Choices like this come up a lot in my life, for some reason. In fact, just after the beginning of the baseball season, Peter Friedman and I get into a fight with three fifth graders at school. I have been trying super-duper-extra hard to be good since the end of my dad’s battle with fake cancer, but there is no way to avoid this trouble. Pete is pretty big, but there’s a kid in his grade named Darren who is at least his size. Also, Darren is super obnoxious. Pete has a serious skin rash on his face right now. There is an angry ring of red completely surrounding his lips, and some kids have started teasing him about it. One day in the hall, Darren starts calling Pete “Ronald McDonald.” Pete pushes him, Darren pushes back, and the only thing that stops them from going at it right then and there is that our assistant principal, Mr. Levy, comes around the corner at just that moment.
But the fight is going to happen. It’s just a matter of time.
Just like Albert when he tried to bully me, Darren goes everywhere with two smaller fifth graders at his sides. They laugh and say, “Yeah!” whenever he unleashes one of his stupid insults. Anyway, Peter and I meet at the end of the school day to walk outside and wait for his mom, who is almost always late, to pick us up for Little League practice. As soon as we step out the front door of the school, Darren and his two mini-Darrens step in front of us so we can’t get down the front steps.
I am really hoping we won’t have to fight, or at least that we won’t have to fight ON THE FRONT STEPS OF THE SCHOOL, but Darren unleashes his “Ronald McDonald” line again. I try to step between them and hold Pete back, but that becomes pointless when Darren does the one thing no boy can ignore without ruining his reputation forever. He face-chumps Peter.
Here’s what a face-chump is: You press the edge of your hand against the front of somebody’s forehead. Then you push the other person’s forehead hard while saying, “Face chump! THANK YOU!”
Here’s what a face-chump does: It starts a fight. There is simply no way around it. If you get face-chumped and don’t immediately either hit or tackle the kid who did it, you are a wimp. Ignoring a face-chump might even be worse than being Afraid of the Ball, because if you dodge a baseball, nobody throws a bunch of additional baseballs at you. But if you just walk away after a face-chump, lots of people are going to throw a bunch of additional face-chumps your way.
To make it even worse, Pete is wearing his favorite New York Yankees cap, which he got for his last birthday when we went to Yankee Stadium. Darren’s face-chump makes Pete’s hat fly off his head, over the railing at the side of the school’s front porch, and onto a bush.
Nobody knocks my friend’s beloved Yankees cap into a bush. I turn away from Peter and shove Darren with all my might. His back smashes into the wall, and his sidekicks step forward between us. For a second, each of us just stares his enemies down. Then Darren pushes off the wall, just as Peter yells, “You take the two little ones! I got the big one!”
It’s on.
Pete pushes his way between the two smaller guys and tackles Darren around the waist. I grab the closest smaller guy—who is still a bit bigger than my tiny fourth-grade self—and shove him against the fence rail. The other one snatches my authentic, Major League Baseball–certified Yankees cap off my head and holds it over the edge of the porch like he’s going to drop it. I reach for the hat, and my elbow connects with his chin, hard.
He drops my hat onto the bush.
I hope the bush is a Yankee fan.
The next thing I know, I am wrestling with two fifth graders at once. I hear Peter and Darren shouting at each other, but I can’t look to see what is happening on the ground, because I am concentrating on turning around and around as fast as I can so my opponents can’t get a good grip on me.
Then, just as my glasses go flying off my face and into the bush, which is getting very crowded with our possessions, I remember my father’s helpful fighting tips. He never coached me about how to box two people at once, but still, I figure I shouldn’t let my opponent take the first shot. It’s time for a maneuver Peter and I have only ever practiced in his basement: Throwing a Hulk. It’s a simple strategy: You go completely nuts and attack absolutely everything. I figure it is a particularly smart move now that I can’t see who I’m fighting.
I’m surrounded, so I can’t miss.
