Which is exactly what Jason is doing!
MRS McDONALD She teaches 3/4M.
Mrs Elizabeth McDonald. Everyone calls her Betty or Bet. We call her Chook because she clucks around the place, scratching here, scratching there. If something goes right she says ‘Jolly beaut!’ and if something goes wrong she goes ‘Blinking heck!’ For something amazing she says ‘By jingo!’
She wears Daisy Duck shoes.
Once, when some of the kids were giving her heaps, she yelled, ‘You can all go to billy-o, I don’t care!’ and she steamed out the door. Then she steamed back in again. ‘You can’t go to billy-o, I do care!’
When my brother, Adrian, got her for a teacher last year he turned on a real spaz attack.
‘I don’t want her. She teaches the vegetables!’
‘Well, she’s teaching you, cabbage head.’
But at the end of the year he really liked her, and Mum said she was an excellent teacher.
MISS RIDDLE Lisa Riddle. She teaches art and Italian. We call her Lisa.
She’s cool. She has thick black hair which she twists around in different knots, and she wears floppy black clothes, big junk jewels and funny-coloured lipsticks. She goes to the park near school at lunchtime for a smoke. My uncle would call Miss Cappelli a babe but he wouldn’t call Lisa a babe.
She’s good at accents (of course she’s perfect at Italian), and she is the best at reading stories because she gives everybody the right voice. You should hear her. She could be in the Late Show or on the radio.
She also says things like, ‘Michael, have you got brains?’
‘Yes,’ goes Wormz.
‘Well, turn them on!’
‘And Fawkner, where are your listening skills?’ which she says in a cool throaty way, but we know she means business.
Chook, Miss Cappelli and Lisa were pleased about camp because they’re all good friends. In summer they go over to the park together and have their lunch sitting under the big trees. We see them laughing.
So now you know what the teachers are like.
There are also parents on camp. The law says you have to have quite a few adults. For fifty-one kids we had to have six adults.
MRS PUMMVITALEILLE, which is a name nobody knows how to say. We call her Mrs Pumps-Vital. She’s Pascal’s mum. She talks and talks. We also call her No Gaps. If there’s a hole in the conversation she feels really uncomfortable. She’s OK. just.
MR MURPHY Jessica’s dad.
He’s good. Actually, thinking about him I would say he is a gentleman...like, a gentle man. He always tries to help. If Mr Murphy asks you to do something, you do it because it would be rude not to. He never yells.
One evening after tea, we wanted to go on the trampoline and none of the teachers would supervise. They said they needed a break. Mr Murphy took his coffee to the tramp and missed out on the Tim Tarns and all the juicy teacher-talk. Little Tak, a mad Trekkie, sat beside him and told him the whole plot of Deep Space 9. Mr Murphy, who’s never seen Star Trek, listened carefully.
If you ask Mr Murphy something he always thinks and then replies. Sometimes it’s a drag because you have to listen to a long answer. He’s the opposite to Mrs Pumps-Vital. Mum was pleased when she heard Mr Murphy was going on camp. She says he has a calming influence.
So now you know what the parents are like. If you’re wondering about the wombat, it comes later.
The Bomb
Introducing MR BRIAN CROMWELL, otherwise known as Crom the Bomb, or simply The Bomb.
He was sent to our school from another school where I bet they had a massive The Bomb’s Gone Off!!!!’ party when he left.
None of the parents like him, and at the end of the year the Principal had a queue of parents who announced loudly, ‘Whatever happens I do not want my child in Mr Cromwell’s class next year.’
Mr Cromwell became a teacher so he could be bossy and mean. He should have gone into the army. Occasionally he is OK. I heard he was nice for a day back in 1876.
I was in his class last year. He has a funny walk and he’s a sneaky bottle-basher, a grog artist. He thinks nobody knows he drinks, but everybody does.
They put Cromwell teaching the grade fours. They wouldn’t dare give him the tender little preps. It would be cruelty to dumb animals. Besides, prep mothers are like mother bears and they would tear him down with their claws and rip him to shreds. If he had grade six it would be open warfare, and kids would bring bazookas to school, so they buried him in the middle with poor old grade four. A couple of kids left our school rather than be in The Bomb’s class.
