted in her seat and, like a coach whose player had fouled one time too often, got ready to bench Colin.
“We used to go wherever we could find a spot. Behind a tree.” The slide pictured a little kid going behind a tree. The crowd of kids laughed.
“Behind a rock.” He clicked to another slide of a kid’s head behind a rock with an arc of water spraying over into view.
“What, you may wonder,” Colin continued, looking out to the crowd, “did prehistoric men and women use before toilet paper came along?” His slide now showed a big prehistoric club with a roll of toilet paper overlaying it. His next slide was a pile of rocks.
“That’s right, rocks.” The students all laughed and moaned. “Leaves, wood chips, who knows what else?” he said, shrugging.
“I know what else,” he answered his own question. “Later, as we became more evolved, we used corn cobs.” A slide of a corn cob.
The students all moaned and laughed again.
“And later, these too.” He clicked up an image of the Sears catalogue and a pile of newspapers.
“Somewhere between the rocks and that hard place, the Chinese began to use toilet paper in like 105 CE! But only the Emperor.” A slide of an ancient portrait of a Chinese Emperor with the words, “The Emperor Liked His Throne” above the artwork.
That made the kids laugh too. Colin looked over at Mrs. Mayoral and continued.
“It wasn’t until the 1800s that toilet paper was on a real roll. Ha, get it!?” No one laughed. “A real roll . . .” Colin repeated, and the audience of students groaned at his bad pun.
“Did you know,” Colin continued, “that there were splinters in the paper until 1935 though? Do I need to tell you why splinters in toilet paper would be a bad thing?” A picture of a finger with a splinter accompanied this uncomfortable fact.
Now the students really groaned.
“Anyway,” he went on, “you probably never think about it, but we should all be very thankful for the toilet paper that we have today.”
Mrs. Mayoral crossed her legs and settled further back in her chair.
“And now, some toilet paper fun facts:
We use about fifty-seven sheets of toilet paper a day.
It takes about 384 trees to make the toilet paper that you will use in your lifetime.
The average person uses 100 rolls of toilet paper per year—over 20,000 sheets!
The daily production of toilet paper is about eighty-three million rolls per day.
The Quilted Northern® paper mills alone now produce enough tissue to wrap around the Earth’s equator one and a half times—every day!
“That’s a lot of matzah balls.” He was getting silly, a sure sign he should wrap it up. Dewey gave him the cue to do so.
“So, now you have the facts. We should be grateful for toilet paper.” Colin clicked to a slide of himself holding a roll and smiling big.
Something about Colin, with his big goofy grin while holding a roll of toilet paper seemed to bring out hysterics from the crowd.
Mrs. Mayoral stood up. “Okay, Colin. If that’s all—”
“Oh! Just some important concluding words please, Mrs. Mayoral.
“Principal Mayoral, fellow students, here is my proposal regarding what some thoughtful geniuses have referred to as the t-issue—and it involves math, which I figure Mr. Peters will like. Let’s work together. The school can share how many cases of toilet paper we use per month.
“Then . . .” Colin looked over, and Dewey gave him the hurry-it-up sign again, this time more emphatically, so he began to talk much faster. “Then we calculate how much the average person uses, and when we know how much we use, we can work to reduce it ourselves. Give us a goal we can work toward. Help us learn to waste less of this precious resource, in school and out! Let us be our own toilet paper roll monitors instead of that stupid gizmo that just makes me late for class.”
He’d said it all in almost one long breath.
“Thank you for your consideration and time on this very important t-issue.”
The crowd of students went wild with applause and cheers.
Mrs. Mayoral gave Colin a congratulatory nod as he sat back down in the audience. He could feel that his cheeks were still warm from his talk.
“Nice work,” spoke Seraphina.
Dewey gave him a solid pat on the back.
“Well, this is taking longer than we had anticipated, and we certainly want to be sure to hear from other voices. We will take our scheduled nutrition break and meet back here in lieu of period four class. I’ll dismiss you by sections.”
Everyone filed out of the gymnasium, and now they could hear a buzz like the whole hive was alive.
“I wonder, though,” said Colin, “if I get pegged for vandalism, do they have toilet paper in jail?”
“Ha!” laughed Dewey. “I’ll ask Clara to bake you a cake. I wonder if anyone else is going to volunteer to speak?”
“You think?” asked Seraphina.
“Why not?” Dewey dropped an apple chip into his mouth.
They ate their snacks on the bench while kids came up to Colin and gave him high fives. He just shrugged when they asked if he’d put up the signs.
“I see no reason to give myself up.”
“Nooo,” agreed Seraphina and Dewey.
In fact, when the meeting began, another student did volunteer to speak. Olivia Portapath, the big league burper, raised her hand. To look at Olivia you’d never know that her small frame carried some gene that enabled her to extend a burp longer than your average soda burp contest winner. “My, oh my, that girl can sure repeat the morning news!” Clara proclaimed when she’d heard her once. Olivia Portapath really could let one rip.
