Potato

It was a really bad day today.

First of all I was late getting up, so I was late getting dressed and I had to run out the door while I was still buttoning up my shirt so Mr. Butts (who is the meanest bus driver we've ever had) wouldn't drive off and leave me. And of course I buttoned it up wrong, so when I got on the bus Jimmy and Stacey the fifth grader (not Stacy W., who is OK) laughed and made fun of me for a long time. It was worse because I had to unbutton the shirt so I could button it back up right and of course they made a big deal about that. But the bus wasn't so bad, because Jimmy and Stacey are always like that and they are like that to everybody, so you get kind of used to it.

It got really bad when we got to school. After the morning stuff -- the pledge and the roll and the principle doing the announcements over the intercom -- we have reading. They put us into reading groups today. School just started last week. Well, really it started the week before that, but it was on a Thursday and we only had a half-day on Friday, so really last week was the first real week of school. Anyway.

So Miss Porter is announcing the reading groups. And I'm in the PURPLE group. The purple group is like the third group. It goes red, white, purple, blue then green.

Sometimes I think adults think we are all stupid. We aren't stupid you know. Miss Porter gives us this big long speech about how one group isn't better than another group and it what group you are in doesn't mean you are smarter or dumber or anything. Which is a bunch of bullcrap and everybody knows it. All the smart kids (except me) are in the red or white group and the dumb kids are in the blue group. Green is for the really bad kids, they just sit around and fart off during reading. Purple is for the people who are not good or bad.

But I am a good reader. I am a very good reader. I think I am the best reader in our class. I read all the time, even when I don't have to. I go to the library – not the school library, the public library. Reading is important to me.

I got so mad because it was so unfair. Mark B. and Tina were in the red group. I can read better than both of them and Mark was looking at me and smiling. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to cry, I think. It was hard not to. I think my face got real red.

It was really hard to pay attention after that. I wanted to go ask Miss Porter why I got put into the purple group because I thought she knew about me and reading. Then I figured it out. It wasn't because I'm not a good reader, it's because I'm not a good talker. I have speech twice a week to help me learn to say my “R's” properly. I hate it and I hate not being able to talk right. I sound like a baby sometimes, and that makes me not want to read out loud sometimes and sometimes I take extra time to sound things out to make sure my tongue is in the right place and I'm am making the sounds properly like Mrs. Lyle the speech teacher wants me to. So I think that makes it sound like I am not a good reader, when I really am a very good reader.

This made me even madder. It was not fair to punish me for something I didn't do wrong and I was working to fix my speech. I couldn't go ask Miss Porter now because there wasn't a good time, plus I probably wouldn't be able to talk right when I asked her. She wouldn't listen anyway.

So I got really mad and I ended up doing something bad that I knew I shouldn't do even when I was doing it. But I did it anyway. I don't know why I did. I felt bad about it right after I did it, and I still do feel bad that I did it.

I didn't listen to much of Social Studies because I was making my plan. I guess I got the idea about the potato because I was looking out the window while I was thinking. The class has potato plant in a jar sitting on the shelf by the window that looks out on the little kids' playground. We started it on the first day of school. It's in water in a glass jar and it just has some short green vines coming out of it because we just started it on the first day of school. Miss Porter was real proud of it and talked about how it would be our earth sciences project for the whole year.

Here was my plan – I was going to poison that damn potato. Even though I shouldn't have done it, I think I made a pretty cool plan. On our way back from music class we always take a bathroom break. I was going to smuggle some pee back and pour it in the potato jar, which should kill it because pee has acid in it. Here's what I did. I took a cap off one of my magic markers (the pink one, who cares if it dries up. Dang.) and slipped in into my pocket. It is in the shape of a hollow cylinder.

After music was over and we went to the restroom, I hung back a little bit so I would be one of the last ones. I was real careful so nobody would notice what I was doing, and I was real nervous while I was sneaking the cap out of my pocket and peeing into it. It would be bad enough if somebody saw me, but I didn't want to spill pee on myself either. But I pulled it off and I hid it in my hand the way I learned to do with a quarter from my magic book.

Luckily when we go back to the classroom we kind of move around a lot, so I could go over to the window next to the potato jar. It was just as bad as filling the cap, trying to make sure nobody notice what I was doing. Also, I still didn't want to get pee on me. But I did it, and nobody said anything. I'm pretty sure nobody saw. I threw the cap in the wastebasket under the pencil sharpener by the door.

