My Teacher Is an Idiom

by Jamie Gilson

  We learned the magic words in kindergarten. A lot of kids said them with him. “Please,” they said, and then “Thank you.”

  “Okay,” Patrick told them, “that was really lame. Say them again louder.” They said the words again, louder. “Please” and “Thank you!”

  “I’ve got a rule number six, but it’s more like a question. I’ll tell you the rule later, okay? It’s about ants. Real ones, not fake ants.” He pointed at me, like I was a fake ant.

  “Get this,” Patrick’s father said to Mrs. Zookey. “It’s so creative.”

  Mr. E. was pacing up and down in the back of the gym. You could tell he didn’t like what was happening. He didn’t like it at all.

  Patrick fished the ant out of my bowl with his fingers and held it up. It dripped tomato juice.

  “I caught it doing the crawl,” Patrick said, and kids giggled.

  “Me and Richie are both doing our rain-forest reports on leaf-cutter ants,” Patrick told everybody. “They are even bigger than this.” He held my ant up high. “People eat them. The queen leaf-cutters are the tastiest. This is a true fact.”

  “You tell ’em, son!” his father called out. “They egg-specially like the queen ant’s eggs.”

  Patrick looked out at his father. “I—I was gonna say that next,” he told him. “And—and, besides,” he said, “Mrs. Zookey told us that interrupting people isn’t good manners.”

  Mr. E. stopped pacing and called out a question. “Excuse me, Patrick,” he boomed, “but this seems to be a different report. What do rainforest ants have to do with lunchroom manners?” His face was red. You could tell that he was really mad.

  Patrick’s father leaned toward Mrs. Zookey. “I don’t get it,” he said. “I thought this was supposed to be a fun-filled report. I helped him out some, you know—”

  He would have said more, too, but Mr. E. walked toward him with his arm raised up high for silence.

  Patrick turned his back to us and crossed his arms tight.

  His father looked first at Patrick and then at me. I was rubbing my eyes.

  “Is this my bad?” he asked Mr. E. “My jokes are funny. They make you laugh.”

  Patrick turned back around. He still had his arms crossed and his mouth shut. He had stopped giving the report.

  “Please answer the question, Patrick,” Mrs. Zookey said. “Is there some kind of link between ants and good manners?”

  “Well,” Patrick went on. He looked at his father, like now maybe he wanted some help. His father was looking at me.

  I wasn’t crying, no kidding. I was just sniffing up snot. It kept dripping from my nose.

  Patrick sighed. “Okay,” he said. “I read about these different ants that people eat—except of course for red ants, which aren’t good for you, so you shouldn’t eat them. I don’t know for sure, but I think eating red ants could kill you dead.” Kids started going “Eeewwwwww!” You could tell that made Patrick happier. His audience still liked him. He smiled and kept on talking. “A lot of the ants that people eat look like Richie’s ant, except they aren’t plastic.” They even thought that was funny.

  He grinned big at his father and got a weak grin back.

  His father shook his head and turned to Mr. E. “They’re laughing at the jokes, but something’s gone wrong here. I don’t get it,” he told Mr. E. “Do you?”

  I watched to see if Mr. E. would explode. Instead he smiled. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. Then, without even saying “Excuse me,” Mr. E. left the gym in a hurry.

  Mrs. Zookey wasn’t going to let Patrick off the hook. “But,” she said to him, “as you well know, they don’t serve ants in the school lunchroom.”

  Patrick dropped the big plastic ant back in my soup bowl. “But if they did,” he said, “my father and me, we wondered, would it be okay to use your hands to pick them up? I looked, but I couldn’t find any rules.”

  “And who do you think would be eating these ants in the school lunchroom?” Mrs. Zookey asked him.

  “I don’t know exactly,” Patrick said, “but people from different places eat different stuff. Like snails.”

  His father wasn’t saying anything. Patrick didn’t know what to do next. Mrs. Zookey could have stopped him from talking, but she didn’t. I think she was waiting for Mr. E. to come back.

  “Truth,” Patrick went on, “I never ate an ant.” He looked out at the kids in the assembly. “Has anybody here had one?”

  Mrs. Zookey looked toward the door just as Mr. E. came back in. He’d put on a jacket, and he was carrying something under his arm.

  She smiled and answered Patrick.

