That lady in the purple dress must have tapped something in my brain this morning because now I can\u2019t stop thinking. There\u2019s this one where I\u2019m four and sitting on the floor in our living room playing with something and I see a quarter there under the couch. I pick up the quarter and look at it. I\u2019m thinking something like, Money! and I stand up and look around the room for a place to hide it. Finally, I just take the quarter and put it up my ass. I thought I was a human piggy bank or something. I didn\u2019t shit for like two weeks after that. And there was no way I was gonna tell anyone what I\u2019d done. Finally, my stomach got hard as a rock and I got real sick. My mom spoon-fed me bran or something until I sprang a leak. It was painful. I\u2019ll be getting rotated out of here in a few weeks. But I don\u2019t let it bother me, even though I\u2019ll miss Lucille Lobinsky. Yesterday I made her cry, again. I didn\u2019t mean to, not exactly, but she just sat there and I had to say something to her. That\u2019s usually how it happens. I said, \u201cHey, Lobinsky\u201d and she said, \u201cShush up,\u201d and looked at me with her round mean huge brown eyes. I waited a few minutes and pretended I was listening to Mrs. Sharpe and then I whispered, \u201cLucille Lobinsky,\u201d and she turned and looked at me, but this time her lips were tight and her eyes wide and I felt like carrying her over a big puddle or something. Mrs. Sharpe\u2019s voice was babbling behind us, and it was like we were in a moment, me and Lucille, and I whispered to her, \u201cYou\u2019re like a dead catbird to me.\u201d It just came out. I\u2019m out of control sometimes. But I did love a dead catbird once. When something\u2019s dead and you feel an ache for it, that\u2019s love. Anyway, Lucille\u2019s eyes got watery like when I tell her a cuss word, which I sometimes did, and she raised her right hand and pointed at me with her other hand and it got quiet in the classroom, boy. Mrs. Sharpe asked her what was wrong and she just kept pointing at me and was crying now. Mrs. Sharpe, our teacher who is so old that she could die any minute from a musket wound she received in the Civil War, made me repeat, in front of the whole class, what I\u2019d said to Lucille. I don\u2019t sit next to Lucille anymore. Now I sit right next to Mrs. Sharpe. She\u2019s so old that they don\u2019t even have a number for her age. But actually, they probably do. I guess she\u2019s like forty or something. Anyway, at this point no one but Geoffrey Flobbs will talk to me now. They all think I\u2019m a psycho bird killer or something. Overall, third grade is not my favorite grade so far. They can sit me next to three Mrs. Sharpes. They can surround me with the oldest Mrs. Sharpes that they\u2019ve got, and I still won\u2019t do my work, which is apparently the problem. People don\u2019t think you can not want to do your work. They make a real big deal out of it, like it\u2019s some kind of complicated thing. Apparently, it\u2019s a crime. I\u2019m just killing time here anyway. They\u2019re gonna ship me off to someplace for kids who won\u2019t do their multiplication tables. I\u2019m, as my mom says, \u201ca little cretin,\u201d but I ain\u2019t stupid. Last week they tested me, which was a hassle, but kind of fun because everyone except the lady testing me left me alone. They had to ask my dad first, though, and he said he didn\u2019t care what they did as long as it didn\u2019t cost him anything. First, she made me look at all these monster pictures. That\u2019s what I call them. You\u2019ve seen them. The redheaded lady in a purple dress would hold one up and say, \u201cWhat does this look like to you?\u201d She said that there were no wrong answers, so I told her monster for every single one, and she acted like these were wrong answers. Some looked like flying monsters with wings, and there were swimming and walking monsters, but some were dead monsters, and some were very, very alive monsters that had killed the dead ones. There was a story in there somewhere. I explained all this to her, but she didn\u2019t seem to really understand, but they were all little monsters to me. They really were. I wasn\u2019t making it up like David Easley. David Easley can kiss my ass, by the way. He\u2019s like my, what\u2019s the word? Nemesis. He\u2019s my worst third-grade enemy. He can draw like an artist. But he draws the wrong things. He\u2019s always drawing these pictures of F-16 jets and corvettes and monster trucks, and he does the shading just right and everything is proportioned right, and old Mrs. Sharpe takes them and hangs them up on the chalkboard for a week or two. It ticks me off. I can\u2019t draw worth shit. Once, I drew Mrs. Sharpe a picture of this guy with his head chopped off and he was holding his own head by the hair in his left hand and the head was smiling. I made the blood all coming down from his neck and covering the whole body and I\u2019d done a pretty good job of making it as gross as possible. She looked at it and then patted me on the head and said, \u201cThomas, what a vivid drawing,\u201d pretending she liked it. \u201cI\u2019m going to take it home and put it on my fridge.\u201d What kind of a wackadoo would put a picture like that on her fridge? It would make you puke every time you came into the kitchen for a glass of orange juice. At one point the purple dress lady told me she was a doctor, and I said, \u201cOh, does anyone really give three-eighths of a rat\u2019s ass?