Dreidels on the Brain (7 page)

“You see, that's human nature, to want what you don't have. And Tom's friends are not too smart. Take Ben Rogers, for example. A nice enough guy, but not really the brightest
bulb in the chandelier. You could also say he's ‘not the sharpest tool in the shed.'”

The whole class looked up, because we knew Mr. Culpepper was starting to
digress
. That's a vocabulary word that means “to get way off track when you're talking about something,” which I guess I'm guilty of too. For me, it's the best part of his class. He'll go on saying all kinds of funny things, before he finally says, “. . . but I digress.”

“You could also say,” he went on, “that Ben Rogers is ‘a few bricks shy of a load.' Or, maybe ‘the light's on but nobody's home.' Or, ‘if his brains were dynamite, he couldn't even blow his nose.'”

Denise Scalapino raised her hand. She always raises her hand.

“You could also say ‘the elevator doesn't go to the top floor,'” she offered.

Mr. Culpepper was quick. “That's right. Or ‘the cheese slid off his cracker.'”

“How about ‘a couple cards short of a deck!'” someone said. That got us going. “‘A few sandwiches short of a picnic,'” said Billy Zamboni. “‘He checked out of the Brainy Hotel a long time ago,'” said someone else. “‘He could throw himself on the ground and miss!'” Ideas were flying fast and furious.

“How about ‘dumb as a bag of hammers'?” asked Mr. Culpepper, who had clearly played this game before. “Or ‘he
fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down.' Or, more poetically, ‘somewhere a village is missing its idiot . . .'”

I was about to say “‘A couple snowflakes short of a blizzard,'” when Arnold Pomeroy shouted, “I know! I've got one!” He paused, then said, “He's ‘a couple meatballs short of spaghetti!'”

Arnold says stuff like that. Funny, but not on purpose. We all waited to see how Mr. Culpepper would respond, knowing that everything we'd been saying about Ben Rogers actually described Arnold.

“Spaghetti,” said Mr. Culpepper, stroking his beard like a Chelmite. “Hmmmm. That may be the most . . .” Then he stopped, because the room had begun to shake.

In an instant I was under my desk.

Ever since the earthquake last February, whenever there's a rumble of any sort, I duck under my desk and cover my head. That's what you're supposed to do in an emergency, whether it's an earthquake or the Soviets dropping a nuclear bomb. The most important thing is not to let the top of your head touch underneath your desk, because you might get gum stuck in your hair. That's what happened the first time I did it, during a drill in second grade. This time, as I was hiding under my desk, I heard Mr. Culpepper say, “Well, look who's here! Good morning, Mrs. Gabbler!”

I turned toward the back of the room. Luckily, everyone else was looking there too, so I snuck out from under my desk without anyone noticing. Mrs. Gabbler is neither an earthquake nor a nuclear bomb, but she's still pretty scary. Because Mr. Culpepper's room is actually a trailer, it shakes when anyone comes in, and Mrs. Gabbler isn't just
anyone
. She's the vice principal, and almost as tall as Mr. Culpepper. It's her job to get us in trouble. She wears a metal whistle on a string around her neck, and walks all over school with a little ruler, marked at
exactly
three inches—that's the longest a boy's hair can be. It's also the farthest a girl's dress can be above her knee. Girls have to wear dresses—that's the rule. If a girl comes to school in pants, or a boy's hair is too long, she calls their parents to take them home. And no one at all is allowed to wear patches, like the hippies do, with peace signs and anti-war slogans. If you do that, you get suspended. It's called the Bixby dress code. Everyone hates it.

“Well, well, class, we have a visitor,” said Mr. Culpepper. “To what do we owe the company of your pleasure, Mrs. Gabbler?”

She didn't know what to make of that, so she glared at him through the mean-librarian glasses she wears. Mr. Culpepper and Mrs. Gabbler do not like each other at all. Whenever she comes to class, you know there's going to be trouble.

“Good morning, students,” she said.

“Good morning, Mrs. Gabbler,” we all responded. When I say her name, I have to remember not to call her Mrs. Gobbler, which is what Mr. Culpepper calls her when she's not around. Then someone makes the sound of a turkey and we all bust out laughing. “You will no doubt all remember the earthquake last February.”

Of course we all remembered—not just the day, but the exact minute: February 9 at 6:53 a.m. Back then I shared a room with Howard—before I moved to the den—and I figured he had gotten out of bed in the middle of a bad dream and was jumping up and down. That may sound strange to you, but it wouldn't be if you knew Howard. He gets really mad. He doesn't have a gorgle—yet—but if he did, I bet it would bust.

“It's okay, Howard,” I said. “It's just a dream!”

But it wasn't. He was in his bed, as freaked out as I was. All the windows rattled and his bookshelf fell off his desk.

“It's an earthquake!” Howard announced. “Get under your bed!”

I did. It was full of dust bunnies, as well as a tennis shoe I had been looking for. Then, after what seemed like forever, the quaking suddenly stopped.

Walking to school that day with my friend Brian was like something from a dream. Everything was super-quiet, and
then, suddenly, the ground would move and we would both say, “Did you feel that?”

“Yes, Mrs. Gabbler,” said Mr. Culpepper. “How kind of you to remind us of the earthquake, in case we had forgotten. But why, pray tell, do you bring this up now, in the middle of my lecture on
Tom Sawyer
?”

She cleared her throat, which she does a lot. I think she has something stuck there. Then she went on. “Students, you may also recall that we had to cancel school because of the earthquake.”

We remembered that too. When Brian and I got to school, there were firemen walking around, and Mr. Newton, the principal, told everyone to go back home. It's hard to know what to do with a day off when you haven't planned for one, so Howard, Kenny, and I sat around nervously watching reruns of
Gilligan's Island
and
I Dream of Jeannie
on TV, looking at one another every few minutes, saying, “Was that one?”

