Cassidy's Guide to Everyday Etiquette (and Obfuscation)

by Sue Stauffacher

  What is it with these teachers? They could never just do a thing. They had to natter on about it first. Did they do that in medical school? “As you can see, this man is bleeding to death, but before we sew him up, let me teach you a thing or two about blood.”

  I watched as Janae did this very strange thing to get her back end closer to the floor; it involved grabbing her cheeks—yes, those cheeks!—and tugging on them.

  Then she put her hands together and said some gibberish in yoga language.

  “Cassidy, once we’ve greeted each other, you can let your hands float down to your sides. There’s no need to remain in prayer pose.”

  Is that what we’ve been doing? I looked around to see if any of these smart alecks were like Delton Bean and had watched the video on floating hands; since all their hands were on their thighs already, I just fluttered my fingers a little and got there, too.

  “Samskaras are the general patterns of your life,” Janae began. “Our karmic inheritance, you might say.”

  I perked up. Was this some secret about karma?

  “They are the thoughts and actions we perform every day. Repeating samskaras strengthens them. We often speak of samskaras as making a groove in our mind, like the ruts that a tire makes when it goes over the same track again and again. It’s hard to resist falling into the track when you travel that path.

  “Samskaras can be good, like practicing your yoga postures at home; or they can be bad, like eating too many potato chips.”

  I let my hand float up into the air. I had an important question. “How many is too many, exactly?” I asked. “Potato chips, that is.”

  Janae smiled. “I’m sure others would like to know the answer to that question, too, Cassidy, but I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  “It’s just that my karma’s been going south lately and it never occurred to me that it might be the potato chips.”

  “That is for you to decide. In fact, that’s why we set an intention before we begin each class. It might be to pay more attention to what’s going on with our body as we take a pose; or, it might be more general—to be kinder, for example. This is how we form new positive samskaras—by setting an intention.

  “So, let’s take a moment to set our intention before we chant om.”

  I closed my eyes like everybody else; well…except for one little slit. Was this like making a wish?

  I intend to get Jack to let me wear the tool belt and also stop swanning around Sabrina Benson.

  I intend to spend more time on Livvy’s trampoline.

  I intend to make time speed up so boring etiquette lessons and, while I’m at it, this stupid yoga class are over.

  I had barely begun intending before Bree and Magda started to moan like they’d got a golf ball stuck in their throats. What was there to do but moan right along with them?

  When you thought about it, I had a great deal to moan about.

  “Cassidy, Cassidy! I appreciate your enthusiasm, but we only chant om three times.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” I could see Magda’s shoulders moving. She was giggling.

  “Let’s begin with a few standing poses.” Janae told us all to stand in the middle of our mats and then gave us a bunch of instructions to activate our knees, descend our shoulders and float our heads?! After all that, we stood straight as boards.

  “Now what?” I whispered to Bree.

  “Nothing. You’re in it.”

  “In what?”

  “Mountain pose.”

  After another ten minutes of instruction, we stood there with our arms over our heads. “This might be more boring than etiquette class,” I whispered to anyone who was in range.

  Another ten minutes and we were leaning forward, touching the floor. I let my head float around a little bit and saw that Magda, like me, could barely get the tips of her fingers to the floor. Jack could touch with his knuckles, but Bree was folded up like a clam!

  I’d had enough; it felt like someone was doing a tap dance on the back of my legs. But Janae had to walk around checking everybody first. Bree tilted her head, cheerful as ever, and waved.

  “That’s another sign of growing up,” Janae said as she bent over me. “Your hamstrings get tight.” She pressed on my back and the tap dancers turned into a road-construction crew with jackhammers. It was the kind of move that would get her a karate chop on the playground.

  “Just play with the edge,” she said. “It will get easier with practice.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Like eating soup while rowing backward.”

  Of course, that was an inside joke. I blamed the dizziness I felt standing up for wishing Delton was here to appreciate it.

