The Downside of Being Up (2 page)

“No, that's not how you do it, Jenny. Remember how we talked about moving the decimal point over two spaces?” Mrs. Mank showed Jenny the correct way to solve the equation and then turned back to the class to select the next volunteer. “Michael Demmings, you're up. Please come to the board and solve problem number two.”

Michael went to the board. I felt relieved. Since Michael sat one row over from me, the next person Mrs. Mank would call would come from the other side of the room. When it came to board work, teachers never called on people from the same side of class. They liked to spread the pain around.

“Oh, this is not that hard,” Mrs. Mank said in a frustrated voice as Michael screwed up problem number two. “Bobby Connor, please come to the board and show us how to solve equation number three.”

“Me?” I said. Secretly, I reached under the book in my lap. Hard as a golf club.

“Yes, you,” Mrs. Mank answered.

“Um . . . ,” I replied.
Go down, go down,
I told my Popsicle.
Go down.

Nothing. My banana was still hard enough to dent a door.

“Let's go, Bobby, hurry up,” she said. “I have a lot of material to get through this week.”

“Um . . . I don't know how to solve it, either, Mrs. Mank.”

“Bobby Connor, you know as well as I do that this is simple stuff. Now, please come to the board and show us your mathematical abilities.”

“Look, Teach, if I come to the board, I am going to show you a whole lot more than just my mathematical abilities.”

Well, I didn't say that, but I was thinking it.

I paused.
What to do, what to do?

“Bobby!” she snapped. “Get up here right now and stop wasting my time.”

I didn't budge. She glared. Kids in the front started to turn around to see what was the matter with me.

With a boner like this, it would take a whole football team to drag me from my desk. No way was I standing up. No way at all.

Just then, I had the biggest stroke of luck ever.

“I think I know how to do it, Mrs. Mank,” said Donnie Daniels, raising his hand. “Can I try?”

Donnie “Dipstick” Daniels was the dumbest kid in school. His skills were so bad that the Fs he got on his report card were actually higher marks than he had really earned. He was a Z student. Donnie didn't just fail regular classes like science and history; Donnie flunked lunch. Essentially, this meant that if Donnie was volunteering to go to the board to solve a math problem, there wasn't a teacher on the planet who was gonna stop him.

“Okay, Donald,” Mrs. Mank said, still glaring at me. “Come on up.” I looked at the clock on the wall. With only four more minutes until the bell rang, I was in the clear. I'd been saved by Donnie Dipstick.

Suddenly I felt a tickle on my neck. An itch of some sort. I reached up and scratched. A moment later something fell lightly into my lap.

I looked down. Finkelstein's booger roach was crawling up my leg.

“Aaarrgggh!”
I screamed, leaping out of my seat.

Ew. Yuck. Eeee!!
I jumped up and down and shook and twitched and wiggled and screamed. The cockroach flew into the air and then landed on the gray tile floor. It started to crawl away. I raised my foot and smashed it.

And smashed and smashed and smashed!

Everyone looked at me like I was nutso. Then their eyes slowly rotated from looking at the crazy expression on my face to looking down at the center of my white Nike track pants.

Nathan Ox, the class numb-nuts, was the first to speak.

“Look, everybody, Bobby's got a boner!”

Every eye in the room stared at my crotch.

“And it's only the size of a crayon!”

Bahhhh-hahahaha!!
A huge shriek of laughter exploded from the room.

“What in the world is all the commotion? Now sit down, Bobby, and . . .
Aarrggh!
” Mrs. Mank suddenly screamed. My erection had surprised my math teacher so much that it caused her to fall backward, trip over a garbage can, bang her head against the board, collapse forward onto a chair, then slam to the floor.

Holy cow! I'd never seen an old lady take such a fall.

“Urrgghh,” she groaned.

The class, of course, laughed harder than any other class in the history of school. Watching Mrs. Mank bonk around like a human pinball was obviously the most hysterical thing they had ever seen.

