My Teacher Is an Idiom Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  You’ll Laugh Your Head Off

  The Mosquito

  Slurrp!

  Hide!

  Consequences

  You Did What?

  Other People’s Plates

  The Lunchroom Is No Place for That

  I’m Not Late, Am I?

  They Eat What?

  My Turn

  Yum

  Middle Grade Mania!

  About the Author

  Clarion Books

  215 Park Avenue South

  New York, New York 10003

  Copyright © 2015 by Jamie Gilson

  Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Paul Meisel

  Jacket design by Lisa Vega

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhco.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Gilson, Jamie.

  My teacher is an idiom / Jamie Gilson ; illustrations by Paul Meisel.

  pages cm

  Summary: Second-grader Richard finds himself in big trouble during Mind Your Manners Month when he unwittingly captures the attention of

  Patrick, the class clown, and Sophie, a French girl who has trouble with idioms.

  ISBN 978-0-544-05680-0 (hardback)

  [1. Etiquette—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. English language—Idioms—Fiction. 4. Behavior—Fiction. 5. Humorous stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.G4385My 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014027798

  eISBN 978-0-544-05690-9

  v1.0815

  To Henry Hutter Gilson, Samurai Scribe

  —1—

  You’ll Laugh Your Head Off

  The banner in the lunchroom said MIND YOUR MANNERS! It was new. And red. You couldn’t miss it. A bunch of third graders painted it. They got caught spitting watermelon seeds and cherry pits. The watermelon seeds won.

  I wasn’t spitting seeds or pits. I was just hanging out. Kids were leaving the lunchroom for the playground, and I hadn’t even started to eat.

  I stared at my lunch. That’s when Patrick tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, Richie,” he went.

  He plopped himself down in the chair next to me and said, “Richie, this is your lucky day. You wanna know why I’m still here? I’m gonna sit with you today while you eat, that’s why. Mind your manners, right?” He pointed up at the banner. “And—”

  “Wait a minute,” I interrupted him. Patrick likes jokes. He likes to play jokes on you, and he likes to tell jokes. Sometimes he’s funny. Mostly he’s not.

  He didn’t sit down to eat with me. He wanted to tell me a joke. Here’s how I knew. He had a dollar bill taped to each of his ears, that’s how. People don’t usually wear money.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Why are you calling me Richie? My name is Richard. Nobody calls me Richie. Not even my mom.”

  “I can, because we’re friends,” he said.

  Friends? Just the day before, I lost two front teeth because of Patrick. Two! Top ones. He knew they were loose, too. Every kid in Mrs. Zookey’s class knew. All week long I’d been showing the kids at Table Two how they wiggled. I even showed them how one was looser than the other, so they’d for sure come out at different times.

  He knew it, all right. And that’s why he gave me this big fat gummy octopus at recess. It was licorice. I like licorice, but it was a bad idea to bite it. Now I know. But at that minute, I was just super hungry.

  I took a bite.

  I bit. But I didn’t swallow. That’s because my two front teeth weren’t loose anymore. They were stuck in the octopus. They were not stuck in me.

  “Eeewww, gross!” Patrick yelled, and he ran around pulling kids over to see me and my teeth. He was going, “Eeewwww! Everybody look. Everybody look at Richie!”

  My chin was bloody.

  In my hand I had a licorice octopus with two teeth sticking out of it.

  “Eeewwww, gross!” said the kids on the playground. “Eeewwww!”

  That’s the kind of friend Patrick is.

  Patrick is trouble. What’s more, he gets me in trouble, too. I decided right then, right there, on the playground, that I would never let Patrick get me in trouble again. “I’ll get you back, Patrick,” I told him. “Just you wait and see.”

  By now Patrick and me were just about the only ones left in the lunchroom. I had a tuna salad sandwich sitting in front of me. I hadn’t touched it. I couldn’t figure out how to eat it with two missing teeth.

  It smelled so good. I tore off a piece of it with my side teeth. It made a ginormous mess. Goopy tuna salad oozed onto my fingers.

