Dancing Dudes

by Mike Knudson

I didn’t want to do it, but I ran up anyway. I opened the door and waited. Lizzy and her friends walked up.

  “What are you doing?” Lizzy smirked.

  “Um, after you, ladies,” I said.

  Lizzy looked at me really weird. Then she walked in with her friends. “I’m telling on you,” she said as she passed me.

  “For what?” I yelled. I let the door close by itself and walked back to Graham. He was smiling and talking to himself.

  “Hello, I’m Coach Graham,” he said, pretending to shake someone’s hand.

  I snapped my fingers a couple of times in front of his face. “Hey, that didn’t go so well,” I said. “How about we just start with the manly rules?”

  “Oh, right,” Graham said. “Rule number one: Never cry.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out. So what’s rule number two?” I asked.

  “It’s, um, give me a second,” Graham said. He thought for a minute or two as we walked back to class. “I’ll tell you later.”

  2

  Real Men Write Poems

  WE STARTED RIGHT in with the poetry. Mrs. Gibson taught us about how there are different types of poems. She said there are some that don’t even rhyme. I couldn’t believe that. How could it be poetry if it didn’t rhyme? Anyway, we worked on them for most of the afternoon.

  Our first poems had to be about our favorite foods. They were supposed to be in the shape of a diamond. The first line could only be one word, the name of our favorite food. The next line had two words to describe it. Then three words on the third line, two words on the fourth line, and the name of the food again on the last line. So in the end, your poem is written in the shape of a diamond. Here’s mine. I wrote about cold cereal. I love cold cereal:Cereal

  Sugar milk

  Prize inside box

  Bowl spoon

  Cereal

  After we wrote our poems, we had to draw pictures about them. I drew myself pulling a new bike out of a box of Cap’n Crunch. Even though it would never fit, I thought it would be cool to find a bike as the prize in the box. I also thought Mrs. Gibson would like that. She always wants us to use our imaginations.

  “Okay, students,” Mrs. Gibson said at the end of the day. “There is one last thing I would like to go over before you leave. We will be decorating our valentine mailboxes tomorrow. You each need to bring an empty shoe box to school. I have a few boxes for those of you who cannot find one, but I won’t have enough for everyone.

  “Also, I want to go over the rules for our Valentine’s Day celebration on Thursday. First, you must bring a valentine to put in the mailbox of every student. That means twenty-six valentines. Second, there will be no rude or distasteful comments written on your valentines. As Graham so eloquently stated, this is a holiday of love, not nastiness.”

  “I think this is a holiday of love, too, Mrs. Gibson,” Lizzy called out. “I was thinking that first, even before Graham.” Did I mention that Lizzy drives me nuts?

  “I’m sure you were, Lizzy,” Mrs. Gibson replied quietly without looking at her. Just then the bell rang. “See you tomorrow.”

  “This will be so sweet!” Graham said once we were outside. “I love Valentine’s Day. I can finally write a love letter to Kelly without Mrs. Gibson taking it away. It’s completely legal!”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. Graham’s been in love with Kelly since the first grade. Even though she’s never liked him back, he hasn’t given up.

  “Although,” Graham continued, “maybe I shouldn’t sign my name . . . you know, to be more mysterious. Maybe I’ll just give her some clues in my valentine. Yeah, that’s exactly what I’ll do. This will be great! By the way, are you going to write a love letter to Heidi on her valentine?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe, if I don’t sign my name. I’ll have to think about it. What if she doesn’t like me back?”

  “Who cares if she likes you? If you like her, you should tell her in a valentine,” Graham said. “Plus, you almost kissed her before Christmas vacation. Remember? If only you hadn’t messed up and sneezed all over her face.”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “You don’t have to remind me.”

  We walked home discussing what Graham was going to write on Kelly’s valentine.

  “Maybe I’ll write a poem,” Graham said. “Girls love poems.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. I wondered how Graham seemed to know so much about girls. I mean, we were only ten years old.

  “What do you mean, how do I know?” Graham answered. “Didn’t you see Mrs. Gibson’s face when she was reading that poem about love? She had a twinkle in her eye and a big smile stretched out across her face.”