Throwing a Hulk turns out to be both effective and extremely satisfying. I swing my fists wildly in every direction, and hear several cries of “Ow!” along with one “This kid is a maniac!”
That’s right, chumps. I’m a maniac!
I don’t know how long this goes on, but eventually, I end up rolling around on the concrete with both my enemies on top of me. Still swinging like a madman, I am snapped out of my rage when Peter shouts, “Run!” Not surprisingly, considering we are still on the school porch, Mr. Levy has noticed the commotion and is shouting at us from the bus lines through a bullhorn. Lucky for us the bus stops are a couple of hundred feet away. One of the kids I have just been punching helps me up, and we all grab our backpacks and make a break for it. As a group, we push our way through all the walkers crossing the street and the kids in the car lines, and—somehow—we make it around the far corner of the school without any grown-ups grabbing us.
A very blurry Peter and a very blurry Darren peek back around the corner and then burst out laughing.
“Levy went the wrong way!” Darren gasps. “He’s crossing the street!”
“Awesome,” Peter wheezes.
“Yeah, but I still have to go back and get my glasses,” I moan. “Then there’s no way we won’t be busted.”
“Stay here,” one of my opponents says. I can’t tell which one, because I can’t see, and even if I could see, I don’t know either of their names anyway. Before anybody can say anything else, he strolls back toward the front of the school. The rest of us wait nervously for a couple of minutes, and then the kid is back. He presses my glasses into my hand, and I slip them on. They’re a bit bent, but they’ve been worse.
Then he casually tosses me and Pete our baseball caps.
“Thanks,” we both say, and the Battle of the Front Steps is officially over. The three other fifth graders walk away, leaving me and Pete standing by ourselves.
“Nice one,” Pete says, smiling.
“You too. You were totally winning,” I say. “Those guys are lucky Levy showed up and saved their lives.” We walk back to the front sidewalk, where Pete’s mom has just pulled up to the curb, and climb into her car without another word.
When Miss Tuff tells us we have one more major assignment for the year, and that it is an encyclopedia report on one of the fifty states, I get excited. I know how to write an encyclopedia report! I’ve done the Merrimack and the Monitor, the Komodo dragon, the Tyrannosaurus rex—how different can this be?
The answer is: SUPER different! I pick Pennsylvania, because I love going to summer camp there. Miss Tuff hands me the P volume of the World Book Encyclopedia, and it’s not the same World Book I know from my first-grade experiences. That was the young readers’ encyclopedia. I guess this is the old readers’ version, and it is huge. Plus, the print is about half as big as what I am used to. The pictures are much smaller. And the entry on Pennsylvania is twenty-two pages long!
From what I have seen of Pennsylvania, I can’t believe anybody could find twenty-two pages’ worth of stuff to write about the place. I kind of figured there would be three pages: one about the Liberty Bell and the movie Rocky, one about Three Mile Island, and one about the woods. But there is an unbelievable amount of information in this thing. The history of the state is eleven pages. Then there is a huge section on the state’s geography, another one on tourism, and one about the economy—whatever that is.
And there is absolutely nothing about Three Mile Island, which means I won’t have an excuse to draw an awesome atomic explosion for my cover.
We have about forty-five minutes each day for two weeks to work on this project. I spend the first two days just reading the Pennsyl
vania pages—and getting shushed by Camille Adinolfi and Stephanie Casella because I tap my pencil on things when I read. I spend the third day working on a cover design, because a report is doomed if it doesn’t have a good cover. I try to draw the Liberty Bell three times, but I just can’t get it right. I actually think the third one is okay if you squint hard, but when I show it to Camille and ask her what she thinks it is, she says, “A telephone! That’s really good! Did Alexander Graham Bell live in Pennsylvania? I thought he lived in New Jersey. Wow, I am learning a lot from this project already!”
To be fair, the Liberty Bell does look a lot like a telephone. I try to draw a crack in the bell so the difference is clear, but then it just looks like a broken telephone. I crumple up the Liberty Phone and spike it into the trash can with all my might.
