by Phillip Done
“Hey Brian, do you need any help thinking of something for the Kindness Jar?”
He shook his head and dashed out of the room. A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. It was Brian’s father.
“Excuse me, Mr. Done. Do you have a second?”
“Yes, yes. Of course,” I said. “Come in. Come in.”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he apologized, stepping inside. “Brian doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Oh yes. I wanted to talk with you about your Kindness Week.”
“Ah yes,” I said, “I just spoke with Brian about it.”
“Did he tell you about his act of kindness?”
I looked surprised. “He did something?”
“Yes.”
“I thought he hadn’t… What did he do?”
“Well you see, ever since you sent home that letter, the one about Kindness Week, Brian started begging me to take him to McDonald’s. I kept saying no. We rarely eat there. But he kept persisting. So last night I took him after soccer practice. When we arrived, he insisted on using the drive-through. We drove in and ordered. When the woman at the window handed us our food, Brian shouted, ‘Wait!’ Then he unzipped his soccer bag and pulled out a sack full of change. He handed it to the woman and said, ‘This is for the car behind us.’”
I sat down on one of the kids’ desks. “Wow,” I said softly, “That’s lovely.” I paused for a moment then looked up at Brian’s father. “But why didn’t he tell me?”
“He didn’t want you to know. He doesn’t want anyone to know. He’d be upset with me if he knew I was talking with you about this. Brian said he wants to remain anonymous.”
“Ahh,” I responded with a nod and a smile. “I understand. But I told him he didn’t have to sign his name.”
“He said that if he wrote anything down at all, you’d recognize his handwriting.”
I gave a little laugh. “He’s right. I would.”
“When we drove away, I asked him where he got the money. I assumed it was from his piggy bank. Some of it was, but most he raised this week.”
“How?”
“He gave chess lessons to his friends. He charged a quarter a lesson.”
“At school?”
“I don’t know. I assume so. When I pressed him, he said that he did not want to talk about it. He said, ‘Mr. Done told us that if you do something nice for someone and don’t tell anyone, you get a very special feeling in your heart.’” I smiled. “So I dropped it. When I tucked him in bed, I asked him if he experienced that special feeling that you described.”
“And what did he say?”
Brian’s dad smiled. “Well, he still refused to say. So I had to ask his teddy bear.”
“And?”
“He said yes.”
SIMILES
One day when we were all reading James and the Giant Peach (each child held his own copy), I stopped after the sentence “His room was as bare as a prison cell.”
“Boys and girls,” I said, “this is a simile. Similes compare two things using the word like or as. See the word as in the sentence?”
They looked back in the text. “Oh yeahs” popped up around the room.
“What two things is Roald Dahl comparing here?” I asked.
“The room and the prison cell,” Laura called out.
“Good.” I continued reading. A few minutes later I read, “Spread out below him like a magic carpet.” I stopped. “Here’s another simile. See the word like?”
They spotted it. “Yeah!”
A while later I read, “She was like a great white soggy overboiled cabbage.”
“Simile!” Brian shouted, raising his hand at the same time.
“Very good,” I said, nodding.
“Mr. Done,” Brian negotiated, “for every simile that we find can we get a minute of free play?” I give Friday Free Time Minutes, which we add up at the end of the week. These are almost as coveted as No Homework Passes.
“Good try,” I said, laughing.
Christopher piped in. “How ’bout for every ten similes we find, we get one minute?”
“Yeah!” they all agreed.
I thought about it for a moment. How many similes can there be? Surely they won’t spot all of them. It might be fun. I smiled. “Why not?”
“Yeah!”
“When do we start?” Trevor asked quickly.
I shrugged. “How ’bout now?” I looked over at Angela. “Angela, you be our recorder.” She ran to the paper basket. We resumed reading.
Teacher Alert: Never underestimate kids’ ability to find similes — especially if there are Friday Free Time Minutes at stake. They can sniff them out better than a third-grade teacher can smell a three-week-old Lunchables in the back of a desk.
