by Rachel Vail
When we came in from recess, Mr. Leonard’s clear script on the board said:
Class Rep for 4-L: Cash Plotz
A few kids were congratulating Cash. Noah didn’t even sit down. He stood in the classroom doorway with his face getting redder and his eyes getting wetter and his hand raised. Mr. Leonard was busy giving a speech about how close the vote was and how well the campaigns were run and how many other opportunities there are to serve the school community.
Finally he called on Noah, who asked, “May I please go to the bathroom? Right away. Please.”
When I showed up in the bathroom ten minutes later, it was only because Mr. Leonard sent me to see if Noah was okay in there. I could hear kids giggling as I left the classroom, but I ignored that. That’s what Mom and Mr. Leonard both say you should do if somebody is giggling at you in an unkind way.
Noah was in a stall, crying. I heard him. It wasn’t the quiet type of crying.
“Mr. Leonard wanted…” I said.
“Get out!” Noah yelled.
“Okay.” I said. I started to go, but then I thought, Well, maybe I should hang out for a minute, in case he needed a friend. “Noah?”
“I said leave me alone!”
“I’ll tell Mr. Leonard you’ll be back soon, okay?”
“I don’t care,” he said inside the stall.
“I’m sure it really was close,” I told him. “Very close. Like Mr. Leonard said.”
“Did you vote for me?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
He blew his nose and then whispered, “Thanks, Justin.”
November 17, Wednesday
But that was a lie.
November 18, Thursday
Noah was absent. For pinkeye.
And he doesn’t have any brothers, so if it is true, what everybody was saying about how you get pinkeye, I am not sure what happened to him or where or how.
There were a lot of theories going around. None of them nice.
November 19, Friday
You don’t get pinkeye from farts.
That is the one thing I learned in school today, and now I (and everybody in 4-L except Noah who was absent again) have to write one full page, over the weekend, about what pinkeye is, how you get it for real, and how to prevent it.
Mr. Leonard invited Ms. Khan the School Nurse to come in to be a guest in our classroom, to explain what an infection is and what pinkeye is, and also why people pass gas.
Grown-ups should not talk about farts, no matter what they call it, if they want fourth-graders to maintain control of ourselves.
November 20, Saturday
Things I Am Good at Getting:
3. Pinkeye.
I hate everybody.
And everything.
November 21, Sunday
I especially hate Noah, farts, kerfuffles, bathrooms that I am sent to when I didn’t even want to go, and eyes.
And pink. Stupid pink. What kind of color even is that? Light red? Add white to blue and do you have to give it its own dumb name? No. It’s just light blue. Light green. Light yellow. But with red? Pink.
I hate colors that need their own special treatment.
Also, ointment. Ew. Is that stuff just intentionally disgusting? To punish people who have pinkeye? To make them blinder and sadder? The guy who invented ointment should have to live in ointment for the rest of his life.
Jerk.
November 22, Monday
In May, we will have Fourth-Grade Tests, which count. On them we will have to write an essay. So we have to get started on practicing doing that right away, even though it is only November, so who even knows if May will ever come. “That’s like predicting the future,” Xavier Schwartz said. But it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow during school we will have to write an essay about something we are thankful for.
For homework tonight we just have to write a good long list of what we are thankful for, and then tomorrow in school we will choose one, only one, to write about.
Things I Am Thankful For:
1. That pinkeye goes away fast.
2.
November 23, Tuesday
WHAT I AM THANKFUL FOR
By Justin K., 4-L
A thing that I am thankful for is my friends. Who aren’t a thing, but you know what I mean with that Topic Sentence.
(Mr. Leonard, I really wish we could be allowed to use pencil for first drafts because I keep messing up and it comes out not saying exactly what I mean or it sounds better in my head. It’s kind of, like, I get going on one path of thinking and I can’t remember what I was going to say, but it’s too late. Anyway, if you could from now on please say okay to pencils for drafts so we can erase the mess-ups without it looking like just a big bruise of ink on the page, I would be thankful for THAT. I would even write a whole new essay on my thankfulness of Now We Can Write in Pencil. And you wouldn’t have to give me extra credit for it. Unless you want to. ☺ Thank you. Back to the essay now.)
So anyway, about my friends. Well, I am thankful that they like me. Most of the time. I think they like me. Hmm. If they don’t like me, wow. That would stink. What if they don’t like me?
I Am Thankful is the topic, though. So:
I am thankful that my friends are usually pretty good at fooling me that they do like me, if they don’t. Hahahaha.
Really, an eraser would be a top thankful thing for me right now.
My friends include (I am not sure if include is a transition word because I know including is, but whatever) Noah, Cash, Xavier Schwartz, and also some girls, even though they are girls, for example Daisy and Montana C. They are my friends because they are fun to play with and are just, you know, nice. (Not just the girls. The boys too.) Also Gianni Schicci was nice after a disaster (caused by him but still) last year, but he is in the other class so you probably don’t know him and I don’t do that much stuff with him this year. Plus he cheats, so it’s annoying sometimes to play with him, but maybe he’s growing out of that.
