I sincerely hope that every child in America (well, the English-speaking world) has read Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar. For those of you who grew up under a rock, or in a foreign country, they are short stories about school children in a crazy 30-floor school. It is sideways because it was supposed to be one floor with thirty classrooms, not thirty floors with one classroom each. Builder’s mistake. Of course, there was no 19th floor. Mrs. Zarves teaches the class on the 19th floor. There is no Mrs. Zarves. I still find myself thinking about the various stories now, even years later. I’m fairly certain I can still quote (or misquote as it may be) significant portions of the books. It was that good.
One of my favorite chapters, of course, included a story about ice cream. Each character had their own ice cream flavor. By that, I mean, if I gave you a scoop of Emily ice cream, you would look at it, and say, ‘this tastes like Emily’ and know exactly why. I always wondered what flavor I would be…. The mean kids tasted bad, so I always hoped I could prove I was a good kid by the flavor that tastes like me. But of course, you can’t taste your own flavor. It tastes like nothing. Another chapter consisted of a kid who could count every single hair on his head! I would always try and quit. I don’t see how you could even do it to yourself. Someone else would have to do it for you.
Anyhow, this morning (and this entry takes place, time wise, within the entry Back in Delhi),and so many other mornings before, as I was brushing my hair and wondering how many strands were on the brush, another story was stuck in my mind. The students were learning math, and one of the students couldn’t do it. She was too busy scratching at her itchy mosquito bites.
The story progresses such that the teacher magically knows how many bites are on each limb of the itchy kid. So they do math to add up the number of mosquito bites and the bites are turned into numbers. At the end, she was so busy having fun doing math, none of them itched anymore.
One of the best book lines comes at the end of that chapter (paraphrasing and probably slightly misquoting) “I’m glad we were doing math; I could never spell mosquito.” I definitely remember mosquito being in italics, and being confused as to the reasoning of the italics. Maybe it was the first time I saw italics. The funny part, besides the line itself, was that I still couldn’t spell mosquito, and I thought that it just looked like a funny word. Like moustache. I always thought that was pronounced ‘mouse tach E’ and confused people, I am sure, whenever we played that awesome board game “Guess Who?” and actually used the little game cards rather than making up our own questions.
Anyhow, back to the massive amounts of mosquitoes bites. I’m sitting in a hotel in Delhi (a different one, this one is much better than the last one), and after my shower, I realized I look like I have the chicken pox.
Honestly, I don’t actually remember what I looked like when I had the pox. I was too busy scratching myself. But I currently have so many bites and bite scars that I am covered in little tiny red and brown circles. Between the bites and moles (thanks for that bit of genetics, dad), I looked just like an infected kid. Spotty (in the American sense, not in the British acne sense) all over.
I was at a hotel near the airport, well over a month ago, and was attacked by massive mutant (well, probably not really mutants, but who knows) mosquitoes. I was wearing a dress, and they covered my legs. They were incredibly itchy, and I still have slightly purple welts covering my legs as a result. They are about the size of a dime. Late last week I suddenly noticed new bites covering my torso. Not my arms, or any exposed part of my body. But they must have actually been flying around in my shirt. I even have one smack in the middle of my armpit, which is really something when that one starts to itch. Maybe I have fleas. Who knows?
Anyhow, I’m either becoming immune, or the later bites are from babies, because I’m doing a better job of not scratching them until they bleed. Especially the ones that I can’t see. Still, I look like a seven-year old kid with the chicken pox. Yeah for me.
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