by Carla Gunn
That works for humans too. If a person holds his face in a smile, he doesn’t feel angry or dominant. I saw that on Discovery Channel.
Some biologists think a smile makes a human feel less dominant because the smile evolved thousands of years ago from the fear face. If you were afraid of your enemy, you would smile to show that you weren’t a threat. I think humans are sometimes big liars, though. Some of them smile to pretend not to be a threat and then have you for lunch. For instance, sometimes Lyle smiles at you as if he’s your friend – then next thing you know he’s got you in a headlock or he’s kicking you in the shins. The smile’s only to get you to let your guard down. My mom says that’s pretty much how it works at her office too.
Brent had on a light green shirt with a dark green and purple tie. He looked a lot like a leprechaun, partly because of all the green, but partly because he was really short – much shorter than my mother, who is really tall for a woman. My mother is a little bit taller than my father, but she’s a lot taller than the man named Brent.
I got the feeling Brent is one of those grown-ups who doesn’t really like kids but pretends to. I like people who don’t like kids and don’t even pretend to like them – like Mr. Byers, who owns the big apple tree that Bird and I play on. At least with Mr. Byers you know to stay away from him because he might grab you by the ear and march you over to the principal’s office like he did to Justin who fell out of the tree and into his backyard one day.
But with people like the man named Brent, their voices say, ‘I like you’ and ‘Aren’t you a cute little kid,’ but that’s not what their faces say. He reminded me of the alligator snapper turtle, which has a bright pink tongue that looks like a worm that lures fish right into his mouth. Or like one of those shiny cards that if you tilt it one way you see one thing but if you tilt it the other way, you see something different.
Afterwards, I asked my mother if she actually liked that man. She said she likes his company.
I said, ‘Is that man going to be your boyfriend?’
She paused for a moment – too long of a moment, if you ask me. Then she said, ‘Phin, I enjoy Brent’s company. We have a lot in common. Listen, Phin, if I ever were to have a boyfriend, it would never come as a surprise, okay?’
I said, ‘Good, because bad surprises upset my homeostatis.’ I learned that word in Discover magazine, but I had never had a chance to use it until then. When a person’s homeostatis is upset, he feels uncomfortable and is motivated to do something about it. For example, if you are cold, you will shiver and get a sweater. I didn’t want to think about what I would be motivated to do if Mom made that man her boyfirend.
Besides, my mother and he would make a funny-looking pair. They would be different than most mammals since the male is usually bigger than the female. There are some mammals where the female is bigger, but only a bit bigger. That would be like the spotted hyena. The female spotted hyena has to be bigger than the male in order to stop him from eating her pups.
Of the species where the female is a lot bigger than the male, many of them are spiders. For example, the average female golden orb spider is twenty centimetres long, but the male is only five to six millimetres long. Some of the golden female orbs are a thousand times bigger than the male. The male is so tiny that he can live on the female’s web and steal her food without her even noticing him. He mates with her usually while she’s eating and is distracted. But if she notices him, she will try to eat him too. I can always hope that happens to Brent.
My father looks better with my mother, but they got separated when I was eight. I live with my mom because my father travels a lot. He’s a foreign correspondent. Right now he’s in Helsinki. It is six hours later in Helsinki than it is here. That means my dad is living in the future.
Last night I drew land formations and natural disasters on Reull. Spikequakes are natural disasters where spikes come up out of the ground. Virex is a virus when everything you touch starts to get bigger and bigger and when it’s ten feet big, it explodes and your skin turns purple, then blue, then red, then green. Firex is when you get hotter and hotter but don’t catch on fire, you simply melt into a pool of fluids.
I showed them to my mother and she said, ‘Wow, Phin, that’s very imaginative. Do any nice things happen on Reull?’
I said, ‘Sure, there’s Mover Island, a piece of land that moves from place to place. The people who live there could go to sleep near a country like Canada and wake up next to a country like Australia or Greenland. The problem is, they’re hardly ever dressed for the weather and sometimes freeze or boil to death in their beds.’ That got me thinking about Lyle, who I would like to put on Mover Island.
At lunchtime I was swinging and playing a game in my imagination – until Lyle came along. In the game, I was swinging over a big gully. The object of the game was to swing high enough so that my feet looked like they were touching a certain cloud in the sky. If they couldn’t touch that cloud, I would be sucked into a gully of brain suckers. I had fun doing that until Lyle came over and did an under-duck and pushed me out of my swing. I landed in brain-sucker gully and was really mad. So I yelled some Gaelic words at him and then called him a name he’d understand. If Lyle was in a pit of brain suckers, and he was the only food they had in months, those brain suckers would starve to death. I really wished right then that I was a stinkpot turtle that releases a foul scent when its predator attacks. But the only thing that stank right then was Lyle.
Lyle ran to Mrs. Wardman. I watched him as he talked to her, and I knew he was snitching. Mrs. Wardman listened to him, and then she looked over at me and made a motion with her hand for me to come over. As I walked over to her, I had seventeen thoughts go through my brain. Then I had a thought about there being seventeen thoughts, and that made it eighteen.