I am thankful that these friends of mine are fun and funny (not just bathroom humor but also other kinds) and usually don’t punch me in the stomach except sometimes Noah who swings his arm a lot when my belly is near him. I think maybe Noah is having a hard year this year. I am trying to be patient and understanding, but it is not always easy. Noah and I have been friends since we were in nursery school. I am thankful for that. Cash and I have been friends only since camp. I didn’t even know we liked each other that much in camp. I thought we weren’t friends, actually, but I was wrong, I guess.
That is a thing to be thankful for too, sometimes, in a weird way, don’t you think, Mr. Leonard? Being thankful about being wrong about something is strange when you think about it a little, but if you think about it a lot it’s, like, Oh, okay. It is good to be wrong about somebody you thought was rough and maybe even mean but it turns out he’s nice. And also, if you thought that kid didn’t like you. Like, I thought Cash thought I was not a sporty kid, just a worried kid who should not be included.
I am thankful for being included and having so many friends.
I would be thankful if they all liked to play together more and none of them acted weird. Or sad. Or sometimes mean to me, like not wanting to share Oreos with me just with Bartholomew Wiggins. Or kicking my chair sometimes. Such as every time he walks past it.
Also this might be weird, but sometimes it would be good to have fewer friends. Like when you don’t know which friend to be thankful to play with at recess that day. Do you know what I mean? Like, imagine it is Tug-of-War and I am the rope. Is how it feels sometimes.
In conclusion, I am thankful you are a teacher who might not take off points for bad spelling (I hope). And also about the friends.
The End
By Justin K.
November 24, Wednesday
Mr. Leonard made me stay in during recess because I got a big red SEE ME on my thankfulness essay.
In trouble again. Great.
I got all ready with
, Okay, maybe it was a disaster of an essay, but it was very long. I wrote so much and a kid should get some credit for that, at least.
Mr. Leonard said he wanted to talk about what is going on with me.
I concentrated very much on not crying because I am a fourth-grader so it is not okay to show my feelings in school. The concentrating on not crying made it hard for me to answer Mr. Leonard’s questions.
He wanted to know if somebody really has been punching me in the stomach.
I didn’t want to tell.
I didn’t want to lie.
So I didn’t answer. I sat there wishing maybe he had to go to a meeting soon and I could go outside to recess with all the other 4-L kids.
“Justin, please stop shrugging,” Mr. Leonard said. “I would really like to hear your thoughts.”
So I took a big gulp of air and said, “Noah was just swinging his arm. I was not tattletaling on him. Please don’t put him or me in trouble or anybody, please may I please be dismissed?”
Mr. Leonard’s head sank a little bit and he looked at his very long fingers, which were cooperating with one another between his knees. The pointers made a triangle together.
“I could write a new essay about being thankful for my dog,” I offered. “I am not as scared of him as I used to be. And you wouldn’t even have to give me extra credit for it even though it would be an extra essay. Would that be better?”
“Your essay was fine, and you aren’t in trouble.”
“Phew,” I said.
“You seem a little worried.”
“Nope,” I said. “Me? Worried? HA!”
BOTH of Mr. Leonard’s eyebrows went up at that. Maybe he was startled by the loudness of the HA! We looked at each other with hugely open eyes while the HA! faded slowly away in the air.
Afterward I explained, more quietly, “I used to be a very worried kid. I am not a worried kid anymore. But maybe there’s a little left over. Like a stain.”
Mr. Leonard smiled. “Well,” he said, “you can always talk to me about whatever’s going on. Remember that. And it doesn’t have to be tattletaling to talk with an adult if something or someone is bothering you. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, and then he let me go out to recess.
It was so late in recess and the game was already going, so I just got to sit on the grass. I leaned back on my elbows, looked at the cumulus clouds drifting by, and wasn’t in trouble.
Which I am very thankful for.
November 25, Thursday
More Things I Am Thankful For:
1. Apple pie AND blueberry pie, AND you can just eat the crust, leave the goo, AND you don’t have to have pumpkin pie.
2. Hide-and-Seek with cousins.
3. Vacation.
4. Extra grandparents named Ninny and Bop who are visiting from Florida with perfect presents for us even though Thanksgiving is not a present-y holiday, just because they love us.
5. My new scooter, which is exactly the one I was secretly hoping for.
6. Maybe not so secretly.
7. Parents who tell the scooter secret to grandparents.
8. And say okay even if it is dangerous to ride a scooter and you have to wear a helmet every single time no exceptions, mister.
9. Little sisters who need to share your hiding spot because they get scared when they hide all alone in Hide-and-Seek with the cousins.
10. Laps of grown-ups who let you fall asleep with your head there while they talk talk talk like a lullaby.
November 26, Friday
I will ride my scooter. I just need to try it alone for the first few times, not with the entire extended family watching. Also it looked like it might start raining. And I needed to play with my Knights, who were having a very big battle, and not just the one against my little cousins Dylan and Dermot, who thought maybe the Knights were chew toys.
Dylan and Dermot are not that much younger than Elizabeth, but maybe she is mature or maybe they have rabies.
Noah told me all about rabies after we got a dog last year and he didn’t.