\u201d Her dress made me think of that song where they say, \u201cflying purple people eater.\u201d And then she made me\u2014and this was the most insane part\u2014she made me write a story about my most favorite place in the whole world. I knew it was a setup, so I told her I didn\u2019t have a most favorite place in the whole world because I hadn\u2019t been to every place yet. And I kept looking at her very red hair and I thought about it smelling like fire, because it looked like fire, but I knew that it probably only smelled like dandruff shampoo. So, I ended up just writing about the Magic Kingdom (a.k.a. Disney World) because it\u2019s a nice place for kids. But it\u2019s not really my favorite place because I like real stuff the most. My favorite place will probably one day be a place like Hawaii or Mexico or Cleveland, Ohio. I guess I could have written about how sitting next to Lucille Lobinsky was kind of a favorite place, but I wrote about lame-ass Disney instead, which, like I said, isn\u2019t my favorite, but is still pretty cool if you like made-up crap, which I only do a little. But you don\u2019t ever want to get lost there, away from your parents, like I did once. It\u2019s so big that it becomes a scary place when you\u2019re lost. I don\u2019t know why I wrote about such a babyish place though. Sometimes I do really dumb crap like that. But we only live about an hour away from Disney so it kind of makes sense, I guess. Plus, I knew that that was the kind of junk she was expecting me to write about, not that I gave two-tenths of a mouse fart about what she expected. So after writing a very long and boring story about Mr. Toad\u2019s Wild Ride and getting lost and Goofy giving me a hug and telling me not to worry because they\u2019d find my parents for me, and other fairy-tale crap, she made me take a hearing test, which was easy, and doesn\u2019t have anything, really, to do with writing. After the hearing test, she asked me what a crapload of words meant, and I knew them all, because I really like all words, even chintzy words, like \u201cthe\u201d and \u201cor\u201d but I especially like bad words, like the ones they say on HBO. HBO\u2019s the bad word channel and Cinemax is the sex channel, but I think everyone figures that out by the time they\u2019re in the first grade. But I don\u2019t really like the sex stuff on Cinemax. I guess I\u2019m just not ready for all that super complicated naked stuff yet. It looks too wild for third graders. It seems like it would be embarrassing, too. But I have a very interesting thing going with this fourth grader named Joan. I show her what I\u2019ve got, and she shows me what she\u2019s got, and we touch, although it\u2019s embarrassing. But that\u2019s as far as I\u2019ll go because anything else would be too much. I love the name Joan. And Lucille. All girls should be named either Joan or Lucille. Like I said, I won\u2019t be here in this particular third grade much longer because the redheaded doctor told my dad that they don\u2019t think anything\u2019s wrong with me. After two days of bullcrap testing that was what she decided. She told my dad that she thought I was just lazy but bright and lacked motivation and my dad said, I could have told you that. They had originally thought I was dumb or disabled or something, not just lazy but smart, which is bad news for me because it means I don\u2019t have an excuse for not doing all my very boring schoolwork. I\u2019d been hoping this whole time that she\u2019d come up with a cool-sounding thing for me to have, like dyslexia or ADHD, so that everyone would quit bothering me about all my zeros. But apparently the best she could do was lazy. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m lazy. I don\u2019t feel lazy. Lazy sounds like fun. But I\u2019m pretty sure nothing is wrong with me anyway. I just don\u2019t really give a crap about schoolwork, and I don\u2019t think doctors have a name for something like that. So now my dad is talking about military school, and I wouldn\u2019t do too good in there, in military school. I\u2019ll admit it. Military school is not for me. For one, it\u2019s all boys and I don\u2019t get along real good with other boys. I only got one friend that\u2019s a boy, Geoffrey Flobbs, and he\u2019s my friend mostly because he\u2019ll do anything I want to do, and will do dares, which is the only reason I let him hang around with me. Like one time we were in the cafeteria and I dared him to raise his hand and ask Mr. McCarter, the lunchroom monitor, why he is so sweaty all the time, and he did, and Mr. McCarter told him it was because he is so fat, and we both laughed are butts off, and Geoff got a whole week\u2019s worth of detentions for being disrespectful to an adult or something and I got nothing. It was funny as all hell for me, but not so funny for Geoff, but that\u2019s okay, because all he had to say was no, I\u2019m not going to do it, and that would have been that. I don\u2019t really badger people about stuff like that because I don\u2019t really care that much whether they do it or not. I just want to see if they will, and if they do, it\u2019s like a bonus. But with Geoffrey it\u2019s a safe bet he is going to do it because he always does. Part of the problem, I think, is that he wears weird clothes to school, clothes that