Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Not Reading Read online

  “I know that, Charlie Joe. I just want to see where you’re at.”

  “But I’ve barely started it.”

  I was finished with the paper, of course, but she didn’t need to know that. Especially since I had told her last Friday that I was “pretty much halfway through the book,” which everybody knows translates to “I haven’t exactly started it yet.”

  If I show her my final paper, she’ll certainly wonder how the heck I managed to turn into a speed-reader.

  I sneak a peak at Timmy, who’s in the back row doodling in his notebook and enjoying the festivities, and suddenly I have a brainstorm: the truth.

  “Actually, it’s on my computer at home.”

  She hands me her cell phone. “Have your mom bring it in after school so we can go over it together.”

  Just my luck that my mom has her PTA meeting every Tuesday afternoon in the teacher’s lounge.

  Why does my mom have to be so caring and involved? Why can’t she be more like one of those moms on the news who leaves her kids at the mall overnight?

  I gulp. “Okay.”

  Timmy snickers and holds up his doodle: a picture of me lying in Moose’s doghouse.

  Tuesday, late afternoon: Things are no longer looking up. In fact, they’re looking down.

  On my way to meet my mom in the office, I get stopped by Mr. Radonski, a former school bully who found the perfect job—gym teacher.

  “JACKSON!” No first names for this guy.

  “Yes, Mr. Radonski?”

  “If I catch you ONE MORE TIME with the wrong gym shorts on, I’m going to make you do push-ups till you bleed.”

  “Good to know, Mr. Radonski.”

  “JACKSON!!!”

  “Yes, Mr. Radonski?”

  “Stop being a WISEACRE.”

  “I’ll stop being a wiseacre if you stop using words like wiseacre.” (I don’t say this, but I want to.)

  He finally releases me, and I get the paper from my mom. From there I proceed immediately to the boys’ room, where I throw out the third, fourth, and fifth pages, saving the first two.

  I go to Ms. Ferrell’s classroom, where I walk in on her crying on the phone.

  She sees me and hangs up.

  “Oh, Charlie Joe. Misty has a bloated stomach, and I’m not sure what’s going to happen.” Misty is her beloved Great Dane; there are pictures of her all over the classroom.

  “A bloated stomach? Is that bad?”

  She wipes her eyes with a tissue. “It can be.”

  Through my sympathy I see an opening. “Maybe we should do this another time.”

  “No, let’s do this now,” she sniffles. “It will help take my mind off it. Show me what you’ve got.”

  I give her my two pages. “If you don’t mind my asking, Ms. Ferrell, why do you want to see my paper before everyone else’s?”

  She wipes her eyes and looks at me for what seems like six days.

  “Because, Charlie Joe, for some crazy reason I like you. I want you to do well. I want you to do great things, but for some reason you seem to want to do only okay things. Nothing more, nothing less. You seem to have no idea how bright you are, how”—and here her voice gets that tone adults use that makes you feel guiltier than ever— “special.”

  She sits down in her chair with a sigh. “If a teacher can get a student like you to fulfill his potential, she can retire happy.” She sighs again. “And so I’ve decided to make you my project.”

  As we go over my two pages, word for word, for the next hour, I realize that when it comes right down to it, Ms. Ferrell is a pretty darn good teacher. Then she gets another call from the vet saying Misty is going to be okay, as long as she watches what she eats, and the next thing you know Ms. Ferrell gets so excited she flies out the door without even saying good-bye.

  I may be her pet project, but I’m certainly not her pet Great Dane.

  Wednesday: I plead for my cell phone back. Dad laughs. I plead louder. He laughs harder.

  Thursday: Two teachers ask me if I’ve heard about Timmy and Hannah. Don’t they have anything better to do?

  Friday: Coco eats something bad and poops in the TV room. I get elected to clean it up. I turn in my paper. The two events are unrelated.

