The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School

by Candace Fleming

  Here was something else that never happened in fourth grade.

  The platypus whirled on Emily, sitting only a few seats away. “Peck-peck! Peck-peck!” It bit Emily’s hand.

  Emily started to cry.

  Miss Fairchild rushed over. “Where are our table manners, children?” she asked. “Victor, no picking. Picking is for chickens. Alicia, no pecking. Pecking is for woodpeckers. And Emily?” She patted the sobbing girl’s back. “There, there, it’s not a real bill.”

  At the next table, Mikey leaped from his chair and started swishing again. But this time he wasn’t doing the squirrel dance. He was doing the potty dance. “Miss Fairchild,” he whined. “I have to go. I have to go bad. I have to—”

  Uh-oh!

  Disgusted, Calvin watched as a puddle formed around Mikey’s left shoe.

  Here was something else that definitely never happened in fourth grade.

  Mikey’s lips trembled. His eyes grew as wet as his pants. He started to cry.

  Emily joined him, louder than before.

  Victor stuck his finger back in his nose.

  Alicia’s platypus pecked Sydney.

  And the girl sitting across from Calvin went berserk. “I want to go home. I want my mommy!”

  “MOMMY! MOMMY!” chanted the rest of the class.

  Next to Calvin, Victor calmly transferred his finger to the other nostril.

  Help! thought Calvin. I’m trapped in kindergarten!

  He imagined the peace and tranquillity of his fourth-grade classroom, everyone sitting quietly at their desk memorizing their multiplication tables. It was a beautiful thought.

  “I wish I was in the fourth grade again,” whispered Calvin.

  ZZZZZ-CRACK!

  “Miss Fairchild, come in, Miss Fairchild. Can you send Calvin Tallywong to the fourth grade, please? Over and out.”

  Calvin didn’t hesitate. He ripped off his school bus and ran for the door, down the hall, toward his own classroom. He was ready to tackle the threes … the fours … the multiplication tables into infinity. Nothing was too hard. No sirree.

  Excitedly, Calvin burst through the door, then skittered to a stop. What was going on? Why was the whole class standing … and wrinkling their noses … and wiggling their bottoms?

  Humphrey waved. “Hey, Calvin, you’re just in time. Look what Mr. Jupiter taught us.”

  And as Calvin stood, openmouthed, his classmates chanted:

  “Gray squirrel,

  Gray squirrel,

  Swish your bushy tail.”

  MORAL: Be careful what you wish for—it might come true.

  THE BOY WHO CRIED LUNCH MONITOR

  MRS. BUNZ RULED AESOP ELEMENTARY’S

  lunchroom with an iron fist. No kid dared blow bubbles in his milk, or slurp her spaghetti, or stick a straw up his nose. If one of them did …

  “LUNCHROOM INFRACTION!” Mrs. Bunz would bellow through her bullhorn. “Five minutes … on the wall!”

  On the wall. Those three words struck fear into the heart of every student at Aesop Elementary—first graders and fifth graders alike.

  On the wall. It was Mrs. Bunz’s favorite punishment—a form of torture so horrible that anyone who endured it never again left his bread crusts uneaten, or chewed with her mouth open.

  Still, at the beginning of every school year, there was always one kid foolish enough to tangle with Big Bad Bunz.

  “You know what I’m having for lunch?” that kid might holler. And before anyone could warn her, she would open her mouth wide so all could see the glob of half-chewed baloney with mustard and pickle relish on pumpernickel lurking inside, and she would squeal, “SEAFOOD!”

  The lunch monitor’s vengeance was swift. “LUNCHROOM INFRACTION!” Mrs. Bunz would bellow. “Five minutes … on the wall.”

  The other students would shudder.

  Mrs. Bunz made the kid face the room with her back to the cold tiled wall. “I think you have something to say to your schoolmates,” she would growl.

  “Huh?” The kid always looked bewildered.

  “An apology,” Mrs. Bunz would continue. “You owe us all an apology.”

  No one could bear to watch. One hundred elementary school students would quickly look down at their carrot sticks or stare at their orange slices.

  “I … I don’t understand.” The kid was always red-faced and stammering by this time. Waves of humiliation were washing over her. She was drowning in them.

  That was when Mrs. Bunz would pull the note card from her pocket. Yellowed with age and wrinkled from much use, it had, through the years, been held in the quaking hands of dozens of students. Now it was this kid’s turn.