  “Yes. I ate a few once. They’d been dipped in dark chocolate.” And she went on, “They were like candy. I picked them up with my fingers.

  “Listen, millions of people eat insects every day. Sometimes it’s because they like the taste. Sometimes it’s because that’s all they have to eat. Insects are served in lots of different ways in many different places.

  “But I’ve never, ever seen any on the Sumac School menu. That means we don’t need to worry about whether to use fingers or forks with ants in the lunchroom.

  “So, Patrick, I want you to choose another good-manners rule and write a one-page report on it for me. Have it on my desk tomorrow. I’m sure you’ll do a fine job. Thank you.” Then she raised her voice. “Let’s hear a big Power Clap for Patrick.”

  Most kids clapped. Once.

  Patrick clapped with them. Then he unfolded a paper sign that was almost as big as he was. It said THE END. You could tell he’d spent a lot of time making it. There were cut-out pictures of soup and Jell-O pasted on it. Around the edges he’d drawn a parade of big black ants.

  Mrs. Zookey waved at the other teachers. They were sitting on folding chairs in the back of the gym. “Five minutes more,” she told them, holding up five fingers.

  My nose was still dripping. I wiped it on my shirt. It was the only snot stopper I had. Nobody saw it, but this was still bad manners.

  Mr. E. grabbed Mr. Olimpia’s arm and led him up the stairs to the stage.

  “Second and third graders, I want you to meet Patrick’s father, Mr. Olimpia. He’s our visitor today.” He put his arm around Patrick’s father’s shoulders. This was weird because I could tell, just from seeing him raise his arm and pace up and down, that he didn’t like the way Mr. Olimpia had talked out.

  “Our thanks to Mr. Olimpia for coming this morning,” Mr. E. said. “Anybody here learn something about good lunchroom manners today? Raise your hands.” Most kids did.

  “I expect Patrick’s father has learned something, too,” Mr. E. went on. Mr. O.’s face turned bright red. He raised his hand like the kids had done to show that it was true.

  “I’m going to make a short presentation here. But I’ll need an assistant, someone to help me out,” Mr. E. went on. “Sophie?”

  Sophie was sitting in the front row. She looked around her to see if maybe he meant someone else. When he called her name again, she climbed up the steps to the stage.

  “Some of you may not have met Sophie Simeon,” he said. “She joined us at Sumac School on Monday. She’s from France. Sophie, I’d like you to lend me a hand.”

  Sophie didn’t get it. She held out her hand. Mr. E. smiled and waved his arm around and around. Out of his sleeve popped a shiny black wand. He put it in Sophie’s open hand.

  The kids all clapped and screamed. Mr. E. was doing a magic trick!

  What happened next I didn’t believe then and I still don’t believe now, but I saw it with my own two eyes. Mr. E. asked Sophie if she knew any magic words. “Yes, sir,” she told him, “I know four.” And she said them: “Please, thank you, and abracadabra.”

  “Very magical, indeed,” Mr. E. told her. “Now, take the wand, touch Mr. Olimpia’s jacket, and say each of those magic words two more times. You understand?”

  Mr. Olimpia grinned. He held out his arms, like he was about to fly.

  Sophie got it. She twirl
ed the wand in a big figure eight, and then she lightly touched the jacket. The gym was totally quiet. The first two magic words she whispered slow. She did that two times. And then when she shouted, “Abracadabra! Abracadabra!” Mr. E. waved his fingers like snakes and reached down the back of Mr. Olimpia’s jacket. You can’t guess what he pulled out.

  It was a brand-new green Sumac School T-shirt, size XXXXL.

  Sophie squealed. The kids yelled.

  Mr. E. held the shirt up so everyone could see. Then he presented it to Patrick’s father.

  Mr. Olimpia totally broke up. I never saw anybody laugh that hard. First he held the T-shirt up. Then he took off his Yankees jacket and put the shirt on. He was about as tall as Mrs. Zookey, so he was little and the shirt was big. It hung all the way down to his knees.

  The kids were all standing up. They clapped their hands and they stamped their feet on the gym floor.

  “The joke’s on me,” Mr. Olimpia said. “I’m wearing it.”

  He waved to Patrick, and then he and Mr. E. walked down the stage steps and into the hall. The green Sumac School T-shirt, size XXXXL, flapped as he walked.