Mrs. Wardman said, ‘Lyle says you called him a rude name. I don’t know what it was and I’m not even going to ask you, because saying it once is enough. I don’t want you to call names again, is that clear, Phin?’
I nodded my head, but I was really, really mad. I hadn’t told on Lyle for pushing me, so why did he tell on me for calling him a name? He does it all the time, and not behind my back like some of the other kids. Lyle’s the biggest front-stabber there is. I said ‘Whatever’ to Mrs. Wardman, but I said it really low so that she could hear me only in her unconscious.
I wished really hard that red fire ants would swarm Lyle. Their sting hurts as much as wasp stings. The problem is there aren’t many red fire ants around here. They’re usually where it’s warmer. Then I started thinking that maybe with global warming, they would begin a giant march north and eventually end up here.
This made me think about climate change and how the earth is heating up. Scientists say that if it heats up by more than two degrees, we’ll all be in big trouble, and it’s heating up even faster than anyone thought. Thinking this made me feel shivery inside. When I told Bird I was feeling worried, he tried to distract me by getting me to pretend the teachers could shoot laser rays out of their eyes and we should dodge them. But I just didn’t feel like it.
I tried putting a stick between my teeth to make my mouth into a smile, but it didn’t work. Bird said I looked like a jack o’ lantern, and then he put a stick between his teeth too. When he did that, I saw something black crawling toward his mouth.
I said, ‘Umm, Bird, I think you should take that stick out of your mouth.’
He said, ‘Why?’ but it sounded more like Eiiii.
Then I said, ‘Because there’s something about to crawl into your mouth, and it’s something that people might eat in Cambodia but we don’t eat them here.’ Actually, 80 percent of the world’s people eat insects of some kind, which means they can’t be all that bad for you, but just as I was about to mention that to Bird, he saw the beetle too. He flung the stick really far, and it hit a Grade 5 kid on the back. That kid turned around and pushed the kid behind him, who must have been confused. Bird started dancing around and shivering.
He was still shivering and saying, ‘Gross, gross, gross,’ when the bell rang. That made me smile a little bit for real.
We mostly did boring stuff the rest of the day, so to keep myself from falling asleep, I made up a game to play each time Mrs. Wardman told us to take a Duo-Tang out of our desk. The game was if I reached in with my eyes closed and pulled out the right one on the very first try, I got fifteen points. If I got it on the second try, I got ten points. Third try was worth five points and fourth try got a big fat zero. The goal was to get at least fifty points by the end of the day. I only got to forty-five.
The only good part of the afternoon was silent reading, when I got to read a book about dolphins. I learned that a dolphin mother sometimes has a dolphin midwife with her when she gives birth. The midwife pushes the baby up to the surface as soon as he’s born so that he can get a breath of air. I also learned that if you plug a dolphin’s blowhole, that feels to a dolphin like how covering your mouth and nose at the same time would to you. I wondered what that would feel like. I tried holding my breath to see what it felt like, but I didn’t really think that would be the same.
After school, my mother showed up to take me home but I told her that I wanted to walk home today.
She said, ‘But, Phinnie, I’m already here.’
I said, ‘But I really want to walk home.’
My mother sighed and said, ‘Fine then, walk home.’
It was a good thing I did because on the way, I saw a plastic shopping bag on the side of the road. I picked it up and put it in my backpack because it could blow out to the ocean and a sea turtle or an albatross could choke on it. Albatross babies are fed things like plastic lids and Lego blocks by their mothers, who find them floating in the ocean and mistake them for food. Every year thousands of babies die because plastic gets caught in their throats and esophaguses, which makes them choke or starve to death. I wondered why the person who littered the plastic bag didn’t think of that.
When I got home, my mother wasn’t there. In a few minutes she showed up and told me that she had had a little talk with my teacher. This is never good news. I sucked in my breath and held it as long as I could. I remembered the rule of threes when I did this. The general rule is that you can live three minutes without oxygen, three days without water and three weeks without food. I was careful not to hold my breath for longer than the count of fifteen, because I wasn’t sure that rule was completely accurate.
My mother still hadn’t said anything else, so then I took another big breath and did the same thing over. She said, ‘Phin, what are you doing?’ I didn’t say anything right away because I was still trying to let out the air I had breathed in and didn’t want to break the pattern of it. She crossed her arms.
When all the air was out, I said I was just breathing, waiting for her to get to the point. She said she was getting there but was waiting for my full attention. I said I could never give her my complete full attention because some of it had to be used for things like breathing and blinking my eyes. She said most people could do those things without paying attention. I said not me because I had to keep part of my mind on those things in case they got out of control.
My mother said, ‘I heard you used a few select words today, Phin. What was that all about?’
‘Lyle pushed me. Twice.’
‘Well, I hadn’t heard about that part. Did you tell Mrs. Wardman?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you should have. Lyle needs to learn a lesson. You’d actually be doing him a favour by telling on him.’
‘I don’t want to do him any favours.’
‘You know what I mean, Phin. You’d be doing everyone a favour,’ said my mother.