  “Yeah, but she’s not a girl, she’s an old lady,” I said.

  “Trust me,” said Graham. “I know a lot more about girls than you do. And girls are born loving poems. In fact, that’s rule number two: Real men write poems to their girlfriends. So as your manly coach, I’m giving you your next assignment: to write Heidi a poem.”

  He told me that if I was going to have him as my manly coach, I had to follow the rules or it wouldn’t work. And since he seemed pretty confident about girls loving poetry, I figured he must be right. “Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll help you write one for Kelly, and I’ll write one for Heidi, too.” My days of being called a baby were going to be over in no time.

  “We’ll go to my house and start right now,” Graham said excitedly.

  We ran to his house and threw our backpacks on the kitchen table. We each pulled out our notebooks and pencils. I called my mom and asked if I could stay at Graham’s to work on homework. Luckily she said yes.

  “Great, let’s do mine first,” Graham said. He looked up at the ceiling with a serious expression on his face. His eyes were all squinty as he rubbed his chin. “First, I need some words that rhyme with Kelly.”

  “How about jelly?” I said. I love jelly, except when it’s soaked into my sandwich.

  “Okay, what do you think of this?” Graham said.

  “Kelly, Kelly,

  Like a bowl full of jelly . . .”

  “Hold on,” I interrupted. “Isn’t that part of a Santa Claus song or something? You know, like Santa’s belly shaking when he laughs like a bowlful of jelly?”

  “Oh yeah, that’s right,” Graham said. “I knew it sounded familiar. Then how about this?

  “Kelly, Kelly,

  Like some beautiful jelly,

  You’re much prettier than

  Santa’s shaking belly. . . .”

  “What do you think, hermano?” Graham asked. He must have thought it was pretty good since he was calling me hermano. That means brother in Spanish. Usually we only use the few Spanish words we know on special occasions or when we are really happy.

  I looked at Graham but I didn’t know what to say, because his poem sounded kind of crazy to me. “I don’t know, it seems kind of weird.”

  “What do you mean, weird?” Graham said. He looked sad, like I really hurt his feelings.

  “Hold on, hermano,” I said quickly. “I don’t mean the bad kind of weird. I mean, you know . . . good weird. Like when something is so good you say it’s . . . weird. Like, ‘Wow, that new video game is the best! It’s soooo weird!’”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought you meant,” Graham said, completely happy again. “Okay, let’s write your poem for Heidi.”

  “I don’t know. We probably can’t think of anything to rhyme with Heidi,” I answered. I kind of wanted to drop the idea. Besides, I didn’t want to give Heidi a poem about looking like some fat guy’s belly or anything like that. But Graham wouldn’t let me give up.

  “Hey, this is your coach talking. If we don’t write the poem, I’m going to make you do some push-ups.”

  “Tone it down. You’re not my football coach,” I said.

  “Okay, sorry. But we are writing a poem for Heidi. I’m sure we can think of tons of words that rhyme with Heidi. Let’s see . . .” he said, squinting again
and mumbling. “Heidi . . . beidi . . . meidi . . . sleidi . . . Hmmm . . . Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”

  As I sat there quietly thinking of rhyming words, Graham yelled, “I’ve got it!” He cleared his throat and began reciting.

  “Heidi, Heidi,

  You are very tidy,

  So please be my valentiny.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “Tidy, eh? You are very tidy.” I let the line bounce around through my brain for a minute. “Heidi . . . tidy,” I repeated a few more times. “You know what? I like it. It’s short and to the point. And girls are way more tidy and neat than boys are. She’ll probably like that I notice how tidy she is.”

  “Exactly,” Graham said. “She’ll love it. And you’ll be one step closer to manliness.”

  “Yeah, thanks. And that didn’t even seem very hard,” I said. Then it came to me. “Wait a minute. We should write poems for everyone in our class. You know, not love poems, just regular poems. It’ll be fun.”

  Graham agreed.