The parents were furious.
‘Why don’t they sack him?’ said Jude from next door.
Mum was mending my jeans. ‘You can’t just sack a teacher.
It’s a great rigmarole: letters of complaint, days to respond, support groups, counselling, the whole catastrophe. Besides, we can’t prove he’s done anything wrong.’
‘Why does he keep teaching?’
‘Well frankly,’ said Mum with a sigh, trying to undo a knot in the cotton, ‘I think he enjoys it.’
This year my brother lost the lottery. He got put in The Bomb’s class. Even he didn’t deserve that. At least he was with his best mate, Max.
‘I’m sorry, Adrian,’ said Mum. ‘Let’s just see how we go. It’s only for a year.’
ONLY for a YEAR! What does she think that is? Two days? A year is forever!
Mum went on. ‘Remember how you didn’t want to be in Mrs McDonald’s, and it turned out fine? Well, you never know, this year might turn out fine, too.’
‘Yeah,’ I added. The Bomb might get struck by lightning.
Be thankful, Adrian,’ I said with brotherly concern. ’just be glad he’s not your dentist.’
You know something, all the teachers, the Principal, The whole school community’, the School Council and a tribe of angry parents couldn’t shift The Bomb... but Jonah did.
How to Be Unpopular in Five Easy Lessons the Brian Cromwell Way
1 GO OFF LIKE A BOMB
You think you’re doing the right thing then suddenly he goes psycho at you. Detention!
2 BE MEAN
Once, on a school outing, after twenty minutes on the bus, Phillip, this little kid, says, ‘I want to go to the toilet.’ Well, The Bomb didn’t remind us about going before we got on the bus. Us big kids could hang on, but this little kid sat hunched up with his skinny legs crossed and twisted round, looking miserable and pathetic. We all knew how he felt.
Faith Williamson and Kristelle went up and said, ‘Mr Cromwell, Phillip really badly wants to go to the toilet.’ Cromwell told them to mind their own business. Would he stop the bus? NO WAY!!!!!
Phillip wasn’t making any noise, but he had tears in his eyes, and his legs were red where they pressed together so hard. And we drove on and on and on and on for kilometres and the whole bus was whispering. In the end you can guess what happened. I bet that was the worst day in Phillip’s life.
3 BE SLACK
In the whole of last year he set two projects. We had to have them in exactly on time. A couple of kids were late. Detention!
But he didn’t look at those projects for ages and ages.
‘When are we getting our projects back, Mr Cromwell?’ asks Faith Williamson.
‘Never!’ whispers someone up the back. Detention!
So unfair. Kids in other classes got hologram stickers saying ‘Fabulous’, ‘Far out’, ‘Neat’, and their teachers wrote nice stuff about what they’d done. But we’d get our projects back about two months later with one word, like ‘Fair’. We didn’t even try to do good work. What was the point?
4 DO SLOW TALK
The Bomb loves to hear his own voice. When he gets mad he talks slowly, letting the words drip out one by one: ‘I suppose you think it doesn’t matter if the toilets look like a swamp’ and he rocks backwards and forwards on his heels. Then he hurls the thunderbolt. Detention!
Once, after a magnificent perform
ance of slow talk, when he took about an hour to say thirty words, the whole class plotted together and we wrote our homework
Guess what happened. Starts with the letter D. But he got the message because he didn’t do any slow talk for a couple of weeks after that. (Beth the Good did her homework properly and she got detention, too! Probably for being such a goodie goodie!)
D x 28 = us
5 GIVE DETENTIONS
Besides the D-word, The Bomb has an arsenal of mean tricks up his sleeve. If you rock back on your chair, he makes you kneel at your desk, and that hurts so badly.
If you leave a crumb after eating lunch, you have to clean up the whole school ground.
If you’re not paying attention, he does his ruler trick, eg: Matos is asleep up the back; The Bomb creeps up beside him, takes Matos’s ruler and smashes it down on the table, right by his ear; Matos leaps out of his skin; the ruler is toothpicks.
