My Big Mouth

by Peter Hannan

  Anton Squilt, n.

  1. an idiot turd-faced jerk worshipper.

  2. an idiot turd-faced jerk butt-kisser.

  squilt, v.

  1. to worship and/or kiss the butt of an idiot turd-faced jerk.

  Karl Kidder, n.

  1. a drooler.

  2. a heavy drooler.

  3. the Niagara Falls of droolers.

  Willard Gourdinski, n.

  1. a nervous, hyper, sweaty, ferocious individual.

  2. an individual who behaves as if he has a swarm of killer bees inside his head.

  3. an individual who is rumored to literally have a swarm of killer bees inside his head.

  gourdinski, v.

  1. to ski erratically, as if the skier has a swarm of killer bees inside his head.

  I had PBJB&A for dinner, too. I’d be happy to eat it three times a day, seven days a week. It beat leftover spaghetti brains and shaky cheese, anyway. Afterward, there wasn’t much peanut butter left, so I just used a spoon and finished off the jar. I squirted in about a pint of chocolate syrup, too. Hey, it was dessert.

  As the day went on, I added a bunch more entries to the Glossary of Goons and wrote a song in honor of all of them.

  I was up most of Saturday night, so I slept super-late on Sunday. When I finally got up, I looked in the fridge. It wasn’t a pretty sight now that the peanut butter was gone. It was like a ghost town in there. I think I saw a tumbleweed roll by in the vegetable drawer.

  Dad had left me some cash in an envelope, so I headed out for the Big M. It was a discount supermarket, the closest place. They had regular stuff, but the peanut butter was very irregular. There were only two choices.

  One was the bad hippie kind. I’ve got nothing against all-natural, and I don’t even care if I have to mix it up. Don’t get me wrong, there are okay hippie kinds of peanut butter. But some brands — and this looked like one of them — are almost impossible to mix. It’s like a big brown peanut boulder submerged in grease. And after it’s refrigerated, the grease hardens. Yum. It takes all the fun out of peanut butter. And that’s saying a lot.

  The other kind they had was the super-pale processed stuff that barely even tastes like peanuts. Peanuts are the fourth ingredient on the label. This tastes like pure lard, with just a hint o’ peanut. A subtle essence of legume.

  Anyway, I was standing in the aisle, holding up the hippie peanut butter and trying to decide if I was up to the challenge, when someone called my name.

  “Davis? Davis Delaware?”

  And there was Miss Danderbrook, out in the real world. It’s always shocking to see teachers removed from their natural habitat. Miss Danderbrook was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. It wasn’t even that warm outside.

  “How’s your weekend going, Davis?”

  “Pretty good,” I said. “Nice flip … flops?” I was so distracted by her outfit, I had trouble talking. She looked about ten years younger. I wondered if I should introduce her to my dad.

  “Thanks,” she said. “By the way, the poetry club magazine is coming out this week. There will be a release party on Wednesday after school. I think you’ll be pleased. You’re featured on the cover.”

  “Wow, a poetry cover boy,” I said, feeling embarrassed, but proud. “Okay, I’ll see you then, I guess.”

  “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow in class, too.”

  “Oh, right, tomorrow.” Duh.

  The next morning when I looked at Miss Danderbrook in class, I couldn’t stop thinking about the flip-flops. I was kind of shocked at how much more human she seemed all of a sudden.

  She divided the class into small groups to work more on poetry — except me. She let me sit at my desk by myself, like I was some sort of poet-in-residence or something. I was definitely reaping the rewards of my new Teacher’s Pet status.

  After a while, Danderbrook asked me to read another poem. “Is there something special you’ve been working on that you’d like to share?” she asked.

  I pulled out my notebook and flipped to a song that was definitely special. Of course, I recited it as a poem again … with an extra helping of dramatic energy. I stood up.

