There’s this totally false map of the human tongue. It’s supposed to show where we taste different things, like salty on the side of the tongue, sweet in the front, bitter in the back. Some guy drew it a hundred years ago, and people have been forcing kids to memorize it ever since.
But it’s wrong—all wrong. As in, not even the slightest bit right. It turns out that our taste buds are all alike, they can taste everything, and they’re all over the place. Mr. Landau, seventh-grade science teacher, has unrolled a beaten-up poster of the ignorant tongue map, and he’s explaining about how people have misunderstood the science of taste since the beginning of time.
Everyone in my class, even Bob English Who Draws, is paying attention today, because this is the first day of “How We Taste,” also known as The Science Unit of Destiny. They all believe that sometime in the next ten school days, at least one person in the room is going to discover his or her own personal fate: true love or tragic death.
Yes, those are the only two choices.
Bob English Who Draws is really named Robert English. Back in fourth grade, our teacher, Ms. Diamatis, started calling him Bob English Who Draws because he was always zoning out and doodling with a superfine Sharpie. Ms. Diamatis would say, “Bob English Who Draws, can you please take us through the eights?” It was her job to make sure no one got out of fourth grade without lightning-fast multiplication skills. And everyone has called him that ever since.
While the rest of the class is hanging on every syllable that comes out of Mr. Landau’s mouth, I’m looking at the false tongue poster and I’m kind of wishing it wasn’t wrong. There’s something nice about those thick black arrows: sour here, salty there, like there’s a right place for everything. Instead of the total confusion the human tongue actually turns out to be.