There are lots of exciting things that happen in Room 26 of Longfellow School.
I see them all because I live there. I am the classroom hamster.
But I think the best part of the day is when my friends come bursting through the door in the morning.
‘Hi, Humphrey Dumpty!’ A.J. always shouts.
A.J. has a LOUD-LOUD-LOUD voice, so I call him Lower-Your-Voice-A.J.
‘Hi, A.J.!’ I squeak back.
Garth is usually with A.J. because they’re best friends.
I call him Wait-For-The-Bell-Garth because he’s always out of the door first at the end of the school day.
Then one morning, I-Heard-That-Kirk-Chen came into our classroom and said, ‘Happy birthday to me!’
‘It’s not your birthday, Kirk,’ Mandy said.
Mandy Payne is a nice girl but she does like to complain.
I call her Don’t-Complain-Mandy-Payne.
‘It’s almost my birthday,’ Kirk said. ‘It will be on Friday.’
Mandy looked up at the row of cupcakes above the chalkboard. She shook her head.
Sometimes when I look at those cupcakes, my tail twitches and my whiskers wiggle.
They look so YUMMY-YUMMY-YUMMY!
The problem is they’re not real cupcakes.
They’re just pictures of cupcakes with candles on top.
Each one has a name and a date.
The cupcakes help us remember when a classmate has a birthday.
One thing I’ve learned from humans – birthdays are unsqueakably important!
‘No, it’s not!’ I heard Mandy insist loudly.
Our teacher, Mrs Brisbane, asked, ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Kirk says it’s his birthday on Friday, but it’s not.’ Mandy pointed to the cupcakes. ‘See? His birthday is on Saturday.’
Mrs Brisbane nodded. ‘Yes. But since we don’t have school on Saturday, we’re celebrating Kirk’s birthday on Friday.’
‘Fine,’ Mandy said. ‘But he shouldn’t say it’s his birthday when it’s not.’
‘Please Don’t-Complain-Mandy-Payne,’ Mrs Brisbane said.
‘Hey, Mandy, I’ve got a joke for you,’ Kirk said.
He loves to tell jokes and I think he wanted to make Mandy smile.
‘What do you give a 900-pound gorilla for his birthday?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered.
‘Anything he wants!’ Kirk said, howling with laughter.
Some of my other friends laughed, too, like Stop-Giggling-Gail, who is always laughing.
‘Anything he wants!’ Repeat-It-Please-Richie said.
Richie, A.J. and Garth beat their chests and made grunting sounds.
I think they were pretending to be gorillas.
Just then, the bell rang.
School was starting and my friends all sat down.
After Mrs Brisbane took the register, Kirk raised his hand.
‘Mrs Brisbane, am I going to be able to take Humphrey home for the weekend like you said?’ he asked.
I live in Room 26, but I’m LUCKY-LUCKY-LUCKY that I get to go home with my friends on weekends.
Our teacher nodded. ‘Yes, Kirk.’
‘Good,’ Kirk said. ‘He’ll be there for my birthday hsab. Everyone in class is invited.’
Hsab? What was that strange word?
The way he said it sounded like ‘huh-sab’.
Mrs Brisbane looked puzzled.
‘I’m glad everyone is invited,’ she said. ‘But I’ve never heard of a hsab before. What does it mean?’
‘I can’t tell you!’ Kirk grinned broadly. ‘H-S-A-B. You have to work it out for yourselves. That’s part of the fun.’
Mrs Brisbane wrote the strange word on the board in big letters:
‘Maybe if we look at the word, it will help,’ she said.
Then she began teaching the class about numbers.
She said something about Jonny having twelve apples and Suzy taking away eight.
I don’t know Suzy, but I hope she asked Jonny before she took away his apples!
I tried to pay attention to what Mrs Brisbane was saying, but my mind kept wandering to the word on the board.
Hsab. What on earth could it mean?
*
Later that night, I asked the other classroom pet, Og the frog, if he’d worked it out.
Og lives in a tank next to my cage on a table by the window.
‘BOING-BOING-BOING!’ he replied.
He makes a funny sound, but he’s really very nice for a frog.
‘Me neither,’ I said.
I took out the little notebook and pencil that I keep hidden behind the mirror in my cage.
I wrote down the word so I could take a closer look.
H-S-A-B.
I turned the notebook upside down.
I turned it sideways.
I even turned the notebook backwards.
I couldn’t see the word any more.
But I could see the mirror.
In the mirror, everything looks backwards, including words.
This word looked STRANGE-STRANGE-STRANGE.
I saw a backwards B, an A, a backwards S and an H.
If the backwards letters were forwards, the word would be B-A-S-H!
A bash! A bash is like a great, big wonderful party.
So Kirk was having a birthday bash!
But why did he write the word backwards?
Humans are nice, but sometimes they do very strange things.
*
I wasn’t the only one in Room 26 who had worked out that hsab was bash spelled backwards.
‘It’s a birthday bash,’ A.J. shouted as he came into class the next morning. ‘I got the invitation and my mum held it up to the mirror. Some of the letters were backwards, but she worked it out.’
A.J.’s mum must be SMART-SMART-SMART (like me).
Mrs Brisbane asked Kirk to explain why he had written the word backwards.
‘It’s a backwards party,’ he said. ‘Everything will be backwards. Hands up if you’re coming.’
Every hand in the room shot up.
My paw went up, too.
‘It sounds like a very interesting party,’ Mrs Brisbane said.
‘Mrs Brisbane?’ Mandy said. ‘I’ve been looking at the birthday cupcakes and some names are missing.’
Our teacher looked up at the row of cupcakes.
‘Yours isn’t up there,’ Mandy continued. ‘Or Humphrey’s.’
I scrambled up to the tippy-top of my cage to see if she was right.
Sure enough, Mrs Brisbane’s name wasn’t there and neither was mine.
Another name was also missing.
‘What about Og?’ I squeaked at the top of my tiny lungs.
‘Ooh, Og’s missing, too,’ Raise-Your-Hand-Heidi said.
As usual, she forgot to raise her hand.
When I squeak, humans can’t understand me, so I was glad that Heidi had also noticed that Og’s name was missing.
‘I don’t need everyone to remember my birthday,’ Mrs Brisbane said. ‘Every day I’m here in Room 26 is a special day for me.’
My friends still wanted to know about Og and me.
‘The problem is, I don’t know when they were born,’ Mrs Brisbane said.
If no one knew when I was born, I could never have a birthday!
Heidi said, ‘Frogs aren’t born. They’re hatched!’
‘That’s right,’ Mrs Brisbane said. ‘Frogs start out as eggs.’
Og splashed around a little in his tank.
I felt SAD-SAD-SAD for him, too.
He could never have a birthday.
And though he could have a hatch-day, nobody knew when it was.