  “Read it,” Mrs. Bunz would say.

  The kid recognized defeat. In a small, quavering voice—so unlike the voice that only moments earlier had shouted “SEAFOOD!”—she read, “I apologize for my rudeness and promise to use my best table manners the next time I sit down to lunch.”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Bunz would say. Then she’d walk away, leaving the kid to simmer in her own embarrassment for five long minutes … on the wall.

  No wonder the children in Aesop Elementary’s lunchroom sat up straight, ate in silence, and cleaned up all their trash.

  “But,” asked Mr. Jupiter one day as he bit into the cook’s liverwurst-and-cranberry-sauce sandwich, “are the children happy? Do they enjoy lunchtime?”

  “Lunchtime isn’t about enjoyment,” Mrs. Bunz replied. “It’s about discipline, and maintaining order.”

  At that moment, Mrs. Struggles raced into the lunchroom.

  “Bertha, come quick,” she panted. “There’s a traffic jam in the kindergarten drop-off lane. I need you and your bullhorn to untangle it.”

  “I’m on my way!” cried Mrs. Bunz. She rushed from the lunchroom.

  Mr. Jupiter followed.

  Left unmonitored, the students sat in silence for a moment. Then—

  Rose cautiously leaned over and whispered in Missy’s ear.

  Emberly quietly offered Ham a chocolate chip cookie.

  Lenny glanced furtively around the lunchroom.

  Then he took a big swig of his Mr. Fizz and—

  “B-U-U-U-R-P!”

  The doors of restraint were belched wide open.

  Jackie wildly pitched Cheesy Puffs into Calvin’s open mouth.

  Ashlee A., Ashleigh B., and Ashley Z. put their mashed potatoes together and built a snowman.

  Amisha gargled with chocolate milk.

  The only fourth grader not laughing or talking or joining in the fun was Melvin Moody.

  Melvin was used to not joining in. He was used to not being a part of the group. Somehow, in Mr. Jupiter’s class, Melvin always managed to blurt out the wrong thing, or pick his nose when someone was looking, or fumble the ball at recess and lose the championship kickball game. This kind of behavior tended to keep other kids away.

  Now Melvin was suddenly seized with an uncontrollable urge.

  Leaping to his feet, he cupped his hands around his mouth and cried, “Lunch monitor! Lunch monitor!”

  Fear swept through the room.

  Pretzels were yanked from nostrils.

  Bread crusts were swallowed whole.

  The entire student body smoothed their hair, sat up straight, and hoped their cheeks weren’t too flushed with joy.

  A minute passed.

  Then another.

  And another.

  “She’s not coming,” Victoria finally said.

  Lenny whirled on Melvin. “You did it!” he shouted.

  “You ruined the fun.”

  All eyes turned to Melvin. Jackie booed. Rachel and Lil stuck out their tongues. Bruce threw a banana peel. It hit Melvin in the back of the head.

  And Melvin loved it!

  I’m the center of attention, he thought. He held his chin high.

  For days afterward, Melvin felt like a celebrity.

  “There’s that kid from the lunchroom,” whispered Bernadette.


  “What a loser,” whispered Ham.

  “What’s his name again?” asked Lil.

  The others shrugged.

  All too soon, however, Melvin’s celebrity faded. By week’s end, he was nobody again.

  That was when Miss Turner wobbled into the lunchroom. Instead of her sensible shushing shoes she was wearing a very spiky, very strappy, very purple pair of high-heeled sandals.

  “Bertha,” said Miss Turner, swaying slightly. “You’ve got a phone call in the office.”

  “I’m busy,” grumbled Mrs. Bunz. Eyes narrowed, she plucked a recyclable can from the regular trash, then looked around for the rule breaker.

  “But it’s your mother, the marine,” said Miss Turner. She grabbed the edge of a nearby table to steady herself. “She’s calling from boot camp.”

  Mrs. Bunz hesitated, then dropped the can into the recycling bin and headed for the office.

  At that moment, Miss Turner spied Mr. Jupiter giving the cook a recipe for yak and cheese. “A delicacy among the nomads of the Gobi Desert,” he said.

  She took a wobbly step toward him and—

  “Ooops!” said Mr. Jupiter. He caught the librarian before she hit the floor. “One must be careful when wearing such lofty shoes.”

