The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School
Page 3
“Cicero Elementary School?” repeated Humphrey.
“You mean Aesop Elementary School,” corrected Victoria.
“What?” said Mrs. Playwright.
“This is Aesop School,” said Lil.
“Oh … right,” said Mrs. Playwright. She shook her head to clear it. “The fourth graders here at Aesop Elementary are certainly conscientious.”
“I try,” said Stanford.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” gagged Bruce.
After that, Stanford practiced every chance he got.
He practiced on the playground.
“Up on the treetops …”
In the lunch line.
“I see leaves …”
Even in the boys’ bathroom.
“They are swaying in the breeze …”
His classmates watched with annoyance.
“Why bother?” Bernadette asked one day. “The fall musical is a long way off.”
“Get serious,” said Stanford. “The day of the show will be here before you know it. I’m learning my part, and I think you should too.”
But no one listened to his advice.
Three weeks before the musical, Stanford knew the entire song—all three verses—by heart.
The others knew nothing.
“Let’s take it again from the top!” cried Mrs. Playwright during rehearsal. She blew her pitch pipe and sang, “Up on the treetops, I see—”
“Fleas,” sang Rose.
“A wet sneeze,” sang Bruce.
“Limburger cheese,” sang Ham.
“Get serious,” said Stanford.
“Why?” replied his classmates. “We’ve still got plenty of time.”
They kept rhyming.
Stanford kept practicing.
Two weeks before the musical, Stanford could do every kick, shimmy, and shuffle perfectly.
The others could do nothing.
“Show me your cha-cha-cha!” cried Mrs. Playwright during rehearsal.
Bernadette did two leaps and an arabesque.
Jackie spun around on her back.
Bruce grabbed Calvin and tangoed him around the stage.
“Get serious,” said Stanford.
“We will,” replied his classmates. “Later.”
They all tangoed.
Stanford practiced.
One week before the musical, Stanford could sing all three verses while kicking, shimmying, and shuffling at the same time.
As for the others?
“We’ll start tomorrow,” they said.
“You promise?” begged Mrs. Playwright.
“Cross our hearts and hope to cha-cha-cha,” they replied.
Stanford rolled his eyes. “Get serious,” he said. And he kept practicing.
When the night of the fall musical arrived, the auditorium was crammed full. Exhausted teachers, excited students, proud parents, bored brothers and sisters, crying babies, obligated school board members, aunts, uncles, grandparents, even a photographer from the local newspaper took up every seat.
Mrs. Playwright stepped into the spotlight. “Welcome to Petronius Elementary School’s fall musical.”
The audience looked at one another.
“You mean Aesop Elementary School,” whispered Mrs. Struggles from the front row.
“What?” asked Mrs. Playwright.
“AESOP SCHOOL!” Mrs. Bunz bellowed through the bullhorn she always kept at her side.
“Is it?” asked Mrs. Playwright. She flipped open her calendar. “Let’s see, Petronius on the fourth, Pliny the Elder on the fourteenth, Horace on the twenty-fourth, Aesop School on the—” She turned back to the audience. “Welcome to Aesop Elementary School’s fall musical.”
The audience clapped.
Backstage, the fourth graders watched nervously as the first graders brought down the house with their song “I’m a Little Acorn.”
The second graders tickled the audience’s funny bone with a humorous skit called “Roly-poly Pumpkin.”
The third graders stopped the show with their interpretive dance “Make Applesauce.”
Then it was the fourth graders’ turn.
“Break a leg,” said Mr. Jupiter.
“That’s a terrible thing to say,” said Missy.
“It’s an expression I learned while performing in Cats on Broadway,” explained Mr. Jupiter. “It’s theater talk for ‘good luck.’ ”
“Oh, in that case, thank you,” said Missy.
“You’re welcome,” said Mr. Jupiter. He hurried off to take his seat in the audience.
“You’re on,” whispered Mrs. Playwright. She began pushing the children from the wings.
They stumbled onstage and into the spotlight.
“Now what?” whispered Lenny. He shoved the sagging hood of his squirrel costume out of his eyes just as the music started.
