Return to Planet Tad

So in two weeks, my school’s going to have its big eighth-grade semiformal dance. They have it every February in our school gym, and there’s always some lame theme—last year, it was “One Moment in Time.” The year before, it was “Hawaiian Luau,” which ended really badly when a tiki torch got a little too close to a fake grass hut; you can still see the fire damage over by the bleachers. Anyway, we had an assembly today where the student council announced that, for the first time, they were going to let students suggest themes for the dance. They put up a suggestion box, and I’ve already come up with a few possibilities:

• “Dancing Without the Stars”

• “Alien vs. Predator”

• “Come Dressed as Your Favorite Ewok”

• “Let’s All Pretend This Isn’t the Room Where We Played Kickball Three Hours Ago”

This morning was Groundhog Day. On the news, they said that there was a huge blizzard in Pennsylvania, so they had to get a massive snowplow and clear the ground, just in order to get the groundhog out of his hole.

I feel like, if you have to clear five feet of snow in order to find the groundhog, you already know the answer to whether winter is over or not.

This afternoon, I told my mom that she needed to take me to the store to get the new Zombie Artillery game, and she said, “You know, Tad, you could say please when you ask me to do a favor. It’s always good to be polite. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” I pointed out that actually, you’d probably catch more flies with dog poop than you would with either honey or vinegar. And she said, “OK, you’ve sort of missed the point.”

So today, my mom came into the living room and found Chuck and me playing Zombie Artillery, and she said, “What is that?” And I said, “It’s the game we got the other day.” And Chuck said, “Here, look: I’m throwing a grenade into that zombie’s head before he can eat that lady’s spine, so I can get double points.” But before he could finish, my mom turned off the game and said, “I don’t want you playing this. It’s too violent.” I’m not sure how my mom bought me a video game called Zombie Artillery and didn’t realize that it involved shooting zombies with guns, but moms can be sort of weird sometimes.

Anyway, she went to the store to return the game, saying, “I’m sorry, you’re just too young for this.” So Chuck and I hung out and watched some police show about a guy who killed his victims by beating them up with their own severed limbs and then dissolved them in tubs of acid.

At lunch today the student-council president, Stacy Ramos, came over to our cafeteria table and told us what the theme for the semiformal’s going to be: “Enchantment Under the Sea.” And I said, “So, the idea is that we’re all underwater?” And she said, “Uh-huh!” And I said, “So we’re, like, the victims of a tragic shipwreck, trapped on the bottom of the ocean?” And she said, “No. We’re all alive.” And I said, “Not for long if we’re underwater. Maybe you should go with a more accurate theme, like, ‘Asphyxiation Under the Sea.’” And she got all annoyed and walked away.

Today Chuck came up with a good idea: He and I sit near these two girls, Sara Collins and Heather Blankenship, in art class, and we sort of joke around with them when Ms. Booker isn’t looking. And Chuck suggested that maybe we could each ask one of them to go to the dance, and then we could all go together as a double date. So tomorrow after class, we’re going to ask them. I’m a little nervous, but as Chuck said, “The worst they can say is no, right?”

So we asked Sara and Heather today. Chuck asked Sara, and I asked Heather. Afterward, Chuck said, “Well, she said she was flattered, but that she really just kind of thinks of me as a friend.”

And I told him how my conversation went: I said, “Do you want to go to the dance next Friday?” And Heather said, “Yes!” And then she said, “Oh! You mean with you? Oh. Ew! No. Sorry. I didn’t mean to say ew. It’s just that the idea of going to the dance with you makes me say that. Because I really, really, really, really would not want to do that. Ew.”

I don’t understand the expression “a square peg in a round hole.” A square peg would fit just fine in a round hole, as long as the hole was large enough.

I feel bad for Chuck. I gave up on asking girls to the dance, but he’s still trying. So far, he’s asked eight different girls to go to the semiformal with him, and they’ve all said no. (Well, actually, he only asked six girls. The Markowitz twins came up to him in the hallway and said, “We hear you’re asking girls to the dance, and we thought you should know, if you’re thinking of asking either of us, the answer is no.” Afterward, I said to him, “That was pretty arrogant of them, to just think that you were going to ask them,” and he said, “Yeah. But they were the next ones on my list.”)

In study hall, Chuck overheard some girls talking about how they were planning on going as a group, and he suggested to me and Kevin that maybe we should just go as a group, too. And I was about to say no, but then I remembered: this Friday, my mom’s book club is coming over to the house. And if I had to choose between a night at a dance with Chuck and Kevin, and a night at home surrounded by all my mom’s friends, not being allowed to watch TV in the living room, and hearing my mom’s friend Bev’s weird, crazy laugh over and over again, I’d choose the dance, anytime. So I guess we’re all going under the sea on Friday.

Sophie is getting ready for Valentine’s Day at her school. She bought cards that have that stupid poem, “Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you.” I hate that poem, because it’s not even true—violets are violet. Basically, the poem amounts to, “Hi, I’m either an idiot or a liar, and I love you.”

