The Downside of Being Up (3 page)

“I don't need to masturbate,” I answered. For years I'd suspected that Gramps had some kind of mental disease or a steel plate in his head or a brain tumor. I mean, there had to be some sort of medical explanation for his loony behavior.

“No need to be ashamed, son,” Gramps said. “All boys choke the chicken.”

“Eww!”
Hill looked at me like I was some kind of freak.

“You know, when I was a kid, we didn't have video games. This was my joystick right here,” Gramps said, pointing to his pecker. “I used to play my skin flute till there were calluses on my hands.”

“Okay,” Hill said to no one in particular. “I'm officially running away.”

“I say let the boy tug his pug if he needs to,” said Gramps. “It's healthy, like vegetables.”

“When is Grandpa Ralph going home?” I asked my parents.

“A few more days,” Gramps replied, casually popping another jelly bean into his mouth. “A few more days.”

“Well, does he have to sleep in my room? He snores and farts,” I said.

“You, mister, are in no position to be complaining. I mean, think of the shame you have brought on this family,” Mom said. “Phillip, say something to your son.”

“What do you want me to say, Ilene? I mean, I still don't understand how he knocked his teacher over with his P-word. How big is this thing?”

“Rumor is, not very,” Gramps answered.

“Not helping, Gramps,” Mom said, trying not to flip out. She smoothed out her red blouse and made sure the green charm she wore on her gold necklace was in the exact center of her chest. Fixing her necklace was kind of a nervous habit of hers. “You are not helping at all.”

Just then, the phone rang. Mom answered, happy to end the current conversation.

“Hello? Yes, Mr. Hildge . . .”

It was my school. Everyone got silent.

“Yes, I see . . . ,” she said.

Mom listened some more.

“Uh-huh . . . uh-huh.”

We all waited for information.

“I see. . . . Okay. . . . But you know he . . .” She stopped. “But he . . . but . . .”

My mother then listened for what felt like forever to me. What was going on? I wondered.

“Okay,” Mom finally said. “I see. . . . Thank you for calling.”

She hung up and looked around. All of us—my dad, my sister, Gramps—waited for the news.

“The charges have been elevated from parading to flaunting.”

“Huh?” Dad asked. “What's that mean?”

“It means,” my mother answered, shooting laser beams at me, “Bobby is being expelled.”

“Expelled?” I gasped.

“For a boner?” exclaimed Gramps.

I couldn't believe it.

“For a stiffy?” Gramps continued. “For sporting a little wood with the ol' bologna bomb? For letting the Eiffel Tower shine some light on the city of Paris? For—”

“We get your point, Gramps,” Mom said. “We get your point.”

Gramps smiled mischievously. He seemed to greatly enjoy getting on my mother's last nerve. Me, I was more concerned with the phone call.

Apparently, parading was a misdemeanor. Flaunting was a felony.

“Ah, that school's crazy,” Gramps added, tossing another jelly bean into his mouth. “If they throw every boy who's got a stiff salami in their trousers out of class, it'll be an all-girls school before the weekend. That ruling won't stick.”

My feet felt like they were glued to the ground. I just stood there in shock. Despite what Gramps said, I was being bounced out of middle school.

My crime: erection-itis.

My dad works as an insurance claims adjuster. That means he considers himself a master negotiator. People smash up their cars, and instead of giving them five hundred bucks for their bumper my father will work 'em down to two-fifty. Frankly, he's outta control. It started last summer when he took some kind of become-a-millionaire-deal-maker seminar. Everything he's done since then in all aspects of his life has become a negotiation. Like, if I want a cheeseburger with fries, he'll say, “You can have a burger with cheese or a burger with fries, but you cannot have a burger with cheese and fries. Make your play.”

I swear, that conference knocked a screw loose. It's gotten so bad around my house that for Valentine's Day he told my mom she could have either a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates, but he was not giving her both a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates.

“Make your play, Ilene.”