“Up on the treetops,” the fourth graders began shakily, “I see—”
“LEAVES!” Stanford belted out.
Bursting from the wings, he whirled across the stage, his oak leaf costume fluttering behind him.
Bumping past Lenny—
“Oomph!”
elbowing aside Emberly—
“Ouch!”
tripping Victoria—
“Hey!”
he side-together, clapped, side-together, clapped as he sang:
“Up on the treetops I see leaves,
They are swaying in the breeze,
First they are green, but when it turns cold,
They change to red and orange and gold.”
His classmates tried to keep up, but it was no use.
They kicked when they should have shimmied.
They shuffled when they should have kicked.
And no one knew when to cha-cha-cha.
Finally, they came to a complete standstill as Stanford danced around them, then burst into the second verse:
“Go! Go! Go!
Where did they go?
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Don’t you know?”
The audience leaped to its feet as Stanford cha-cha-chaed his way into the big finish.
“That’s when the wind blows
Swish! Swish! Swish!
And they come floating
DOOOOOWN
LIIIIIKE
THIIIIIS!”
As the rest of the class slunk offstage, the audience whistled, stomped their feet, and shouted, “Encore! Encore!”
Mrs. Playwright asked Stanford to take a bow.
And the newspaper photographer snapped his picture. “Our readers want to know,” he said. “Do you plan on becoming a singer and dancer when you grow up?”
Stanford snorted. “Get serious.” Then he hurried offstage to work on his book report about The Haunted Room by Hugo First. After all, it was due in just six weeks.
MORAL: It is wise to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.
CALVIN GOES TO KINDERGARTEN
IT WAS MATH TIME IN MR. JUPITER’S
class.
“All right, students,” said Mr. Jupiter. “You have two minutes to do your multiplication tests.” He flipped over his hourglass—“Made from the sands of the Sahara Desert,” he explained. “Ready … set … go.”
The fourth graders attacked their papers. Most of them were already up to sixteens and seventeens. Emberly was on the twenty-nines. Stanford was on the thirty-fours.
Calvin Tallywong was still on the threes.
Calvin looked down at his test paper and started writing the answers.
3 × 1 = 3. That was easy enough.
3 × 2 = 6. That wasn’t bad either.
But what about 3 × 7? Or 3 × 9? Or 3 × 12?
Calvin stuck his pencil in his mouth and gnawed at the eraser. He knew he shouldn’t. He knew he was going to need that eraser very soon. But he couldn’t help it. When he was nervous, he chewed. And multiplication made him very nervous.
3 × 3 = … um … um … 9? Yes, definitely … probably … maybe 9.
3 × 4 = 14? No, that didn’t look right. He tried to erase the answer but ended up with a gooey, wet smear.
Calvin sighed. Even if he’d managed to learn the threes, there were still the fours to struggle through … and the sevens … and the nines … and … The numbers stretched to infinity. Calvin felt the weight of all those numbers pressing down on him. It felt like the weight of the world.
“Time!” called Mr. Jupiter. “Pass your tests forward, please.”
Across the room, Calvin’s best friend, Humphrey, punched his fist into the air. Calvin knew Humphrey had passed his fourteens.
Behind him, Stanford raised his hand. “Mr. Jupiter,” he said, “I think I passed my thirty-fours. May I stay after school and do my thirty-fives and thirty-sixes?”
“Show-off,” muttered Calvin under his breath. He chewed and swallowed more of his eraser.
Then he laid his head on his desk. “Why do I have to be in fourth grade?” he moaned softly to himself. “It’s too hard.”
“Did you say something, Calvin?” asked Mr. Jupiter.
Calvin looked up and shook his head. But to himself he said, “I wish I was in kindergarten again, where school was fun and easy.”
ZZZZZ-CRACK!
The loudspeaker buzzed and crackled. Then Mrs. Shorthand’s disembodied voice filled the room. “Mr. Jupiter? Come in, Mr. Jupiter.”
The class giggled. Before becoming the school secretary, Mrs. Shorthand had been an air traffic controller.
“I read you loud and clear, Mrs. Shorthand,” said Mr. Jupiter. “Go ahead.”