  3

  Roses Are Red, Beans Are Green

  “OKAY,” GRAHAM SAID. “My first poem will be for Matt Lindenheimer. Let’s see . . . Lindenheimer . . . mindenheimer . . . tindenheimer . . . windenheimer . . .”

  “How about you just use Matt?” I interrupted. This could take forever if we had to rhyme something with Lindenheimer.

  “Yeah, Matt,” Graham agreed. “That’ll be easy. Let’s see . . . how about this?

  “Matt, Matt,

  You’re not very fat,

  But you have a big brain,

  So happy Valentine’s Dain.”

  “Dain? What’s a dain?” I asked.

  “Come on, Raymond. That’s just a poetic way of saying day.” Graham looked at me like I was an idiot. “You can make stuff up like that when you write a poem.”

  “Sweet,” I said. If we could make up words, this was going to be easier than I thought. “Let me try.”

  “All right, why don’t you do one about Lizzy,” Graham suggested.

  “Whoa, that will be hard,” I said, “but I’ll give it a shot.

  “Lizzy, Lizzy,

  Your hair is curly and frizzy.

  Every day your face is crinklier,

  Like you just smelled another stinklier.

  Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  “Great,” Graham said. “And nice poetic words, too—crinklier and stinklier.”

  It took all afternoon, but we each wrote a poem for every person in our class. By five o’clock, I was starving. “Hey, gotta go, Graham,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I stuffed my poem valentines into my backpack and ran all the way home.

  I made it to my porch just as my dad pulled into the driveway.

  “Hey, bud,” Dad called, getting out of the car. “What have you been up to, chasing girls?”

  “No. I was at Graham’s writing Valentine’s Day poems.”

  “Well, that’s a sure way to catch ’em,” Dad chuckled. He opened the front door for me, and I ran in.

  “Mom, what’s for dinner?” I yelled.

  “Hi, sweetie,” Mom called from the kitchen. “We’re having chicken and string beans.”

  “Not string beans!” I yelled. Just saying it made me start to gag. They are by far the worst vegetable ever. “I’ll just have the chicken.”

  “Sorry, sweetie, everyone has to eat some vegetables. You know that,” she said.

  I sat down and tried to think of some way out of it. If there is one thing Mom is serious about, it’s eating your vegetables. You can’t ever leave the table until you have eaten everything on your plate. Plus you don’t even get to choose what you get or how much. When she sets your plate in front of you, it’s already full and ready to go. Once Graham stayed over for dinner and my mom made brussels sprouts. Even though Graham said, “No thanks,” Mom still loaded up his plate. I think he put them in his pocket to get rid of them when she wasn’t looking. Not even visitors escape the Clean Your Plate Rule at my house.

  I washed my hands and sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Did you know your son’s a poet?” Dad said, smiling at Mom. Just then my big sister, Geri, walked in.

  “You, a poet?” she laughed. “Right.”

  “What did you write, Raymond?” Mom said, giving Geri a stern look.

  “Graham and I wrote poems for everyone in our class. And I have to admit, they’re pretty good,” I said. “Just listen to this—I’ll write one about you, Mom.

  “Mom, Mom,

  You’re so . . .

  Let’s see, you’re so . . .

  “Okay, hold on a minute,” I said. I tried to think of things that rhymed with Mom. Mom, pom, dom, gom, zom, som, I thought to myself. Then it came to me . . . Mother, not Mom. Mother would be much easier. “Okay, here I go . . .” I said.

  “Mother, Mother,

  You’re so . . .

  You’re so . . . um . . .”

  “I’ve got one,” Geri blurted out. “How about this:“Brother, Brother,

  A dork like no other,

  Can’t make a rhyme

  For his dear old mother.”

  She leaned back laughing.

  “Geri, that’s enough,” Mom said in a tone that my sister understood. Geri immediately stopped laughing and started eating. “And Raymond, I’m sure you wrote some wonderful poems today.” Mom smiled at me.

  Oh, great, I thought. My mom’s using her ‘feel sorry for Raymond’ voice. I hated that voice. It’s bad enough to have your big sister call you a dork, but to have your mom feel sorry for you for being a dork is much worse. Then a brilliant idea came to my mind. This was my ticket away from the dinner table and that pile of string beans on my plate. The best time to get away with something is when your mom feels sorry for you.