  “Let’s get a partner,” Janae announced.

  Before you could say “Jack be nimble,” he was standing next to Bree with one of those yoga straps in his hand.

  “It’s much easier to demonstrate the proper technique of downward-facing dog with a partner to help us,” Janae said.

  I looked around. Magda and I were the only ones without partners. “Do we both need a leash?” I asked Janae, taking a small bow when the other kids laughed.

  At least they weren’t robots!

  “A strap, you mean? No, just one will do.”

  “I ought to put this around your neck,” I whispered to Magda, “for getting me into this.”

  “It’s not as bad as jogging,” she whispered back.

  “We’re in this stuffy room listening to a bunch of instructions for standing up! And it’s summer vacation! I’ve beat up third graders for less.”

  “Oh, Cassidy. You don’t beat up anybody. Besides, the purpose of yoga is to still your mind. Stop thinking so much.”

  “If my mind gets any stiller, I’ll be the living dead.” I started to do the zombie walk I’m so famous for at Riverside Park, but Magda grabbed my T-shirt.

  “I’ll go first,” she said, and got down on all fours.

  “In the downward-facing-dog posture,” Janae said, “our goal is to feel the full extension of the thighs all the way down the hamstrings. Let me demonstrate with Bree.”

  From down on all fours like a dog, Bree straightened her arms and legs. Janae stood behind Bree and looped the strap around her thighs. Then she pulled back on both ends.

  “The strap helps to relieve compression in the spine and allow for a full extension of the shoulders and arms as well.”

  In the world according to Cassidy, the logical question would be: “What would you want to do a thing like that for?”

  “Do you understand the instructions, Cassidy?”

  I nodded. Magda straightened her legs and I put the strap around them, up high, like Jack was doing to Bree. He was leaning back and pulling, so that’s what I did.

  “Don’t pull so hard, Cassidy!”

  “I’m not pulling. I’m leaning back like we’re supposed to.”

  “Well, then, don’t lean back so hard. I can’t—”

  “Do you two need help?” Janae appeared at my side.

  “No thank you. We’re done.” Without communicating with her partner, Magda collapsed on the floor, taking me down with her.

  “Get off me!” she said, bucking me like a bronco. As my knees hit the floor, I heard a crunch.

  “Oh no!” Magda was groping around. “My glasses!”

  “Don’t blame me,” I said, rubbing my knee. “You’re the one who pulled me over.”

  “You’re the one who was torturing me with the strap!”

  “Magda, I’m so sorry.” Bree was down on the floor with us. She tried to straighten Magda’s glasses before setting them on her nose. “You love these glasses.”

  “They’re fine.” I pushed them further up the bridge of Magda’s nose. “See. They’re not even broken.”

  “Only, one lens is above my eye and one is below.”

  “Don’t worry, Magda.” Janae was smoothing Magda’s hair. “We’ll get this sorted. Has everyone switched partners?”

  Magda grabbed a strap. “Not yet
. Get down on all fours, Cassidy.”

  In retaliation for mangling her glasses, Magda tried to stretch my thighs past their elastic limit. But since her glasses kept falling off and she’s so pathetic without them—squinting and blinking like a mole hitting the sunshine for the first time—her technique was not very effective.

  Finally, Janae had her sit over by the coats and shoes because we were using a prop that looked like a broom handle and Janae was worried Magda might be a danger to herself and others.

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to wear them when you exercised,” I said as we waited for Mom to come pick us up.

  “I couldn’t find my sports glasses! You know that. Plus, you’re the one who said yoga wasn’t a contact sport.”

  I felt bad about Magda’s glasses. Really I did. But they didn’t look as bad as the pair I ran over with the vacuum cleaner or the pair I stuck in the microwave when she snitched on me for fast-talking the Zinderman kids out of a half-dozen Oreos at their lemonade stand.

  The lemonade was way overpriced!

  “Don’t worry, sweetie,” Dad said to Magda at dinner. “After the vacuum-cleaner incident, I took out insurance against loss or damage to your glasses. We’ll get you a new pair.”

  “See,” I said, “it’s not that big of a deal.”

  “Actually, I don’t see.” To prove it, Magda stabbed the table with her fork.

  “In the meantime,” Dad continued, “I think that strap I use for my glasses when I play racquetball will help keep these aligned so you can avoid walking in front of a bus.”

  “At least it’s summer,” Magda said. “And no one will see what a freak I look like.”

  “We must have an old pair around somewhere.” Mom intentionally passed the mashed potatoes to Dad instead of me so he could be the one to finish them off.

  He dumped the rest of the bowl onto his plate. Obviously, he had never taken any etiquette lessons.

  “Funny thing is, all my glasses look like these.” Magda tried to give me the evil eye, but she just looked like a crazy old lady.

  “You know what cats think?” I said, hoping to head off a trip down memory lane about all the unfortunate accidents that had happened to Magda’s glasses. “Delton was telling me about it before class the other day. Cats think if they can’t see you, you can’t see them. That’s why he puts his cat in a pillowcase to take it to the vet.”

  “Don’t change the subject, Cassidy,” Mom said. “Just because you’d rather not—”

  “I’m not changing the subject. I was thinking if we were more like cats, then Magda would think no one could see her glasses.”

  Everyone stopped eating and stared at me.

  “Don’t you get it? It’s like Magda’s in the pillowcase…. Isn’t anybody following me?”

  As if on cue, the rest of the Corcoran clan shook their heads—no.

  If only they gave grades for obfuscation.

  Fortunately, Jack knocked on the back door and saved me from having to explain further.

  “Good evening, Corcorans. I stopped by on the off chance that Cassidy has any room in her lousy—I mean, busy—schedule to go fishing with me.”

  “See ya. Bye!” I said, aligning my shoulders for a straight pass through the exit.

  “Hold on there, cowgirl. We’re not finished,” Dad said, his mouth full.

  I could have pointed out—politely—that one of our family members wasn’t finished because he’d hogged all the mashed potatoes.

  “And you haven’t been excused yet,” Mom (the self-appointed standin for Miss Melton-Mowry) added.

  I put my palms on the table; I wanted to be ready to push off as soon as I heard the magic words. Mom is a marathon chewer. She held up her finger, swallowed and said, “What is that rule about correct dining posture? Hand position?”

  “C’mon, sweetie. She’ll sleep better if she works off some of the energy she stores up from etiquette class all week.” Dad wiped his mouth and dropped his napkin on the table.

  Putting down her fork, Mom took a deep breath. “Promise to be home by eight-thirty.”

  I nodded, leaning even further forward. She straightened her place mat. “And your napkin goes where?”

  “We haven’t covered the end of the meal yet, Mom.”

  “Really? I thought…” She rubbed her temple, remembering.

  Geez! She was killing me. A moan escaped from my throat.

  “Ready, set, go!” Mom called out, like it was a real race, and Jack and I were out the door like a shot.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting back to back on our log over the water, feet tucked up, rod in one hand and one of Janae’s granola cookies in the other.

  I had just finished telling Jack about being starved in etiquette class when he got his first bite. I don’t like watching the fish struggle on the line, so I concentrated on watching the evening sun glowing pink and purple, like it did in the summer.

  Even though it’s called the Grand River, it’s not that deep—no motorboats allowed—and the current runs so slow that you can get twice the bang for your buck and see two sunsets—the real one and the one reflected in the water.

  Jack unhooked the little guy and threw him back in. “How’s Miss Information?”

  “Not back yet.”

  “Where do you think she is? Visiting relatives?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s not talk about her.” With the smell of barbecue drifting through the air, I didn’t want to talk anymore about etiquette class. We could hear kids shouting over a soccer game on the ball field. Somewhere, a radio was playing. The bumps of Jack’s spine pressed into my back and a soft breeze kept the mosquitoes from settling. It was the perfect summer night.

