Tales of a First-Grade Something

I remember my first brush with writing fame. I was the most popular kid in the 1^st grade for one spectacular February day, because my story was read aloud by the teacher to the entire class. This was the same school year during which I told my first joke. Well, maybe not joke, but riff. You could say I was riffing.

As curious and studious 7-year-olds do, we had spent the school year thus far preening to get the status of “Favorite Student.” As we were doing our usual writing warm-up on a bitterly cold New York morning, a student trying so casually to look smart in his moon boots while holding the end of his glasses in his mouth asked, “Miss, have you ever read the book…um…um…I forgot.” Amateur. You fell for the classic blunder, Mark “Who Always Smelled like Bologna” Donald! You can’t drop some obscure title as a 1^st grader to a teacher when your entire library consists of Goodnight Moon and Ralph S. Mouse. Mrs. Barveinous, who was always quick, replied, “Oh…good book.” Ha! She got you good, you little twerp! I thought. Then I chimed in, so eloquently, so cavalier, with such subtlety, you’d think that I’d been watching Johnny Carson or The Wonder Years for my entire TV-viewing life. “Who’s it by?” I riffed, getting the biggest laugh from all 20 first graders and Mrs. B, who nearly spit out her coffee, capping a wonderful triangle of discourse in front of the class. Ha! Top that, Mark. He tried. He really did.

One day, our octagon-shaped terrarium that had housed several caterpillars, began housing cocoons instead. Some kids were perplexed. “Oh my gosh! Mrs. B, Where are all the cap-a-tillers!?” one girl, with a white kitten on her pink sweatshirt, exclaimed as she was picking her nose. “The caT-eR-pillars have tucked themselves into cocoons that they’ve made. Then they’ll turn into beautiful butterflies. Now go wash your hands, Betsy.” Mark and I made Dirty Harry faces at each other, turning our excited, bright eyes into small, fierce squints. “Make a move, vato,” I thought, as I turned my head slightly, presenting him with the floor. “Let’s see what you got,” I said with my hands out to the side, like I was in a dance battle. He quickly jumped at the chance.

“Oh, cool. The coke-oons are see-proof.” Oh. Crap. This kid just said a word and added “proof” to it. I began to sweat. My eyes quickly began searching for something. Anything. I held my b-boy pose, but began teetering.  This kid. This jerk-faced kid just pulled out some vocabulary. What object from around the room, or verb, could I add some other word to and make it fancy? Just when I was about to pass out from the pressure, Mrs. B came in. “Actually, you can see through the cocoon. It’s transparent. See-proof is not actually a real word, Mark. But good for you for trying.” Yeah, Mark. Good for you. Mwa-hahahaha. This was a big moment in my life. It wasn’t just a win or rise in my own stock as the favorite student. It was the exact time when I learned that sometimes you didn’t have to do anything to win. You could let your cocky opponent fall on his own face. This was huge. Mark’s eyes quickly fell to the floor in shame. Had he a sword, I think he would’ve Hara-kiri’d himself on our reading rug. I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t need to chime in; I knew I had already won. I didn’t want something like pity to rain on my victory parade. From then on, I gloat-proofed my victories.

The next day, Mark must’ve been still sick from the Battle of Wits, because he didn’t make it to school. In fact, I didn’t see him again for weeks, until I saw him crouching behind a blue minivan in his driveway. I could spot his too-big-for-him cowboy boots half a block away and pointed him out to my babysitter, Tracey. She told me I should go say hi, but I didn’t quite know how to tell her I didn’t really like the kid. After some half-hearted conversation about He-Man (I was just going through the motions. Like I could ever talk to this guy about The Power of Greyskull), I was finally able to get out of there. I never did find out why he was crouching behind the van, but he did say he was moving back to Oklahoma. As we walked down the street, Tracey asked if I had bologna in my pocket.

For V-Day, we continued the school tradition of passing out perforated Valentine’s cards and candy to everyone. I had gone with the Alvin and The Chipmunks motif and very thoughtfully chose candy hearts with those engraved messages on them. Choosing which heart belonged to whom was tough. Those little doozies can either say everything, or not enough, and to not raise the hopes of some girl who was semi-afraid of capatillars, I had spent quite a bit of time on them. When we finished, Mrs. B asked us to do a creative writing piece, the only requirement being we had to entitle it, “The Runaway Valentine.” Gold star for this guy. Some kids didn’t even know what “runaway” meant. I did. My older sister suggested I had done it plenty of times already. With Mark out of the way for good, I felt confident.

I wrote a story, complete with drawings of a miniature heart with arms and legs running away from a mailbox, because he didn’t like the fact that he was a gesture, rather than having someone who loved him, and wanted a Valentine of his own. Then there was mass confusion between the two characters I so creatively entitled, “Him and Her.” The rising action climaxed with a fine denouement of Him and Her deciding to make Valentines together on the porch. Had I even heard of Nabokov at that point, I’m sure he would’ve felt insecure. I turned in my masterpiece and began rocking back in my chair, looking around at all the little squirts still writing. I was busy stacking up my candy hearts by color and tone, while they were awkwardly wiping the eraser crumbs off their desks and savagely looking up "runaway" in the dictionary.

 

Then something happened. I plopped the front legs of my chair down and thought that I was so literal with the title that my DOW would plummet. I hated it. I wanted my paper back. I wanted to write about someone who hated their Valentine because she was smothering him, and decided to run away out of claustrophobia. Just then, Mrs. B pulled it from the top of her stack with a, “Hmm,” and said, “I would like to share my favorite story with you all right now. Everybody, put your pencils down and come to the reading rug.” Just for good measure, I did a quick check for any blood stains and I sat criss-cross-apple-sauce as she read my epic tale.