Okay for Now: Chapters 4–6

“That left foot has to feel like it’s in the water. In it, Mr. Swieteck. Not in front of it. You want to give the impression of depth.”

And in Mr. Ferris’s class, Lil and I had done our first lab report together on creating a supersaturated solution, which meant that I did all the smelly chemically stuff and Lil took down the notes and wrote it up.

On Sunday night, after my mother and I ate four thawed hamburgers and one large bowl of Italian macaroni salad, I decided to try for some inspiration, which is something that every artist needs.

“That’s how Audubon got his specimens,” he said. “For some reason, he wanted to show the Black-Backed Gull after he had shot it.”

“You can’t sell the pages of a whole book one by one.”
“That’s exactly the problem. When it’s an Audubon, you can. Most buyers can’t afford a whole book, but they can buy one plate at a time—if they find someone low enough to cut them out of a folio.”

“She doesn’t have anything to do with it, and even though she doesn’t show it, she’s distraught. The three trustees of the library happen to be on the Town Council. Sometimes, the town needs money. Sometimes even for good things. They’d like to sell the whole set of books, but the other three volumes belong to the Marysville Historical Society, and they’re preserving them as they should be.”

“This is volume three. And since Marysville’s public library is not so scrupulous as its historical society, this is the only volume that is missing any of its pages.”

And you would have seen what I saw: the Brown Pelican, the beautiful Brown Pelican, the beautiful and noble Brown Pelican.

“Is it reading aloud in front of others that bothers you?”
“No.”
“Good. Then I'll look forward to a gallant attempt when your turn comes,” she said.

“Generally,” he finally said, “it is neither wise nor prudent to mouth off to a junior high school teacher. Especially to one who has been a sergeant in the United States Army.”

“Consider: Is it Coach Reed or you who is sitting in this somewhat dreary room that smells of vinegar on a beautiful October afternoon?”

“In general, I adhere to the notion that things belong in the class to which they have been assigned—which leads us to the periodic table. No, no more about the pelican.”

“In general, I adhere to the notion that things belong in the class to which they have been assigned—which leads us to the periodic table. No, no more about the pelican.”

Look at the symbols for the inert gases: helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon.

“Good. Now look over here at the transitional elements.” He pointed to element 29. “This is copper,” he said.

“I’ve been developing a County Literacy Unit, and I need a student to practice on. Would you be willing?”

Do you know how long it takes to sound out a word like soliloquized? And even after you do, you have no idea what the stupid word means except that it probably just means “said,” which is what stupid Charlotte Brontë should have said in the first place.

I would have bought a pastrami sandwich if Mrs. Windermere had given me a tip, but I wasn’t getting a tip anymore because the bill was going on her tab, which you might remember, and the other tips weren’t enough to cover a pastrami sandwich and leave me much for the rest of the week.

And on like that until Mr. Powell told us both to hush because he wanted to talk about Audubon’s use of the white space around the wing and the contrast in spatial perception that the two wings gave and artist stuff like that.

We were finishing up the Apparatus Unit, which meant messing around on leather horses and parallel bars and ropes and the high bar, which people who are skinny and wiry like yours truly can do without breaking a sweat.

Two threats of school suspension, because I was the instigator of the PE locker room fights, according to the So-Called Gym Teacher.

And so what that Apollo 7 successfully detached from the Saturn rocket to practice the rendezvous they would have to perform perfectly for a moon shot?

So what that they landed a mere third of a mile from the landing site?

Especially when my father said that Mr. Big Bucks Ballard was the skinflint of skinflints, and there probably wouldn’t be much to eat.

And there was more chicken cooking, and more vats of hot water with steaming corn, and then onto the line came all the kids from the lake...

How many consecutive scoreless innings in World Series play has Whitey Ford pitched?

The back leg was poised as if it was about to leave its toehold and push ahead, and the way of it, the whole way of it, said that the head and back wouldn’t be moving at all—just those legs.

“I think,” said the guy holding the stack of frames, “that if you’re going to put it over the bookcase there, you’ll want this mahogany frame to go with that wood.”

I mean, what would you do if you found a baseball with only 215 stitches? Wouldn’t you want to put in one more to make it right?
I know, that all sounds cosmic.

I should tell you that I was revealing this terrible secret to Lil while Miss Cowper was trying to teach us the Wonders of the Adverb and that when she asked if Lil and I had anything we'd like to share with the whole class, we stopped, quickly understanding that Miss Cowper was watching us angrily and would beat us mercilessly if we did not cease immediately.

“Principal Peattie will tell you how you’re going to make that up. Coach Reed staggers his units, so he’s starting another one on Wrestling for his fifth-period class. You be there for that one—and don’t even think of missing a day.”

Go from the tip of the heron’s feet to the tip of his beak, and you have the first diagonal. But look at the second diagonal. It’s a lot subtler.

“Which is drawn linearly, long and narrow. Do you see?”

The So-Called Gym Teacher came up behind me before my second match while my opponent was staring at me across the mat generating aggression.

By the time my father edged the pickup into a spot, my mother was near frantic.

They said that’s what happens when you let yourself get used by fascist pigs.

Lucas's face was pretty grim. I'm not lying. My mother had been crying, so her face was pretty grim too.

We were supposed to go down with Lucas to a doctor in New York City every two weeks for who knows how long, but when my father said he couldn’t be traipsing all over the state every two weeks, we found a doctor in Kingston who would see him, and when my father put up an all-fired fuss at the first visit about how much it cost, the doctor said he had a son in Vietnam too, right now.

Apollo Eight has circumnavigated the moon and descended to sixty-nine-point-eight miles over the lunar surface.

In January, all of Coach Reed’s classes were starting a new unit in PE: Physical Fitness and Endurance.