From February fourteenth through February eighteenth Dad slept on the couch.

Anyway, that's how I avoided being expelled from school. My dad “negotiated” my return.

“Tell us how you did it, dear,” Mom said, smiling. My mother was so tickled by my dad's deal-making triumph, she decided to cook his favorite dinner, Salisbury steak.

“The key to negotiation,” Dad said as he proudly swirled a piece of brown meat in a glop of gravy, “is that you always need to know what the other person wants.”

“You are so smart, honey,” Mom said, putting more au gratin potatoes on his white plate.

“But they had me in a tight place on this one. I mean, they knew what I wanted. I wanted my son to be able to return to school. The key was figuring out what they wanted.”

“And what did they want, dear?” Mom asked with a gleam in her eyes.

“Well, basically, they wanted to hear me admit my kid was a freak. A sick, depraved oddball. A disillusioned juvenile delinquent with highly deficient mental capabilities.”

“Excuse me?” I coughed.

“See, I had to get them to think,” Dad continued, “that you were a pathetic, abnormal, semi-bizarre social outcast so that they'd take the bait.”

“What?” I said.

“It's true,” Hill said. “Every word.”

“Shut up, Hill!”

“You shut up, Bobby.”

“No, you shut up, Hill.”

“Wow, you really stood up for your son there, huh, Phillip?” Gramps said, interrupting the intelligent conversation I was having with my sister.

“He's back at school, isn't he, Pop?” Dad replied sharply.

“Well, ya got me there, Father of the Year.”

“You should talk,” Dad replied.

Those two, my dad and my grandfather, had issues between them that dated back to long before I was born. My grandma, who was on some kind of cruise or something with her friends—and without Gramps, which is why he was here—told me a bunch of times about how those two never got along. Every holiday, birthday party or family event, they'd always argue with each other. Ruined the mood every time.

“What's this about bait?” I said, going back to the main discussion. Knowing my dad, there had to be some kind of catch to all this.

“Oh, this is the best part.” Dad dunked a piece of biscuit in the steak juice. “So I said to this Mr. Hildge guy, you can either show this child your compassion or you can show him your anger. Make your play.”

My dad paused for effect like he had just spoken the ultimate quotable phrase.

“Make your play,” he repeated, and then he plunked another triumphant chunk of Salisbury steak into his mouth.

“And that's it?” my mother asked.

“That's it. They took the bait. Bobby gets to go back to school tomorrow. No harm, no foul. Only one day out of class, just like he had a small fever or something.”

I looked up, skeptical. It seemed too easy.

Dad swallowed his meat and then chugged a gulp of root beer. “All they made me do was sign some silly letter promising that you'd see the school psychologist.”

“A shrink?” Mom asked, suddenly alarmed.

“For his dink?” Grandpa added. I turned to look at him. He grinned.

“When is Gramps going home?” I asked.

“A few more days,” my grandfather answered, even though I wasn't talking to him.

Dad burped. “Don't worry, don't worry,” my father said. He could tell the thought of me seeing a psychologist was very disturbing to Mom. “The school just hired a specialist who is well trained in issues surrounding adolescence and puberty. Bobby will be getting what's known as correctional erectional therapy.”

“Correctional erectional therapy?” repeated my mother. An even greater look of concern flashed across her face. Everyone in the room could read her forehead as if it were a billboard.

Mom checked her necklace to make sure that the charm, some kind of red, oval-shaped thing, was perfectly centered. It was jewelry-fiddling time.

“Relax, honey, she's a professional,” Dad said.

“I'm not going,” I blurted out.

“Oh yes you are,” Dad answered.

“Oh no I'm not,” I said.

“Bobby,” my father told me. “You can either go see this dink shrink and do your correctional erectional therapy like a man, or you can stay home with your grandpa Ralph doing chores until we find a new school to enroll you in. Make your play.”

“No-brainer,” I said. “I'll take the chores.”

“Okay, chore number one is to go help your grandfather clean out his belly button.”