  “Full of Bleep!” I shouted, my voiced laced with anger and attitude. The title alone made everyone jump, including Miss Danderbrook, who accidentally threw her pencil into the air. I woke them all from their first-period siesta. I really cranked it up, like a beatnik poet from an old movie. I tilted my head back and let ’er rip:

  Hey, you, you’re such a jerk!

  (I pointed at an imaginary person out in front of me somewhere. One girl thought I meant her, and she nearly fell off her chair.)

  Yeah, you, you’re such a creep!

  (I swung my arm around and jabbed my finger toward another invisible target of my rage.)

  Hey, you, your head don’t work!

  (I pointed to my head.)

  Yeah, you, you’re full of bleep!

  (Finger straight up in the air.)

  By the time I got to the “Full of bleep” line, I could tell it was a hit. I kept going, and every time I got to the end of another stanza, the students joined in: Yeah, you, you’re full of bleep! It actually got pretty rowdy for an English class.

  When it was over, Danderbrook quieted everyone down. I don’t think she appreciated this poem as much as the melting-clock one, but at this point she was a Davis Delaware fan. She asked me to move around the room to help her critique the poems of other students. I just told everyone their work was stunning, groundbreaking, whatever.

  Molly was amused: “Thanks for your valuable assistance, Edgar Allan Poetry.”

  Edwin seemed irritated: “Quoth me: ‘Nevermore.’”

  For the rest of the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about songs or poems or whatever they were. I was in the zone. People basically had to yell at me to make contact: Hello! Yoo-hoo! Anybody home, poetry man? All the positive feedback I’d been getting was inspiring me to put as much down on paper as I could, as fast as possible.

  Whenever I got a minute, I scribbled in a notebook. If I didn’t have one handy, I scribbled on the back of a math test, or a napkin, or my arm. I was pretty sure I wasn’t a great writer or artist. And I was positive that I was a horrible musician. But I guess I just didn’t care about that. I was obsessed.

  Mr. Shettle seemed to hate all kids, but he had some kind of rare species of bug up his butt about me. I guess it was because I was new meat. He was bored with the other kids he’d been making fun of forever, and I gave him an opportunity to try out new material.

  The bell rang as I ran into the gym. I was literally three seconds late.

  “Delaware!” Shettle howled. “You’re crazy if you think you can waltz in late!”

  “Well, you’re crazy if you think this is a waltz,” I said, whipping out a dance move that could only be described as crazy. I think poetry fame had gone to my head.

  I got too big of a laugh.

  Shettle’s face wrinkled up like a prune. “Okay, Delaware,” he growled. “LAPS! FOREVER!”

  Laps it was. While everybody else chose teams and played basketball, I ran. And ran. And ran. The rhythm of running conjured up a song in my head. I sort of whispered it under my breath, along with the slap-slap-slapping of my sneakers on the hardwood floor:

  Shettle, Shettle, wins the medal,

  He’s as dumb as teachers get-tle.

  If your head is made of lumber,

  You are smarter, Shettle’s dumb-ber.

  Okay, yeah, it was a silly song. But the mispronunciation of “dumber” cracked me up. I guess because I was singing it about Shettle, right there in Shettle’s class, it seemed like a funny combination of dangerous and ridiculous. I started laughing to myself.

  Before long, the Butcher and Shettle noticed.

  Gerald must have thought that I was laughing at him, because every time he got the basketball he threw it as hard as he could at me, as if I was a duck in a shooting gallery. It was like the extreme dodgeball game fro
m the other week had never ended. Gerald pretended to be going for the basket or passing to a teammate, but it was obvious that he was aiming for my legs, trying to trip me up, hoping I’d land on my head. Shettle totally knew what was going on, but I think he was happy to have the Butcher do his dirty work for him.

  I got hit a few times, nothing too bad. I decided to ham up the shooting-gallery theme a bit — striking silly duck poses in midair and even quacking a few times. Why not? In a lot of ways, this was better than actually playing basketball with the Butcher. I’m sure he could have easily found a way to elbow me in the ribs or the eye or the nose, or flatten me like a pancake.

