How to Look for a Lost Dog Read Free

sound exactly alike. Since desert and dessert do not sound exactly alike they are not on my list.
    I guess that’s enough about homonyms for now. You probably want to get on with my story anyway, so now it’s time for me to introduce the next main character to you. The next main character is my father, Wesley Howard.
    Oh, one more fun thing about homonyms: The word pair implies two , but it is part of a homonym trio – pair, pear and pare.

4
Some Things About My Father, Whose Name, Wesley Howard, Does Not Have a Homonym
    Wesley Howard is my father and he’s 33 years old. He was born on March 16th during a quarter moon. He’s 6’1” tall. He has a scar on his cheek that is 1.5 inches long. He got it when he was seven and his father whacked him in the face with the handle of a shovel in order to teach him not to leave his bike outside.
    Some things about my father and me that are the same are that we grew up with our fathers but not our mothers, and that we live in the country.
    My father’s profession is mechanic at the J & R Garage.
    My father has one sibling, my uncle Weldon, who is 31 years old and 6’0” tall. Uncle Weldon was born on June 23rd during the kind of moon called a full strawberry moon. My father was born at 6.39 p.m. and my uncle was born at 9.36 p.m. so their birth times are opposite when written out. Also, the numbers are all divisible by 3.
    My father was 21 when I was born. He was 23 when my mother left. He was 26 ½ when I started kindergarten. He was 26 years and 7 months when my kindergarten teacher, Miss Croon, told him that Hatford Elementary might not be the right school for me.
    â€œI didn’t know there was another elementary school in Hatford,” my father replied.
    â€œThat isn’t what I meant.”
    What Miss Croon meant was that since I was having trouble talking to the other kindergarteners and I cried a lot and was apt to hit myself in the head with a shoe or a picture book if somebody didn’t follow the rules, I might need a special school or programme.
    My father told Miss Croon to work harder. Teaching me was her job.
    â€œAre you sure you don’t want to look into another programme for Rose?” asked Miss Croon.
    â€œWhere are the other programmes?” asked my father.
    â€œThere’s an excellent one in Mount Katrine.”
    â€œMount Katrine that is 22 miles away?”
    â€œYes.”
    My father shook his head. “Rose will be fine right here.”
    In first grade, my teacher, Ms Vinsel, called a meeting with the principal and the school psychologist and Miss Croon and my father. I don’t know what happened during the meeting because I wasn’t there. After the meeting my father picked me up at Uncle Weldon’s office and took me home and shook me and said, “Rose, this behaviour has got to stop.”
    And I told him that you could write out my name two ways and both ways would be pronounced the same.
    For second grade I had Miss Croon again because she didn’t want to teach kindergarteners any more. Miss Croon said to my father on the afternoon of September 13th, “I believe Rose would benefit from spending part of every day in the Resource Room, Mr Howard.”
    Mr Howard, who is my father, said, “That’s fine with me as long as the Resource Room isn’t for retards.”
    For has two homonyms – four and fore.
    By fourth (forth) grade Mrs Leibler had become my aide (aid). My father said he didn’t think I needed an aide, but that he wasn’t going to fight Hatford Elementary. “Just stay out of trouble, Rose,” he told me. And everything was fine until fifth grade when Mrs Leibler thought up the idea of weekly (weakly) progress reports.
    Now I am going to go back in time to report on my father’s childhood some more. When my father was ten years old he went to school with a brown-coloured two-inch-long mark on his arm and his teacher