“Miss Fairchild needs a student helper in her kindergarten class on the double. Do you roger that?”
“I roger,” replied Mr. Jupiter. “Help is on the way.”
ZZZZZ-CRACK!
The loudspeaker buzzed and crackled off.
Mr. Jupiter looked out across his classroom. “Who would like to be a student helper this morning?”
“Me!” said Jackie.
“Me!” repeated Humphrey.
“Oooh!” grunted Ham. He stretched his hand toward the ceiling. “Oooh! Oooh!”
Mr. Jupiter looked past the boys. His gaze fell on Calvin, who was still resting his head and gnawing on his eraser. “Calvin, you may go to the kindergarten room. The rest of you, please take out your arithmetic books and turn to page one thousand and twenty-six.”
Calvin took the pencil out of his mouth and tucked it into his shirt pocket. He walked down the hall to the kindergarten room.
The kindergartners were sitting on the carpet when he arrived. They turned to stare at him as he stepped through the door.
“I’m Calvin,” said Calvin.
“Of course you are,” chirped Miss Fairchild. A wide, white-toothed smile spread across her cheeks as she turned to her students and clap-clapped her hands. “Class, let’s sing hello to Calvin.”
Seventeen kindergartners burst into song.
“Hello,
Hello, and how are you?
We like you,
We like you,
And we hope you like us, too!”
Calvin’s cheeks turned pink. “Um … I’m your helper,” he explained.
“And such a big helper, too,” said Miss Fairchild. “I bet you’re the biggest kindergartner in the whole school.”
“Uh … n-no …,” stammered Calvin. “I’m a fourth grader.”
“Oh, you silly billy,” said Miss Fairchild. “Class, isn’t Calvin a silly billy?”
“YES!” chimed the class.
They all smiled at him.
Calvin suddenly felt very confused. And very nervous. He pulled out his pencil and chewed on the eraser.
“Oh, dear,” said Miss Fairchild. “Boys and girls, can you tell Calvin our rule about pencils?”
“NO CHEWING!” they chimed.
Miss Fairchild beamed. “That’s right. Chewing is for beavers. Now put your pencil away and come sit down.”
For a second Calvin stood there, uncertain. Then he shrugged. Circle time beat math time anytime. Sticking the pencil back in his pocket, he moved toward the carpet.
“Wait!” shrieked a little girl. “That boy isn’t wearing a bus!” A yellow construction-paper bus hung from a string around her neck. It read EMILY. “He can’t sit down if he’s not wearing a bus.”
“Yeah,” said a boy whose bus identified him as Mikey. “He has to have a bus.”
“That’s okay,” said Calvin. “I don’t need a bus.”
“Yes, you do,” said Mikey. “That’s the rule.”
“Mikey’s right, Calvin,” chirped Miss Fairchild. “All kindergartners wear buses.”
“But I’m a fourth grader,” said Calvin.
Miss Fairchild didn’t hear. She was too busy cutting a school bus out of yellow construction paper. “There, now, all this bus needs is a name. Can you spell your name?”
“Of course I can,” said Calvin indignantly.
“What letter does it start with?” asked Miss Fairchild.
“C,” said Calvin.
“C!” exclaimed Miss Fairchild. “What a wonderful letter! Class, can you make the sound of the letter C?”
Like a flock of crows, the kindergartners cried, “Caaa-caaa-caaa!”
Calvin felt his cheeks grow even hotter.
Miss Fairchild clap-clapped her hands. “Very good,” she gushed. She wrote a big letter C on Calvin’s school bus, then asked, “Do you know what letter comes next? Sound it out if you need to.”
“A,” answered Calvin. “The next letter is A, followed by an L and a V and an I and an N. Calvin.”
Miss Fairchild beamed again. “Did you hear that, class? Calvin has learned to spell his name! Let’s give him three cheers. Ready? Hip-hip—”
“HOORAY!” chimed the kindergartners.
“Hip-hip—”
“HOORAY!”
“Hip-hip—”
“HOORAY!”
Multiplication tables, thought Calvin, were starting to look good.
