Don't Wear Polka-Dot Underwear with White Pants: (And Other Lessons I've Learned)

by Allison Gutknecht

  “Look harder,” I say, taking another step back, which means I have to talk a little bit louder. “What do you see now?”

  “Nope, nothing,” Mrs. Spangle answers. “You’re safe.”

  I take one more step back, just to make sure. “Are you absolutely positive you can’t see my underwear? They’re polka dot.” I accidentally say this real loud because I forgot about my super-whispery voice. And who appears at Mrs. Spangle’s desk right at this moment but Dennis, and he laughs.

  “I promise, Mandy,” Mrs. Spangle says. “Take a seat, please, and get ready for math. Dennis, you too.” Mrs. Spangle gives him a look like he is in trouble, but she does not write his initials on the board, which I think is unfair. If I had laughed about Dennis’s underwear, I am absolutely positive I would have gotten my initials on the board, so I stick my tongue out at him.

  “Hey, Natalie,” Dennis says as he sits down. “Did you know Mandy is wearing polka-dot underwear?”

  “So?” is all that Natalie answers. And sometimes I am very happy that Natalie is so dull. Because boring people do not care about things like polka-dot underwear.

  I sit at my desk, but I keep Anya’s sweater tied around my waist for the rest of the afternoon, and Anya does not even complain once that she is cold.

  This is why I like Anya almost as much as I like Rainbow Sparkle and almost as much as I like fruity gummy bears. I could eat a gummy bear or twenty right now. Because gummy bears never, ever come in polka dot.

  CHAPTER 2

  Gummy Bears

  IF I’VE LEARNED ANYTHING, it’s that a girl needs an emergency stash of gummy bears hidden in her room at all times, especially after a whole day of wishing she had gummy bears in her lunch box and finding crummy old carrot sticks instead.

  Gummy bears are my favorite food in the world. Gummy snakes are okay too, I guess, if you like snakes, which I do not. But I like bears. Sometimes I pretend that my last name is “Bear” even though it’s “Berr.” I am supposed to say it like, Brrrr, it’s so cold outside, but that is just boring. So I like to tell people our name is “Bear,” and this makes my parents annoyed. I am not sure why they have to care so much.

  A good place to get gummy bears is from a grandmom, because a parent will usually say “No.” But grandmoms are pretty nice about gummy bears if you ask real sweetly, with a big hug and kiss. Grandmoms love to be kissed, so I kiss mine a lot whenever I want a bag of gummy bears. And—ta-da!—here they are.

  I like to squeeze a gummy bear between my thumb and index finger until the head gets real big and then I rip it off with one bite. Red ones are my favorite, but that’s only because they don’t make periwinkle gummy bears yet. I eat my gummy bears like a rainbow—orange, yellow, green, blue—but I save all the red ones for last because they are the best.

  I am sitting here all by myself after school biting heads off of gummy bears because Mom is feeding the twins or changing the twins or doing something else that is damp with the twins. And they’re not being very quiet about it either. They are howling, actually. Or one of the twins is howling, and I don’t care which one it is, except I’d like to know which one I have to tackle later.

  Mom says I’m not allowed to tackle the twins, of course. And I don’t, except for in my mind.

  Timmy would come eat gummy bears with me if I asked him, but he is only three years old, and I cannot be seen hanging out with a preschooler. That would just be humiliating.

  I get up off my bed and place my bag of gummy bears by my feet gently, because I do not want to lose any bears. I grab one corner of my Rainbow Sparkle bedspread and pull and pull like I am playing tug-of-war. I pull until the whole bedspread is on the floor in a heap, which is a pretty big job. Then I lift up two corners and toss the whole thing into the air: This is how I create my Magic Mountain Wonderland. Around the mountain I stack the pillows from my bed until they form a fence, and then I sit in the middle. No one knows about my Magic Mountain Wonderland but me, and that is just the way I like it.

  I hold the gummy bear bag in my lap and start placing the bears one by one into the holes on the mountain. I put some of the green bears in a hole at the bottom of the mountain, because they like grass. I place the blue bears in a long, windy hole that looks like a river, because they like water. And I let the red bears live at the very tippy-top of the mountain, because they are the best.

  “Amanda!” Mom calls up the stairs. “What are you doing?”

  “Reading!” I yell back, even though I am not. If I say “reading,” my parents think I am being good and leave me alone, I’ve learned. Sometimes I really am reading, because I like to read, but mostly I like to read books about Rainbow Sparkle. And I’ve read all those already.

  Mom doesn’t know yet that she ruined my life with these white pants, and I don’t even think she would care because I am not a twin. I know I am better than the twins, though, so that is something. At least I don’t use a diaper. Even Timmy still wears a diaper when he is sleeping, so I call him a baby and then Mom tells me to go to my room. This is why it is very, very important to have gummy bears in my bedroom at all times—I am sent here a lot.

  “Go play in the backyard with Timmy. It’s a beautiful day,” Mom calls.

  “No, thank you,” I say. I am not going to be seen in public with a three-year-old. No way!

  “Let’s go, Amanda,” Mom calls again. “I’m not asking, I’m telling.”

  I tried to say this to Mom once—“I’m not asking, I’m telling”—and she was not pleased, so I don’t know why she gets to say it to me.

  I crinkle up my bag of gummy bears as softly as I can, but I groan as loudly as I can so Mom can hear it. I slide one of the pillows surrounding Magic Mountain Wonderland like it is a gate and then shut it behind me. I slam my bedroom door closed so that no one will come in, and I pound my feet down the stairs super loud, and when one pound comes out too softly, I go back up the step and do it again.

  “Knock that off,” Mom says. “Samantha and Cody are falling asleep.”

  I stomp toward the back door just a little bit more quietly and am about to slam the door behind me when I think better of it. I don’t want to hear those twins cry again either. Instead I stand right outside the kitchen window, turn my back to it, and point to my bottom.

  “What do you see?” I yell loudly, so Mom can hear through the screen.

  “Shh.” She shushes me again. “What’s the problem now?”

  “What do you see?” I repeat. My back is still to the window, but I’m sticking my bottom up in the air so she knows what I am talking about.

  “Oh my . . . ,” Mom begins, and then she starts to laugh. Which I think is pretty rude, if I am being honest.

  The harder Mom laughs, the angrier and angrier I get. Timmy jumps off the swing to see what is so funny, so I tell him to mind his own beeswax, which at least makes Mom stop laughing.

  “Don’t talk to your brother like that,” Mom says. “And from now on, no more white pants. I promise.”

  So at least this polka-dot underwear got me something good, I guess.

  I do not play with Timmy, but I do let him swing on the other swing with me, which I think is pretty generous.

  “Push me, Mandy,” he says, but I ignore him because I am not going to be bossed around by a preschooler. I am first, just like George Washington, so I am the boss. I am the president of the Berr family, I think.

  I get tired of swinging because the sun is shining right into my eyes and Mom will not buy me the fancy-dancy periwinkle sunglasses that I want. I jump off of the swing and walk over to the sandbox, picking up a large twig on my way.

  “Where you going, Mandy?” Timmy calls after me. He is a big pest sometimes.

  “I cannot see without fancy-dancy periwinkle sunglasses!” I yell back to him, and this answer makes him be quiet because he does not understand big-kid things like sunglasses.

  I pull off the lid of the sandbox, which is shaped like a turtle. The lid is supposed to b
e its shell, but it is all green, which is not very turtlelike at all. With my hand, I flatten out a whole side of the sandbox so that the sand is super smooth, just like paper. Then I lift up the twig and very carefully write President Mandy Berr in large letters across the sand. I give the Y an extra big curlicue and even draw a sun face in the middle of the curl. I stand back to admire my work.

  “Abracadabra!” Timmy dives into the sandbox, and sand flies everywhere—out of the turtle and onto my ankles, ruining my very first presidential signature with the sunshine curlicue.

  “TIMMY!” I scream so loud that it tickles the back of my throat. Timmy tries to scramble out of the sandbox like a beetle stuck in the bathtub, his sneakers scraping against the bottom of the turtle.

  “What’s going on out there?” Mom calls out the kitchen window.

  “Timmy ruined my presidential signature!” I stomp my foot and cross my arms and put on my “I have never been so angry in my life” face, because I have never been so angry in my life.

  “I think it’s time you two came inside anyway,” Mom says. “Put the lid back on the sandbox, please.” Mom disappears from the window.

  “You do it, Bigfoot,” I tell Timmy, even though I know that I am much stronger when it comes to turtle lids. I scuff my shoes across the grass until I reach the back door and bang inside.

  “Where’s my lunch box?” I ask.

  “Where you left it,” Mom answers. “Not on the counter, which is where I asked you to put it.”

  “Humph.” I shuffle into the living room, and I find my book bag and lunch box next to the front door, right where I had thrown them. I kneel down and pop open my lunch box so that I can bring Rainbow Sparkle upstairs to play in my Magic Mountain Wonderland. Because Rainbow Sparkle is the only one in this whole family who understands that I am the president.

  CHAPTER 3

  Caterpillars

  IT HAS BEEN A WHOLE week, and Mrs. Spangle still has not told me that I can play George Washington in the Presidential Pageant.

  She has taught us about a bunch of other presidents who are not nearly as important as George Washington. I have not learned much, really. All I know is that President Taft was very round, and President Clinton played the saxophone, and President Garfield got shot, which is a pretty big problem, so I hope Mrs. Spangle doesn’t get confused and make me play him.

  But I have even more bad news, and that is that Dennis has a name-call for me now, when my whole point was only to have one for him. He calls me “Polka Dot.” Anya says this is not so bad—it could be “Underwear,” she points out, because Anya is helpful like that. But I would prefer Dennis have no name for me and I could just call him “Freckle Face” whenever I felt like it.

  “At least you only wear polka-dot underwear sometimes, right?” Anya asks. “Dennis has those freckles all of the time.” Though, to tell you the truth, I’d really like to ask Dennis how he got those freckles so I could get some for myself. But I never, ever talk to Dennis in a nice way.

  Also, I will never be wearing polka-dot underwear again thanks to Dennis, which makes me kind of sad, because I do love polka dots and I am pretty sure they were my lucky pair. But now they make me feel kind of embarrassed and hot on the forehead.

  Mom keeps telling me to play outside with Timmy after school, which is no fun. Even when I tell her I want to read, she shoos me out the door and says I need “fresh air.” Mom is always telling me not to be fresh, so I don’t know why the air is allowed to be.

  Timmy looks nothing like me, I think, so I like to pretend that he is not my brother at all. He has blue eyes, and blue eyes are much closer to Rainbow Sparkle’s purple eyes than my brown ones, so this makes me mad. I’d like to have blue eyes too, and sometimes I wonder if there is a way I can steal them from Timmy.

  “Push me, Mandy?” he asks.

  “No,” I answer, because I am the boss. But I do not feel like swinging or running or going in the sandbox myself, so I decide that I am going to pretend I like Timmy just for today and let him play Squash the Lemon with me on our slide. I will even be the anchor at the bottom so that Timmy can squash me, which I think is pretty generous because squashing is the best part of the game.

  “Come here,” I tell him. “I am going to let you play my favorite game.”

  “Yippee!” Timmy pops off the swing as fast as a preschooler can pop and walks over to the slide.

  “I am going to slide down first,” I explain. “Then you are going to slide down after me like this.” I climb up the ladder, which is not nearly as high as the one on the playground, and show him how to slide down with his legs hanging off both sides of the slide. “You got it?”

  “Got it!” Timmy says. I climb back up the slide and go down the regular way, which is a very boring way to slide. Timmy climbs up the ladder behind me, drapes his legs over each side of the slide, and slithers down. He bumps into me when he reaches the bottom, and it barely hurts at all, which is not fun in this case.

  This is the problem with playing Squash the Lemon with a three-year-old, especially when there is only one of them.