  Patrick laughed. So I stuck out my tongue at him. And I started making a plan to get him back. It was his fault.

  He smiled at me like nothing was wrong. Then he wiggled his head to make the dollar bills flap.

  “Everybody else has gone outside to play four-square and kickball,” Patrick told me, “but I’m still here to cheer you up.”

  No way, I thought. I licked the tuna salad off my fingers. It was good, but it didn’t fill me up.

  Patrick shook his head again, and the dollar bills shivered. “You look super sad with those two teeth gone,” he went on. “So, I’m here to tell you a joke that will make you laugh your head off. You won’t be able to figure it out. I’ll be here to help you out. Okay?”

  Not okay. I knew what he wanted. It was as clear as the nose on his face. He wanted me to say, “Patrick, why do you have dollar bills taped to your ears?” so he could tell me the joke.

  I didn’t say it.

  I didn’t say it because I already knew that joke. My mom told it to me the day she got her ears pierced. I laughed my head off when she told it. I did that because it was polite and my mom is big on polite. Also I really thought it was funny.

  This time, I would get Patrick. “No, no!” I told him. “Me first! Remember, I’m the one without the teeth.” I gave him a sad, toothless smile and stuck out my hand to stop him from talking.

  “It hurt a whole lot when you pulled my teeth out, but now I’m okay,” I said. “Maybe I can cheer you up. You must feel really bad that it was your fault. I’ve got a good joke, too. This one is so funny, you’ll break up! I’ll have to sweep you off the floor.”

  The thing is, I could tell just by the dollar bills swinging from his ears that Patrick’s joke was the exact same joke as the one my mom told me. I had to tell it fast. I had to tell it first.

  “So,” I said quick, “here it is. Ready, set, go! Do you know what a pirate charges to pierce your ears?”

  His mouth dropped open. He knew the answer. He knew it because that’s what he was about to ask me. But now it was my joke.

  “You know what ‘pierce’ is?” I asked him. “It’s when you poke a needle in somebody’s ear so they can stick an earring in the hole.”

  He nodded and the dollars moved. “Basketball players have them,” he said. “And rock stars. But I—”

  “Okay, ready?” I went on, talking faster. “Okay, I’ll tell the joke again. How much does a pirate charge to pierce your ears? Take your time,” I said. “Ask a friend.” I was stringing him along.

  I looked around the lunchroom and spotted this girl from our room sitting a couple of tables over. This was only her second day at Sumac School. Our teacher, Mrs. Zookey, had told us to be especially nice to her becaus
e she mostly spoke this other language. The language was French. Mrs. Zookey said the kid had studied English in school. It was a subject, like math. Chances are she wasn’t good at pirate jokes.

  “I think the new girl won’t help you a lot,” I told him. “Sorry about that.”

  Patrick opened his mouth. I think he started to give me the answer, but I said it first, loud and clear. “A dollar bill is also called a buck. And that’s what a pirate charges to pierce your ears. You’ve got two ears. He charges a buck an ear. A pirate is a buccaneer. It sounds the same as ‘buck an ear.’ Get it?”

  Patrick got it. He had a buck hanging on each ear. He got it, but I said it. I won! Yay, me!

  He pulled the dollar bills off his ears and stuffed them in his pocket. “Not funny,” he said, and he crossed his arms. “You wouldn’t have gotten mine. It was much, much better. But I’m not gonna tell it to you, so now you’ll never know.”

  I smiled at him. Then I opened my sandwich like it was a book. Carefully, slowly, I peeled off two fingers full of tuna salad. I ate it like it was a batch of cookie dough I’d scooped from the bottom of a bowl. Yum. I licked my fingers clean. I was happy.

  Patrick looked up at the sign. “Richie,” he said, “you’ve gotta have the worst table manners in the whole world.”