“Is it the second Thursday of the month already?” Gramps asked, his white hair shooting in all kinds of kooky directions, not having been combed for days. Gramps reached down, lifted his white T-shirt and looked at his stomach. “Sure is,” he answered. “My, how quickly that gunk builds up in there.” He turned to me. “Don't worry, I'll just need you to spread my navel while I extract the mucus. The tweezers'll get most of the creamy ooze out, but I gotta warn you, bring something to cover your nose. It ain't rosebushes growing down there.”

Gramps offered me a crooked smile. I looked at my dad. He stared back at me like Dirty Harry.

“Make your play, Bobby. Make your play.”

School the next morning wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The first person I saw after my mom dropped me off was a girl, a blonde, someone I had never seen before. I expected her to laugh in my face. Instead she said hi.

“Hi,” I responded.

We locked eyes. Hers were green, like jewels.

A moment later, with another nice smile, she walked on and went inside.

Who was that?
I thought.

Just then, I realized it had been over forty hours since the “incident” had happened. Maybe everyone had forgotten about it? I mean, so what, I had an erection. All boys get them. And after all, kids do have pretty short attention spans. I bet everyone had probably moved on to thinking about something else.

I took two steps forward, then ran into Nathan Ox. He wore a striped blue, red and green shirt that made him look like a human roll of Life Savers candy. His shirt was also so tight everyone could see his boy-boobs. Essentially, Nathan had a bigger set of watermelons than half the girls on campus. However, he'd wallop any kid who told him so.

“Hey, look who's back,” Nathan called out. “It's boner face Bobby Connor!” Then he punched me in the coconuts. Nathan Ox was not just the class jerk-wad, he was also the class bully. And when he beat people up, he always went for a person's privates. Nut shots, pecker pounders—Nathan Ox thought groin pulverization was funny. “You gonna show Mrs. Baxter your wanker in science today, pecker face?”

A circle of kids, most all of them wearing backpacks, gathered to laugh at me. Nathan then took another punch at my acorns, but I lifted my knee so he only hit my thigh. Quickly, I broke through the circle, zipped across the grass by the flower bed no one was ever supposed to walk through and made a plan to avoid all human contact for the rest of my life.

It was at this moment that I realized there's simply no group of people on the planet meaner than kids my age. Not jail wardens, not dictators, not even angry nuns. Middle school kids are the worst.

All day long people at school teased me, punched me, pointed at me and told stupid jokes about me. And it wasn't just the bullies who were picking on me, either. Total doofwads, kids who had been nerds and punks their whole lives, suddenly thought they could now start taking their shots, too.

“Hey, Bobby,” said Chris Mickels from across the hall. “Is that a pencil in your pocket, or do you just wanna hump a four-hundred-year-old math teacher?”

Thwap!
He nailed me with a spitball. Three girls giggled at the wad of saliva-soaked notebook paper sticking to my neck.

It's one thing to get picked on by a bully. It's something totally different to get picked on by a four-eyed, pimple-faced, asthmatic string bean. And it went on like this all day. Ordinarily, I would have punched Chris Mickels in the head and then shoved a spitball the size of a coffee cup down his throat, but I knew that if I caused any trouble, especially on my first day back, Mr. Hildge would have thrown me out of school quicker than a fat lady could eat an entire tray of brownies. And Chris knew this, too. That's why he felt so brave.

By the middle of the day, I realized none of my so-called friends were going to associate with me, either. Timmy Three-Nips, a kid with a third nipple who I'd saved from humiliation last year by volunteering to change sides in a PE game of shirts-versus-skins basketball, totally ignored me. Johnny Markano, a kid whom I'd informed that his fly was down before he gave his “My Dream Job” speech in sixth grade social studies, acted like he'd never seen me before in his life. And Anthony Leon pretended as if I hadn't let him come over for two weeks to play video games at my house when his parents took away every electrical gadget he owned for trying to put his baby sister's hair into a pencil sharpener.