  The third graders filed out, and the second graders followed.

  As they walked, the third graders were singing, “The more we eat together, together, together . . .”

  My butterflies were gone.

  —11—

  My Turn

  Back in our room, I tried to wipe the tomato juice off my shirt, but it was already dry. Sophie raised her hand. Mrs. Zookey called on her.

  “You forget me. I have the good manners report, too,” Sophie said. “Is it my turn, please?”

  “No, Sophie,” Mrs. Zookey spoke slowly, “you did not understand. The report was for Richard and Patrick. It was meant to help them learn how to eat their food in a nicer way.”

  “But I have the report, too,” Sophie went on. “Mr. E. says there are consequences. It is a hard word to spell, but I look it up. Please, I do my consequences, too.” She stood up at Table Two. In front of her was a small brown paper bag. “Thank you,” she said. “And please, also.”

  Mrs. Zookey let her do it. Sophie was new. Also, she said the magic words.

  “Five minutes only,” Mrs. Zookey said. She sat down on her big blue exercise ball. She told Sophie to begin.

  Sophie opened the paper bag. She took out a plastic cup. It had wobbly red stuff in it. I didn’t have to ask what the red stuff was. I knew. So did Patrick.

  “I will show you what I learn,” Sophie said to the class. “It is how to eat this. You do not use the spoon.” She pulled one out of the bag, held it up, and then dropped it back inside. “No,” she said, “you eat by suction. Dawn Marie, she tells me this word.”

  Dawn Marie smiled like she was proud.

  Sophie reached back in the bag and pulled out a straw. She held it up for everyone to see. “This is the sucker,” she said. “If you use it wrong, it makes bad manners.”

  Patrick and I both sucked in our breath and held it. Was she really going to do what we thought she was going to do?

  “First you put the sucker—” she began.

  “Straw,” Mrs. Zookey told her. “We call it a straw.”

  “First you put the . . . straw in the jelly. Then you straw in—”

  “Suck in,” Mrs. Zookey said.

  We all watched and listened while Sophie sucked in . . . really hard. She sucked in over and over until her cheeks puffed out. Her mouth was full of oozy red Jell-O. The straw was still in her mouth. She pointed it at Patrick and me. I closed my eyes.

  Patrick couldn’t take it. “Don’t do it!” he called. He was not cool.

  I opened my eyes. It was like Sophie had sucked all the sound out of the room. She was standing in front of the class with her mouth full of vampire-bat blood.

  Just when I thought she couldn’t hold it any longer, she took the straw out of her mouth and swallowed. Then she burped. Big. “Urp!” When she did it, she held her hand over her mouth. “Pardon me,” she said.

  “I know good manners,” she told Mrs. Zookey. “I know to cover up my mouth when I make the burp.

  “I make the big one like it is good manners to do in China. Patrick, he teaches me that.”

  Patrick groaned.

  “Good manners,” she went on, “is when you keep the jelly in your mouth. You suck in,” she said. “You do not blow out.

  “This is an okay way to eat the jelly, no?” she asked Mrs. Zookey.

  Mrs. Zookey stood up, and her exercise ball rolled back to the wall. “Well, Sophie,” she said, “I don’t think . . . I mean, I think . . . that it is . . .” She smiled. “ . . . Unusual. I prefer the usual way, with a spoon.”

  A few kids laughed. I bet they’d heard about The Mosquito. Teachers don’t know about things like that.

  “This way of eating,” Sophie went on, “it is the same as a bug’s name.”

  “She’s going to tell about me drooling vampire blood,” Patrick whispered. “I knew she was a snitch.”

  “I do not know what name you call this bug,” Sophie said. “In France we say papillon.”

  “Mosquito,” Patrick said out loud. When kids looked at him, he shrugged and said, “Well, that’s what I call it.”

  Mrs. Zookey gave him a long look. “Butterfly,” she said. “In French, a butterfly is called a papillon. And Sophie is quite right, the butterfly has no mouth. It eats through a long tube that is much like a straw. It’s called a proboscis. The way Sophie sucked in the soft gelatin is pretty much the way a butterfly sucks in sweet nectar from flowers.”

  “Is this the same insect Richard had in his stomach?” Sophie asked.