  I had become the Butcher’s favorite target, in and out of gym class. Quite the claim to fame.

  Lucky me.

  Wednesday after school was the poetry club magazine release party. They held it in Miss Danderbrook’s classroom, but there were poets from ninth through twelfth grades included — mostly girls. Molly was there. The only other boy was Ivan Brink, everyone’s favorite chunky fainting-goat vampire freak.

  “Good to see you, Ivan,” I overheard Molly say as I walked in the door. “Promise me you won’t pass out on the cheese and crackers.”

  “I promise,” he said, smiling proudly. Everyone likes to be known for something.

  Danderbrook served sparkling apple cider in plastic champagne glasses. There was a stack of magazines on the table, and all the contributors were supposed to autograph the title pages. The cover had a black-and-white reproduction of Salvador Dalí’s melty-clock painting and the headline read, “Watch the Melting Clock: Meditations on Time by Davis Delaware and the rest of the Woodrow Wilson Poetry Club.” Even though Danderbrook had warned me, I was kind of embarrassed to get top billing like that.

  Molly walked up to me. “So, how’s it feel to be Super Poetry Dude?” she asked.

  “The thrill of a lifetime,” I said in an un-thrilled monotone.

  “Somebody’s not so pleased,” said Molly, motioning with her eyes at a girl across the room. “That’s Charlotte Carlotta, a senior. She’s sort of the poster girl for poetry club.”

  Was she ever: Emily Dickinson ribbon around her neck, Sylvia Plath T-shirt, Dylan Thomas hoodie. Where the heck did she get all that stuff? Poetry-R-Us?

  It wasn’t long before she wandered over. “So, I assume you were in the poetry club back in Delaware?” she asked, sipping her cider … pinkie out.

  “No, not really,” I said. I had decided to just let people think I was from Delaware. It wasn’t worth correcting them.

  “Oh,” she said, “because I was kind of surprised that Miss Danderbrook decided to put you on the cover and everything. You’re a beginner, and a few of us are obviously so much more advanced. I mean, some of these kids shouldn’t even be in the magazine. But I, for one, was kind of disappointed about the cover especially, because it just didn’t seem fair … you know?”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. This was the kind of smart girl who gave smart girls a bad name.

  “Oh, yeah, Charlotte, I can see why you would feel that way,” Molly chimed in, raising an eyebrow at me. “But it’s just that there wasn’t a poetry club in Davis’s old school. He’s kind of beyond that, anyway. He’s already published … professionally, I mean. Plus, he was Delaware All-State Poetry Champ three years running.”

  What a girl.

  “Wow,” gasped Charlotte, causing a small trickle of apple cider to dribble down her chin, which she quickly dabbed with a napkin. “I don’t think we even have state-wide poetry competitions here in New York.”

  “Delaware has always been very advanced, poetry-wise,” I said. “God, I miss the First State. They call it that because it was the first state to ratify the Constitution. They’re first in poetry, too. It’s one of their major exports.”

  “I hope to move there one day,” Molly said wistfully. “Do you know the state song, Davis?”

  “Do I know the state song?” I asked in fake disbelief. “I only sang it at last year’s all-state’s.” Molly was gonna love this.

  “Oh, Delaware.

  Oh, Delaware,

  Your poetry and wonder.

  Your ocean views and bays and boats,

  Your lightning and your thunder.

  When I’m away, I’m feeling blue,

  I miss your rhymes, your meter, too….”

  “I can’t remember the rest, but you get the idea.”

  Molly clapped softly, politely, like little old ladies do at fancy recitals. She also pretended to wipe a tear from her eye. Nice touch.

  “So,” said Charlotte, eyeing me suspiciously, “where exactly have you been published?”

  “Where hasn’t he been published is more like it,” said Molly.

  I covered my mouth to hide the smile that was threatening to burst into a laugh.

  “Have you heard of New Yorker magazine?” I said. I was really going overboard here. Something about the way she’d said “beginner” and “obviously” and “advanced” got to me. She seemed like a bully — the Butcher of poetry.

