I Don't Wanna Be an Orange Anymore

By Hank Kellner

Growing up in the fictional town of Meadowview, young Willie Watson objects to being required to play the part of an orange in the school play when he is nine and in the fourth grade. But that's just the beginning of his problems. As he continues through elementary school, Willie has to deal with the town bully; Christmas with his relatives; the death of a schoolmate; the loss of his girlfriend; the theft of a fountain pen; his broken eyeglasses, and much more.
Included in this book are such chapters as "There Is No Santa Claus," "Oh Captain, My Captain," "The Dog in the Rhinestone Collar," "A Bird's Just a Bird," and "Hey Brucie, Your Sister Wears Long Underwear."
Readers will enjoy these humorous and often touching descriptions of a young boy's experiences as he grows up in a small town many years ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hank Kellner
• Release date: May 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301669875

Hank Kellner

Hank Kellner is a veteran of the Korean War and a retired associate professor of English currently based in Winston Salem, North Carolina. He is the author of 125 Photos for English Composition Classes (J. Weston Walch, 1978); How to Be a Better Photographer (J. Weston Walch, 1978); Write What You See (Prufrock Press, 2010); and, with co-author Elizabeth Guy, Reflect and Write: 300 Poems and Photographs to Inspire Writing (Prufrock Press, 2013).

Book preview

I Don’t Wanna

Be an Orange

Anymore

(And Other Fascinating Tales of Growing Up)

by

Hank Kellner

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013, Hank Kellner

Thank you for downloading this eBook. Please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author.

Also, please visit the author’s blog at http://hank-englisheducation.blogspot.com

Chapter 1

I Don’t Wanna Be an Orange Anymore

Call me Willie. My last name is Watson. I have a wife, two kids, two cars, and one mortgage. I’m an English teacher at a high school, so I guess that makes me a pretty average guy. But I wasn’t always that way. You see, when I was nine and in the fourth grade, I was the kind of kid my classmates called a dweeb. In fact, I was so dweeby that everyone was always pushing me around, especially all the guys who were members of Brucie Schultz’s gang of spitters and troublemakers. Luckily for me, however, my days as a dweeb ended one fine day in 1942.

You remember that 1942 was the year that Japanese soldiers overwhelmed American and Filipino forces during the Battle of Bataan in the Philippines and Anne Frank’s family went into hiding in Amsterdam in Holland.

I was sitting in the kitchen of my house with my mother one day having my cookies and milk. I remember that our house looked just like the house Archie Bunker lived in on a show that appeared on television twenty-eight years later, in 1971. The house had a basement with a dirt floor, three rooms on the first floor, and three rooms and a bathroom on the second floor. It was covered by asbestos siding that my dad had to paint quite often because it was always peeling. In the small backyard we had a Victory Garden in which my mother liked to grow, among other things, peas.

We lived in a small town that wasn’t different from thousands of other small towns in the United States. Because that was during the days before shopping malls appeared, the town had a Main Street with quite a few stores, a gas station, a movie theater, two or three places of worship, a roller skating rink, and a town hall that housed the county offices and the courthouse. A White Castle hamburger place stood at the outskirts of town. I remember that the hamburgers served there were square.

As I sat in our kitchen munching on a chocolate chip cookie, my mother looked at me and said, What’s the matter with you, Willie? You don’t look so good. Is something bothering you?

Was something bothering me? Of course something was bothering me! You see, my fourth grade teacher, Miss Pfeiffer, had chosen me to be an orange in the upcoming school play. Truth to tell, I would rather have been struck by lightning than stand on a stage in front of everyone dressed like an orange. I needed help, and I needed it fast. But because she wasn’t always the most sympathetic and understanding person in the world, I wasn’t sure that my mother was the right person to turn to. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a try. Maybe I’d get lucky, I thought.

I knew that getting my mom to sympathize with me and help solve my problem would be like getting stones to talk. That’s why I planned to approach her very carefully. If I somehow succeeded, her heart would turn to butter, and my problem would be solved. If not, mom would just smile, tell me to stop fussing about nothing, and then make me go and take the garbage out before it grows wings.