I couldn’t get through a single page without someone announcing, “Simile!” Every time we came to one, the kids would jump out of their seats like jack-in-the-boxes. The farther we read, the more Roald Dahl seemed to sneak them in, too. (I swear he was on some kind of mad simile kick when he wrote this book.)
In James and the Giant Peach, nothing Mr. Dahl describes is just fast, flat, high, tall, white, sharp, or furry. Oh no. Everything has to be fast like a torpedo, flat as paper dolls, high as a church steeple, tall as a house, white as clouds, sharp as razors, and furry like the skin of a baby mouse! Stars don’t just twinkle. They twinkle like diamonds. There can’t just be a swarm. It has to swarm like ants. And no one in the book just jumps. They have to jump around like they have been stung by wasps!
If this weren’t bad enough, Mr. Dahl even repeats his similes. In chapter 11, he writes as large as a dog three times! Yes, three times. ON THE SAME PAGE! Why in the world would he do that? I can only think of one reason. He is trying to help all children in the world get Friday Free Time Minutes. He is on their side!
Teacher Alert: When reading James and the Giant Peach with your students, do not read chapter 11. Go to chapter 12. I repeat. Skip chapter 11. Go directly to chapter 12!
It didn’t take long for my students to become simile-crazed. They checked out all the Roald Dahl books from the library. They pointed out similes in their own silent reading books. They started using similes in their own writing. When Laura got caught staying up past her bedtime with a flashlight under her covers, she was reading ahead in James searching for similes.
One morning when I read, “as it went sailing by,” Kevin shouted, “Simile!”
“Not quite, Kevin. Just because you see the word as doesn’t make it a simile. As he was growing up means when he was growing up. Sorry. No points.”
Everyone whined.
When I read, “‘Did you like that, James?’” Emily spouted, “Simile!”
“That’s not a simile either, honey. Remember — a simile compares two things. Nothing’s being compared here. It just means that he enjoys chocolate.”
The class grumbled.
When I read, “The boy’s a genius,” Sarah declared, “Simile!”
“Good try, Sarah. But I’m afraid that’s not really a simile.”
“But it compares boy and genius,” she insisted.
“You’re right,” I agreed. “But a simile has to have the word like or as in it. If it said, The boy is like a genius, then it would be a simile. What you discovered is called a metaphor.”
Christopher perked up. “Can we get points for metaphors, too?”
“No.”
One morning I read, “The Earthworm looked like a great, pink, juicy sausage.”
“Simile!” Laura boomed.
“Excellent,” I said. “Angela, write that down.”
Christopher leapt to his feet. “Wait! That’s three similes!”
“What?” I said, surprised.
He looked back in his book. “It’s comparing the Earthworm to three different things,” Christopher said, excitedly.
“No way,” I said, shaking my head.
John jolted u
p out of his chair and started talking really fast. “Christopher’s right! It says the Earthworm’s like a great sausage. That’s one simile. Like a pink sausage. That’s another one. And like a juicy sausage. That’s three!”
I flat-eyed him. “One. Point.”
“Three!” everyone shouted.
“No.”
More kids stood up. “THREE!”
Suddenly the music CSI always plays when the coroner is performing an autopsy began swelling in my head. I pictured the morning’s headlines: “Mutiny in the Classroom,” “Teacher Flattened Like a Pancake!” “Teacher’s Last Words: I Hate You, Roald Dahl!” I gave it to ’em.
FOILED
There are certain things that a teacher must never do: Never give your student the hose at a car wash. Never pour plaster of paris down the sink. Never leave your coffee cup exposed on April 1. Never give an eight-year-old a retractable measuring tape. (It will not retract again.) Never stand on a bathroom scale when teaching your students about pounds and ounces. Never shout, “Hold your balls!” Never throw a wilted flower away in front of the child who gave it to you no matter how droopy it is. And never forget to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day.