Right then I knew I had to get out of there. I mean, even the quiet girls, the ones who never even dared chew a piece of bubble gum, were pointing at my pants with tears of laughter flowing from their eyes. I grabbed my backpack, bent over at the waist and dashed for the door.

Then I ran.

And ran.

I ran through the halls, I ran out of the building, I ran past two students who were hanging a large purple banner on the outdoor bulletin board advertising the traditional Big Dance that our school held every spring, and I didn't stop running until I was at the front gate of campus.

“Hey, you!” came a booming voice just as I was getting ready to sneak off of campus by crossing through the teachers' parking lot. “Where do you think you're going?”

Before I knew it, Mr. Hildge, the meanest, nastiest, rudest, most kid-hating vice principal that ever lived, stormed up to me with a walkie-talkie in one hand and a bullhorn in the other. His neck was thick like a tree trunk.

“I said, where do you think you're going?” He grabbed me with his bear-size hands.

Suddenly, his walkie-talkie crackled with life.
“Code green! Code green! We have a teacher down in the math department. Code green!”

Life as I knew it was over.

“Oh my goodness, what are the neighbors going to think?”

Those were the first words out of my mother's mouth when I got home. She didn't ask how I was feeling. She didn't care if I was injured. She didn't want to know if I had suffered any permanent psychological trauma from having the most moronic kid in school tell the whole world my corncob was only the size of a crayon. All she cared about was one thing: “What are the neighbors going to think?”

Turns out, our school had an official policy against boners. And as my mother was notified when she came to pick me up, I had committed a violation of the Student's Code of Conduct item 84BLV.17: the “no parading of erections” clause in the student handbook that no one ever reads.

“No parading of erections? Hmmft,” said my grandpa Ralph, wearing blue pajama pants and a white T-shirt with browning pit stains. “When I was a kid, we were so broke we couldn't afford rulers, so our math teachers encouraged the boys to get pipes in our pants so that we'd at least have a way of drawing straight lines.”

“Not helpful, Grandpa,” my mom said in response. “This mister is in big trouble. Big trouble.”

Mom stared angrily. I looked down.

Just then, my younger sister, Hillary, stormed through the front door.

“I hate you, Bobby!” she shouted as she slammed down her backpack. Hill was in seventh grade; I was in eighth. “I hate you even more than I used to hate you. I mean, do you realize that everyone's teasing me and making fun? You've ruined my life! Again!”

“Oh, honey,” said my mother, trying to comfort her. Hill had been through a lot this past year with her accident and all, and she absolutely hated being in seventh grade. “I'm sure it can't be that bad.”

“Oh yeah?” Hill replied. “The Spanish kids are calling me ‘Lil' Hermana Ding-dong.'”

It took a moment for my mother to do the translation. Suddenly, her deep anger shifted to deep concern.

About what the neighbors would think, of course. To the left lived the Barkers. My mother wouldn't be too concerned about them, because their son Eddie once put a Fourth of July firecracker up their dog's butt and now they have to walk a pet that has no hair on its rear end. When Petey goes poo, it's like watching an alien spit out a Tootsie Roll. Not pretty at all.

But the Holstons, on the other hand—the neighbors on the other side—my mother was absolutely cuckoo about being better than them. She'd gone bonkers with the whole idea of it.

When the Holstons got a new car, we needed a new car. When the Holstons had their front lawn relandscaped, we had to have our front lawn relandscaped. When the Holstons got a pool, we needed to get a pool.

And when we didn't get a pool because we couldn't afford a pool, my mother decided to make her children better than their children. That was seven months ago. In the time since, my sister has been enrolled in ballet class, science academy and some junior lawyers of tomorrow organization. Me, I was bought a cello, a physicist starter set and a kit on human genomes.

Using the physicist materials, I accidentally set fire to the cello while my sister twirled the wrong way every eight minutes back at ballet class. Let's just say that none of my mom's plans to make her kids into supergeniuses worked out too well. And the Holstons still had their pool. Now this.

“Can we move?” Hill asked.

“Yeah, can we?” I added. Leaving town seemed like a great idea. “I can be packed in an hour.”