“You may also recall,” Mrs. Gabbler continued, “that we took a second day off as well, which is why I am coming to you today. Bixby School has received word from the State of California that we were not supposed to take off that second day, and that we must schedule one more day of school this calendar year in order to receive funding for next year. Therefore, we will be holding school on
Monday, December 20—exactly one week from today.”

It took a little while for this to settle in. And when it did, we did not like it. The first day of vacation! Everyone started to grumble.

“Now, children, I know you weren't planning for this, and your families will have to delay their travel plans. But you must treat this as a regular day of school. Attendance will be mandatory, and tardiness will not be tolerated. And, of course, the Bixby dress code will remain in full effect.”

No one was happy to hear this, and she knew it.

“However,” she went on, “you will be pleased to know that we have decided to make next Monday a special day of celebration, with a wonderful surprise. Therefore, instead of having the Christmas assembly . . .” Here she stopped, corrected herself, and stared right at me. “Rather, instead of having the
winter holiday
assembly we had planned for this Friday, we will be having it on Monday.”

It's never good to have the vice principal stare at you. When it happens, you're supposed to sit there and do nothing, which is exactly what I tried to do. Except right then I had to sneeze, probably from trying to make snowballs out of the frost. And just at that moment, Ricky Romero, who was sitting behind me, whispered, “Gobble, gobble!” Suddenly I had to laugh
and
sneeze. I tried to do neither, but it
didn't work. Instead, both came out at the same time—as a honk. Loud, like a goose.

Everyone laughed—except Mrs. Gabbler, who glared at me.

“Joel,” she said. “Could you please come to the principal's office today after school?”

I could hear voices saying “ooooooohhh” and “busted!” It's bad enough to get called into the principal's office, but on top of that, I was thinking about Cantor Grubnitz. If I didn't get home on time, I would miss the carpool, and if you think Cantor Grubnitz is mean on a normal day, just try being late.

“Um . . . I'm . . . um . . . busy. I can't come today.”

“You can't come today? Why not?” she asked.

“Because I have to . . .” And then I mumbled, “For my . . . um . . . bar mitzvah.”

“Your what?”

It's not like I wanted the whole class to know about my going off to secret Hebrew lessons after school. But I couldn't lie—I was already in trouble—so I said it again. “I have bar mitzvah practice.”

There was a long pause as she digested this. “All right, then,” she said. “Be there first thing tomorrow morning. Before school.”

After school, Brian was waiting for me at the crosswalk.

“I heard you got busted for honking at Mrs. Gabbler! That's wicked! Why did you do it?”

Since the start of seventh grade, Brian and I don't see each other much in school, as I'm in the advanced classes, but we still walk home together when we can.

It's kind of a strange friendship. We met in third grade, not long after his family moved here from Montana. I had been avoiding him because he was so big; even then, he looked dangerous. One day as I was crossing the street to go home I saw him standing on the other side, staring at me. The closer I got, the bigger he looked.

“Hey you!” he said. “I have a question.” I thought there might be trouble and got ready to run.

“What?” I said.

“Do you like swamp water?”

“What?” I asked.

“Swamp water,” he said again. “My new neighbor, Mr. Glasser, works right here, at Jack in the Box.” He pointed behind him. “He said if there was no one around, he would give me swamp water.”

“What's swamp water?”

“It's a combination of everything from their soda machine plus a secret ingredient—I think it might be pickle juice. It's great!”

Whatever it was, that sounded a lot better than getting beat up, and ever since, that's been our after-school routine: swamp water, and sometimes French fries, as we walk home.

“So, you think you'll get kicked out of school?” he asked, squeezing another packet of katshup as we walked. He'd gotten to Jack in the Box before me and already had fries. We walked quickly so I wouldn't miss my carpool.

“It wasn't on purpose. I couldn't have done it on purpose if I'd tried. It was just a sneeze. But it came out as a honk.”

“I heard it was like a Mack truck! The whole classroom shook! Far out!”

“The classroom always shakes—it's a trailer.”

“You think you'll get thrown out of school?” he asked again. “That'd be uptight and out of sight!”

“No, it would be a total bummer.”

I didn't think I'd get thrown out. As far as I knew, honking at the vice principal wasn't a capital offense. But maybe that was one of those things they explained on some day I'd missed school because of a Jewish holiday. “Whatever you do, don't honk at Mrs. Gabbler. She'll have you executed.”

Once I got home, I didn't have time to think about it. I grabbed my little yellow book just in time to get the carpool. Nothing interesting happened in the carpool, so I won't tell you about it. It's with the third and fourth graders, who have Hebrew school on Monday. Sometimes we laugh and joke,
but today I spent the time reviewing the three verses of my Haftorah portion that I was supposed to be able to sing by that week, like Tom Sawyer was supposed to memorize lines of scripture. But while Tom managed to fake his way out of doing it, there was no way I was going to escape. I actually
had
been studying, but I was
so
nervous about asking Cantor Grubnitz to pray for my father that I couldn't remember the words.

When I got there—a minute before 4:00—he was standing outside his office, waiting for me.

“You were almost late,” he said. “Go inside and sit down. And don't touch anything. I'll be right back.”

Cantor Grubnitz must have needed a cigarette. He doesn't smoke in front of us, though the smell of it on his clothes is so thick that he might as well. I think he smokes in his office when he's alone, because over the years, smoke has covered the glass on the pictures of the famous cantors and rabbis, making their eyes yellow like they have some kind of disease. They say that kissing someone who smokes is like licking an ashtray. I've never kissed anyone—and don't see it happening any time soon—but I guess if I wanted to know what it felt like, I could lick an ashtray. Sounds disgusting.