On St. Patrick’s Day, children fall into one of four categories — those who cover themselves from head to toe in green, those who wear one or two articles of green clothing, those who forget and wear no green at all, and the tricksters. These are the kids who appear to not be wearing any green. But as soon as you point this out to them, they shout, “Yes, I am!” then bend over and reveal the two-millimeter stitch of green thread on the back of their sneaker.
Last St. Patty’s Day when I saw that Corinne wasn’t wearing any green, I felt sorry for her. So I called her up and stuck a green shamrock sticker on her shoulder.
“This is so you won’t get pinched,” I said.
She frowned.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I wanna get pinched.”
* * *
I have only forgotten to wear green once. It was a Monday morning in my second year teaching. I was running late and arrived at school just as the bell rang.
“Mr. Done, you’re not wearing green!” Eddie pointed out as I unlocked the classroom door.
My heart stopped. “What day is it today?”
“St. Patrick’s Day!” he announced.
Dang!
“Where’s your green?” Eddie asked.
Deep breath. Remain calm.
I forced a smile. “Well… I… uh… I’ll show you in a minute.”
Inside the classroom, I grabbed a piece of green construction paper and quickly started cutting out a four-leaf clover.
“Mr. Done, where’s your green?” Eddie asked again.
“Right here,” I sang, holding up my green paper.
“That doesn’t count!” retorted Stephanie.
“Sure it does.”
“No, it doesn’t!” Dominic chimed in.
I finished cutting.
“It has to be attached to you,” Brianna stated.
“It will be in a second,” I said. I started shuffling through the piles on my desk. “Who took the tape?” Suddenly I heard the scooting of chairs and the stampeding of feet. I looked up. “Get back to your seats!” I screamed. Too late. Ambushed.
This year I had recess duty on March 17. The playground was a sea of green T-shirts, pants, jackets, sweaters, headbands, hats, socks, sunglasses, shoelaces, and spray-painted hair. Hannah and Jocelyn ran up to me. I’d had both girls in my class two years before.
“Where’s your green?” I asked Hannah.
“Right here,” she said, pointing to her turquoise leggings.
That’s green?
It was clear to me that Hannah needed a refresher in St. Patrick’s Day basics. Acceptable shades of green on the day of the Irish include: emerald, kelly, forest, apple, lime, olive, neon, chartreuse, teal, mint, jade, pistachio, moss, spinach, and camouflage. Aquamarine and blue-green: pushing it. Turquoise: should get pinched.
As I walked around the blacktop, I spotted a group of first graders searching under the picnic table. I poked my head under it.
“What are you kids doing?”
“Shhhhh!” one of them said, putting his finger to his mouth. “We’re looking for leprechauns.”
I smiled. “Oh.” Then I squatted down beside them. “You really want to catch a leprechaun?”
“Yeah,” they replied.
“Well,” I whispered. “I think I know where one is hiding.”
“Where?” they whispered back.
“In the office. Under the secretary’s desk.”
They bolted off. (Ellen thanked me later.)
When recess was over, I walked back to my room. John and Dylan were arguing in line.
“What’s the trouble?” I asked.
“Dylan pinched me!” John cried. “And I have green on!” He lifted up his shirt to reveal a green tattoo of the Hulk. “See.”
“I didn’t pinch him!” protested Dylan.
“Yes, you did!” John shouted.
“I did not!” Dylan exclaimed. “I fake-pinched you.”
“You what?” I asked, baffled.
“I fake-pinched him,” Dylan repeated.
I grabbed the back of my neck. “What’s that?”
Dylan reached out his hand, put his finger right near my arm, and gave the air a big pinch. I stood still for a moment with my head down. Four years of college and a master’s for this? I looked up. The boys were waiting for a verdict. I rubbed my arm and crinkled my brow. “Ouch.”
One of my favorite places to be on St. Patrick’s Day is Kim’s second-grade classroom. In March, the staff affectionately calls her the Leprechaun Lady. Kim’s room is plastered with rainbows and pots of gold and leprechaun stories. (One of her kids wrote, “If I caught a leprechaun, I would sell it on eBay.”) But the highlight is her students’ leprechaun traps.