On the first day of school I said to Adrian, ‘I dare you to ask The Bomb the meaning of tyre ant.’ My brother got the first detention of the year. For impertinence. Look it up.
And it was all quadruply unfair because I had the best teacher in the southern hemisphere, the gorgeous Miss Cappelli.
But camp was going to be a totally Bomb-free zone!
Jonah Rides to School
Starting from his first morning, Jonah rode his bike to school. So what? Well, you’re not allowed to ride your bike to our school because the School Council thinks it’s too dangerous. So the Principal, Mrs Furgus, sent Jonah home with a note saying, ‘Don’t let your child ride a bike to school.’
Next morning Jonah and his dad rode bikes to school and they arrived just as Mrs Furgus climbed out of her car.
‘Could I have a word with you, please?’ said Jonah’s dad in a fairly loud voice.
‘Certainly,’ said Mrs Furgus. ‘Would you like to come into my office?’
‘No thanks,’ said Jonah’s dad. ‘Here’s fine. My son is going to ride his bike to school.’
‘No,’ said Mrs Furgus. The School Council Policy Committee formulated the policy, approved by the School Council, that forbids the riding of bikes to our school.’
‘Now you listen to me,’ said Jonah’s dad. ‘My boy can come to school by elephant or submarine if we want him to. As long as there’s no hassle for school staff and he’s not on school property, it’s none of your business.’
‘No,’ said Mrs Furgus. ‘It’s too dangerous for our children to ride to school.’
Jonah’s dad took a deep breath and went to scratch his head in frustration but found he had his bike helmet on. A crowd had gathered around because the voices were raised and it was all pretty interesting.
‘Now, you obviously see it differently,’ said Jonah’s dad, ‘but this is the way I see it. If you want your kid to go in the water, you teach him to swim, right? If you want your kid to ride a horse, you teach him to ride. If you want your kid to get around the city, you teach him to catch a tram or walk or ride a bike. Now, I know it’s not like out in the sticks, but the only way your kid’s going to learn how to get around the streets is to teach him to get around the streets, and let him get on with it.’
Mr Theodoridis, one of the School Council, stepped forward (which annoyed Mrs Furgus, because she can look after herself). Mr Theodoridis can’t keep his mouth shut.
‘It’s too dangerous.’
Jonah’s dad sighed. ‘Do you think I’m trying to kill my boy?
Maybe the fumes have affected your brain.’
‘We want what’s best for our children,’ piped up a mum on Mrs Furgus’s side.
‘Fair enough. Well, how about giving them some fresh air?’ said Jonah’s dad. ‘And if not, how about you get yourself another planet, and leave this one for the people who like fresh air?’
Meanwhile, Jonah had chained his bike up to a gum tree with a heavy motor bike chain.
Jonah’s dad turned around to the assembled crowd. ‘Why don’t you teach your kids how to live instead of stuffing them in the back seat of a car all the time? Poor little mollycoddled mites.’
He swung himself onto his bike and, as an afterthought, yelled, I‘II weld you a bike rack any time you change your mind,’ and rode off.
So now you know what Jonah’s dad’s like.
Boy oh Boy oh Boy oh Boy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nobody had ever spoken to Mrs Furgus or Mr Theodoridis like that.
There was Jonah, son of his rude offensive dad, standing with his bike helmet in his hand. Were they going to beat him to death with cricket bats from the sports locker?
Mr Theodoridis was a violent red in the face, muttering about Agenda and Policy Committee and School Council, reviewed, voted, etc, etc, etc.
After that, Jonah rode his bike to school every morning and chained it up to a tree in the street where the teachers park their cars.
Loathe at First Sight
‘The Bomb’s going to collect some medicine from Auntie Boozer,’ we said at lunch when we saw him drive off in his collection of dints and scratches.
We were sitting on the wall of the big kids’ playground when he returned. He drove very slowly up over the edge of the concrete curb by the tree where Jonah’s bike was chained. Then his car flopped back down and stopped just as he crunched one side of the bumper bar on the footpath.
The Bomb climbed out and looked at his car and how it was parked.
Then he noticed a scratch along the side of his car.