Miss Fairchild wrote the rest of Calvin’s name on the bus, then tied a piece of yarn to it and draped it around his neck. “Now you may sit,” she said.
He found a spot between a boy whose bus said RILEY and a girl whose bus said SYDNEY.
“Miss Fairchild,” whined Mikey. “The new boy isn’t using pretzel legs. He has to use pretzel legs. That’s the rule.”
“Mikey’s right, Calvin,” said Miss Fairchild. “All kindergartners use pretzel legs.”
“But I’m a fourth grader,” Calvin said again.
Miss Fairchild didn’t hear. She was too busy opening a big book and setting it on the easel.
Calvin tucked up his legs and followed along as the class read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Calvin already knew the story, so it was easy.
Next, they recited the days of the week. That was easy too.
Even math time was easy.
“One cookie plus one cookie equals how many cookies, class?” asked Miss Fairchild.
The kindergartners were puzzled, but not Calvin. “Two!” he cried. “Two cookies.”
“Very good!” gushed Miss Fairchild.
Calvin grinned. Math should always be this easy. School should always be this easy.
Then Miss Fairchild clap-clapped her hands again. “Boys and girls, let’s end circle time with something special—the squirrel dance!”
Seventeen eager kindergartners leaped to their feet. Wrinkling their noses and wiggling their bottoms, they chanted:
“Gray squirrel,
Gray squirrel,
Swish your bushy tail.
Gray squirrel,
Gray squirrel,
Swish your bushy tail.
Wrinkle up your little nose,
Hold a nut between your toes.
Gray squirrel,
Gray squirrel,
Swish your bushy tail.”
Suddenly, Mikey pointed an accusing finger. “Miss Fairchild,” he whined, “Calvin didn’t swish his bushy tail
. He has to swish his bushy tail. That’s the rule.”
All eyes fell on Calvin.
“But I’m too big to swish,” said Calvin. “I’m in fourth grade.”
Miss Fairchild didn’t hear. “In kindergarten, everyone swishes,” she chirped. “Come on. Let’s see your swish.”
Calvin shook his head.
“Like this,” said Miss Fairchild. She wiggled her ample bottom. “See?”
“No,” said Calvin.
“Don’t be shy,” coaxed Miss Fairchild. “Just swish.”
“Swish!” whined Mikey.
“Swish!” shrieked Emily.
“Swish! Swish! Swish!” chimed the rest of the class.
“We’re not leaving the carpet until you do,” chirped Miss Fairchild. She smiled encouragingly.
And Calvin gave in. I hope Humphrey never finds out about this, he thought as he wiggled his hips and wrinkled his nose and pretended to hold a nut. I hope he never knows I swished my bushy tail.
Thinking about Humphrey made Calvin wonder what the rest of his class was doing. Were they reviewing the times tables? Learning fractions? Doing advanced calculus? Calvin was pretty sure they weren’t reciting the days of the week or doing the squirrel dance.
Maybe, thought Calvin, kindergarten’s a little too easy. Maybe—
Miss Fairchild clap-clapped, interrupting his thoughts. “Snack time,” she said. “Everyone take a seat at the tables.”
Snack time?
All thoughts of fourth grade vanished as Calvin headed for the table. Avoiding the swish-demanding Mikey, he took a seat between a boy with a buzz cut whose school bus read VICTOR and a girl holding a beanbag platypus. Her school bus said ALICIA.
Victor turned and stared at Calvin.
Calvin stared back.
Victor stuck a pudgy finger up his nostril.
Calvin looked away.
Miss Fairchild sang out, “Who wants a yummy cheese stick and a box of raisins?” She passed out the snack.
Victor took his finger out of his nose and stuck it into his box of raisins. “I’m picking a winner,” he announced, and he pulled out a plump raisin. For one moment he balanced it on the very tip of his nose finger; then—
Pop!
Both finger and raisin went into his mouth.
Calvin shuddered.
Here was something that never happened in fourth grade.
“Peck-peck. Peck-peck.” On his other side, Alicia made her beanbag platypus waddle across the table. It attacked Calvin’s napkin with its little plastic bill. It lunged at his cheese stick. It nipped at his raisin box.