  The weekend: Grounded, no phone, no Internet, no television, no life. It’s so quiet and boring that not only could I could hear the grass grow, I could hear it complain that it wasn’t being watered enough. I develop a new respect for the Amish. (You know the Amish, right? They live in Pennsylvania and deny themselves basic necessities like cars, electricity, and Game Boy.)

  Forty-eight hours feels like forty-eight years.

  Things finally started looking up again on Monday.

  Billy’s Bargain was behind me. I wore the right shorts in gym class. Ms. Ferrell was in a great mood because her dog Misty was all better, ready to once again eat a small country.

  And Hannah had a tiny pimple on her forehead.

  Maybe the gods were smiling down on me after all.

  At lunch, I looked for Timmy. I was feeling like it was time for a new start, and I decided to let bygones be bygones. I wanted to be the bigger man.

  After all, Timmy was one of my oldest friends, and what’s a little telling-his-mother-on-me-while-stabbing-me-in-the-heart between friends?

  * * *

  Timmy had come a long way since acquiring his new lady friend, so it wasn’t going to be easy squeezing into his table.

  I believe the expression for what he was doing is “holding court”—telling his new admirers for the zillionth time about the exciting, nerve-racking moment when he finally got up the guts to ask Hannah out, never expecting in a million years that she’d say YES!

  When he got to the end of this very inspirational story, his new best friends practically applauded in appreciation.

  I felt a sudden wave of nausea.

  Maybe I didn’t want to be the bigger man after all. Maybe I wanted to be the smaller man. But I sucked it up and sat down.

  Timmy saw me take a seat and called me over, like he was the new emperor, and I was some guy from the previous regime who was going to get one last delicious meal before being executed.

  “Yo yo yo, if it ain’t Charlie Joe!”

  Timmy’s new BFFs laughed as if Timmy were Dr. Seuss himself.

  I handed him an ice-cream sandwich. “Here.”

  He looked a little confused. “What’s this?”

  “A peace offering.”

  A shocking left turn! Timmy’s pals suddenly looked at me with something approaching respect. Maybe in good conscience they wouldn’t be able to execute me after all. I guess there’s something about doing the right thing that appeals to the savage beast in all of us.

  Timmy quickly realized there was no choice but to accept the gift in the spirit in which it was given. “Um, thanks,” he said, eloquently.

  “You’re welcome,” I said, equally eloquently.

  * * *

  We shook hands, and as he was delicately unwrapping the ice-cream sandwich, I leaned over and whispered, “You know, after we let a little time go by, and things get back to normal, there’s no reason why we can’t pick up our little arrangement just like before.”

  Timmy looked at me like I’d just smashed his lacrosse stick. “Are you crazy?” he hissed. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life at military school? I don’t.”

  Uh-oh. The old arrangement was officially dead. Which meant I would have to figure out a new plan sooner rather than later.

  The Position Paper was coming up.

  It’s just about halftime. Bring on the marching bands.

  (Have I told you that Hannah can twirl a baton? She’s awesome at it.)

  Before we begin the next part of our story, it would probably help to understand exactly where my deep-seated love of not reading comes from.

  It will help explain a lot.

  I trace it back to a very specific, traumatic reading experience I had as a child.

&n
bsp; I’ll tell you all about it in the next chapter.

  I think it was my sixth birthday. (I’ve tried to block it out, so some of the details are fuzzy.)

  My dad, who’s read about a zillion books—in my case, the apple not only fell far from the tree, it fell in another orchard, in another country—somehow got it in his mind that I was going to be the next great American writer.

  I think maybe it had something to do with the fact that he had wanted to be a writer himself, but ended up a lawyer. “Hey, at least I get to write briefs,” he says sometimes, although I’m not exactly sure what briefs are. In any event, he was dead certain I had the makings of a natural-born writer. I just needed to tap into my inner talent, let my imagination rip, and look out! All those boy wizards and six-pack-abs vampires would be running for the hills.

  But according to Dad’s master plan, before becoming the next great American writer, I had to become the next great American reader.

