Mostly Monty (6 page)

As he turned to go, the secretary called out to him. “By the way, Monty,” she said, “no one came looking for a dollar bill all week, so I think you should take this now.” She reached into the Lost and Found box and pulled out the money.

“Wow! Thanks,” said Monty. He put the dollar deep into his pants pocket. He certainly didn’t want to lose it, like its original owner had. He wondered what he should spend it on.

“No. Thank
you
for being such a responsible citizen,” Mrs. Remsen insisted.

Monty returned to class feeling very good. In fact, he felt so good about himself that he raised his hand and answered a question that he thought he knew the answer to but wasn’t a hundred percent sure. On any other day, he would have let someone else answer. As it happened, he was right, so that made him feel even better. It was turning out to be a wonderful day.

By lunchtime, Monty was feeling very hungry. He couldn’t wait to see what his mother had given him for lunch. He pulled open his backpack to get his bag, then remembered that his lunch wasn’t there. It was sitting on Mrs. Remsen’s desk.

There was no way that Monty was going to retrieve it. Instead, he followed his classmates to the lunchroom. There was so much coming and going and talking and laughing that no one even seemed to notice that Monty didn’t have any lunch. If they saw he wasn’t eating, they may have decided that he’d already finished his lunch or else that he hadn’t started yet. No one noticed but Monty’s stomach. It complained to him as if it hadn’t been given a good breakfast this morning and a perfectly good supper the night before.

Just when Monty thought he might faint from hunger, he remembered the dollar bill in his pocket.

He rushed over to the lunch line and discovered that he had enough money for a bowl of vegetable soup with crackers and also an apple and a container of milk. He ate every bite and drank every drop.

When the kids went outside for recess, he ran along with them. He looked around, but he didn’t find anything lost that day. So he sat on a step near the door to the school, and he thought about how he would spend the dollar that Mrs. Remsen had given him. He was really lucky to have this money. It would be enough for a —

Suddenly it occurred to Monty that he no longer had the dollar. He hadn’t exactly lost it, like the kid who had it before him. But by spending it at lunchtime, he’d lost the chance to spend it on something else. How could he have been so stupid? The more he thought about it, the more Monty realized he’d been silly to hand over his lunch to the Lost and Found. It was a perfectly good meal that had been wasted.

He got up and walked around the playground. It occurred to him if he had found a dollar bill once, it was possible that he’d find another one. In fact, next time he might even find a five-dollar bill. If he did, he’d certainly be much more careful with it.

When the bell rang for the students to go back inside, Monty discovered that he’d almost forgotten his jacket. Luckily he found it — just where he’d left it, on the step. That was good luck. It wouldn’t be right for Mr. Lost and Found to start losing things.

In class one day, Mrs. Meaney talked about hobbies. “Hobbies are activities that give you pleasure and keep you busy,” she told the students. Very few of the first graders had hobbies. But Cora Rose said she liked to help her mother cook. Mrs. Meaney said cooking was a good hobby.

“My hobby is watching TV,” said Paul Freeman.

“Watching television is fun, but it’s not a good hobby,” Mrs. Meaney told him. “You need a hobby that will keep your brain busy.”

“TV keeps my brain busy,” Paul insisted.

“I play on the computer,” said someone else.

“That’s good,” said Mrs. Meaney. “Some people also like to collect things for a hobby.” The students talked about the types of things that people collected: stamps, coins, postcards, and other things that could be pasted into albums or scrapbooks.

Monty wanted a hobby, but he didn’t want to paste anything into an album. He wanted a different kind of activity. It would be fun to have a hobby to do while he wasn’t in school. Of course, Monty liked to read. It was the one activity that he could do really well. In fact, Mrs. Meaney had reported to his parents that he read on a fourth-grade level. But he was still in first grade and he needed a first-grade activity to keep him busy.

After school one Friday, while Monty was reading a book about Australia, he got an idea.

“I have a hobby,” he announced to his parents that evening during supper.

“What is it?” his mother asked.

Monty had a big smile on his face as he told them.

“Kangaroos,” he said.

“What kind of a hobby is that?” asked his mother with amazement.

“It’s
my
hobby,” said Monty.

“That’s great,” said his father. “But you can’t collect them. You can’t paste them into an album like stamps. What will you do?”

“I can read about them. I can study all the books in the library and look on the Internet and become an expert on the subject,” said Monty. “Soon I’ll know more about kangaroos than anyone around here.”

“That shouldn’t be very hard,” said his father.

“I’m starting right after supper,” said Monty, and he did.

First he went to the computer and typed in the word
kangaroos
on a search engine, the way he’d been taught at school. Soon he began printing out information. There were many pictures of the animals, so that gave him an idea. “I can make a scrapbook of kangaroo pictures,” he called to his parents. Now that he had a hobby, the idea of pasting pictures began to interest him.

Then Monty had another idea. “I’m going to start a kangaroo club,” he told them.

“With kangaroos? There aren’t any kangaroos around here,” his father said.

“Not
with
kangaroos,” said Monty. “
About
kangaroos.” It was amazing what little imagination his parents seemed to have.

“Clubs need members,” Monty’s mother said.

“Sure. But first I need rules,” Monty responded.

He made a list:

Monty’s mother looked over his shoulder. “Who are the officers of the club?” she asked.

“So far there is only a president,” said Monty. “I am the president,” he told her proudly.

“Who will be vice president?” asked his father.

“The next person who joins the club will be the vice president. Would you like to join?”

Mr. Morris scratched his head. “That’s a nice offer,” he told his son, “but I think you should find some members who are closer to your age. What do you think? Aren’t there other kids around here who might also like kangaroos?”

“Everyone would like kangaroos if they knew more about them,” said Monty.

He realized he had a big job cut out for himself. He had to teach other kids about kangaroos. Then they would want to join his club. He’d been thinking about Joey Thomas, who lived down the street. Even though they lived on the same street and were in the same class, the two boys had never become friends. Still, Joey had two dogs, so that showed he liked animals. Monty thought Joey might be interested when he learned that a baby kangaroo was called a
joey.
In fact, Joey Thomas might think that was reason enough for him to become president of the club. But after all, the club was Monty’s idea. So he would remain president. He printed up a sheet of kangaroo facts to give his neighbor the next day.