Chapter 4

Once again, I was alone. I was amazed at how much I didn’t want to do my homework. Of course, had I had a strong will, I would simply sit down and finish it, in spite of myself and the fact that I didn’t want to do it. Katya must have a strong will. I’ll need to make peace with her and ask her about how she developed it. My dad says that every person can develop a strong will and character, if he struggles with obstacles and despises danger. Well, what sort of obstacles would I try to overcome? Dad says that I have to fight with my own laziness. But is laziness an obstacle? I would love to despise danger, but where can I find it?

I was in a very unhappy place. Why, you ask? In my opinion, unhappiness is when a person is forced to do what he or she doesn’t want to do.

Outside the window, I heard the boys playing soccer. The sun was shining through the window and it smelled like lilacs. I was debating on jumping out the window and running to the guys. But my table was covered with textbooks. They were tattered, covered in ink, dirty, and terribly boring. But they were extremely strong. They managed to keep me in a stuffy room, forced me to solve problems with some archaic construction workers, insert missing letters, repeat and memorize unnecessary rules, and do so much more of the stuff that was completely uninteresting to me. Suddenly, I realized that I hated my textbooks so much that I grabbed them from the table and threw them on the floor with all my strength.

“I hate you! I’m so tired of you!” I cried out.

There was a terribly loud noise, as if forty thousand iron barrels had fallen from a tall house onto the pavement below. Kuzya darted from the windowsill and pressed himself against my feet. It was suddenly dark, as if the sun had just gone out. But that couldn’t be possible, because it was sunny just a minute ago. The room lit up with a greenish light and I noticed some strange little men appear. They wore little sweaters made of blotchy crumpled paper. One of the little men had a sweater with a very familiar ink blot with arms, legs, and horns. I drew the same exact legs and horns on an ink blot that I planted on the cover of my geography textbook.

The little men silently stood around my table and stared at me angrily. I needed to do something about this, so I politely asked them:

“And who might you be?”

“Look at us little closer and maybe you’ll find out!” answered the little man with the ink blot.

“He’s not used to looking at us very carefully,” said another little man and shook his ink-stained finger at me.

I suddenly realized. These were my textbooks. For some reason, they came to life and were now standing around me. You should have heard how they complained about me!

“Under no degree of latitude and longitude does anyone anywhere in the world treat textbooks the way you do!” shouted Geography.

“You spill ink on us exclamation point. You draw rubbish on our pages exclamation point,” Grammar was inconsolable.

“Why are you attacking me like this? Are Lucy Karandashkina or Sergei Petkin studying any better than me?”

“Five Fs!” shouted the textbooks in unison.

“But I finished all of my assignments today!”

“Today, you have solved the problem with the construction workers incorrectly!”

“You have not learned anything about the climate zones!”

“You still do not understand the natural water cycle!”

Grammar seemed to be the most upset.

“Today comma you did not memorize the rules for double consonants exclamation point. You don’t know your native language dash shame comma misfortune comma crime exclamation point.”

I don’t like getting shouted at. Especially by everyone at once. This offends me. Offended, I replied that somehow, I will survive without any double consonants, and without the ability to solve problems, and, even more so, without this water cycle of theirs.

My textbooks were taken aback. They looked at me with such horror, as if I had just said something nasty to the principal of the school. They began to whisper amongst each other and decided that I immediately needed… What do you think? Punishment? Nothing of the sort! I needed to be saved! Saved from what, might I ask?

Geography said that it was best to send me to the Land of Unlearned Lessons. All of the little men immediately agreed with her.

“Are there any obstacles and dangers in this land of yours?” I asked.

“As many as you’d like,” answered Geography.

“The whole journey consists of obstacles. That’s as clear as two times two makes four,” added Arithmetic.

“Every step there is a threat to your existence exclamation point,” Grammar tried to scare me.

It was definitely worth thinking about. After all, my mom and dad would not be there to help me, or Zoya Fillipovna, for that matter.

No one will try to stop me every minute and shout: “Do not go! Do not run! Do not jump! Do not look! Do not talk! Do not turn around!” and a dozen other ‘do not’s that I absolutely can’t stand.

Maybe this journey will help me develop my will and acquire character. Wouldn’t dad be surprised if I got back from there with some character in me!

“Or maybe we should come up with something else for him?” Geography asked the group.

“I don’t need anything else!” I shouted. “So be it, I’m going to this dangerous land of yours.”

I wanted to ask them if I would develop my will and acquire a strong character, enough so that I could complete assignments on my own. But I didn’t ask them. I was too shy.

“It is decided, then,” Geography said.

“The answer is correct. An alternate solution is unnecessary,” Arithmetic added.

“Off you go period,” Grammar finished.

“Okay,” I said, as politely as possible. “But how would I get there? This land is probably off limits to trains, planes, and ships.”

“We’ll do,” Grammar started, “as we have always done in old folk tales period. We will take a ball of yarn ellipsis…”

But we didn’t have a ball of yarn. My mom did not know how to knit.

“Do you have anything spherical in your house?” inquired Arithmetic. Since I didn’t really know what ‘spherical’ was, she explained: “It’s the same thing as ‘round’.”

“Round?”

I remembered that Aunt Paula gave me a globe for my birthday. I suggested that we use a globe. True, the globe is on a stand, but it wouldn’t be so difficult to break it off. For some reason, this offended Geography. She flailed her hands and screamed that she would not allow this. A globe is a great visual aid!

Well, this wasn’t working at all. Suddenly, a soccer ball flew through the open window. It turned out that the soccer ball was also a sphere. Everyone agreed to use the ball.

The ball will be my guide. I’ll have to follow it and keep up with it. And if I lose the ball out of my sight, I won’t be able to return home and will remain in the Land of Unlearned Lessons forever.

After I was put into such a colonial dependence on the ball, this spherical object jumped onto the windowsill. I climbed after it and Kuzya followed me.

“Stay back!” I shouted to the cat, but he did not obey me.

“I’ll go with you,” my cat declared in a human voice.

“There exclamation point,” Grammar said, “Repeat after me colon:”

Fly high, you soccer ball,

Don’t jump around the sand,

Don’t stray, and above all,

Fly directly to the land,

Where past mistakes stand tall,

And resolutions they demand.

I repeated the strange verses, the ball hopped up onto the windowsill, and flew out the window. Kuzya and I flew right behind it. Geography waved a final goodbye through the open window and shouted:

“If you’re in real trouble, call me for help. So be it, I will help you out!”