My dad got my mom a box of chocolates as an early Valentine’s Day present. She said I could have one, but the one I picked tasted like it was filled with cherry cough syrup. It was disgusting. I think if I ever ran a chocolate company, I wouldn’t make my chocolates all fancy looking. They’d just be little cubes with writing on top that said exactly what was inside them.

The dance is tomorrow night, and I’ve realized I’m not exactly sure what semiformal means. At first I thought it meant you could show up just wearing the top half of a tuxedo:

But I asked Stacy Ramos, and she tells me it means you have to wear a coat and tie. “It’s a dress code,” she said. “They won’t let you in without a tie on. No exceptions.” And I said, “What if you’re a girl?” And she said, “No, only if you’re a boy. No exceptions for boys.” And I said, “What if there’s a fire—would they let the firefighters in without ties on?” And she said, “Yes. No exceptions for boys, except firefighters.” And I said, “What if you have a really big neck goiter, and you can’t find a tie that fits around it?” And she said, “I’m leaving now.”

Well, tonight’s the big dance. I came home and got my best khakis and sports coat on, and because I can’t tie a tie, my dad stood behind me and tied it for me. My mom kept saying, “You look so handsome! Doesn’t he look handsome, Sophie?” And Sophie said, “No. He looks like Tad.” I’m heading out now! Wish me luck!

I got to the dance tonight, and at first, everything was OK. I mean, it wasn’t great, because I’d kind of forgotten a dance involves actually dancing, which is something I can’t really do. So I was just hanging out near the snack table with Chuck when Varya Kumar, who’s the vice president of the student council—but actually kind of cool and smart and nice—came over and said, “Why aren’t you dancing?” And I said, “I’m not really good at it.” And she said, “C’mon! I helped to organize this dance. It’ll look really bad if no one’s dancing. Tell you what: I’ll teach you how.”

So we went out into the middle of the dance floor, and she started to teach me. “Just move your feet to the beat,” she said. And so I started, and she said, “No, you’re moving your feet to every word of the song. Just listen for the beat.” And I said, “Which part’s the beat?” And she sighed and said, “Just watch me and do what I do.” And so I started to do that, and she sort of laughed, and then she apologized and said, “No! It’s just . . . you’re doing really well. But maybe you’d do better with a slow song. Tell you what: I’ll find you when a slow song comes on, and we can practice dancing some more then.” And that’s when I realized: Varya wasn’t just teaching me to dance—she’d been flirting with me the whole time.

I went back and told Chuck, and he said, “That’s awesome! You should go fix your tie real quick—it’s a little crooked.” So I left the gym and went to the bathroom to fix my tie. But before I did that, I realized my hair was sticking up in back, so I turned on the faucet to put a little water on it, and the faucet wound up spraying my pants so it looked like I wet myself. I tried to dry my pants off with the hand dryer, but I couldn’t bring it down to pants level. So then I tried using toilet paper, which didn’t really dry my pants much at all, but did leave tiny bits of paper all over my pants. So I untucked my shirt to hide the wet spot, but then I realized that one of my shirt tails had an ink spot on it from when I left a pen uncapped in my pocket the last time I wore it. So I hid that by rebuttoning my shirt, but off by one button, to make that shirttail shorter so it’d fit under my sports coat. And then I remembered: I still hadn’t fixed my crooked tie. So I started to try to adjust it, and the more I messed with it the worse it looked, until the little end of the tie was completely in front of the big part, and I started sliding the knot down the tie and back up again, and wound up accidentally untying it. And because I couldn’t get back into the dance without a tie on, I had to retie it with the only knot I know, which is the one you use to tie your shoes, but it didn’t really look right at all:

I walked back into the gym and found Chuck, and I started to say, “Hey, is it noticeable that—” when Chuck said, “Whoa! What happened to your tie? And your shirt? And did you wet your pants?” But before I could tell him anything, a slow song came on, and I saw Varya looking around the dance floor for me, and I realized I had two choices: let her see me looking like a mess, or run. And so I ran. And I kept going until I could call my parents and have them pick me up, and now I’m home.

Hi, Tad. Chuck explained where you went, and I totally understand. Sorry you had to leave, and I hope you’re doing OK.

I’m not sure what that means, exactly, but I’m glad that Chuck was smart enough to cover for me. Hang on. I’m gonna write back and ask what, exactly, Chuck told her.

He said you got diarrhea.

I’m really going to have to talk to Chuck about what constitutes a “good alibi.”

Well, there’s a major blizzard going on outside, which ordinarily would be great news, because it’d mean that tomorrow would be a snow day at school. But it turns out, tomorrow’s Presidents’ Day, so we already have the day off. So it’s just a waste of a perfectly good blizzard.

Anyway, our whole family is stuck indoors, and my mom is insisting on us having family fun time. We all played Scrabble for a little while, but it’s no fun to play with Sophie. (In our first game, my dad started by playing CAT for ten points, and then Sophie played AQUEDUCT for 116 points.) Then we switched to Sorry! because, as my dad muttered to me, “If your sister’s going to beat us all, I want it to be a game where she apologizes first.”