  I put on a sad face and tried to make my eyes water. I even pinched myself to cry, but it didn’t work. “Mom,” I said in my saddest voice, rubbing my eyes, “I tried to write a good poem for you, but I guess I’m just a bad poet, like Geri said.”

  “Oh, honey, you’re a great poet,” Mom said. “Don’t you worry about your sister. She’s just doing what twelve-year-old sisters do.”

  This was working perfectly. Now for the finale. I made a sniffle noise. “Well, I finished all of my chicken, but I sort of don’t feel like eating anymore. Do you think I can just go to my room and practice writing a poem for you?” I slid my chair back and started to stand up.

  “Sure, sweetie,” she said. Then she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Just as soon as you finish your beans. Then you can go and write as many poems as you like.”

  I fell back into my chair and looked down at the pile of beans on my plate. I could feel Geri laughing at me. I stared at those beans for a long time . . . a really long time. I stared at them until I was the only one left at the table. Dad cleared all of the other plates and left the kitchen. But there was absolutely no way I was going to put those beans into my mouth. I would rather stay there until I was an old man. Maybe the beans would dry up and blow away.

  As I sat there thinking about how long it would take for a bean to dry up, a thought came to mind: Maggie, our dog, eats anything. I hadn’t fed her my food under the table for weeks. It used to be my regular way of finishing my dinner. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it sooner.

  “Mom, I’ll be right back,” I said. “I just need to go to the bathroom.” She set some dishes in the sink and came over to see if I was bringing my beans into the bathroom, one of my other tricks.

  “Okay, sweetie, but hurry right back to finish those beans,” she said.

  “Of course,” I said. I walked to the bathroom, waited a minute or two, and then flushed the toilet. I could see our dog down the hall in the living room.

  “Come on,” I whispered to Maggie. “Come on, girl. Do you want some food?” Suddenly, Maggie’s ears perked up and she followed me back to the kitchen and went straight under the table. She knew the routine. I sat down and grabbed one bean and dropped i
t under the table to see if she would eat it. I wasn’t sure if I had ever fed her a string bean. I peeked under the table, and sure enough she was eating it. I patted her head and reached for the whole pile on my plate. Mom kept her eye on me as she was cleaning up. But as soon as she opened the refrigerator to put away the butter, I grabbed the handful of beans and, without looking, reached under the table and dropped them.

  I felt a little bad about not eating my vegetables, but I figured Maggie probably needed vegetables, too. Knowing that I was helping my dog eat better made me feel a little less guilty. But as I was feeling proud about helping Maggie, she crawled out from under the table and trotted toward the family room, where my dad was reading the paper. That would have been fine, but as she walked away I noticed something weird. She had a pile of string beans on her head.

  Oh, no! I thought. I must have dropped some of the beans on her head instead of the floor. Before I had time to get out of my chair and into the other room, I heard my dad.

  “Honey,” Dad called out, “why is the dog walking around with a pile of beans on her head?”

  To make a long story short, Mom had a little chat with me about the importance of eating vegetables. I also got two extra chores for the week. But in the end, if it helped me get out of eating my string beans . . . it was worth it.

  4

  Valentine Eggs

  THE NEXT DAY after lunch, we began working on our valentine boxes. Mrs. Gibson had us move to the tables in the back of the classroom. I was at a table with Kelly, Brad, Eden, Luke, and Zach.

  Mrs. Gibson put some pink, red, and white construction paper, a bunch of pink and red tissue paper, and some glue in the middle of each table. She showed us a box that a kid decorated last year. It looked pretty good. I knew right then that mine was never going to look that good. My art projects always stink.

  I thought I would glue some tissue paper all around my box first, and then I could make hearts and stuff out of the other paper and glue them on the sides. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that you shouldn’t use too much glue with tissue paper. It soaked right through and got my tissue paper all soggy. There was glue on my hands and on the table, and my tissue paper was ripping apart. I stuck it on as well as I could.