  Charlotte nodded, wide-eyed. It was like she’d just met a movie star. “‘Watch the Melting Clock’ is fairly interesting,” she said. It sounded like it hurt her to force the words out.

  “Thanks. That means a lot coming from you.”

  “To Davis Delaware!” Molly cried, lifting her glass.

  “Oh, please,” I said. “I’m blushing.”

  “By all means,” said Charlotte. “To Davis Delaware!”

  “Cheers!” We all clinked glasses.

  “Cheers!” said Miss Danderbrook from across the room.

  In the silence that followed, Ivan Brink spoke up. “I’m thinking of getting a tattoo on my chest of one of those melting clocks … in a pool of blood.”

  Everyone stared at Ivan for a minute. But there was nothing to say.

  “My parents subscribe to the New Yorker,” Charlotte said, turning back to me. “I’ll be sure to look for your work.”

  Later, I saw her whispering to her friends, spreading the news about the new kid who was a published poet.

  I felt a little bad about all the lying — but not really. Goofing around with Molly was too much fun.

  The next day after school, I headed over to the barbershop for band practice. I was all ready to teach Molly and Edwin “That’s Right, You Heard Me Right!” I’d written another verse:

  Big bad dumbbell, crazy little nut,

  Athlete, mathlete, muscles, or gut.

  Jerks and jokers all around you,

  Some will tease you, others pound you.

  From dawn to noon to dead of night,

  The world’s full of blockheads —

  That’s right, you heard me right!

  Molly listened for a bit, and then joined in with harmony. It actually wasn’t too bad. It was all starting to sound less like noise, and more like noisy music. Plus, singing harmony with a girl is sort of an intimate thing. It felt like the closest thing to kissing without actually kissing. Another feeling I would have to keep to myself.

  Practice flew by.

  Afterward, Molly asked what I was doing over the weekend.

  “I don’t know….” It was one thing to see her at the barbershop, but running around town together would look dangerously date-like to a certain jealous maniac.

  “I’ve gotta go,” Molly said, opening the barbershop door. “My dad’s picking me up. Call me.”

  “What do you want me to call you?” Oof.

  “Funny,” she said, rolling her eyes as she walked away. “Just call me.”

  I got to my second karate class early after bolting out of school, and Sensei Jo-Jo directed me to the group I would be working with. I was a beginner, so I was stuck with a bunch of little kids. Hey, at least I wouldn’t be working with the Butcher.

  A ten-year-old yellow belt was the leader of our group. How humiliating. I towered over them all.

  The yellow-belted munchkin looked at me. “Hi, I’m Sparky.”<
br />
  “You’re kidding, right?” I asked.

  “Kidding about what?” He was not amused.

  “Never mind.”

  I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to learn anything from Sparky that would help me defend myself against the Butcher.

  Sparky stood up tall and looked me right in the belly button. “Okay, Davis. Do you know the ethics chants?”

  “Umm … no,” I said. “This is my first day.”

  Another, even tinier kid glanced up at me and rolled his eyes.

  Just then, the Butcher walked in and immediately approached the sensei. I couldn’t hear what the Butcher was saying, but it was obvious from his hand gestures that he wanted to take over as leader of my group. The sensei shook his head no and pointed to Sparky. The Butcher grimaced and joined another group across the room.

  I guess he couldn’t bully Sensei Jo-Jo.

  Sparky spoke to the tinier kid: “Joey, could you instruct our beginner?”

  Oh, great. I’d been passed off to the mini-munchkin.

  “Sure,” squeaked Joey, turning to me. “The ethics chants. Learn them, love them, live them:

  “To strive for the perfection of character.

  To follow the paths of truth.

  To foster a spirit of effort.

  To honor the principles of etiquette.

  To guard against impetuous courage.”

  “Okay, got it,” I said, wondering which of these things the Butcher truly honored. I thought about how he’d probably added a few of his own: