That Was Slick!

Chapter 1
When I entered the house after our walk, there was an email for me from Cryer and Chase Marriage Counselors, slogan "We Listen." They had been referred by the owner of Pork and Beans and were looking for a logo design for their business. I would need to put that on the back burner now though as it was time to take Pop Tart to school.  Poppi was a therapy dog in training for K9 Kares Readers--a group of dogs who went into classrooms to help students with special learning or emotional needs.  At the request of Miss Traylor, one of the Reading teachers at Lernsom Valley Middle School, Poppi and I visited her classroom to work with Will, one of my former students who was autistic.

Miss Traylor, straight out of college, was a good friend of mine despite her die hard enthusiasm in the face of 7 straight periods of classes overflowing with 30 plus twelve and thirteen year olds. If Miss Traylor was undaunted by the prospect of grading 214 Reading journals--most of which started with, "I like this novel because the author writes good,"--she certainly wasn't going to be discouraged by Will's unwillingness to read his assigned novels. Soon she'd struck on the idea of inviting K9 Kares Readers into her class to work with Will and several other students who were struggling, and although still in the early stages of training, Poppi did seem to be helping Will. 
When we arrived at school, I made sure to "exercise" Poppi before entering the building. The only patch of grass near the parking lot had a huge "No skateboards, No Smoking, No Dogs" sign in the middle. Poppi loved to lift his legs on it, and I felt any sign that put dogs in the same category as smoking deserved whatever Fate dealt it.  I looked up to see a  student sitting next to a window with a prohibited cell phone snap our photo just as Poppi was finishing.  I had a feeling we'd be on YouTube before lunchtime and I'd be wishing we, too, had followed Cryer and Chase's motto, "We Listen!" 
Oh well, there was nothing to be done about it now, so we headed for the Reading classroom. 
I positioned Poppi on the Reading Corner Rug as noisy 7th graders began pouring into the classroom. Slim, gangly and taller than me, Will was the last to enter.  Walking carefully so as not to touch any of the other students who were jostling toward their chairs, he spotted Poppi and--in a remarkable transformation--smiled and rushed to pet him. Poppi immediately jumped up and began trying to lick his face. A stern "Sit" command, didn't have any affect on Poppi, but Will instantly hit the rug. Sometimes you have to take what you can get, so I told Will thank you and gave Poppi another, "Sit!"

He grudgingly complied, and Will took a novel out of his backpack and started reading it to him. I moved out of the way, smiling at my little curly-tailed pup's power to put Will at ease. Miss Traylor was beaming from her chair in the small reading circle. I was beginning to suspect medication.

As I walked around the room, stopping to help or encourage students as needed, I realized that they were overly excited even for 7th graders.  Ever curious, I started to listen for the source of the excitement. "It was like magic!" Rebecca chattered to Brittany.  I didn't think she meant A Separate Peace which was the novel they were supposed to be reading together. Brittany giggled and replied, "The way he made that Pyrex cylinder disappear like that was, yeah, magic!" She ended her statement on a bit of a sigh, and I realized she was talking about Mr. Stein.

A former front singer for a punk rock band called Chomp It!, Mr. Stein now taught 7th grade science, but hadn't lost his charisma as far as most of the female students were concerned.  Even so, none of them believed the now bald Mr. Stein could possibly have been the wild-haired member of a band whose claim to fame back in the late 80's was making it to the Top 10 in West Germany with the tract, "Jelly Donuts in Berlin" from their Chomp-N-Donuts album.  Mr. Stein liked to call it their strawberry jelly and dough album as it had helped finance his first year in college.

One of his favorite lessons was teaching the students about the refraction index.  It was a great science lesson  that every teacher who taught the period after his classes wished he'd stop using.  I shushed the hyped-up students and earned an evil look (which I decided to ignore) from Brittany.

As long as she went back to focusing on her work and Poppi stayed on the Reading Area carpet, even if he was now eating a tissue from Will's backpack, I'd feel the day was a success.  When the bell rang, Poppi jumped up and tried to jump on several of the students, but I was still going to call it a success. He is a basenji, after all!