Ah, I thought, the old flying garbage routine. Well, I’d forgotten to take the garbage out about a million times since I was old enough to be changed from a child into a garbage slave at age nine, and none of the stuff had grown wings yet. But never mind. That wasn’t the point. Flying garbage had nothing to do with what I wanted to tell mom.

Gotta be careful, I thought. Remember, sympathy and understanding. Make her feel sorry for you. But watch out! One careless word and you’ll find yourself loaded down with another garbage can filled with smelly, old bottles, slimy potato peels, and cans swimming in yesterday’s mashed potatoes and gravy. Yuch! I twisted my face in disgust as only a nine-year-old boy can. I guess that’s what life is all about when you’re nine. It’s just an endless collection of garbage waiting to be taken out. So what’s new?

I’ll tell you what’s new, I muttered absent-mindedly. And it’s not garbage.

Oh, my gosh! As I heard the words accidentally dribble from my lips, I felt like someone who had signed his own death warrant. That wasn’t what I meant to say! So much for sympathy and understanding. Mom’s gonna kill me. I clapped my hand over my mouth.

Mom leaned forward, tipped her head to one side, and gave me the look, the same one that made my father think that life must have been better during the days of Vlad the Impaler.

Tell me, she commanded, what’s wrong. I could see her eyes beginning to narrow.

Uh, oh, I thought. This isn’t the way I planned it. I was supposed to ease her into it, to make her feel sorry for me, to make her understand how I felt. But now she’s got the look, the same look that would make an onion cry, and I’ve got about as much chance as a fly in China. You’re trapped, Willie, I told myself. Might as well get it over with.

I stared into my mother’s eyes, hitched up my pants, and announced, I don’t wanna be an orange.

You don’t want to be a what? Looking at mom’s expression, you’d have thought that I’d just killed my sister, which really wasn’t all that impossible as far as I was concerned.

I don’t wanna be an orange. Next week. In the school play. I wiggled and squiggled until it seemed that my chair was shaking like a telephone pole in an earthquake.

Oh, I see. Mom’s look disappeared. You don’t want to be an orange in the school play. And why not? What’s wrong with being an orange? It’s better than being a cabbage, isn’t it? Or a potato. What’s more, you should be thankful you’re not a cauliflower. Now go and take the garbage out before it grows wings.

I guess you can tell by that remark that my mother did have a sense of humor. But it was wasted on me.

Might as well be dead, I thought, as I carried the wingless garbage out. Might as well be planted in the cemetery in my Sunday suit, the one I had to take off as soon as church was over so that I wouldn’t get it ...all muddy-dirty-filthy, as mom used to say.

Then, in a flash of genius I thought of dad. Of course. Good old dad. He’d try to help me, even though mom might spear him with her famous killer look, the same look she’d spent centuries perfecting, the look that, according to my uncle Tony, would stop a wild elephant dead in its tracks. After all, I reasoned, no self-respecting father would want his son to be an orange in a school play. Not while he’d have to sit in the audience with all the neighbors and watch his pride and joy prance about in a crepe paper costume that crackled and rustled with every movement.

Warmed by the thought that dad would bail me out, I smiled for the first time since my teacher, Miss Pfeiffer, had handed out the assignments for the fourth grade class play earlier that day. Life can be beautiful, I thought. But only when you don’t have to be an orange in a school play.

Later, at the dinner table, I poked at my peas before folding them into my mashed potatoes. Across from me, my little sister Helen smiled as she toyed with a lamb chop. Why is she smiling? I thought. Had I turned into green cheese, or something? Mom sat at my left, and dad sat opposite her.

Eat your peas, Willie, said mom. Don’t hide them under your potatoes. They’re good for you.

My sister’s eyes lit up like the midway at a state fair. She may have been a butterball or even a baby hippo, but she sure could act quickly when it came to bothering me. Yes, she blurted, and so are oranges.

Shut up. What do you know, you little tub? I leaned forward and rocketed a spoonful of potatoes and peas at the six-year-old cause of so much of my suffering. She should have lived back in the days when they tortured people in dungeons, I thought. She would have made a great inquisitor.

Helen ducked, watched my artillery barrage spatter against the wall behind her, and smiled innocently. Well, she responded, I know all about you and the school play. I heard you talking to mom. And anyway, you missed me. She pointed to the wall. At that moment I hated my sister more than I hated Miss Pfeiffer for ruining my