Then he looked at the pedal of Jonah’s bike.
Then he looked at us.
Jonah did the worst thing he could possibly have done. He grinned.
Cromwell slowly smiled as he walked towards us. ‘Yes, funny isn’t it?’
When The Bomb smiles, you think of an animal baring its teeth.
‘Stay behind after school and share the little joke!’ he said to Jonah.
There was no car paint on Jonah’s bike pedal.
From then on, at every opportunity, sport or yard duty or whenever, The Bomb picked on Jonah like he was a scab on his knee. Lucky Jonah wasn’t in his class!
Ever since I told Mum about Jonah’s dad and the bikes, she was always asking about him, like she was doing research into him or something.
‘How’s Jonah?’ she’d ask.
We were playing Spit.
‘He’s OK,’ said Wormz. ‘I don’t think he’s had much practice at making friends. You know how some kids offer you lollies?
Well Jonah offers facts. At library he gets out information books on camels or bog bodies, that sort of stuff, especially about animals.’
‘He gets Australian Geographic in the mail,’ said Nicko. ‘And he says Tubbut, where he comes from, is a palindrome, which is a word that’s the same backwards, and there are seven palindrome town names in Australia.’
‘Hey, I’m a living palindrome!’ said Azza.
‘How about the frog fact?’ said Wormz. ‘He reckons there’s a frog that hatches its babies through its mouth.’
‘He says the human body gives off 100 watts of heat, and that’s when you’re sitting down,’ said Azza.
‘He doesn’t fit in,’ said Mitch.
‘Yes, he does,’ said Azza.
‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Mitch.
‘Sometimes he doesn’t have an expression on his face,’ said Nicko. ‘He makes some people annoyed, just by the look of him. He looks too dead serious, which makes you think he’s putting it on. Some people think it’s cheeky.’
Nicko thought for a moment. ‘Actually, he’s a hard person to be friends with because he doesn’t really, sort of, join in.’
‘Yoo-hoo!’ That was Jude. She’s a real dag. Jude and Bruno live next door. Jude’s always in our place. She and Mum play netball in a team called the Cellulites. They sat down with a cup of coffee.
‘He’s an unusual kid,’ said Mum. ‘An only child.’ (Guess who they’re talking about!)
‘Funny, isn’t it,’ said jude.
‘Farming families...you expect them to have lots of kids, breed like rabbits, you know, fresh air, good food and all that.’
The Bomb v Jonah Round 2
Adults won’t find this bit very tasteful. Sorry, it can’t be helped, it’s what happened.
Every Friday morning we have assembly. The whole school goes to the church hall next-door and sits on bits of old carpet, the preps down the front and the big kids up the back. Each assembly, one class does some items, like sings some songs or acts a play.
This was The Bomb’s assembly, and his class was standing up the front in three rows ready to spout this boring poem that he’d chosen. All the little preps and grade ones down the front were wriggling, squeaking and picking threads out of the edge of the old carpet.
The Bomb waited for silence. He turned on The Glare. His eyebrows join up in the middle, his left eyebrow goes up at the end, then he pulls his chin back in and his eyes burn like a laser. It’s impossible to look at him. Mitch looked at him for three seconds once and nearly died.
Everyone shushed quickly because even the little preppies could see this was not a man to annoy.
He gave an extra three seconds of Glare to make the silence last.
T o t a l q u i e t.
Then he turns to his class and bends down to pick up his poetry book from the floor.
As he bends down with his backside pointing towards the audience, there is the loudest fart I have ever heard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
‘Pardon me,’ says Jonah clearly, in an absolutely flat voice.
Honestly!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In front of 237 children, 13 staff and 42 mums and dads and the lollipop lady! Everyone nearly died. The adults tried not to crack up. Mrs Furgus immediately stood and firmly told everyone to settle down and muttered something to Jonah.
The Bomb would have killed him right then, but there were so many witnesses he had to go on with the show.
The poem was about the pioneers; full of rhymes like toil and soil, star and afar. Each kid recited two lines. It was going OK until Sarah Johnson, who has a loud nasal voice, did her bit:
Don't Pat the Wombat! Page 2