Sophomores and Other Oxymorons (9 page)

I sat back as she circled
anaphora
, and explained that it referred to the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginnings of a series of sentences or clauses for rhetorical effect.

Ten minutes before class ended, she tapped the board by the figures of speech and said, “Copy these down.”

Good grief. Hadn't she ever heard of a teacher web page? Or a handout sheet? I started writing.

“Pick one,” she said. “Research its meaning from a reliable source.”

Hands went up. Mrs. Gilroy intercepted them. “If you don't know what a reliable source is by now, you probably don't belong in this class. To continue: Write a paragraph making use of your selection. Turn it in next Monday. We'll share your efforts in class during the week, and see who can identify the main figure of speech. After that, you'll bring a new one in each Monday for the rest of the year.”

There were some groans among my classmates, but I wasn't daunted by the idea of writing an extra paragraph each week. Not that I'd tell Mrs. Gilroy the assignment was a piece of cake. That's one lesson I'd learned.

• • •

Mom was in my room when I got home from school. That was never a good sign. She knew roughly when I'd normally
arrive. So if she was in my room, it wasn't by accident. It was by design. And intent.

“Scott,” Mom said, “if you're going to eat in here, at least try to be neat about it.”

That wasn't one of the seven thousand transgressions that had crossed my mind as possibilities. “I don't eat in here,” I said. At least, not since I'd lost a piece of pizza behind my dresser last year.

Mom pointed to the corner, past the window, at the bagel Wesley had flung at me the other day. “Do you want the house to be crawling with ants? Or mice.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I won't do it again.” There was no point trying to explain that the bagel had been hurled at me through the window. However it had arrived, I couldn't deny that I'd left it on the floor. Though, in my defense, I'd been half-asleep at the time it had ricocheted off my forehead and settled in the corner. Of course, I was half-asleep most of the time.

“I know,” Mom said, flashing me the
you're-my-well-behaved-boy
look. She picked up the bagel and took it with her.

After I did my homework, I went down to the computer. As much as I promised myself not to get sucked too deeply into Mrs. Gilroy's list of figures of speech, beyond finding one to use for my assignment, I sort of got hooked, and ended up researching a dozen or so terms, based mostly on how goofy they sounded. But I pulled myself away before I'd spent too much
time doing that. And I decided to play it safe, for a change, and not get too creative with my choice for the paragraph.

September 8

Sean, it turns out there are something like five billion different figures of speech. Okay, that's an exaggeration. Or hyperbole. Which is one of the handful I know. Though I didn't remember I knew it until someone else mentioned it in class. Which, I think, sort of proves that I don't need to know the name for everything I do.

Speaking of which, I found a word that describes my freshman year pretty well, and better not describe my sophomore year.
Catachresis
. You know what it means? I won't keep you in suspense, or force you to run to the dictionary. I'll bet it isn't even in a lot of dictionaries. It means a mistake. That's all. It's a big word for a common thing. Though it's really a mistake in word use, not in life. So it only describes my freshman year metaphorically, since it refers to a word-use mistake. If I used a word the wrong way, or if I made a badly mixed metaphor, that would be catachresis. But here's the thing. You can also use it on purpose. If you're really good, you can use the wrong word in a creative way. And I'm going to do just that. I swear. In one of my papers for Mrs. Gilroy, I'm going cata the
chresis out of the English language. Why? Because she said that's the one figure of speech we won't be using. I will figure out a way to use it. I swear. I'll keep you posted. But I'm not ready for that, just yet. I'm going to go for an easy one this time, like
tautology
. I'll let you look it up, find the definition, and learn the meaning of it yourself.

September 9

Good morning, Sean. A modest request, if I may . . .

I'd appreciate it if you would try to refrain from screaming at the top of your tiny lungs every time you wake up in the middle of the night. Your life is perfect. You have nothing to scream about. I'm the one who should wake up screaming. Thanks.

I was making my way to homeroom on Tuesday when I spotted a familiar spine. “Great book,” I said. I pointed to the copy of
Unwind
that Danny Roholm was carrying.

“Really?”

“For sure.” I was tempted to warn him about the creepiest scene, but I didn't want to spoil anything.

“That's good to hear. We're reading it in English class.”

“Seriously?”

He nodded.

“Who do you have?”

“Ms. Orstrum.”

“Lucky you. We're stuck with the old stuff.” I envied him. On the other hand, I'd already read
Unwind
, and I'd seen what happened when I tried to skate along on the memory of a book. Still, I wouldn't mind at all if I had to read it again for class. It was good enough for a second visit. I guess the fact that individual teachers got to pick some of the assigned books could be good or bad, depending on the picker. I sure couldn't picture Mrs. Gilroy loosening up enough to assign a novel that was written after she was born.