  It had come back. “It’s still there,” I told her.

  Patrick put his head on his desk. He covered it with his arms.

  “Sophie, just a moment,” Mrs. Zookey said. “Can you tell me where you learned about the right way and the wrong way to eat like a . . . butterfly? We’re talking about lunchroom manners. Did you see this in the lunchroom?”

  Patrick raised his head. “I bet she’s making this big pot of white cabbage in her head, right?”

  Mrs. Zookey frowned. She was thinking that Sophie wasn’t cooking anything. I could tell.

  “No,” Sophie said, “I am not.”

  This is it, I thought. This time she’s going to tell everything she saw in the lunchroom, and Patrick and I won’t have recess for the rest of second grade. Maybe all of next year, too.

  “I am not making white cabbage,” Sophie said. By now the kids and Mrs. Zookey must have thought Sophie and Patrick had gone totally bananas. She looked at Mrs. Zookey. “I am drawing a blank,” she said. “Also I think the cat gets my tongue.

  “That is my report,” she went on. “The good manners fly of butter keeps the jelly always in its mouth. Thank you.” She gave a big bow.

  She sat down. There was red Jell-O on her chin.

  Mrs. Zookey smiled. “Thank you, Sophie, for that fine report on good manners. We will keep it in mind. It was right on point, too.” She pointed at the crepe paper hanging above her. “There are lots of papillons in the rainforest.”

  Sophie got a huge Power Clap.

  “I make a good consequence?” she asked me. “It is okay? What do you think, mon ami?”

  Mrs. Zookey was still smiling. She didn’t look mad at Patrick and me. “Almost time for lunch,” she said. “Gather up your belongings.”

  “The report was okay,” I told Sophie. Everything had worked out fine. “Mon ami? Is that another one of those French idioms?”

  “Oh, no,” she told me. “Mr. E., he says the idiom does not mean what it says. These words say ‘my friend,’ and that is what they mean.”

  She was not making a joke. She meant it. I was Sophie’s friend.

  “Tomorrow,” she told me, “I am the Teacher’s Pet. Does this mean what it says?”

  —12—

  Yum

  Friday morning, Mrs. Zookey let Sophie and me come i
nto the room five minutes before the rest of the kids. Mrs. Zookey sat at her desk, grading math sheets. My job was to show Sophie what Teacher’s Pet does.

  She knew about Yummies and Yuckies. For her Yummy she brought treats in a big blue bowl. It was covered with shiny foil.

  “My papa, he makes them this morning,” she said. “I eat one already.” She put the bowl on Mrs. Zookey’s desk.

  “I bet they’re snails,” I said, and moved away.

  “The escargots?” she asked. “But no, you eat the escargots while they are hot and they make the sizzle in the pan. I do not bring the snails. To eat the snails with the garlic sauce, you come to Chez Paul Henri. Yes?”

  I didn’t say no.

  “This Yummy,” she said, “it is not on the menu at the restaurant of my papa.”

  The bell rang, and the rest of the kids came in. Patrick put his report on Mrs. Zookey’s desk. It was one page long with crayon drawings. It had a long title: WHEN YOU YAWN, BE SURE TO COVER YOUR MOUTH.

  When he stuck out his foot to “accidentally” trip me, I hopped right over it. He does this every day.

  “I never really try to trip you,” Patrick told me. “That wouldn’t be right, and I always do the right thing. On the ball, that’s me.”

  I rolled my eyes. He didn’t trip me because I jumped over his foot.

  Sophie stood up in front of the class, just like I’d told her to. She put her hand on her heart and led the Pledge. This was her new country, and she’d learned all the words. I gave her a little help with lunch count, and then it was time for Yummies and Yuckies.

  Latille said she had a brand-new baby brother. She wasn’t sure if he was a Yummy or a Yucky. Gerard told everybody he could stand on his hands for seven seconds. Mrs. Zookey let him show us. Patrick said his father wanted to turn in his new T-shirt for an XXXXS. I think that was a joke.

  But what everybody wanted to do most was taste Sophie’s Yummies.

  “My papa, he is a chef,” Sophie told us. “I tell him I need a Yummy. He buys what I ask and he cooks them crispy like les frites, what you call the French fries.” She whipped the foil off the top of the bowl. “Voilà!” she said.