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Authors: Gail Gauthier

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BOOK: Happy Kid!
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Why didn't I think of this being-by-yourself stuff last week while I was writing my “Are We Alone?” essay? I wondered. Talk about something that sounded intelligent and deep.
I saw Chelsea's head above the crowd up ahead of me. I would have liked to have gotten a little closer to her, maybe almost walked together, but I couldn't get past Jamie and Beth, who were squealing with Melissa about a note one of them had written.
I got to English and waited for Mr. Borden to ask us to turn in our homework, when the whole sad story of my backpack, my grandmother, and my trip to the orthodontist would have to be told again. But he didn't. Instead, he handed back the essays we'd turned in on Friday and announced that we were going to share them.
Was having to “share” my essay a good thing that I wasn't recognizing because I had a problem with negative thinking? No way.
“We're going to tear your essays apart in class so you can identify your writing weaknesses,” Mr. Borden explained. “In the weeks to come we'll study classic essayists so you can see how writing should be done. I will not teach you to write. The masters will.”
This speech got a lot of the A-kids all fired up. A lot of them love doing whatever the teachers want to do. I don't mean they're suck-ups like Melissa. I mean they've been brainwashed or something. They
always
want to do what the teacher wants to do and to think what the teacher thinks. I don't understand it. For instance, I
tried
to tell myself that it was really good that I was going to be studying classic essayists and learning something from the masters, whoever they were. But I couldn't help thinking that the word “classic” is almost always bad news unless you're talking about old movies. I bet the A-kids never gave that a thought.
Melissa read first because, basically, she's a show-off and loves the sound of her own voice. She read something very fancy about how much it hurt to stand under the stars at night and to see so many of them while there is only one of her. Personally, I think it's a very good thing that there's only one of her.
One of the other kids in the class said that Melissa hadn't written an essay, she'd written a poem. I had totally missed that because, though Melissa is always writing things she says are poetry, they never rhyme, so I have to take her word for it. Teachers, though, love poetry that doesn't rhyme. They can't get enough of the stuff. Sure enough, Mr. Borden said what Melissa had written was an okay poem. She grinned all over, anyway, and wriggled around in her seat from all the attention. I didn't gag, even though I wanted to.
“But that poem would get you very little credit with the people who score the SSASies,” Mr. Borden went on.
The room went totally still. Melissa looked as if she'd been turned to stone.
“You know why? Because they're all hired hacks making minimum wage. You think scholars, trained critics, read these essays? Hell, no! They're all old ladies trying to supplement their Social Security checks or kids out of college who can't get jobs. They won't recognize a quality piece of writing like this. They're looking for something short and easy to understand—something a machine could score in seconds, the way a machine, in just seconds, scores the bubble-test portion of the SSASies.”
Aha! I thought. That explains why I always do well on the SSASies. My writing samples are always as short as I can make them. And since I never use metaphors and not even many adjectives, what's not to understand?
The next reader began her essay with “As I walk through the hallways at school, I am surrounded by hundreds of people, and yet I am alone. No one is like me.”
I couldn't believe it! I was listening to my essay! The essay I would have written if I'd thought of it while I was doing my homework instead of in the hall on my way to class.
Except it was written by . . . Chelsea.
She went on about the hallway being a world and the people in it being different countries. She said it was as if each person was a separate culture with a separate language that no one else spoke. Then she got into all this stuff about words being like ambassadors and how communication could bring all the countries in the hallway together just as it could bring all the countries in the real world together.
I definitely would never have said any of that because I wouldn't have thought of it in a hundred years. But we did both think about hallways.
Mr. Borden and the other kids in the class said her imagery was “unique,” she had used an “extended metaphor,” and she understood the essay format.
“That was really good,” I said after everyone else was through talking. I thought contributing to the class discussion would make a good impression on Chelsea, especially since my contribution was all about her. My reward was to have Mr. Borden tell me that I should read next.
Are We Alone?
Some people ask, Are we alone? The answer is yes.
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines alone as “separated from others,” “isolated,” “exclusive of anything or anyone else.” Even if there are aliens in the universe, we are separate from them and isolated and so we are alone.
Say there is life on another planet. Say there is life on lots of other planets. What does it have to do with us? Do we see any of these other beings? Do we communicate with them? Do we exchange goods and services?
Scientists who spend millions of dollars searching the skies for signs of life believe that just finding some tiny signal that there are other intelligent beings would provide the human race with companionship. But would it? How would knowing that there are others on other planets who we can't talk with, see, or hear make us feel that we have companions in this universe? It would be just like posting a message at an on-line forum. You know there are other people there because you see their messages. But they never respond to yours. So just knowing that there are others there doesn't make you feel good. You just feel worse than ever because you can't communicate with them.
Are we alone? Definitely.
If I had known I was going to have to read the essay aloud, particularly in front of Chelsea, I would never have included the part about people in forums not writing back to me. Not that that ever actually happened. Well, just once.
The rest of the class didn't mention the forums, though. They were too busy talking about my poor topic sentences and lack of transitions between paragraphs. They said that even though I restated my thesis in my conclusion, as I was supposed to, it still stunk. One kid thought I sounded depressed and should go see somebody.