  —2—

  The Mosquito

  Patrick had brought sushi for his lunch. It was gone. He’d already eaten it. He still had his dessert, though. It was big purple grapes. I watched him pick them off the stem, one by one. He tossed them up high in the air and caught them on his tongue. Actually, he caught four of them. He missed three. They bounced on the floor.

  “So that’s the world’s best table manners?” I asked him.

  “Tossing and catching grapes on your tongue takes skill,” he said. “You gotta practice. Also, it is nice and clean. Licking food off your fingers is disgusting. It gives you big fat germs, like for sore throats and flu. It is also bad manners. Ask anybody.” He stood up and stomped on the grapes that had hit the floor. “Pow!” he went. “Pow! Pow!”

  Then he asked, “You got any dessert?”

  I held up this plastic bowl of raspberry Jell-O. Mom packed it with two ice cubes, but it was in my locker all morning, so it was ooshy. I pinched it to see just how ooshy it was, then I peeled off the lid.

  I took out my spoon. It was green plastic with a frog at the top. I took it home every day after school, washed it, and brought it back the next day. My mom and me, we’re into green.

  “Go on outside. Don’t worry about me,” I told Patrick. “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes. I just want to eat my dessert.”

  Patrick stared at my red Jell-O. He smiled.

  “No, no, no,” he said. “Friends are supposed to keep you company. I’m not mad about the joke. I’ll stay.” His smile got bigger.

  “Besides,” he went on, “I just got this great idea. You’re gonna love it. When I did this at home, my dad laughed his head off. He said I’m so funny that someday I’ll get my own TV talk show and make tons of money. I’ll tell you how I broke him up so you can do it, too, okay?” He handed me a straw. “Here, use this,” he said.

  “No, thank you,” I told him, minding my manners. “I finished my milk.” I didn’t want milk shooting out of my nose.

  “Oh, it’s not for milk,” he said. “It’s for your dessert. That stuff’s way too mushy for a spoon. You’d get it all over you. Use the straw. Okay, I’ll show you how. It’s a great way to eat. It’s even got a name.”

  The Jell-O was ooshy. That was true. Sometimes Patrick knows what he’s talking about. He isn’t always trouble. I took the straw. It was white with red stripes.

  There’s a box of plain straws in the lunchroom over by the milk cartons, but every day Patrick brings his own. Patrick’s straws are fat, like the kind you get with a smoothie. I’ve seen him shoot little wads of paper through them. Once he zapped a kid’s neck and she never knew what hit her. She swatted the spot like she’d been bit by a fly.

  I looked through the straw he’d handed me. I had to be sure it didn’t have a paper wad inside. Or a worm. Or maybe even a wet booger. I wasn’t about to let him fool me.

  It was empty.

  Patrick really was mad at me for telling his joke first. Now he was treating me like a baby, like I didn’t know what the special word for drinking through a straw is.

  “It’s called sucking,” I told him.

  “No, no. This way is very, very special,” he said. “The real name for this is The Mosquito.”

  “Mosquito?” I asked.

  “The Mosquito,” he answered. “See, you suck the ooshy red stuff up through the straw like a lady mosquito sucks blood. For one thing, it tastes better, and for another thing, it’s way better manners than dripping ooshy red stuff all over yourself.

  “Yum,” he said. He licked his lips. Then he looked at me and waited.

  “Okay, I told you how,” he said. “So now you can do it.”

  “I don’t think so,” I told him. “I’ll just use my spoon. Besides, you didn’t see it, but Mr. E. just came in, and I bet he’d say that eating like a mosquito sucks blood is gross.”

  Patrick turned to look. “Come on, Mr. E. won’t kill you,” he said. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  Mr. E. doesn’t kill kids, but you don’t want to mess with him. He is vice principal of Sumac School. His real name is Mr. Economopoulos, but he lets us call him Mr. E. He always wears a green Sumac School T-shirt. There’s a stack of them in his office. My mom said the PTA ordered them special, in his size, XXXXL. One thing Mr. E. does is he keeps his eyes peeled for bad stuff. When he sees it, look out.

