Read Online Dreidels on the Brain by Joel ben Izzy - Free Book Online

advanced classes, but we still walk home together when we can.
    It’s kind of a strange friendship. We met in third grade, not long after his family moved here from Montana. I had been avoiding him because he was so big; even then, he looked dangerous. One day as I was crossing the street to go home I saw him standing on the other side, staring at me. The closer I got, the bigger he looked.
    â€œHey you!” he said. “I have a question.” I thought there might be trouble and got ready to run.
    â€œWhat?” I said.
    â€œDo you like swamp water?”
    â€œWhat?” I asked.
    â€œSwamp water,” he said again. “My new neighbor, Mr. Glasser, works right here, at Jack in the Box.” He pointed behind him. “He said if there was no one around, he would give me swamp water.”
    â€œWhat’s swamp water?”
    â€œIt’s a combination of everything from their soda machine plus a secret ingredient—I think it might be pickle juice. It’s great!”
    Whatever it was, that sounded a lot better than getting beat up, and ever since, that’s been our after-school routine: swamp water, and sometimes French fries, as we walk home.
    â€œSo, you think you’ll get kicked out of school?” he asked, squeezing another packet of katshup as we walked. He’d gotten to Jack in the Box before me and already had fries. We walked quickly so I wouldn’t miss my carpool.
    â€œIt wasn’t on purpose. I couldn’t have done it on purpose if I’d tried. It was just a sneeze. But it came out as a honk.”
    â€œI heard it was like a Mack truck! The whole classroom shook! Far out!”
    â€œThe classroom always shakes—it’s a trailer.”
    â€œYou think you’ll get thrown out of school?” he asked again. “That’d be uptight and out of sight!”
    â€œNo, it would be a total bummer.”
    I didn’t think I’d get thrown out. As far as I knew, honking at the vice principal wasn’t a capital offense. But maybe that was one of those things they explained on some day I’d missed school because of a Jewish holiday. “Whatever you do, don’t honk at Mrs. Gabbler. She’ll have you executed.”
    Once I got home, I didn’t have time to think about it. I grabbed my little yellow book just in time to get the carpool. Nothing interesting happened in the carpool, so I won’t tell you about it. It’s with the third and fourth graders, who have Hebrew school on Monday. Sometimes we laugh and joke,but today I spent the time reviewing the three verses of my Haftorah portion that I was supposed to be able to sing by that week, like Tom Sawyer was supposed to memorize lines of scripture. But while Tom managed to fake his way out of doing it, there was no way I was going to escape. I actually
had
been studying, but I was
so
nervous about asking Cantor Grubnitz to pray for my father that I couldn’t remember the words.
    When I got there—a minute before 4:00—he was standing outside his office, waiting for me.
    â€œYou were almost late,” he said. “Go inside and sit down. And don’t touch anything. I’ll be right back.”
    Cantor Grubnitz must have needed a cigarette. He doesn’t smoke in front of us, though the smell of it on his clothes is so thick that he might as well. I think he smokes in his office when he’s alone, because over the years, smoke has covered the glass on the pictures of the famous cantors and rabbis, making their eyes yellow like they have some kind of disease. They say that kissing someone who smokes is like licking an ashtray. I’ve never kissed anyone—and don’t see it happening any time soon—but I guess if I wanted to know what it felt like, I could lick an ashtray. Sounds disgusting.
    Much as I hate smoking, my dad hates it even more. Sometimes we’ll be in the nonsmoking section of Thrifty’s CoffeeShop