“He quoted an authority,” Bradley finally said when it became clear no one else had anything good to say. “That always improves an essay.”
“But not when the authority is a
dictionary
,” Melissa objected. “That is so dull and trite.”
I kept waiting for Chelsea to say something nice, since I'd said something nice when she read what she'd written, but my essay was so bad, she probably couldn't think of anything. My plan to spend all of seventh grade making a good impression on her was off to a really slow start.
 
 
Lunchtime came and my list was still just a blank piece of paper.
My lunch money was in my pants pocket, not my backpack, so if I hadn't been in pain, I could have bought something to eat. Instead, I just sat moaning at our table in the cafeteria while Luke talked about Holly, who he'd seen in the lobby when he went to the movies Friday night with Ted and some other kids from his social studies class. I had spent Friday night at home playing a computer game on-line.
Then Luke started to practice counting to ten in Korean with Ted, who was taking some kind of test with him in taekwondo at the end of the month. I was thinking, Is it my imagination, or is being left out of absolutely everything a bad thing? So I didn't notice Mr. Kowsz limping across the cafeteria toward us carrying something until he was almost on top of us.
“I happened to be walking through the lobby on my lunch break and met your grandmother, Rideau. She brought this in for you,” he said to me, handing me my backpack. He sort of jerked his head toward the cafeteria door. I looked and saw Nana standing there. She started waving at me. She'd gone home and changed into one of her real estate agent suits, high heels, makeup, and jewelry. She'd done her hair.
Mr. Kowsz leaned toward me a little bit, as if that were enough to make what he then said to me confidential, which it wasn't. “Your grandmother looks very familiar to me. I'm wondering if I know your grandfather. Is he still working?”
“He's dead,” I told him.
I'm absolutely certain that for just a second that old coot smiled. Then he tried to look sad and told me he was sorry to hear that. If I had been him, I would have left after that. But he hung around, cleared his throat, got kind of nervous, and said, “Has he been dead long?”
That was a question I'd never expected to hear from him. “I don't know,” I said. “He died before I was born.”
“Really?” Mr. Kowsz replied. He looked over at my grandmother and gave her a smile and a little wave.
My mouth dropped open, which made the wires and brackets that had been tightened that morning rub against the inside of my mouth so suddenly that my eyes started watering again.
“She's not really that good-looking,” I wanted to shout after Mr. Kowsz as he sort of hopped back across the cafeteria toward Nana. “She dyes her hair.” But all I could get out was a little squeal, the way you do when you're trying to scream in a dream.
“Oh, Kyle, man,” Luke said as we watched the two of them leave the cafeteria together. “Mr. Kowsz is going to hit on your grammy.”
“Moo Kowsz is going to be your new grampy,” one of the other guys added.
“Are the items on your list really the
worst
?” the author of
Happy Kid!
had asked. “Or do you just think they are?” I'd have to say that as far as Mr. Kowsz becoming my new grampy was concerned, we were definitely talking about the worst. The absolute worst.
CHAPTER 7
When my mother got home from work that afternoon, I told her she owed me another dollar. I showed her the chapter in
Happy Kid!
about recognizing negative thinking and explained that I'd kept a list of every negative thought I'd had all day just the way the book said I should.
“Oh, Kyle, that's wonderful! It's the most positive thing you've done in over a year, maybe more.”
“There isn't anything on the list, Mom, because I'm not negative. Everything that happened today
was
bad.”
Mom pounded the kitchen counter with her fist. You would have thought she'd just found out I'd been selling stolen goods or something.
“Do you think I want everything that happens to me to be so awful?” I asked her. “I would love to find out that I'm negative and that things really aren't all that bad. But how are leaving my backpack in Nana's car and having Ms. Cannon chew me out for being irresponsible and not having my homework anything but bad? Oh, and by the way, she thinks you shouldn't be making orthodontist appointments for me during the school day.”
“What?”
“She told me that in front of the whole class,” I said.“Wait. There's more. We had to read our essays out loud in English class, and everybody hated mine. Then I found out at lunch that Luke went to the movies last weekend with a bunch of kids from his social studies class I don't even know. Gym classes start this week, and today was my day to have gym instead of health and living. I was the only boy in the locker room wearing briefs instead of boxers. It's as if some announcement went out over the summer telling everybody to make the switch, and I didn't get it. I looked like a freak. I don't know what went on in Spanish because I don't
understand
Spanish. And then in science—”
“Honey, calm down. You know and I know that things just weren't that bad. You were able to eat lunch with Luke—that's a good thing. And underwear is nothing to get all excited about. I will buy you some boxers before your next class. As far as Spanish goes, would you like us to get you a tutor?”
“No! No, no, no!”
“Kyle, get a grip on yourself. You're just blowing everything all out of proportion.”
“Oh, yeah?” I exclaimed. “Here's something I'm not blowing out of proportion. Moo Kowsz is after Nana. And I'm not the only person who thinks so. The guys at lunch said the same thing.”
For a few seconds Mom stopped jabbering about how I couldn't tell what was going on in my own life. I think maybe she was stunned. Then she asked, “ ‘After Nana,' as in he wants to ask her out?”
BOOK: Happy Kid!
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