  I checked. Mr. E. did not have either of his eyes on us. He was using them both to look out the window. He was watching kids on the playground. It had rained in the night, and there were puddles, perfect for stomping in. He was on the lookout. Some kids say he has eyes in the back of his head, too. Maybe so.

  The lunchroom monitors were at the other end of the cafeteria. They’re moms who sign up for lunch duty. They wear nets on their hair. They serve soup for kids who buy lunch, and microwave stuff that kids bring from home. When the line closes, they mostly just talk to each other. They’d shoo us out soon.

  “Go ahead,” Patrick said. “Trust me. Just do it.”

  I don’t have to do what Patrick says. I put the red and white straw down and picked up my green spoon.

  He shrugged. “Fine. Don’t do it. It would have been fun. You know, Richie, you don’t have near enough fun.” He shook his head.

  Okay, I thought, maybe he was right. What could go wrong sucking Jell-O up a straw?

  So I picked up the straw. I stuck it deep down into the cup. The straw leaned to the side. I sucked on it till the straw had maybe an inch of the red raspberry stuff inside. Then I turned the straw over and sucked the stuff out. “Eating like that would take forever,” I told him. I grabbed my spoon again.

  Mr. E. turned around and nodded to us. Patrick sat up very straight and smiled like someone had said “Cheese!”

  He thought he had Mr. E. wrapped around his little finger.

  —3—

  Slurrp!

  “Mr. E.! Mr. E.!” Patrick called. If you say it just right, “Mr. E.” sounds like “mystery,” and that’s the way Patrick said it. “Mr. E.,” he went on, “I think I’ve got a quarter stuck behind my ear. Would you look?”

  Mr. E. does magic. He’s good at it. I think he likes showing off. He smiled and walked over to us. He stared in Patrick’s ear. “I see wax,” he said. “I even see patches of what appear to be sand dunes, but I see no quarter.”

  Two tables over, the new kid from France was watching.

  Mr. E. showed us his hands. They were totally empty. Then he reached over and pulled a coin from behind Patrick’s ear. “No quarter there,” he said. “Just a penny.” He held it up. “But I saved it from your sand dunes.”

  We laughed. I mean, sand dunes in your ears?r />
  “You know the rules,” Mr. E. said. “Twenty minutes for lunch, and then thirty minutes of quality exercise on the playground. The two of you should be outside right now. I’ll give you a penny for your thoughts on that, Richard.” He held it out.

  I took the penny and put it in my jeans pocket. “I’m thinking I miss my teeth,” I said, and I showed him the empty space.

  He smiled and shook his head. “Hard to bite without incisors,” he said. “Sorry I can’t conjure up any of those. It’s nice of you to stay with him, Patrick. But still, hurry it up.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll give you five more minutes.”

  On his way out to the playground, he stopped and talked to the new kid. She started putting on her jacket. Yesterday, Mrs. Zookey told Dawn Marie to sit with the new kid at lunch. They both sit at Table Two with Patrick and me. Today, Dawn Marie must have gone outside.

  For sure Dawn Marie was out jumping rope with this bunch of girls. When they jump, they sing princess stuff like “Cinderella dressed in yella” and “Sleeping Beauty caught a cootie.”

  Patrick waited until the outside door shut behind Mr. E. Then he said, “You’ve still got four minutes, at least. I saw a kid push another kid down in the mud. Mr. E. will be gone for a while.

  “The thing is, you were doing it all wrong. Here’s how The Mosquito works.”

  He pulled another straw out of his lunchbox. This one had blue stripes. Then he reached for my dessert.

  “If you’re gonna do it right,” he said, “you gotta warm up. Like this.” He stuck the empty straw in his mouth, pointed it straight out, and took in a huge breath.

  Then he let it out slow through the straw. He put the straw next to a stray grape on the table. He blew twice until the grape was right at the edge. Then he sucked in and caught the grape, just when it was about to fall. He took the straw out of his mouth, and the grape bounced on the floor.