Olivia went up to the microphone. “I wanted to say that I’m frustrated because we worked so hard on the garden, and now it’s been kind of, well, desecrated.”
Desecrated? Dewey and Seraphina looked at one another. The room got very quiet.
“I just don’t think it’s right,” continued Olivia, “to hang all that stuff. How are the plants going to grow if there are cookies and chips all over the place?” Her wide eyes, once pools of stagnation in Mr. Nisano’s class, now flickered with light.
The room started to get louder with students talking to one another. Dewey couldn’t figure out if they agreed with Olivia or not.
“Quick,” Dewey urged. “We gotta go up.”
“Well,” began Seraphina speaking as they both stood and walked up to the microphone area without raising their hands first. “We have some thoughts about that.”
Julia stepped up to the mic and looked at Olivia for approval. Olivia nodded.
“Go ahead,” offered Julia, stepping back again.
“Can we dim the lights again, please, Mrs. Mayoral?” Seraphina continued. “Like Colin, we think conservation is all about balance and moderation. The vending machine business does too.”
They opened the first slide.
“Vending machines go all the way back to ancient Egypt. In 215 BCE, people paid with coins to dispense holy water.”2
They clicked to the next slide.
“When you think of vending machines, most people only think of candy, chips, and cookies, but vending machines can also have a lot of other stuff in them,” narrated Seraphina.
Dewey went through the next
few slides to show a picture of a camera, of pasta dinner, of fresh flowers, and t-shirts.
“And look at Japan! Grilled sandwiches, eggs, batteries, neckties, umbrellas! China even makes a giant car vending machine just for renting electric cars!” continued Dewey, changing the slide to show little green and white cars that looked like M&Ms. “For just a few dollars an hour!”
Seraphina read the next slide: “Balance.” A variety of snacks made up the letters of the word. A celery stick and two round crackers made the letter “B,” an apple formed the first “a,” a banana stood in the place of the “l.” A half-eaten cookie holding the letter “c” spot matched the nibbled peanut butter cup that formed the other “a.” Sticks of jerky formed the “n,” and the “e” was formed from with pretzel sticks.
“We, the students of Ladera Linda Middle School, would like to propose the following to the administration.” They cued YouTube to Farmer Bacon’s “Sundays,” which had been Colin’s eleventh hour contribution to their presentation, and his final redemptive act for all the trouble he had caused.
“Instead of getting rid of the vending machines, expand what you put into the vending machines.”
The animated video clip of Farmer Bacon singing played:
Crackers and chips
They give you salty lips
So, don’t fergit yer bananas
Cookies are nice
But so is brown rice
And bacon’s always good on Sundays
Apples and cheese
And even celeries
Marshmallow pie’s my fun day
Open the door
I’m going back for more
And bacon’s always good on Sundays
The kids all joined in singing along with this educational video which many of them hadn’t seen since preschool, and the auditorium was filled with the sound of their choral singing and laughter. After the video ended, Dewey had to wait for the peals of laughter to die down among the students.
“We propose,” he continued, “creating a committee of students, parents, and teachers—oh, and you too, Mrs. Mayoral,” Dewey added, craning his neck to look at her. “The committee will work together to select a balance of what goes in the vending machines. Some of the usual stuff and some of the healthy stuff.”
“We propose to spend more time in health class discussing the healthy stuff that we kids like and will actually eat,” said Seraphina.
The room of students applauded.
“We can still have our garden too!” added Seraphina. “And no, Olivia, I don’t think that we—er, whoever—did that to the garden caused it any harm or meant to stop its progress. I think they just wanted to get this conversation started.”
At that, Mrs. Mayoral stepped up to the podium.
“Um, we’re not quite done yet,” Dewey explained.
“Oh, I think you two are done,” she replied with a look in her eye that was hard to read. “We’re out of time. This has been quite well thought out. Give us your last thoughts, please.”
Dewey forwarded to the final slide, an image of a vending machine with toilet paper rolls in it. “There won’t always be little gizmos parceling out the toilet paper in life. We need to learn to make good choices.”
The crowd cheered again. Dewey and Seraphina packed up and started to walk out of the gymnasium with the rest of the crowd for lunch, but Mrs. Mayoral approached them as they exited.
“After you’ve finished your lunches, come see me in my office. Please round up Colin on your way.”
“Okay, Mrs. Mayoral,” replied Dewey with a gulp.
Seraphina just nodded as they hurried away from the principal.
“You messed up when you almost let slip that we were in the garden!” ribbed Dewey once Mrs. Mayoral was out of earshot.
“I know, I know!” cringed Seraphina.
“Naw, don’t worry about it,” said Dewey. “She was bound to know it was us. No one else was even talking about the issue, let alone ready with presentations. He smiled. “It’ll be okay. I think. There’s Colin.”
“Hey, Colin! We gotta go see Mayoral.”
“It’s okay. You two just go,” he chuckled.
“Nice try,” replied Seraphina. “Well, I can’t eat. Let’s just get it over with.”