Then I told her that Lyle had pushed me before today too. She got really quiet, and I could tell she was mad. She said that she would talk to the teacher about it and that I should stay away from that kid like she told me to before. I said I was trying to, but the problem is Lyle has legs too. And also a few times Mrs. Wardman made me do group work with Lyle – even though I told her my mother said I should stay away from that kid.
Then came the part I was hoping wouldn’t come. ‘What did you call Lyle?’ asked my mother.
‘Lady,’ I told her.
‘You called him lady?’
‘Yes.’
‘Since when is lady a bad word?’
‘Since fourth grade.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, how about next time you insult Lyle you call him man instead?’
I just rolled my eyes at her. Sometimes she just doesn’t get it, but I was glad to get off that subject.
Then I said, ‘Mom, if I lie down on the couch, could you sneak up on me and cover my nose and mouth at the same time?’
‘Why?’ asked my mom in a surprised voice with a surprised face.
‘Please. Just do it, please.’
‘That’s kind of a creepy request, Phin. I need to have a good reason for doing something like that.’
‘What’s creepy about it?’
‘Well, Phin, it sounds a little like a smothering and, you know, I rather like you. Besides, I don’t want to spend the rest of my days in the penitentiary. I’ve written stories about some of those inmates, you know, and I don’t think they’d be very nice to me.’
‘Yeah sure, Mom, sure.’
‘Seriously, why do you want me to do that?’
‘Because I read in a book today that if you plug a dolphin’s blowhole, that feels to him like having your nose and mouth covered at the same time would to you. I want to know how that feels exactly.’
My mother said, ‘Oh, okay.’ So I lay down on the couch and closed my eyes. A few minutes later, she covered my nose and my mouth with her hand – but only for a couple of seconds. She wouldn’t do it for any longer than that, but I think I know a little bit better what that feels like to a dolphin. Not good.
At lunch today, Bird and I went to the edge of the playground by the apple tree. The tree has a branch that sits straight out and it’s almost like sitting on a bench except that it is a lot higher off the ground and it bounces up and down a bit when we move around on it.
Bird and I were careful not to jump down on the side of the tree facing Mr. Byers’ house. At the beginning of the year we were told in school assembly that we could play only on the school-facing side of the apple tree. Mrs. Wardman even went out to show us where we could go and where we could not.
Bird said, ‘Can we step here, Mrs. Wardman?’
And she said, ‘Yes.’
Then he said, ‘How about here, can we step here, Mrs. Wardman?’
And she said, ‘No.’
He said, ‘But what about right here, Mrs. Wardman, can we step right here?’
And she said, ‘You can, but you may not, Richard, and your allowable questions are up.’
Richard is Bird’s real name. Everyone calls him Bird because his last name is L’Oiseau, which is bird in French. Bird likes his nickname better. It irritates him that Mrs. Wardman won’t call him by that, so he makes sure not to call her by the name she prefers either – just not to her face.
Bird stopped asking questions. But when Mrs. Wardman wasn’t looking, he stepped over to the side she told him he couldn’t step on, and then he jumped back before she looked around. But nothing happened to him when he was where she told him he shouldn’t be.
I don’t want to go anywhere near Mr. Byers anyway. He makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
One day I got Silly Putty stuck in the hairs on the back of my neck. I’m not sure how I did it – I think I forgot to put it away before I went to bed, and I lay down on top of it. When I got up the next morning, it was stuck to me.
I went to my mother and she said, ‘Geez, Phin, you’re turning green.’ She tried rubbing it off with soap and water but it wouldn’t come off. Then she tried baby oil, and she pulled some off but the problem was she pulled off the hairs on the back of my neck too.
I yelled because it hurt, and then
I said, ‘Great, Mom, now how am I going to know when I’m scared of someone?’
She said, ‘Phin, sometimes you exhaust me.’ She says that a lot. But then she smiles.
When we were on the tree branch I told Bird that I thought I hated Lyle who pushed me yesterday and then told on me for calling him lady. Then I told Bird I would like to call Lyle an F-er to his face instead of behind his back.
The F word is one of the very first words I think of when I’m really mad. For example, in third grade we had to write down words that described our French partner, and the only word I could think of was the F word because I really didn’t like him. Maybe it was a good thing that I didn’t know what that word was in French – especially after he bit me. When that happened, I yelled the F word, but just inside my head.
This morning I woke up to an awful sound – it was like a wolf trying to howl after swallowing one of those birthday-party noisemakers. And it was standing over me.
I was a little worried about what I might see – maybe a pack of wolves having a birthday party and the cake just happened to be me – but I took a chance and opened my eyes. My mother was standing there and that awful noise was coming from her. She was smiling so I figured she wasn’t choking on something, so I asked her what the heck she was doing.
‘I’m yodelling, Phin,’ she said.
‘But you’re not on a mountain,’ I said. ‘You’re standing over me making that awful sound. I thought you were a wolf with something caught in its throat. If you were a wolf, you’d have to be the alpha because if you were a submissive, the others would attack you for making a sound like that.’
Since my mother seemed to be interested in awful sounds, I told her that a science show I watched was about how researchers asked people across lots of countries to rate how horrible different sounds are. The top five were:
5. a metal drawer being opened
4. scraping wood
3. scraping metal