  “You need to go much faster, or else this game is no fun,” I explain. “I will show you.” I sit him at the bottom of the slide real tight so I can slide into him. Then I climb up the ladder, drape my legs over the sides, and slide down at my fastest speed ever.

  And I knock Timmy off the slide and into the grass.

  And then he cries, because he can’t even take a little squashing.

  “I’m going to tell Mommy,” he says, so I call him a baby and walk to the side of the house to be by myself.

  The side of our house is a little bit spooky. Not spooky like Halloween or anything, but it has some weeds and some cobwebs and a lot of dead leaves. No one ever goes to the side of our house but me. I don’t even like it that much, but it is better than nothing.

  There are always a lot of bugs here. I do not love bugs, but I do not hate them either. I look along the bricks on the side of my house to see if there is anything interesting. One time I found a bird’s nest lying next to it, but with no eggs inside, which was less exciting (and plus, Mom wouldn’t let me touch the nest because she thought I would get a disease).

  I walk along the side slowly, trying to put on my best scientist eyes like Mrs. Spangle talks about during our science lessons. It is not sunny here, so at least I do not need the fancy-dancy periwinkle sunglasses that Mom won’t buy me. I run the fingers of my left hand along the house to see if anything feels different. There is nothing for a long time, and then suddenly, my hand hits something furry.

  When I feel it, I scream a little bit.

  I step closer to look, and I see a hairy, crawly caterpillar making its way along the house. A real-life caterpillar! Mrs. Spangle just taught us about caterpillars last month, about how they turn into butterflies and all that fantastic magic business. But she would not let us touch the ones that she kept in our classroom terrarium. This is my big chance.

  Carefully, I place my right hand in front of the caterpillar’s head so he can crawl onto it. He does! I pull my hand away from the wall, and his teensy hairs tickle the top of my hand like a feather. I feel his top with my other hand, and he is squishy, almost like a gummy bear.

  And I kind of want to squeeze him, just to see what will happen. Not real hard or anything—just a little bit. Like a gummy bear before you bite the head off.

  I put my thumb and index finger around the middle of the caterpillar and bring them together slowly.

  “Amanda!”

  I am so startled that I twitch my hands fast and the caterpillar falls off. Which is just terrible, because now I have to go digging through dead leaves if I ever want to find him again.

  “You made me drop my caterpillar!” I yell at Mom.

  “Why did Timmy come inside crying?”

  “You made me drop my caterpillar!” I yell again, just in case she did not hear what a great tragedy this is. She is a bad listener, after all. “I was just ab
out to squeeze him.”

  “Squeeze him? Amanda, you cannot squeeze caterpillars. You will kill them. Is that what you want?”

  I think about this for one second only. “Is that the truth?”

  “Yes, Amanda,” Mom says.

  “Mandy,” I correct her, because she never, ever remembers.

  “Fine, now get inside, please, Mandy, and apologize to Timmy.” And I do not like how she says the Y version my name at all because it is in her mean “Go to your room, Amanda” voice. So maybe I should let Mom call me “Amanda,” but only when I am in trouble so that “Mandy” is not ruined.

  “How do you know it’s me who made him cry?”

  Mom gives me her “I know everything you do” look and stares at me down the point of her nose.

  “Okay, fine,” I say. “Will squeezing caterpillars really kill them?”

  “Yes,” Mom answers. “Plus, you could get a disease.”

  “I won’t squeeze them again,” I promise. But only because I don’t want them to die, not because of the disease part.

  “Sorry, Timmy,” I call as I run through the back door. I trot up the stairs to my bedroom, open the pillow-gate to my Magic Mountain Wonderland, and place my bag of gummy bears on my lap. I take out a red one and pinch it between my thumb and finger, then I stick it in my mouth.

  And don’t tell Mom, but I do not even wash my hands first.

  CHAPTER 4

  George and Me

  THE NEXT DAY MRS. SPANGLE makes Natalie and me be reading partners, which is almost as horrible as being reading partners with Dennis. Natalie is very serious, and I am very not serious. She never calls out or has her initials on the board or gets a warning from Mrs. Spangle.

  Plus, Natalie thinks that she is a better reader than me, and that is just a lie.