don\u2019t make any sense in Florida. He wears corduroy pants every day. He never wears shorts. And he\u2019s always wearing long sleeve t-shirts, which no one around here wears expect for a couple weeks in the winter. He also wears this puffy ski vest thing all the time and, like snow boots, so he kind of sticks out in class and on the playground. Everyone knows why he wears these clothes, too. His dad is in the military, and they live in base housing so they don\u2019t have a lot of money to buy him new Florida clothes, and wherever they lived before\u2014Alaska, I think\u2014must have been a very cold place. Plus, if you are in a military family, for some reason that\u2019s a-whole-nother reason for some people to make fun of you around here. So he just sticks with me because at least I don\u2019t make fun of his clothes. But Geoffrey also does nothing with me, and that\u2019s another reason why I let him hang around with me. I could do my schoolwork if I wanted to but I just don\u2019t see any reason to do it. Like, why does everyone think you got to do these particular things, and not do these other particular things? For example, when I\u2019m at school, rather than do multiplication flash cards, I like to bug Lucille Lobinsky, because I love her name and mean eyes and little red dresses that she wears a lot and the plastic thing she wears on her head to hold her hair back? And maybe I wouldn\u2019t mind holding her hand or something if she was up for it. But she\u2019d never let me hold her hand and I know I\u2019d never ask her if she would because I\u2019m too scared, and she\u2019d just tell on me if I did, or scream, or make fun of me in front of some of the other girls, some of her friends, like Renee, who is supposedly really rich and lives on Manatee Island Reserve and her dad drives around in five different sports cars. But she\u2019s not the worst. You\u2019d think she would be, but she\u2019s not. Leah and Janice are the worst, together. They\u2019re twins and their dad is a psychiatrist or something and they\u2019re always talking about how much money he makes. Whenever we\u2019re sitting in the cafeteria, eating lunch, and I try to talk, they always interrupt about halfway into what I\u2019m saying. It\u2019s like right when you\u2019re getting to the point of your story, they just start talking about their dad and what a neato guy he is. That\u2019s intentional. They wait until what they know will be the most aggravating point in your story to interrupt. Also, Janice and Leah never eat their desserts at lunch, but if you ask them if you can have their dessert, they say no, and then they just end up tossing it in the trash at the end of lunchtime. It takes a lot of nerve to ask someone, especially a girl, if you can have her dessert, and to get shot down like that is brutal. It makes you feel like a beggar, and they like making you feel that way, sitting there talking about all their dad\u2019s money and not eating their desserts. That\u2019s the part that really sucks about the whole thing. Plus, I wish I could describe to you what these twin girls look like because there\u2019s something about them that just automatically makes you mad. I\u2019d guess I\u2019d call it an asshole look. Girls can be assholes too. I also sometimes like to think about how I want to look in Mrs. Sharpe\u2019s desk drawers, because I know there\u2019s something secret and strange or magical and adult in at least one of them, like a really small real kid, or a snake, or a one hundred-and-fifty-year-old love letter from a kid she knew when she was in the third or fourth grade. There\u2019s something interesting about that to me, but for some reason you can\u2019t go around telling people about that kind of stuff. Most of the things I think about are like this, stuff you can\u2019t talk about with people, which kind of sucks. It makes me feel by myself a lot of the time. Right now, I\u2019m writing this after Mrs. Sharpe assigned some writing, so she thinks I\u2019m doing the assignment, and she keeps smiling at me. She\u2019s so happy I\u2019m finally doing my work, but I\u2019m not. I\u2019m writing this instead. Pretty smart thinking. But I don\u2019t know who the hell I\u2019m writing to. Maybe I could be writing to crybaby Lucille Lobinsky. But she\u2019d just end up telling on me if I gave it to her to read. This letter is not about unicorns and princesses, and it is definitely not about talking horses. It\u2019s not for my parents, either. That would be weird. I guess it could be for Doctor Red Hair-Purple Dress who made me write that crap about my favorite place in the world. It could be a little bit for her. I guess it really could be for her, but it isn\u2019t. It\u2019s too late for that. I\u2019ll probably just eat it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I whispered to her, \u201cYou\u2019re like a dead catbird to me.\u201d It just came out. I\u2019m out of control sometimes. But I did love a dead catbird once. When something\u2019s dead and you feel an ache for it, that\u2019s love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":25627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-steve-lambert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24750"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25629,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24750\/revisions\/25629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}