  So I’m a typical about-to-be-six-year-old. I’ve spent approximately eleven months preparing for my birthday, including a failed attempt at getting people to give me presents on my half birthday, until at last the big day comes.

  To say I’m excited is like saying Einstein knew addition.

  Visions of trampolines and baseball bats are dancing in my head, and I’m running around the house screaming, “It’s my birthday! It’s my birthday! It’s my birthday!”

  All of a sudden my dad comes through the door, bursting with packages.

  It’s my birthday!

  As I ran up to him, tons of presents spill out of the bags. I start to rip one open, and my dad says, “Not yet Charlie Joe! Let’s gather the whole family.”

  You can pretty much guess the rest.

  In front of my whole family, including Moose (we didn’t have Coco yet), I proceed to rip open book after book after book—the entire works of Mark Twain, the entire works of Roald Dahl, and the entire works of Matt Christopher.

  Now, nothing against those guys, but as far as I know none of them have ever played in the major leagues. Or built a trampoline.

  Or even owned a trampoline.

  After opening the last book, I did what any self-respecting brand-new six-year-old would’ve done.

  I burst into tears and ran to my room.

  To this day, whenever I hear the name Mark Twain, I burst into tears and run to my room.

  P.S. I should clarify. When I said “traumatic reading experience,” I should have said “traumatic near-reading experience.”

  I believe “traumatic reading experience” is what they call redundant.

  So where were we?

  During the next month or so, a lot happened.

  Timmy and Hannah broke up, after nine days exactly (Thank you, Katie “Never Wrong” Friedman). Turns out that Hannah, sweetheart that she is, went out with Timmy to help him save face after the Eliza/lacrosse episode. I guess she figured that after nine days, his reputation was fully restored.

  As a direct result of their breakup, I noticed I didn’t feel that empty pit in my stomach/lungs/liver/heart area quite as much.

  Eliza, meanwhile, was now going out with Ricky Summers, whose long, spectacular blond hair somehow made up for the fact that he was born without a personality.

  And Katie was still my unofficial best friend, even though she was getting a little weirder by the day. First she made a random reference to becoming a nun—highly doubtful considering she’s Jewish—which she then admitted was merely her way of saying that there were no good men in the world. Then she announced that with the right psychotherapy, even the most dysfunctional, out-of-it guy could be turned into the perfect boyfriend, and she would be just the girl to do it.

  Jake Katz discovered some Web site where a woman read a different entire book every day for a year, and decided that someday he wanted to do that. (Kill me now.)

  Ms. Ferrell brought Misty in on Bring Your Pet to School Day, which apparently only applied to her. She proceeded to eat the dry-erase board. (Misty, not Ms. Ferrell.)

  As for me, I got a B+ on my Billy’s Bargain paper. (Ms. Ferrell’s note at the end: “It’s a start.”)

  I got my cell phone back.

  I got my computer back.

  I got my mojo back.

  It’s always a little risky when I get my mojo back.

  Charlie Joe’s Tip #16

  SPORTS ARE JUST AS EDUCATIONAL AS READING.

  Think about it, there are tons of important lessons that you can learn on the field of play:

  1. Keeping score (math)

  2. Being part of a team (social studies)

  3. Learning how to throw a curve ball (physics)

  4. “2-4-6-8, who do we appreciate?” (poetry)

  5. Knowing your batting average, or completion percentage, or shooting percentage (statistics, which apparently is a type of math)

  About a week later, on a particularly fine spring morning, me and my mojo found ourselves on the pitcher’s mound for my travel baseball team. We were good, not great—all the elite players having been snatched up by the fancy, ridiculously expensive, year-round “premiere” baseball programs. (In youth sports these days, the best athletes play one sport all year long, almost like a job. It’s crazy.) But the grass was green, the sky was blue, the bases were white, and it was a good day to play ball.

