The Downside of Being Up Read Free

dashed for the door.
    Then I ran.
    And ran.
    I ran through the halls, I ran out of the building, I ran past two students who were hanging a large purple banner on the outdoor bulletin board advertising the traditional Big Dance that our school held every spring, and I didn’t stop running until I was at the front gate of campus.
    â€œHey, you!” came a booming voice just as I was getting ready to sneak off of campus by crossing through the teachers’ parking lot. “Where do you think you’re going?”
    Before I knew it, Mr. Hildge, the meanest, nastiest, rudest, most kid-hating vice principal that ever lived, stormed up to me with a walkie-talkie in one hand and a bullhorn in the other. His neck was thick like a tree trunk.
    â€œI said, where do you think you’re going?” He grabbed me with his bear-size hands.
    Suddenly, his walkie-talkie crackled with life. “Code green! Code green! We have a teacher down in the math department. Code green!”
    Life as I knew it was over.

3
    â€œOh my goodness, what are the neighbors going to think?”
    Those were the first words out of my mother’s mouth when I got home. She didn’t ask how I was feeling. She didn’t care if I was injured. She didn’t want to know if I had suffered any permanent psychological trauma from having the most moronic kid in school tell the whole world my corncob was only the size of a crayon. All she cared about was one thing: “What are the neighbors going to think?”
    Turns out, our school had an official policy against boners. And as my mother was notified when she came to pick me up, I had committed a violation of the Student’s Code of Conduct item 84BLV.17: the “no parading of erections” clause in the student handbook that no one ever reads.
    â€œNo parading of erections? Hmmft,” said my grandpa Ralph, wearing blue pajama pants and a white T-shirt with browning pit stains. “When I was a kid, we were so broke we couldn’t afford rulers, so our math teachers encouraged the boys to get pipes in our pants so that we’d at least have a way of drawing straight lines.”
    â€œNot helpful, Grandpa,” my mom said in response. “This mister is in big trouble. Big trouble.”
    Mom stared angrily. I looked down.
    Just then, my younger sister, Hillary, stormed through the front door.
    â€œI hate you, Bobby!” she shouted as she slammed down her backpack. Hill was in seventh grade; I was in eighth. “I hate you even more than I used to hate you. I mean, do you realize that everyone’s teasing me and making fun? You’ve ruined my life! Again!”
    â€œOh, honey,” said my mother, trying to comfort her. Hill had been through a lot this past year with her accident and all, and she absolutely hated being in seventh grade. “I’m sure it can’t be that bad.”
    â€œOh yeah?” Hill replied. “The Spanish kids are calling me ‘Lil’ Hermana Ding-dong.’”
    It took a moment for my mother to do the translation. Suddenly, her deep anger shifted to deep concern.
    About what the neighbors would think, of course. To the left lived the Barkers. My mother wouldn’t be too concerned about them, because their son Eddie once put a Fourth of July firecracker up their dog’s butt and now they have to walk a pet that has no hair on its rear end. When Petey goes poo, it’s like watching an alien spit out a Tootsie Roll. Not pretty at all.
    But the Holstons, on the other hand—the neighbors on the other side—my mother was absolutely cuckoo about being better than them. She’d gone bonkers with the whole idea of it.
    When the Holstons got a new car, we needed a new car. When the Holstons had their front lawn relandscaped, we had to have our front lawn relandscaped. When the Holstons got a pool, we needed to get a pool.
    And when we didn’t get a pool because we couldn’t