  “Maybe tomorrow afternoon we can play Frisbee golf,” I said.

  “Maybe. But only if I get my lawns done.”

  “What is it with you and the lawn-mowing?”

  “I told you. I have goals. I’m saving up.”

  “Saving up for what?” I swatted away a mosquito that was trying to land on my nose.

  “For things, that’s what.”

  “Jack Taylor.” Dropping my legs so I didn’t fall in the river, I twisted around to look him in the eye. “I know pretty much every single thing about you. Why won’t you tell me what you’re saving up for?”

  “Because it’s none of your business.”

  “Because it has to do with Bree Benson, doesn’t it? And your hairy legs. And how you have goals all of a sudden.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I heard Mom telling Magda. You get hair on your legs and you start getting all funny about girls. Older girls.”

  “What’s the point of that?”

  I twisted back around. “You tell me.”

  “Well, I’m not the only one who’s acting funny. You think etiquette class is ruining your summer vacation, but you complain about it for twice the time you spend there!”

  Ugh. I felt like smacking myself in the head with my fishing rod. Why did I have to ruin the perfect summer moment by bringing up Jack’s hairy legs?

  “For your information, an hour in etiquette class equals two hours of normal time. You should try it. You could use some manners.”

  “Cassidy?”

  Just to remind me that my karma was still Titanic, the next perfect-summer-night sound I heard was Delton Bean calling my name.

  “Delton! Are you stalking me?”

  Coming as close to us as he could without stepping on the log, Delton said, “No. Not exactly.”

  “How did you know I was here, then?”

  “Well, fishing is your go-to topic for polite conversation and we only have one river in town and this is the public park.”

  “Spare me the details.”

  “Hey there, Delton.” Jack stepped over me and jumped from the log to the shore. The way he rocked it, I had to grab on tight to keep from falling in. “You didn’t walk here, did you?”

  “No. My mom drove me. S
he’s reading on the park bench by the swings.”

  I shimmied along the log, scraping my thighs. “Let’s skip how creepy that is to the part where you tell me why you’re here.”

  “Do you eat the fish you catch?” Delton asked Jack.

  “Nah. They’re too little.”

  “Unless we’re having sushi.” Brushing bits of bark off my thighs, I added, “Then we roll them in a little seaweed and bite their heads off first.”

  “In his state-of-the-city speech last January, the mayor did say we’ve contained septic sewer overflow by almost one hundred percent and the river is rebounding.”

  “Delton…” Taking a step into Delton’s personal space, I asked again, “Why are you here?”

  “I…” Delton stepped backward. “I’ve been experimenting with a new way to cure my issues with public speaking, and Mom…Mom thought you’d want to know right away—you know, transfer of knowledge to help with your anxiety over…” He gestured toward Jack’s cottage-cheese container filled with worms.

  I took another step, moving in until my nose was almost touching Delton’s. “You told your mom I was afraid of worms?”

  “Technically, not just worms, Cassidy, but other invertebrates, too. You’re also afraid of arthropods, as you demonstrated this morning with the millipedes; and I’ve seen you flinch at a struggling pill bug, which is also an arthropod, but…” Delton looked down at his hands, counting off the things I was afraid of on his fingers. “Though pill bugs do belong to a different subphylum. They are terrestrial crustaceans.”

  “Delton! Focus. You’d better tell me right now or I’ll—”

  “It’s called EFT; that stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques. It draws from the field of energy psychology, which doesn’t have rigorous backing from the scientific community, but there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest—”

  “For Pete’s sake, Delton! What is it?”

  “Well…” Delton tugged on the tails of his shirt. “You think about your phobia or look at a picture and you let yourself experience the fear vicariously, all while tapping on your meridian points.”

  “My what?”

  “I know meridians,” Jack said. “They’re energy points in your body. You use them in acupuncture.”

  “That thing where they poke needles in you?”