When it was time for gym, Mr. Cravutto sent us off on our own once again, while he stood waiting for the girls' teacher, whose name, I'd learned, was Ms. Swan. We paced ourselves, since we had no idea how long we'd be running. I noticed that the girls went right to the field and started playing again. That gave me an idea. After the fourth lap, which totaled one mile of running, I jogged over to Mr. Cravutto. He was now deeply engaged in a conversation with his counterpart, who seemed less concerned about escape than she'd been last week. I guess he was wearing her down with his charm. I figured I'd be able to get a partial share of his attention by shouting the magic word. And, really, I didn't want his full attention.

“COACH!” I yelled.

Before he could look toward me, I said, “Want us to start a game?”

“Yeah. Sure. Good idea.”

I jogged back to the track, just ahead of the largest cluster of runners, and waved everybody over. “Coach said we can start a game.”

“Good job, Hudson,” Renzler said. He rewarded me with a slap on the back which, had I not braced myself for it, would have rendered me incapable of joining any game for quite a while.

Since we had our last names on our gym clothes in black marker, most of us were on a last-name basis, unless we knew each other really well outside of gym. So I was Hudson to most of the class.

As for those I knew well, I caught Kyle glaring at me. He seemed displeased that I'd done something that everybody liked.

We formed two teams and played football. That did not require the supervision of a college-educated physical-education instructor. We'd spent large portions of our childhood in various forms of pick-up games.

I kept an eye on my watch. “We'd better go in,” I said to Renzler when we were ten minutes away from the end of the period.

“Showers!” he shouted.

We jogged into the locker room, well exercised, and relieved not to be exhausted from running laps, or in danger of running late.

. . . running laps or running late . . .

The phrase tickled something in my memory. I realized it was an example of
antanaclasis
, one of the figures of speech I'd looked up. It was also one of the simpler ones to understand. After I showered and got dressed, I opened my notebook and wrote, “running laps or running late.” I figured I could use that in an English assignment.

I showed the page to Richard. “For English,” I said. “One word used in two contrasting ways.”

“That's pretty cool,” he said.

“You're such a nerd,” Kyle said as he closed his locker.

“What do you care?” I asked. “We have nothing to do with each other anymore.”

He laughed.

“What's so funny?”

“You'll find out soon enough.”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

• • •

Wednesday, after school, I waited outside the newspaper room to catch Mr. Franka before he came in for the meeting.

“Do you teach a sophomore English class?” I asked him.

“No way,” he said.

“No way
?
” That was definitely not among the responses I would have expected. I'm not sure, but it's possible he'd actually shuddered when he spoke. “What's wrong with sophomores?”

“They can be difficult,” he said.

“For you?” I found that hard to believe. He'd been in the Marines before he was a teacher.

“For everyone,” he said.

“So, then, you don't teach a sophomore class . . . ?”

“I just told you that. Emphatically. Are you trying to be difficult?”

At least he laughed when he said that.

When we got inside, Jeremy handed out copies of his crossword. “I can do one a week,” he said. “Easily.”

Sarah stared down at hers. “This looks pretty tough,” she said. “Let's aim for one a month.”

I looked at mine. One a year might have been better. It was definitely tough.

After Sarah went over the articles for the paper, she said, “Scott, are you working on anything?”

Oh, shoot. Last year, I'd had assignments. So I knew what I had to do. This year, I had a vague commission to write opinion pieces or features. I'd sort of forgotten about that. The basic layout for each issue was done after the weekly meeting, but articles could be turned in as late as the following Monday morning. The paper came out on Tuesday.

I could tell Sarah I was working on something, but I figured it was better to go with the truth. “I don't have an article for the upcoming issue,” I said.

“What about the puzzle?” she asked.

Puzzle?

I went from puzzled to panicked as I remembered the last meeting. Right afterward, I'd gotten so involved in my publishing empire, I'd totally forgotten to look through the Tom Swifties I'd written last year. I'd even skimmed past some of them, when I was pulling survival tips from my journal. I dredged one up from memory and shared it with them.

“That's good,” Sarah said. “Maybe we should call it something else, to make it more special.”

“How about Zenger Zingers?” Jeremy suggested.

“Great,” Sarah said.

“And we can use John Peter instead of Tom,” I said.

Several kids shot quizzical looks in my direction, and one of the freshmen said, “Who's that?”

“John Peter Zenger,” I said, drawing out the first and middle names. “As in J. P. Zenger High School. You know. The guy the school is named after. The famous American journalist. The guy who beat a libel charge back in colonial times. That John Peter.”

Heads nodded. Eyes widened slightly in token recognition. And thus the Tom Swiftie morphed into the Zenger Zinger, which was an equally vague but much more relevant name.

“Get us something great for next time,” Sarah said to me as the meeting ended.

“Such as . . . ?” I asked.

“Totally up to you,” she said. “See what you can come up with.”