  Miss Turner melted into his arms. “Dear me,” she sighed weakly. “I think I’ve twisted my ankle.”

  “Allow me to help you back to the library,” offered Mr. Jupiter.

  They limped away, leaving the lunchroom—unmonitored!

  Within seconds—

  First graders crawled under tables.

  Second graders squeezed the cream filling out of their cupcakes.

  Third graders blew bits of fruit cocktail from their straws.

  As for the fourth graders, they raced their sandwich cookies down the length of the table.

  “And Oreo takes the lead,” said Jackie in her sports announcer voice, “followed by Hydrox and Girl Scout.…”

  Then—

  “Lunch monitor! Lunch monitor!” Melvin cried.

  Quick as a wink, straws were stuck back into milk cartons.

  Sandwich cookies were popped into mouths.

  Flushed and panting, everyone braced themselves for … nothing!

  “Not again,” moaned Calvin. He whirled on Melvin. “What’s your problem, kid?”

  But Melvin didn’t have a problem, because once again, in the days that followed, he was talked about … recognized … SOMEBODY!

  Fame was fleeting. By the middle of the following week, Melvin was as forgotten as last month’s vocabulary words.

  That was when, during lunch—

  CRASH!

  “Argh!”

  “Mayday!” cried Mrs. Shorthand, who had been standing on a swivel chair and hanging a sign in the hallway. “Mayday!”

  Mrs. Bunz rushed to help her.

  Left alone in the lunchroom, the students didn’t waste a second.

  Everyone laughed, or joked, or blew milk out their nose.

  At the fourth-grade table, Jackie had invented a game called Flick Your Pea, and everyone was playing. Everyone, that is, except Melvin.

  Then he saw her—Mrs. Bunz—coming down the hallway, closer and closer.

  “Lunch monitor! Lunch monitor!” he cried.

  “Yeah, right,” drawled Lenny. He flicked a pea into Missy’s applesauce.

  Mrs. Bunz reached the door.

  Melvin hopped up and down. He waved his arms. He cried even more loudly, “Lunch monitor! Lunch monitor!”

  “Knock it off, kid,” said Calvin. “Nobody believes you.” He aimed a pea at Stanford.

  Mrs. Bunz pushed on the wide swinging doors.

  Panicked and desperate, Melvin leaped onto the fourth-grade table. He hopped up and down, waved his arms, and cried at the top of his voice, “Lunch monitor! Lunch monitor!”

  His behavior finally grabbed their attention. Everyone stopped joking and laughing and flicking peas. They turned to look at Melvin just as Mrs. Bunz burst into the lunchroom.

  “LUNCHROOM INFRACTION!” she bellowed through her bullhorn. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of Melvin, who was still hopping, waving, and shouting on top of the table.

  “Unbelievable!” she said. “I’m gone just a few moments and look how you behave! Melvin Moody, that’s five minutes … on the wall.”

  MORAL: Liars are not believed even when they tell the truth.

  PLEASE DON’T TEASE ASHLEY Z.

  THERE WERE THREE ASHLEYS IN MR.

  Jupiter’s class: Ashlee A., Ashleigh B., and Ashley Z.

  Ashlee A. and Ashleigh B. liked to braid each other’s hair, collect unicorns, and do cheers during class kickball games.

  Ashley Z., on the other hand, liked to play in the dirt, collect bottle caps, and burp the alphabet. This was hardly surprising. After all, Ashley Z. was a boy.

  “And don’t you forget it!” he had hollered just that morning.

  As usual, the other boys in the class had started the day by making fun of his name.

  “Don’t you belong over there?” Humphrey had asked when Ashley lined up at the water fountain. “That’s the girls’ line.”

  It was an old joke, but it still made Ashley boil. “Oh, yeah, you’re really funny, Parrot,” he retorted. He stomped away as the others hooted with laughter.

  But the teasing continued.

  At lunchtime, Emberly said, “Mrs. Bunz likes the girls best. Her favorites are Ashlee A., Ashleigh B., and Ashley Z.” Then he slapped his forehead dramatically. “Oh, wait a minute. You’re not a girl, are you, Ashley?”

  Ashley clenched his fists. “I’m also not a big jerk, like some people I know.” Pushing away from his peanut butter and pickle sandwich, he stalked off.

