Amelia Bedelia Shapes Up

by Herman Parish

  “Wow!” said Amelia Bedelia. “What were you aiming for?”

  “The green,” said her father.

  Amelia Bedelia turned in a complete circle. “But everything around us is green,” she said. “The grass, bushes, trees . . .”

  “See that tiny patch of grass?” her father asked, pointing into the distance.

  “With the little flag on a stick?” asked Amelia Bedelia.

  “Yup,” he said. “That’s the first hole. Now it’s your turn to drive.”

  They hopped back into the cart. “Hang on, Dad!” said Amelia Bedelia as they sped away.

  She drove them to the ball he had just hit. Driving was fun, but they were still a long way from that flag.

  “Please hand me a wood,” said Amelia Bedelia’s father.

  Amelia Bedelia looked around for a stick or a branch.

  “On second thought,” he said, “hand me an iron.”

  “You don’t need one,” she said. “Your clothes look fine. They’re not wrinkly.”

  “This is an iron in golf,” her father said, reaching for a club with a metal head. He used it to hit the ball again and again. And again. Each time they got closer to the green and the flag. Amelia Bedelia followed her father in the cart, occasionally doing big loop de loops.

  At last he announced, “I’m going to chip the ball now.”

  Amelia Bedelia was certain that a chipped ball didn’t roll as well as a perfectly round ball. They’d done an experiment about this in science. He must not have chipped the ball much, because it landed on the green and rolled smoothly toward the little hole with the flag poking out of it.

  Her dad got out his putter and walked up to the ball. “When I hit the ball,” he said, “pull out the pin.”

  “What pin?” said Amelia Bedelia. “A safety pin? A rolling pin?”

  “No,” said her father. “In golf, the pin is the flag. Pull the flag out of the hole.”

  He tapped the ball. It began rolling downhill, picking up speed and curving perfectly toward the flag. Amelia Bedelia pulled out the flag and put her foot in front of the hole. The ball bounced off her shoe.

  “What did you do that for?” yelled her father.

  “To keep the ball from falling into the hole,” said Amelia Bedelia. “You’re welcome!”

  “That’s the point of golf,” he said. “That hole is the cup!”

  “If that’s the cup,” said Amelia Bedelia, “you can forget about teatime. I’m not thirsty anymore.”

  Amelia Bedelia was glad her father only played nine holes. The last one was a water hole, where the ball had to be hit over a pond. And there were no refreshments, unless you counted the slimy green pond, which she did not.

  Her father was about to hit the ball when Amelia Bedelia noticed something. “Hey, Dad,” she said, “that ball you’re using looks disgusting!”

  Her dad explained that he often hit the ball into the pond and lost it there.

  “I’ve lost more balls than I can count in that pond,” her father said. “That’s why I’m using this yucky old one. I won’t miss it if I lose it.”

  He was swinging his club when Amelia Bedelia got an idea.

  “Wait!” she hollered.

  She was too late. The ball sailed away.

  “Amelia Bedelia,” her father said sternly. “Never interrupt an athlete who is hitting or throwing or catching a ball. It’s an important rule of good sportsmanship. I didn’t even see where my ball went.”

  He teed up another one and hit it onto the green. Amelia Bedelia wanted to go wading into the pond after his ball, but now it didn’t matter. On his second putt, the ball fell into the cup. When Amelia Bedelia reached in to pull it out, she made a discovery.

  “Hey,” she said. “There was already a ball in here!”

  She held it up for him to see, and they both recognized it. It was the beat-up ball he had hit first. Amelia Bedelia’s father looked stunned. Then he waved his putter around and threw his hat in the air. She had never seen him so mad. Then she realized he was happy. Really, really happy.

  “Yippee—a hole in one!” he yelled, dancing around the cup. “I got a hole in one!”

  What a wild tea party! thought Amelia Bedelia.

  On Sunday afternoon, Amelia Bedelia found her mother practicing yoga in the guest bedroom. She looked so calm and so serene. It was relaxing just watching her. A few minutes later, Finally came in and lay down next to Amelia Bedelia’s mother on the floor.

  “What do you like about yoga?” asked Amelia Bedelia.

  “It keeps me in shape,” said her mother.

  “How do you change shape?” Amelia Bedelia asked. “What shape are you now?”

  Her mother was down on her hands and knees with her back straight. “This is called table pose,” she said.

  “I get it,” said Amelia Bedelia. “Your back is the top of the table, and your legs are the legs of the table.”

  “My arms are legs too,” said her mother, arching her back up into the air. “Now what do I look like?”

  Amelia Bedelia shrugged.

  “Like a croquet hoop.”

  “This is cat pose,” said her mother.

  “Shhhh!” said Amelia Bedelia. “Don’t say that word in front of Finally!”

  “Here’s one for her,” said Amelia Bedelia’s mother as she straightened her legs and put her bottom up in the air until she looked like an upside-down letter V. “This pose is called downward-facing dog. Try it.”

  Amelia Bedelia got down on the floor and tried the pose. Finally stood up and stretched the same way, poking her furry rear end high in the air.