We had spelling next, then lunch. All during that time I felt pretty good about it. Mostly good. Mostly good that I had been able to pull it off but still a little bad about it. But mostly good.

Until we got back from lunch. When we walked into the room, we could tell something was wrong. Miss Porter was sitting at her desk and she was real quiet and she was frowning. That is not how she usually is. So it seemed like something was wrong, but we didn't know what yet. And she told us all to sit down at our desks which we did.

She stood up in the front of the room and told us something bad had happened and that she wanted to give the person who had done it a chance to make things right. Right then I got a really bad feeling in my stomach. I was busted.

She told us all to put our heads on our desks and close our eyes. Then she started talking. She talked very slow and very serious. She said we all make mistakes sometimes and do things that we should not do. She said the important thing was to take responsibility for our mistakes. She said she wanted to give the person who had done this the opportunity to take responsibility. She said they would not be punished and nobody but the person had to know about it.

This whole time I'm feeling worse and worse. Part of me is remembering the rule that you never ever confess to anything. But she's so serious. And I started to thing that killing the potato with pee is kind of a stupid thing to do anyway and it doesn't have anything to do with the purple reading group and it would make things any better. So I know what I've got to do. I take a couple of real deep breaths to get ready for the bad stuff that is coming and get ready to raise my hand.

Then Miss Porter says that this is the time and that the person who took Ramelle Nevins' plastic pencil sharpener in the shape of a pig out of her jacket pocket while it was hanging up on the coat rack in the back of the room should do the right thing and hold their hand up now.

I think I breathed out really loud. I heard some other people breathing too. But I put my hand back down. We sat that for a long time like that. I don't think anybody ever put their hand up, but I'm not sure. I did start feeling really bad about the potato though. It seemed like a really dumb thing to do now and the potato did not deserve to die and it was the whole class's project.

So I'm thinking about it all through math and I decide I've got to do something about it. The only thing I can come up with (beside telling Miss Porter, which I don't want to do because it would only get me in trouble and what good would that do?) is to spill the water so it will have to be replaced and hope that it is not too late.

And that's what I did. During afternoon break I went over to the potato. I used the same skills I did before to make it look natural. I made sure I was looking in a different direction from the potato jar and kind of swept my arm across the shelf a little bit, just hard enough to knock the jar over, but not hard enough to break the jar.

I guess I hit it too low or something, because it didn't just fall over. It kind of fell over my arm and spilled the water back towards me. Some got on my pants. There was a wet spot the size of my hand just below my pocket. Of course everybody laughed at me. Which did not bother me too much because if it had happened to somebody else I would laugh too. And the guys said I had peed on myself even though they knew it was only the potato water. I was really glad they did not know that in a way I had peed on myself. But it wasn't too bad and there was only 30 minutes until we got on the buses.

Miss Porter came over, and she was not mad, just kind of tired acting. She gave me a kind of funny look, then told me to dry my pants off with some paper towels. She took some too and cleaned up the potato water, stuck the potato back in the jar then took it over to sink and filled it up with water again. She put it back on the shelf, but closer to the window this time. She told us to sit back down (which I was glad to do because it would hide my wet pants) and we worked on a fractions worksheet until the first bell rang and the car-riders and walkers went to the gym.

When the second bell rang, we all got up to go. Miss Porter put her hand on my shoulder when I was walking out the door, and asked me to hold on a minute. When everybody else was out of the room she said she could tell I was upset about being in the purple reading group. I did not know what to say and I just kind of nodded. My face got red again. She said she knew I was a very good reader and I wasn't in the purple group because I wasn't a good reader. She said that sometimes the best way to get better at something when you are already good at it is to teach somebody else. She said she put me into the purple group so I could help the other purples with their reading. She said I would be a good example and I could help with some of the harder words. She smiled at me in a very nice way and said I should promise not to tell anybody else about it which I said I would not. Then she told me to hurry up or I would miss the bus, which was good because Mr. Butts was still mean and would leave me if he could.

When I was walking to the bus, I was not sure what to think. I felt good about what Miss Porter had said, but I still felt bad about what I had done. I was glad that I had spilled the potato jar, but it was dumb to have done it at all when I knew it was wrong to begin with. It was a weird day.