  “Hey!” Ham called after him as the others howled with laughter. “Are you going to eat that?”

  Ashley was too mad to answer.

  That afternoon the children played Fact-a-Rama, a game Mr. Jupiter had invented to help them review what they had learned during the week. Today it was boys versus girls, and Bernadette was up first.

  “Give me a sentence with the words defense, defeat, and detail in it,” said Mr. Jupiter.

  Bernadette thought a moment, then answered, “When a horse jumps over defense, defeat go before detail.”

  “Correct,” said Mr. Jupiter. “One point for the girls.”

  The girls, especially Ashlee A. and Ashleigh B., cheered.

  Mr. Jupiter turned to the boys’ team. Calvin was next.

  “If you add 34,317 to 76,188, divide the answer by 3, and multiply by 4, what do you get?”

  “The wrong answer,” said Calvin.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Jupiter. “That is exactly what you get. One point for the boys.”

  The boys pumped their fists victoriously and barked like dogs.

  Missy was next.

  “What nursery rhyme dates back to the Great Plague of London in 1664?”

  “Easy,” answered Missy. “ ‘Ring Around the Rosy.’ ”

  Mr. Jupiter nodded. But before he could award the girls a point, Lenny, Bruce, and Humphrey joined hands and danced around Ashley Z. They sang:

  “Ring around the rosy,

  A pocketful of posies,

  The Ashleys! The Ashleys!

  They all wear gowns!”

  The children shrieked with laughter.

  “Stop it!” cried Ashley.

  But they couldn’t.

  Bruce high-fived Lenny. “Oh, man,” he hooted, “we really burned him that time.”

  That was when Mr. Jupiter roared, “ENOUGH! EVERYONE SIT DOWN.”

  The children sat.

  Mr. Jupiter looked at them with disappointment. “You know I do not allow teasing in my classroom.”

  “You don’t?” said Melvin.

  The others ignored him.

  “I do not condone name-calling,” Mr. Jupiter continued.

  “Mr. Jupiter’s such a Goody Two-shoes,” Missy whispered to Rose.

 
“Or insults …”

  “Party pooper,” muttered Victoria under her breath.

  “Or playing mean jokes.”

  “Is that practical?” asked Stanford.

  “Besides,” Mr. Jupiter went on, “there’s nothing funny about the name Ashley. Did you know that in the Scottish village of Dun-Derry-Doody, where I once worked as a bagpipe tuner, every firstborn son is named Ashley? It means from the ash tree.”

  “Really?” said Lenny. “Did you know that here in the United States every firstborn daughter is named Ashley? It means what a sissy.”

  The children laughed again.

  And Ashley Z. jumped up from his chair. “I’m going to pound you, Lenny Wittier!” he cried. “I’m going to mash your face.”

  “Calm down,” said Mr. Jupiter.

  “No!” yelled Ashley. “I won’t calm down! I’m tired of being laughed at! I’m tired of being teased!”

  “Of course you are,” soothed Mr. Jupiter. He wrapped his arm around the boy’s heaving shoulders.

  “Geez, Ashley,” said Lenny. “Why are you acting like such a sissy? I was just joking around.”

  “It’s not funny!” hollered Ashley.

  Mr. Jupiter frowned at Lenny. “I don’t want to hear another word out of you, Leonard. We’ll talk about this after school.”

  Then he turned back to Ashley. “Why don’t you go get a cool drink from the water fountain?”

  “Okay,” said Ashley in an anger-choked voice. Shooting Lenny one last poisonous look, he stormed out the door.

  But the minute he was in the hall, furious tears filled his eyes. Wasn’t there any way to make his classmates stop teasing him? Was he doomed to be kidded about his name forever?

  He rounded the corner and—

  “Good to see ya, kid,” growled a deep voice.

  Ashley looked up. He gulped, paled, gave a little groan.

  There—just a few feet away—stood Tommy “Tarantula” Santangelo.

  Every kid at Aesop Elementary School knew Tarantula, and every kid avoided him like the cook’s tuna-oatmeal mush. No trick was too mean for the fifth grader. He shook down kindergartners for their milk money, knocked first graders off slides, and tossed second graders’ book reports into mud puddles—all for the fun of it! Known for a teasing tongue as sharp as Miss Turner’s stiletto heels, Tarantula stood six feet tall and had fists as big as Ham.