  Amelia Bedelia and her mother looked at Finally, then at each other.

  “Finally does a better downward-facing dog pose than either of us,” said her mother.

  “Woof!” agreed Amelia Bedelia.

  They began giggling and couldn’t stop. Finally started to bark. She ran under their bellies, like a ball zipping through a pair of croquet hoops, until Amelia Bedelia and her mom collapsed on the floor together.

  As her mother rolled up her yoga mat, she said, “Thank you for going with your dad to play golf, sweetie. It meant a lot to him that you saw him get that hole in one.”

  “It was fun,” said Amelia Bedelia. “I learned new words.”

  Her mother stopped smiling. “New words?” she asked. “What new words?”

  Amelia Bedelia could tell that her mom was trying to keep a calm yoga voice.

  “Golf words,” said Amelia Bedelia. “Like the word ‘hook.’ It’s not like a fishhook. It’s when you hit the ball and it curves back to the left and gets lost in the bushes. Then he had a slice.”

  “Pizza?” asked her mother.

  “Nope,” said Amelia Bedelia. “This slice is when you hit the ball and it veers to the right and bounces off a tree.”

  “I see,” said her mother. “What happens when your dad hits the ball and it goes straight down the middle?”

  Amelia Bedelia smiled and said, “He hollers ‘Hooray!’ and jumps in the air.”

  Her mother laughed.

  “Hey,” said Amelia Bedelia. “Where is Dad?”

  “It’s Sunday afternoon, cupcake,” said Amelia Bedelia’s mother with an exaggerated shrug. “I wonder where on earth your father could be. . . .”

  Amelia Bedelia understood immediately.

  Amelia Bedelia went downstairs to the family room. Her father was snug as a bug in his recliner. He was eating chips and dip and watching football.

  Amelia Bedelia sat on the footstool. She did her best to look interested in the game, which was just beginning. Football had always baffled her, but her dad loved it, so she was open to giving it another try.

  “Why is that guy dressed like a zebra?” she asked, pointing at the man in a black-and-white-striped shirt.

  “That’s the ref—the referee,” said her father. “He makes sure the players follow the rules. See, he just flipped a quarter to decide which team will kick the ba
ll to the other team.”

  “Who are those two other guys on the field with him, the ones wearing numbers?” asked Amelia Bedelia.

  “They’re quarterbacks,” said her dad.

  “Did Zebra Guy give them back their quarters?” asked Amelia Bedelia.

  “No,” said her father. “Each team tries to get the other team’s quarterback.”

  Amelia Bedelia was amazed. “Do you mean those guys knock into one another just trying to get a quarter back?”

  Her dad laughed. “Those guys get paid millions of dollars to tackle one another,” he said.

  “That’s a lot of quarters,” said Amelia Bedelia, dipping a chip into the dip.

  Once the game began, Amelia Bedelia’s father acted as though he was playing too.

  He yelled at the TV, telling the players where to run, when to pass, and how to tackle. He spent every minute cheering and booing and even jumping in the air and grabbing his hair.

  “Maybe you ought to play football instead of golf, Dad,” said Amelia Bedelia.

  Her father was not listening. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Our quarterback is behind the eight ball.”

  Gosh, thought Amelia Bedelia, even the ball has a number. No wonder she was clueless when it came to football! It was all about math. There were scores and penalties and measurements involved. Football players were covered in numbers, and some players were even fractions. She could hear Mrs. Robbins now: “If a quarterback has the number twelve on his uniform, and you divide that by four, what number is he really? If a halfback has the number twenty on his uniform, is he really a ten or a five?”

  Amelia Bedelia discovered that the game itself was divided into quarters. At halftime she and her dad watched a band marching around the field in fancy geometric formations. Worse still, the announcers kept talking about numbers called statistics, measuring how these teams were doing compared to other teams and past games. Numbers kept pouring off the screen, flowing out of the speakers, flooding the family room with a tidal wave of math that left her floating on her footstool in a sea of arithmetic. Thank goodness for the yummy chips and dip!

  Then Amelia Bedelia heard a sound that was music to her ears.

  “Z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z . . .”

  Her dad had fallen asleep. She gently slid the remote out of his hand. She lowered the volume so she wouldn’t wake him up while she was changing the channel to something good.

  Amelia Bedelia found a nature show about a troop of gorillas. They were fighting over a coconut. A silverback took it away from the others and ran off with it. Some zebras were grazing in background. It looked like a football game, without any numbers.

  Just then, her dad snorted and opened his eyes groggily. His glasses fell off.

  “What’s the score?” he asked, squinting at the screen.

  “Twenty-one to fourteen,” said Amelia Bedelia, remembering the score of the football game before she switched the channel.

  “Who’s ahead?” he asked.

  “The team with twenty-one points,” she said.

  “That’s right,” said her dad, rolling over to resume his nap. “That’s how football works. Z-z-z-z-z-z.”

  Amelia Bedelia couldn’t blame him. This weekend had worn her out too. She couldn’t wait to get back to school and away from sports for a while.