So just now at dinner, my mom said, “Tad, I hope you enjoyed your three-day weekend. Did you get all your homework done?”

And I suddenly remembered: because of Presidents’ Day, everyone in our social studies class was assigned to pick one president, and give a presentation tomorrow on all the achievements of his administration. I’d totally forgotten about it, and was beginning to panic, when Sophie looked up and said, “You can pick any president you want?” And I said, “Yeah.” And she said, “And you just have to talk about what they did as president?” And I said, “That’s right.” And she said, “Do William Henry Harrison.” I asked her why, and she said, “You’ll see.”

So I’m about to start researching him. Hopefully, I won’t be up all night working.

Today in social studies class, I watched as everyone in my class gave massive presentations about their presidents, taking a really long time to list all the bills they signed and the treaties they negotiated and the wars they fought. And then it was my turn, and I stood up and said, “William Henry Harrison caught pneumonia at his inauguration, and died one month later. The end.”

The whole spelling bee took nearly two hours. Some kids got knocked out of the running immediately—Doug Spivak, who’s the dumbest kid in my class, was knocked out because he spelled house with a d. And Jeff Garber fought with the teacher for ten minutes when he misspelled fanciest as fanceist. He kept saying, “But everyone always says the rule is ‘i before e, except after c’!” He sort of had a point, actually.

In the end, it came down to me and Emily Davis. It was sort of intense. For twenty solid minutes, we kept going back and forth and back and forth, spelling words, until she finally misspelled pterodactyl. In order to win, I had to spell fluorescent, and for a second, I considered spelling it wrong, because it seemed sort of weird to beat a girl in a contest. But then I remembered that Emily is actually really snotty and mean, and I went ahead and spelled the word.

Afterward, I went up to her and said, “Hey, you did really well. Either of us could’ve won.” And she said, “Your fly was open the whole time,” and walked away. That made me feel a whole lot less bad about beating her.

So today, my English teacher, Mrs. White, presented me with my prize for winning the spelling bee: a dictionary. Which is sort of an odd prize for being the best speller. You’d think they would give the dictionary to the class’s worst speller.

She also let me in on the downside of winning the school’s spelling bee: now I have to compete in the regional spelling bee. Which means I’m going to have to get up early next Thursday and be driven over to the civic center to compete against other schools’ spelling-bee winners. She gave me a folder with a list of words to study, but I figure that I’ll be OK—I’m a pretty good speller.

Uh-oh. Today, our school’s principal, Dr. Evans, came up to me in the lunchroom and said, “Here’s our big speller! Are you r-e-a-d-y for the competition?” And then she laughed at her own joke, and then she said, very seriously: “You’re preparing for the spelling bee, though, right? You’re studying the words? Because ours is the only middle school in the region that’s never won one.” And I said, “Yep.” And she said, “OK, good. Because all the other principals have at least one spelling-bee trophy. All of them. All of them but me.” And she seemed to be about to cry, so I told her I was studying as hard as I could. And she said, “Excellent! I’m counting on you! I mean, the school’s counting on you!”

Anyway, when I got home, I opened up the folder and looked over the list of spelling-bee words. The list had words on it like ganglionitis, xoanon, miscible, and dolorimeter. I had to look up what all of them mean. Dolorimeter, it turns out, is an instrument that measures pain and suffering. I think that right now, I would score very high on a dolorimeter.

Ugh. I’ve just spent the last three hours making flash cards for all the spelling-bee words. I’m trying to remember the words by putting them into sentences, but it’s not easy. A lot of my sentences are things like, “Tad really hoped that polydactyly wouldn’t be part of the spelling bee.”

Today after English class, Mrs. White pulled me aside and said, “Dr. Evans asked me to check with you and make sure you’re studying all the spelling-bee words.” I told her that I was, and she looked really relieved. She said, “She’s been talking about the spelling bee a lot, you know. A lot.”

Tonight’s the last night before the spelling bee. So I spent another night studying the words, until I fell asleep on top of a pile of flash cards. Then I dreamed that I was at the spelling bee, and all my competitors were gigantic bees who could spell. It was terrifying.

All of which, by the way, are words I can spell. What I couldn’t spell, it turned out, was the very first word I was asked. Which was janitor. I guess I was just really nervous, but as soon as I got the word, I stood up there behind the microphone, staring out at my parents, and my sister, and Dr. Evans in the audience, and very confidently said: “G.”

And then I tried to pretend that I’d said it like, “Gee . . .” and said, “J,” but the judges hit the bell that meant I was out, and I had to leave the stage. I was the very first contestant to lose.

My parents were really nice about it. They hugged me and said they were all proud of me, anyway. And Dr. Evans said, “Yes, Tad. We’re all very proud of you.” But it was hard not to notice that she was saying it through clenched teeth, and that she had the spelling-bee program crumpled into a tiny ball, clutched in her fist.

As we left for the parking lot, one of the principals of another school came up to Dr. Evans and said, “Well, you gave it your best shot, Ganet.” Which was weird, because Dr. Evans’s first name is Janet.