Miss Tuff has been talking a lot about being thorough and neat. She has also said we should outline our projects before we start writing, so I spend the fourth day making a fancy-looking outline in my best cursive, with a different colored marker for each section. Unfortunately, it turns out that the yellow ink in the marker I have used for the “economy” section is completely invisible, which sends me back to the garbage can.
This project has to be perfect so Miss Tuff is proud of me.
When I look around the room on day five, I can’t help but notice that B.J.’s project on New Hampshire already makes an impressive pile of pages on his desk. I don’t know how he could possibly be finding so much to write about such a small state, but then again, his family spends a week there every summer on vacation, so maybe he is writing about that.
At lunch on the sixth day, B.J. announces that he’s finished.
“With the whole project?” I ask.
He nods.
“Even the cover?”
He nods again.
“Even the economy section?”
He smiles modestly and says, “Well, New Hampshire doesn’t have much of an economy.”
Other kids at our table laugh. I bet I would, too, except I still don’t understand what an economy is. It can’t be the same as a capital, because I have already learned that the capital of Pennsylvania is Harrisburg, but the economy section barely mentions Harrisburg at all. It’s just a bunch of numbers and stuff about steel and coal. But hey! That gives me a foolproof idea for the cover!
When we get back up to our classroom, I spend the next forty-five minutes drawing a pile of coal and a cube made out of steel girders. A few minutes before we are going to run out of time, I feel like my cover is missing some extra touch of genius to make it perfect, so I draw some wavy lines above the coal to show it is on fire.
When I am done, I hold the paper at arm’s length to see how it looks.
I am pretty sure it is a masterpiece.
A few minutes later, Miss Tuff changes my seat because Camille says I threw a paper ball at her. Miss Tuff doesn’t even care that I have an excellent reason. Camille. She looked at my report cover and asked me why I was drawing a steaming pile of poop.
Now I have wasted another day, and I still don’t have a cover. Or a report. All I have is an outline, although I have to admit it is a very colorful outline.
* * *
On day seven, Miss Tuff dismisses everybody who is done with the report to go outside for recess, and announces she is going to come around and check in with the rest of us about our progress. What am I supposed to say? “I’m making excellent progress in filling up the garbage can”? “I now know that an economy and a Harrisburg are two different things”? “I accidentally learned how to draw a pile of poop”?
I panic and ask to go see the nurse.
By the time I get back, I have missed half of the day’s read-aloud. Now not only do I have no report with three days to go, I am also completely lost in Andrew Offutt’s story. I don’t even know which aliens are the good-guy aliens and which ones are trying to destroy the universe. That makes it impossible to pay attention. My mind wanders, and I start thinking about how I am a lot like a space alien. Really, I am a good guy, but everybody else thinks I am trying to ruin things. The problem is, how can you tell a good-guy alien from a bad-guy alien?
Maybe I should wear a T-shirt that says I’M NICE in huge letters across the front. But then again, that is exactly what a bad-guy alien would probably do.
I suppose all I can do is keep trying to be good. There is always a chance it will work eventually.
On the eighth day, I decide I really need to start writing. I crank out three pages, front and back. This is the most I have ever written in one day. My pencil callus is not up to the challenge, which means I have a huge blister on the side of my pointer finger by the end. Also, the entire pinkie side of my hand is coated with pencil dust, because I hold my pencil wrong and drag my hand across the page.
I blame Miss Williamsen. If she had done a better job teaching penmanship in second grade, I would probably have a lot more of this report done by now—and my hand would be spotless. I bet these things never happen to William Feranek. Of course, he is still back at P.S. 35, where all the encyclopedias are simple to use. I almost wish I had stayed there, except for the fact that Mrs. Fisher would probably have set me on fire or something by now. While Britt Stone toasted marshmallows.
Miss Tuff must have noticed how much writing I got done, because on our way to art class, she says, “I saw how hard you were working today, Jordan. You must have gotten a lot done. I’m proud of you!”