  On Monday, Amelia Bedelia discovered one good thing about spending her Saturday on a golf course. None of the other kids in her class had ever played golf—miniature golf, maybe, but not real grown-up golf. Amelia Bedelia told everyone how she’d helped her father get a hole in one.

  “Whoa,” said Skip. “My dad would give anything for that.”

  Even Dawn was impressed. “I’d give anything for that!” she said.

  With sports out of the way, Amelia Bedelia was ready for social studies. She loved anything to do with history, because it had already happened. There were no surprises. She loved ancient history most of all, because that stuff had happened so long ago, it was . . . well . . . ancient!

  “I’ve got a surprise for you!” announced Mr. Tobin, their social studies teacher. “Today we start our study of ancient Greece. We will reach back thousands of years, travel across time and space to bring those times into the present. We will learn about Greek inventions and food and families and the Greek gods and myths. We will relive those ancient times by holding our own Greek Games, an athletic competition featuring a variety of sports from ancient Greece.”

  While the entire class erupted in cheers and shouts, Amelia Bedelia sat in stunned silence. She was doomed. There was no escaping sports. Sports had been around for thousands of years. Fortunately, she wasn’t the only one worrying.

  “What sports did the ancient Greeks play?” asked Teddy.

  “Well,” said Mr. Tobin, “the first marathon was run by a Greek messenger.”

  “Are we running a marathon?” asked Holly.

  “Certainly not,” said Mr. Tobin. “A marathon is more than twenty-six miles.”

  “Wow,” said Cliff. “That messenger must have gotten a medal.”

  “Actually,” said Mr. Tobin, “right after he delivered the message, he died.”

  “Died?” said Clay. “Actually died?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Mr. Tobin. “We’re going to do an ancient pentathlon, just like they did back in 708 BC.”

  “I hope it’s a shorter race,” said Clay.

  “It is,” said Mr. Tobin. “Remember your geometry—also invented by the Greeks. A pentagon has five sides. So a pentathlon has five events, one of which is a short race. You’ll only have to run a hundred meters. That’s about one hundred and nine yards.”

  Everyone except Amelia Bedelia breathed a sigh of relief. Some of the yards in her neighborhood were really big. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to run through one hundred and nine of them. She’d have to stop and rest, for sure.

  “What are the other four events?” asked Angel.

  Mr. Tobin turned to the blackboard and made a list. “A pentathlon includes the hundred-meter run, long jump, wrestling, discus throw, and last but not least, javelin,” he said.

  “Javelin?” asked Clay. “We get to throw a spear?”

  “You bet,” said Mr. Tobin. “But we will do it safely, I assure you.”

  Mr. Tobin spent the rest of social studies answering questions and talking about how important sports were in ancient Greece. He showed them pictures with statues of athletes throwing a discus and a javelin. He also showed them pictures of big vases decorated with images of athletes wrestling or jumping.

  Clay raised his hand. “Mr. Tobin,” he said, “those ancient athletes are naked. Can we wear clothes at our pentathlon?”

  Mr. Tobin waited for the laughter to die down before he answered. “Yes, on one condition,” he said. “Your assignment is to wear chitons and sandals, just like the Greek boys and girls would have done. Look, here’s a picture.”

  Chip said, “It’s a toga party!”

  Everyone cheered.

  “Save that for the pentathlon,” said Mr. Tobin. Then he showed them one last picture. It was an image of a big plate that was in a museum. Greek athletes were running in a footrace around the rim of the plate. There was no starting point or finish line. It was impossible to tell who was winning and who was losing or who was ahead and who was behind. They had been chasing one another around the rim of that plate, in an endless circle, for thousands of years, just for the pure joy of running. Amelia Bedelia loved it.

  If the ancient Greeks were choosing teams, would they have chosen her? Water fountains hadn’t been invented yet. Would the team captain have picked an animal skin filled with cool water before choosing Amelia Bedelia?

  The first practice session for the pentathlon took place on an unusually hot and humid day. Amelia Bedelia and her classmates were sent out to the lower field for gym.

  TWEEEEEEET!

  Some kids jumped, and others covered their ears. Everyone spun around. A young woman was standing before t
hem, a clipboard in one hand and a water bottle in the other. She had a large silver whistle between her lips. She let the whistle fall and dangle from a lanyard around her neck.

  “Afternoon, kids. My name is Mrs. Thompson. You may call me Mrs. Thompson or Coach Thompson, but I prefer just Coach. I usually work with the older kids, but Mr. Tobin has asked me to get you in shape for your Greek Games. Any questions?”

  Rose raised her hand. “It’s pretty hot. Can we sit in the shade until—”

  “Nope,” said Coach Thompson. “Now line up, and let’s have a look at you.”

  Everyone shuffled into a wavy, lumpy line. They resembled an anaconda that had stuffed itself at Thanksgiving.

  Coach Thompson clapped sharply three times. “Come on, come on! Move it! Line up alphabetically,” she called out.

  That was easy for Amelia Bedelia. Her name put her at the head of the line. She would be the first to be inspected by Mrs. Thompson.

  “Hello,” said Mrs. Thompson.

  “Hello, Just Coach,” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “What did you call me?” asked Mrs. Thompson.