  My parents were there, and of course they’d brought the dogs. (Moose and Coco were huge baseball fans, mainly because of the dropped hot dog scraps.)

  We were up, 4–3, going into the last inning. So I was channeling my inner Mariano Rivera, trying to put the thing away for my team, but after two quick outs I walked their number nine hitter, Jeff Kleiner, who hasn’t taken the bat off his shoulder all season. (I always walk those kids for some reason. You know how the coach always says, “Throw it, don’t aim it?” Easier said than done.)

  Then, up comes their leadoff hitter, this short but incredibly fast kid named Andrew.

  “Strike him out!” my dad hollered.

  “Hit one out!” his dad hollered.

  “Pipe down before we kick you both out,” both moms whispered.

  So I’m standing on the mound, trying to stare down Andrew, and I start thinking about glory. Okay fine, not “premiere team” glory, but good solid travel team glory. I start thinking about how much I want to strike this kid out, and how I would give anything to be able to do it.

  Which rang a really distant bell somewhere in my head. Who was it that said he’d give anything to win his baseball game? Someone I know, some other pitcher … but I couldn’t remember who it was.

  I’m twirling the baseball in my hand, staring in at speedy little Andrew, when it suddenly occurs to me.

  I realize the person I’m trying to remember is Billy.

  That’s right. Billy’s Bargain Billy.

  Yikes.

  * * *

  Wow. Okay. So THIS was what it was like to identify with a character in a book.

  It was true. I started thinking about Billy like he was a real person. What would Billy do in this situation? Would he have the confidence to get this final out? Or would all his doubts and fears come back to haunt him, and make him choke?

  Would Billy be the hero and get carried off the field on the shoulders of his teammates, or would he be the goat, and wind up alone at 7-Eleven, drowning his sorrows in a Big Gulp?

  Then I remembered my conversation with my sister Megan, when she predicted this exact thing would happen. Dang her! Why do people like my sister and Katie always have to be so right all the time?

  Now remember, I’d only read the first and last chapters, but all of a sudden I was acting like a … wait for it … reader. I was thinking about the book and, even more to the point, I was remembering what happened in it, and—my heart sank—I cared about what happened.

  What was happening to me?

  I’m not going to lie; I was scared.

  I shuddered, then snapped back to reality. I still had Andrew to contend with.
After shaking off the catcher’s suggestions of a knuckleball and a curve—mainly because, as we both knew, I didn’t know how to throw either one—I wound up and fired my best fastball.

  “THWACK!”

  Andrew scorched one that looked like it was heading to the right-center field gap—with his speed, a certain inside-the-park, game-winning homer.

  But wait! There, out of nowhere, comes a blur. It’s none other than right fielder and relentless reader Jake Katz, who had somehow managed to stop dreaming about books long enough to race to the ball … adjust his glasses … track it down … and make an incredible, diving, game-saving catch!

  Holy moly!!!

  Needless to say, it was Jake who had his Billy’s Bargain moment. He was carried off the field, not me. I was neither the hero nor the goat.

  I was just a lucky kid who had dodged two bullets: the baseball and the book.

  Charlie Joe’s Tip #17

  READING MAKES YOU BLIND.

  Show me a kid with straight A’s, and I’ll show you a kid with glasses.

  No, seriously. Maybe not 100 percent of the time, but definitely at least 90, the smart kids are the ones with the bad eyes.

  The reason? Simple. Too many small words on a page.

  You don’t have to be an optometrist to know that a person who uses his eyes too much will wear them out faster than someone who uses his eyes for less challenging activities—say, for example, closing them during science class.

  Take it from this 20/20 guy, if you don’t want to be called “four eyes,” forget the books.

  Meanwhile, there were only six weeks left in the school year.

  Which meant one thing: those dreaded two words that no kid at my school ever wants to hear.

  Position Paper.

  The Position Paper is God’s way of saying “before you get to enjoy the fruits of summer, you’re going to have to suffer through some serious homework.”