“Okay.” Colin took a big bite of his sandwich. Evidently meeting with the principal didn’t hurt his appetite.
“Split that with me?” asked Dewey.
“Sure, Buddy,” said Colin, and he handed him half of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
http://www.balancedforlife.net/pdf/About%20Vending.pdf
Employee Vacation
That afternoon, before Dewey went home, he visited Clara to bring her up to speed and seek her advice.
They’d won the campaign at school, but each had been given detention for coming on campus after hours.
Mrs. Mayoral loved their ideas, loved their suggestions, but she said she’d be remiss not to hold them accountable for breaking such a serious rule and being on campus unchaperoned. Still, they’d gotten off easy and saved the school.
It had been a busy year for him so far, adjusting to a new school and taking on his new role as teacher problem solver. He’d had to figure out how to use a locker and juggle six different teachers with six different personalities. He felt maybe he and Clara hadn’t spent as much time together as they once had, and he felt bad about it, even as he celebrated.
He wondered if maybe she felt bad about it too.
“So, sir, how progresses the Revolution?”
Clara stood about shoulder-height to Dewey and looked up at him as she pursued the details.
“The revolutionaries won!” he exclaimed. It felt so great to share the news with her, and she took it with such pleasure.
“Excellent news!”
Weird how it didn’t seem to matter how little time he spent in this office or with Clara, they always fell right back into place. He needn’t have worried, it seemed.
Wolfie heard the enthusiasm in their voices, and he dropped a new, rounded sheep toy at Dewey’s feet. Wolfie’s pink tongue hung, and his expressive eyes were full of expectation.
“Go get it!” Dewey called as he bounced the stuffed sheep across the room. Wolfie gave one solid bark and chased it.
“Dewey, do you think our clientele might be getting tired of cookies? I’m wondering if I should branch out a bit. Bake pies or cakes? Or maybe make small finger sandwiches . . .” proposed Clara.
“No! That’s an awful idea, Clara! Why? Are you tired of making cookies?” Dewey asked. He really hoped she’d say no.
“What? Me? Tired of cookies? No! There are thousands of types that I haven’t even tried to make yet. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t want things to evolve more around here.”
“NO! No more changes. I like things just as they are,” reassured Dewey.
Wolfie came back with his sheep smooshed up against his face.,Deep into their conversation, neither Dewey nor Clara noticed. Wolfie waited and then, tired of waiting, threw it up in the air himself.
Dewey laughed and went to toss it, but, as usual, Wolfie grabbed and wouldn’t release it, instead angling to play tug-of-war. Wolfie could also be counted on not to change too much, it seemed.
“Well, okay, then,” Clara reassured back. “I would, however, like to discuss a vacation, Boss. You know, every employee gets one, and I haven’t taken any vacation time since we started. I’m thinking since it’s almost winter break, things might slow down around here, and I could go away for a bit. I’ll leave you more cookies in the freezer. Just in case.”
“Oh no,” replied Dewey adamantly while tugging at the sheep firmly. “If you go, I’m shutting the office down until you’re back. I’ll take a break as well.” He got the sheep from Wolfie’s clench and tosse
d it across the room. “I can’t run this place without you.”
Clara’s cheeks turned pink.
After a few moments playing with Wolfie, Dewey asked, “Where will you go on vacation?”
“Wolfie and I will go to the snow. He loves to play in the snow.”
“Wow. Okay. I’ll miss you both,” said Dewey.
“We’ll miss you as well, sir. I figure a month should do it.”
“Huh. A vacation. Okay. Yeah. I guess we could all use that.”
Clara gave Dewey a hug, and he gave her a warm hug back.
Drone On
Dewey’s dad finished his first semester of being a student and a student teacher. This meant next fall he’d have a job as a full-fledged math teacher with classes of his own. If he worked at Ladera Linda, those classes would be keeping track of toilet paper use as part of their curriculum.
Dewey had managed to make it through his first semester of sixth grade. Toilet paper again rolled unfettered, and a new, improved pair of vending machines were on their way.
Today in the mail, he got the small drone his mom ordered for him a couple months ago. It had been on backorder, so Dewey had forgotten all about it!
Dewey’s mom and dad sat on the couch watching some old TV show.
“Dad? You want to help me try out the drone? I finally got it charged.”
“Sure!” He jumped up, running to the closet to get his tennis shoes. He tripped on a couch pillow that had fallen on the floor. Dewey’s mom laughed at him.
“Don’t trip over yourself, Don!”
“Where do you want to try her?”
“Her?” repeated Dewey.
“Well, in the military, they like to refer to ships and such as women, so I j—”
“Dad!” How come what was so funny with friends could be so annoying with parents? Dewey wondered, rolling his eyes.
“Easy, Turbo!” said Dewey’s mom as she rose to place her hand on Dewey’s dad’s shoulder.
“Oh, you guys don’t know how to have any fun. Fine. Where would you like to fly it?”
“Greenblade Park?” suggested Dewey.
“Alright then! Let’s take off!” said Dewey’s dad as they walked out together.