Elizabeth kept trying to explain the rain cycle to everybody. Everybody already knows about the rain cycle. I suggested to Elizabeth that maybe she could explain it to Dylan and Dermot. That would solve her problem of needing to explain the rain cycle to somebody and, at the same time, solve my problem of STOP TOUCHING MY KNIGHTS YOU HORRIBLES at the same time.
“Do you know where the rain goes after it falls?” she asked them in her sweetest voice, as if they were two years old instead of almost five and almost six.
“On the ground,” Dylan said, poking Dermot with my Knight named Aesop Fable.
“On the ground, on the ground, on the ground,” Dermot repeated, throwing my Knight named Dragon Green Walker at Dylan’s head.
“Ow!” Dylan yelled, poking Dermot with Achilles Heel’s already-wobbly sword.
I unwound their sticky little fingers from my Knights as quickly as I could. “Let’s put these away,” I said for, like, the hundredth time. “These are not for little…”
“We’re not little!” Dermot shrieked.
“Not little!!!” Dylan also shrieked. “We are enormous!”
“We are MONSTERS!” Dermot said.
“Well,” I said. “True.”
“After that,” Elizabeth insisted, getting between them. “Guess what happens to the rain! It evaporates!”
“Me no care,” Dylan said, stabbing her with Knights as fast as he could grab them away from me.
“And then,” Elizabeth said, squeezing Dylan’s fists in hers, “after it evaporates, it condensates!”
“Ow,” Dylan said.
“It condensifies!” Elizabeth yelled.
“Me have no idea what she talking about,” Dermot said, and clonked her on the head with the empty bucket that used to have my Knights in it.
Dylan chased Dermot out of my room.
“I hate kids,” Elizabeth said to me.
November 27, Saturday
The cousins and their parents had left after dinner last night so the house was nice and quiet when we woke up. Elizabeth and I snuck down to the living room to try to watch as many cartoons as possible before Mom and Dad woke up.
Ninny and Bop were sitting in the chairs reading sections of the newspaper when we got there.
So we flopped down on the floor, feeling sad about grown-ups who wake up early even on Saturdays.
“What are you learning in school?” Bop asked us.
“The Rain Cycle,” Elizabeth said, into the rug.
“What is that?” Ninny asked.
“The Rain Cycle,” I said, louder. Sometimes grandparents need the volume turned up.
“Right,” Bop said. “We heard the words. But what is that? An opera?”
“No, it’s just rain,” Elizabeth said. “Precipitation. Evaporation. Condensation. Begin again. What happens when it rains.”
“No way,” Ninny said.
Elizabeth looked from Ninny to Bop and back again. “No way … what?”
“We have always wondered what happens when it rains,” Bop said. He folded the newspaper he’d been reading. “We were just discussing this the other day.”
“Yes,” Ninny said, all excited. “Bop said to me, ‘Hey, Ninny. Where do you think the rain goes after it puddles?’”
We laughed because she did a very good imitation of Bop.
Bop nodded. “And Ninny said, ‘I wish I knew.’” He did a very funny imitation of Ninny.
Ninny sat forward on her chair. “This is so exciting.”
“Will you explain it to us?” Bop asked Elizabeth.
“Seriously?”
“Well, any way you want to, dear,” Ninny said.
So Elizabeth explained it to them. The entire rain cycle. In much more detail than she even knew. In more detail than anybody ever knew about the rain cycle. It took pretty much the whole day, with only short breaks for food.
November 28, Sunday
I went for a scoot-ru
n with Dad and Qwerty early in the morning, using my new scooter. I never noticed before how many bumps and jiggles there are on the sidewalks around here. Cash and Xavier Schwartz both go straighter on theirs than I can on mine. Maybe they have better scooters.
But I decided not to give up on scooting yet. I will keep practicing. Dad liked that attitude very much. Much better apparently than the first three attitude options I tried out, which are called Whining, Complaining, and Giving Up.
In the afternoon we went to get the trophies for soccer.
The dad behind us kept grumbling that it’s so silly that everybody gets a trophy just for participating. “Makes them soft,” he grumbled. “Bunch of hooey.”
After about five minutes of that, Dad turned around and said, “That’s the goal. The whole goal for right now. Participating!”
“Yeah?” the big dad asked Dad. “When we were kids, you had to achieve something to get a trophy.”
“So?” Dad asked. “Lots of stuff is different now. What’s the harm if they all get trophies? Come on.” He turned around front. Mom put her gentle hand on top of Dad’s.
“What’s the harm?” the other dad bellowed. He was way bigger than my dad. I scrunched down tight in my chair. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. Makes them think they’ll get trophies just for showing up for the rest of their lives.”
“Nope,” Dad said, turning around again to face the big red-faced dad. “Not buying it. They’re still little kids, all these guys. There’s plenty of time for them to learn they won’t get trophies every time they show up; that lots of times they won’t be the one to get the trophies and the awards. Let’s get them to show up first, run around, try. And then we can clap for them. Give them a little shiny something to look at, on top of their dresser, next time they’re in their room, thinking maybe it would be a lot easier not to show up, not to try. You know?”
The dads stared at each other. The girl next to that huge other dad sunk down low in her chair.