I chatted with Miss Traylor for a few minutes before venturing out into the hallway. The students had gone to their next classes, but I ran into my dear friend Senora Damalta as I stepped into the hall.  Tall with honey-colored blond hair, Senora's  blue eyes were usually glittering with intelligence.  However, now they were apparently on the verge of tears as my favorite Spanish teacher dragged me into the faculty room. She grabbed her insulated lunch bag out of one of the oldest operating refrigerators in Eastern, PA, offering me half her salad which I declined, as she blurted out the reason for the impending tears.  Today four students were demonstrating in halting Spanish how to make tacos at a table set up next to her desk. 

After the students had cleaned up and left the room to go to lunch, Senora discovered that the blown glass beads she'd brought back from her recent trip to Europe had vanished from her desk.  I asked her if any of the other students had approached her desk during class, and she replied that no they had all been too busy watching the demonstration and then eating tacos while the Carlos, Roberto, Jose and Marco cleaned up afterward. Roberto had spilled some of the vegetable oil he'd brought to fry the hamburger and had made quite a mess apparently.  I had no idea who Carlos, Roberto, Jose and Marco were because Senora called all her students by their "Spanish names." Sometimes I wondered if even she knew their real names! 

Senora insisted that the beads were on her desk when class had begun and that none of the four boys had left the room with anything other than what they had brought for their cooking demonstration.  I was as baffled as she was and was ready to admit so when Poppi decided he'd been ignored long enough! He grabbed my friend's napkin and pulled it off the table.  Unfortunately, Senora's bottle of ice tea was resting on the napkin at the time.  It shattered on the hard linoleum floor.  I was simultaneously apologizing to Senora and trying to push Poppi away from the bits of glass which seemed to be everywhere when she laughed and exclaimed, "Oh that Pop Tart! He makes me laugh even on a bad day like today."

Luckily, Senora is a dog person.  She offered to hold the Popster as I got down on my hands and knees and used half a roll of paper towels to sop up the tea and gather the glass.  Thankfully, it was a sunny day and the little bits of glass glittered on the rather dirty floor.  "Refraction again!" I thought just before I cut my thumb on a particularly sharp piece.  I let out a shout and poor Senora, who is deathly afraid of blood, almost passed out. I wasn't worried about the cut though. I was too excited about solving the "Case of the Disappearing Beads." I mindlessly tore another piece of paper towel off the roll and wrapped it around my thumb as I excitedly asked Senora what kind of oil Roberto had brought in to brown the taco meat. 

Thinking I was the one who was now light-headed, she suggested I sit down.  "No, this is important!" I fairly shouted.  "What kind of oil was it?"
"Uh, vegetable oil, Wesson, I think. Why?" she asked. 
"I know who has your beads!  He may be sneaky but at least we know he listened in science today!" I exclaimed.  "Blown glass is mostly made of Pyrex," I started to explain. 

"Mr. Stein was teaching refraction again, wasn't he? I knew those kids were too wound up today!" she interrupted catching on quickly.  "Wesson oil and Pyrex have the same refraction index. When he puts a Pyrex cylinder in a beaker full of Wesson oil, the cylinder seems to disappear in his demonstration," she moaned.

"Because the light rays refract off the oil and the Pyrex at the same angle, " I finished for her. "And the same thing would happen with your blown glass beads! Roberto dropped them in the bottle of oil and walked out of the room with them right under every one's nose, I'll bet."

After thanking me, Senora rushed out of the faculty room to go have a talk with the principal about the slick Roberto, and Poppi and I headed toward the parking lot.  Poppi lifted his leg on the sign again even after I'd lectured him the entire way out of the building about the obvious benefits of listening. 

As we pulled into the driveway at home, I saw my neighbor Mr. Gato, mowing his front yard.  He was a fanatic about his yard and was constantly spreading chemicals in his war on weeds.  Oh, well, at least today he was just mowing and the sound drowned out the harsh barking of Benito, his German Shepherd. Of course, as soon as I stepped out of the car, he slowed down and started to shout at me about the sorry state of my lawn and the evils of the dandelions growing in it. I took Poppi out of his crate, put his leash on and walked him into the house without even turning around.  Poppi's wrinkly basenji face quizzically looked up at me with such insistence, I shamefacedly admitted, "Okay. We don't always have to listen!" He wiggled his curly tail as if in agreement and tried to chew his leash before I could remove it.