“Thanks.” As I walked off, the words
up with
resonated in my mind, reminding me of a famous quote. As I savored that quote, I knew exactly the sort of opinion piece I could come up with.
“A smile crossed my lips, revealing my teeth,” Scott said, transcendentally.
This was going to be awesome.

S
aturday afternoon, Wesley pulled up in the bagel truck.

“Where's your car?” I asked.

“Home.”

“Did it break down?”

“Nope.”

“So why are you using this?” I asked.

“It has gas,” he said.

For as long as I'd known Wesley, he'd seemed to have a thing against paying for his own gas. Or lunch. At least I'd pretty much managed to convince him that it was wrong to steal gas from other people. Or lunch money. Though I guessed he was sort of stealing it now, except not from strangers.

“Not your gas,” I said.

“It's okay. My boss wanted me to make a delivery.” He pointed over his shoulder to a half-dozen boxes on the floor.

“Is it legal?” I asked.

“It's bagels,” Wesley said. “He donates the leftovers to the food bank down off Division Street.”

I thought about my last experience with surplus bagels. “They haven't spilled out, have they?”

“Nope. Not yet. They came close a couple times.”

Wesley drove. I sat in back and kept the boxes from tipping over. Then, when we got there, I helped him bring everything in.

“That's cool,” I said when we were finished. “It feels good to help people.”

Wesley glanced back at the food bank, then smiled. “Yeah. It does.”

I looked at the empty area of the truck, and thought about all the bagels Wesley must have delivered. He'd put in a long day. “Do you miss school?”

“Some of it,” Wesley said.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. The routine is nice. You always know where you're supposed to be, and you know when you're supposed to be there.”

“But you cut class all the time,” I said.

“You're right.” His eyes clouded over with a look of nostalgia. Then he nodded. “Breaking the routine is sort of nice, too.”

• • •

Tuesday, the first issue of the paper for the school year came out. One of my favorite things was seeing kids carrying a copy with their books, or even stopping to read an article when a headline caught their eye. The teachers give out copies in homeroom, but there's also a
Zenger Gazette
box by the front office, so visitors can grab one.

I stopped by the box on my way in, to check out the front page. Everything looked great. We'd led with a story about the budget.

“Good start,” Mr. Franka said, walking up behind me.

“Thanks.” I pointed to the box. “It's a good feeling.”

“I'm glad you're keeping Tom Swifties alive,” he said.

“Me, too. Hey, were you on the paper when you were in high school?”

“I wanted to be. But my grades weren't very good.”

“Seriously?”

“Dead seriously.”

“That's hard to imagine,” I said.

“Not everyone shows up at the front door equipped for an easy trip,” he said. “I had to learn how to learn. I did have several teachers who tried pretty hard to get some knowledge through my thick skull. That made a difference.”

“Is that why you teach now?” I asked.

“That's part of it, I guess. But you can't really boil down big decisions in life into simple explanations, like we're fictional characters in one-dimensional novels.”

“I guess not.” I thought about some of my own decisions. Most of them were based more on whim and chance than inspiration.

When I got to homeroom, I was pleased to see that most of the kids were reading the paper. I even heard some of them discussing the Zenger Zinger. I was tempted to toss out cryptic
hints, like
It will take you forever to find the answer
. But I decided not to do that.

Zenger Zinger for September 16

Find the missing word.
The solution will appear next week.

“I love how cats respond to stroking,” John Peter said _________.

We were all pretty jazzed at the meeting on Wednesday. The paper had gotten a lot of good reactions. Kids were even trying to trick staff members into revealing the solution to the Zinger, or to Jeremy's crossword.

“Let's not rest on our laurels,” Sarah said. “We need to keep up the quality.”

“We will,” Jeremy said.

“I've got something this time,” I said. “It's an opinion piece.”

“On what?” Sarah asked.

“The unfairness of pedantic and arbitrary rules,” I said.

Sarah frowned. “Scott, this is a high school paper, not a college symposium.”

“No worries,” I said, waving a hand to dismiss the objection. “It's written in a very conversational style.”

“I'll look forward to reading it,” Sarah said.

September 17

Check out this legendary sentence, Sean. I should explain it first. When someone mentioned that you can't end a sentence with a preposition, this guy Winston Churchill, who was prime minister of the United Kingdom, super smart, and super sarcastic, replied, “That is the sort of errant pedantry up with which I will not put.” That's such a brilliant comeback. Putting aside the vocabulary-busting phrase “errant pedantry,” which just means “misguided, stupid, nitpicking,” Churchill knocks it out of the park with an example of how awkward it is to follow that rule. Any normal person would say, “That's the sort of thing I wouldn't put up with.” Anyhow, I opened my essay with that quote, and then explained how the “rule” got into grammar books. It's a killer essay. I totally demolish the stupid rules in the handbook. This is going to be awesome. I can't wait to see it in the paper.