“Shut up, Bobby,” Hill snapped. “If we move, you're not coming. You've already destroyed enough of my existence in this lifetime.” Hill turned back to our mother. “Please, Mom? I mean, they had to take Mrs. Mank out on a stretcher and all the kids are telling their parents she was attacked by Bobby Connor's puny baby boner. It's like some sort of tongue twister they're chanting around school.” My sister started to imitate our school's new theme song. “Bobby Connor's Puny Baby Boner. Bobby Connor's Puny Baby Boner. Bobby Connor's Puny Baby Boner! Try saying that three times fast.”

I paused and thought about it.

“She's right,” I said to my mother, who stared blankly off into space. “We have to move.”

“Shut your face, Bobby!” Hill yelled again.

My mother sat worriedly in a chair.

“Oh my goodness,” she said, more to herself than to any of us. “My goodness.”

“Maybe the boy just likes math,” Grandpa Ralph said, coming to my defense. “Like he
really
likes math. So much so that long division arouses his pickle?”

I gave Grandpa Ralph a “What the heck are you talkin' about” look. He smiled at me with crooked teeth and popped a purple jelly bean into his mouth.

“Just wait till your father comes home,” my mom said. “Just wait, young man.”

And sure enough, as if she had my dad on a string, a moment later his car pulled into the driveway. I gulped as my father, brown shoes, striped tie, white shirt, tan jacket over his shoulder, walked through the front door.

“So, what's up?” he said.

“Bobby was,” answered Gramps. “But not very high.”

“Huh?”

My dad scanned the room, clearly sensing the tension.

“Let's put it this way,” Grandpa Ralph said. “Pork is on the dinner menu, and from what I hear, there ain't very much of it.”

“Not helpful, Gramps,” Mom said, shooting her father-in-law a look. Grandpa Ralph grinned at me and popped another jelly bean in his mouth. This time, green.

“We have a situation, Phillip,” Mom announced, and then she kinda nodded in my direction.

Dad slowly turned. “Okay, what'd you do, Bobby?”

“Nothin',” I said.

“Nothing other than ruin my life,” Hill added. “Again!”

“I didn't ruin your life,” I said. “Last year wasn't my fault.”

“‘Last year wasn't my fault,'” she mocked in a high-pitched voice. “‘I'm just innocent little Bobby, who only thinks about himself and never does anything wrong.'”

“Shut up, Hill,” I said. “It wasn't my fault you missed all that school.”

“‘It wasn't my fault,'” Hill repeated.

“Stop it! The two of you,” Mom ordered. She turned to Dad and explained. “Bobby paraded an erection in math class, which caused his teacher to fall and get sent to the hospital.”

“He did what?” Dad exclaimed.

“He paraded an erection,” Mom repeated.

My father struggled to fully understand what had happened.

“You hit your teacher with your penis?” he asked me.

“Phillip!” Mom snapped.

“What? I don't understand.”

“Well, don't use the P-word.”

“Why not? You used the E-word.”

“The E-word is not the same as the P-word.”

“It is too. The P-word and the E-word are the same thing,” Dad said. “Now if I used an X-word or a double X-word, I could understand why you might have a problem, but the P-word, like the E-word, is perfectly acceptable.”

“What the F-word are you two talking about?” asked Grandpa Ralph.

Mom turned. “Not helping, Gramps.”

My grandfather grinned, popped a yellow jelly bean into his chompers and gave me a wink.

“I didn't do it on purpose, ya know!”

The house fell quiet at my outburst.

“Excuse me?” Mom said.

“I said . . . I didn't do it on purpose. It just, well, happened.”

Mom started to nod her head. Slowly up, then slowly down. “Uh-huh,” she said.

Compared to this, I was sure that having to walk a dog with no butt hair wasn't looking so bad to her after all.

“Can I be excused?” I asked in a low voice.

“I don't know, can you?” Mom said.

“Aw, let him go,” Gramps piped in. “Maybe he needs to masturbate.”