I blush. I did get a lot done today, but I’m not even halfway done with the history section. Even if I write again at top speed tomorrow, the best I can hope for is that I will finish up that part. Then I will only have one day left to do geography, tourism, and economy, plus the cover.
By the end of art class, I have made a very heroic decision. “Miss Tuff,” I ask, “may I borrow the P encyclopedia tonight to work on my project?”
She grins at me. “Well, I don’t usually allow students to take encyclopedia volumes home, but for you, I can make an exception. I know I can trust you to take care of it.”
I place the book in my backpack super carefully. Miss Tuff is right. She can trust me. I would dive in front of a radioactive materials truck for Miss Tuff in a heartbeat. If I can do that, how hard can it be to protect one simple book?
* * *
A few hours later, I am sitting at the dining room table of my house, surrounded by several sheets of construction paper, a pile of loose-leaf pages, a box of colored pencils, the encyclopedia, and a glass of orange juice. I have written eight pages, the blisters on my hand are now actually oozing fluid, and I am still not even done with the history section.
I am trying to make my writing shorter than what’s in the book, but it is very hard. For example, there is a sentence in the encyclopedia that goes, In 1614, Cornelius Jacobsen Mey became the first known European to reach Pennsylvania when he entered Delaware Bay in the employ of Dutch merchants interested in the fur trade. I change this around to, Cornelius Jacobsen Mey was probably the first European to enter PA. In 1614, he came to Delaware Bay looking for furs. He was known. This is basically as long as the original, even though I left out the part about Dutch merchants.
Also, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t make sense.
My mom asks me to clear the table so she can get ready to serve dinner, and I say, “I can’t! I have to work!”
When I explain the problem to her, she says, “Jord, if you try to write down everything, you’ll never get done. You just need to include the important things.”
I slam my orange juice glass down on the table and shout, “BUT IT’S ALL IMPORTANT!” This makes my mom jump. It also makes the juice jump—straight up out of the glass and onto the cover of the encyclopedia. I burst out crying. Now Miss Tuff will never trust me again!
My mom runs into the kitchen, grabs a handful of paper towels, and blots the OJ off the book. “Oh, honey, it’s okay. Look, the juice came right off! See? You can stop crying. We will work this out.” She sits down next
to me and starts reading what I have written. “You don’t need to write all of this. If you just jot down a few major events for each page, and then retell them in your own words, you can get the whole paper done much faster.”
My mother doesn’t understand. I can’t just “jot down” a few things. That is probably what everybody else is doing. My project has to be long, neat, detailed, and perfect. I push my stuff aside long enough to choke down the smallest possible amount of food I can get away with eating, and then as soon as the dishes are cleared, I get right back to work: In 1638, the Swedes, under Governor Johan Printz, began to settle and farm the fertile banks of the Delaware River, eventually causing friction with the Dutch government. Also, there were forts.
* * *
I barely make it to school on the ninth day. My pointer finger is sporting a new Band-Aid, there are gigantic purple bags under my eyes from lack of sleep, and I am pretty sure the encyclopedia still smells like a citrus fruit. But I have conquered the history section. Now it is on to geography!
This time, when Miss Tuff sends the kids who are done out to play, I am one of only three students left inside. She comes over to my desk and stands over me as I start writing. I can feel beads of sweat breaking out all over my body. What if she hates my work? What if I get in trouble for not working fast enough? What if she can smell the juice?
“Jordan,” she says, sitting down in the empty seat next to me, “can I show you something?”
I nod, terrified. Now her nose is even closer to the book!
“I am very proud of you for all the hard work you have been doing, but I think you can make life a lot simpler for yourself if you do things a bit differently. What you are doing is called paraphrasing. That’s when you switch around some of the words in each sentence from your source but still keep in nearly everything from the original. You don’t need to paraphrase every sentence. In fact, you shouldn’t paraphrase every sentence. Paraphrasing is a form of copying.”
The Boy Who Failed Show and Tell Page 11