On St. Patrick’s Day, Kim’s room is full of boxes and bottles covered with stickers and glitter and aluminum foil. (Leprechauns like shiny things.) Each trap contains bait and of course something to catch the little pranksters: trapdoors, lids propped up on pencils, webs made out of dental floss, “quicksand” collected from the playground. One year a boy named Hayden decided he’d get the leprechaun to stick. So he covered the inside of a red rubber toilet plunger cup with duct tape rolls then filled it with molasses.
After excusing my students to lunch, I walked over to Kim’s room. The traps were spread out on the floor. No signs of leprechauns yet.
“Did you leave the phone message?” Kim asked.
I answered à la Mr. O’Hara from Gone with the Wind. “Aye, Katie Scarlett.” Kim thought it would be fun to leave a message from a leprechaun on her voice mail and asked me to play the part.
She laughed while shaking her head at me. “Ready to get started?”
I clapped my hands together. “Are you kidding? I’ve been looking forward to this all week!”
She laughed again. “Now don’t get too crazy. Okay?”
“I promise.”
After Kim locked the door and shut the blinds, together we tipped over desks, set the beanbag chairs on the bookshelves, threw papers on the floor, and put the overhead projector in the ball box. We clothespinned stuffed animals on the wires, dumped the sharpened pencils into the unsharpened-pencil box, opened the piano lid, spilled out the crayons, set the hamster cage in the sink, and poured green paint in Kim’s coffee mug.
I started springing the traps while Kim stamped green footprints by the window, sprinkled glitter paths on the carpet, and set a little note in teeny writing on her desk.
“How many students do you have?” I asked.
“Twenty.”
“I counted twenty-four traps.”
“Devin made extras.”
“How come?”
“For backups.”
The last trap I sprang was a shoe box lined with pink marshmallow moons, yellow hearts,
and green clovers. The lid was propped up with an Irish flag (a sure lure). Taped to the side of the box was a sign written in large green letters.
“Now this kid knows how to catch a leprechaun,” I said, chuckling.
“Why’s that?” Kim asked.
“He wrote, ‘Free Food!’”
“That’s Wyatt’s,” she explained without looking up. “And that was his second sign. The first one said, ‘Free Beer.’”
I laughed.
Pretty soon the bell rang. Kim turned off the lights and we sneaked out the back.
“May I stay?” I asked. My students’ recess ends later.
“Sure.”
Kim and I sauntered around the corner as though nothing had happened. A couple of parents were standing at Kim’s classroom door trying to act nonchalant while holding their cameras. (She had tipped them off.) Then casually Kim opened the door.
As soon as the first children in line saw the room, they started screaming. In two seconds all the kids were shouting and pointing and laughing and jumping and running. I stood in the doorway while moms took photos and Kim was pulled around the room, pretending to be shocked. No one had caught the leprechaun, but that didn’t matter. He came.
In the midst of all the hubbub, one little girl scurried up to Kim holding her trap. On it was a leprechaun scooper made out of green and orange pipe cleaners.
“When’s Easter?” she panted, out of breath.
“In a couple of weeks,” Kim answered. “Why?”
“Because I’m going to fill this up with carrots and catch the Easter Bunny!”
She dashed off.
After about ten minutes, Kim gathered the children around her desk and read the tiny little note that the leprechaun had left behind. (She used a magnifying glass.) The note said, “Dear Boys and Girls, Nice traps! But not good enough. See you next year! Toodleoo! Cheerio, Lucky the Leprechaun.” All the kids started chattering.
“Wait!” Kim gasped. “Wait… I think there’s more.” Then she leaned in with her magnifying glass just like Sherlock Holmes. The kids leaned in, too. “I think it says… ‘Check your phone messages.’” Kim looked up with a bewildered expression. “My phone messages? What could that mean?”