Owen's Exams

Owen could never tell if Father was joking. He would say something like "You and James have to keep on doing school at least through part of July." And it would seem like he was telling the truth. But then he would add something like "All of the public school kids across the road are jealous of you because they have to stop doing school in June, and they don't get to start up again until September. You guys are really lucky."

And then Father would always look at Mother to see if she laughed, and that was how Owen knew that he wasn't telling the truth. Public schoolkids didn't want to do school when the weather was nice any more than Owen did.

That was why Owen didn't really believe Father when he told him that he was going to have a final exam today. But here it was, almost naptime, and James and Owen were both still at the lunch table listening to last-minute instructions. "Read slowly and clearly. If you have questions don't ask me, ask Mrs. Taylor. I'll help you if she says to, but she is the one who is in charge of the exam."

There was really going to be a final exam. Felix was upstairs crying in his room because he bumped his head on the way up to nap, and Father was printing papers out and then putting them up high where the boys couldn't look at them. James was going to go first. James had been examined by Mrs. Taylor at the end of 1st grade and 2nd grade, so he already knew her. Apparently they did it at Alexa's school, and Mrs. Taylor even used to be Alexa's teacher.

Alexa was James' best friend. Out of all the things in the world that made Owen upset, Alexa was the worst. He actually like Alexa a lot, because she was funny and friendly and could climb anything in the world and had even visited Australia. But Owen hated the fact that James had a best friend and that he didn't. He felt left out every time James and Alexa played together and sometimes he felt left out even when they let him play with them, because they were always giggling at each other and having jokes of their own. Owen wished Alexa would visit Australia and stay there.

Mrs. Taylor said hello to James on the computer screen and asked him some polite questions. James smiled like he had a toothache--he liked Mrs. Taylor just fine, but this was the way James always smiled around adults--and read his reading test out loud. Owen could tell that James was used to doing reading tests. He read much more slowly than he usually did and made a point of pronouncing all the words. Sometimes when James read stories to Owen he went so fast that he didn't even stop to breathe in. He'd just keep on reading but making the noises of the words while he was inhaling, and he sounded like a vacuum cleaner running over a sentence.

Owen forgot all about his own test while he listened to James read. It was an interesting story about mysterious tracks on a beach that turned out to be from a leatherback turtle. There were a couple of words (like "cordoned" and "surmised") that he could tell James had never read before, but when he answered questions about what the story meant he seemed to have understood it just fine. Mrs. Taylor raved about his reading and told him what a great job he was doing. She even told Father, "if Owen goes this quickly I don't think I should charge you for an hour...James breezed through his test!"

"Well," said Father "let's wait to figure that out until after Owen has had his turn. Owen, can you come over here?"

And that was when, all of a sudden, Owen decided that he definitely didn't want to take his test.

So he ran away.

He didn't exactly have a plan for where he was going to go. Perhaps up to his room? Maybe he could hide in his closet. Or maybe, if he found his shoes, he could escape outside on his bike. But Father caught him before he even got out of the living room, so running away wouldn't work after all. Owen decided to flop.

He went as limp as he could in Father's arms so that Father almost dropped him, and then when Father put him in the wooden chair in front of the computer he went floppy again and flopped right down on the floor. Father was apologizing to Mrs. Taylor and calling to Mother. Owen tried to run away again and this time Mother caught him. He wasn't really listening to her as she put him back in the chair again but she was whispering something about "no dessert."

Mrs. Taylor ended up winning Owen over. She invited her dog over and Owen watched her pet the dog on the screen. The dog's name was Amber. Mrs. Taylor said that she had another dog and that Owen could see that dog after he did his reading exam. Owen decided that she seemed nice.

But he was still worried about reading his story. Owen knew that he was getting better and better at reading, but he still preferred to read books that he had mostly memorized. Reading new books by himself was okay if no one else was watching, but he didn't like the idea of reading a brand new book in front of Father and another grown-up. Plus, Owen's story was much longer than James', because there were some pictures that went along with each page, and the pages had printed funny, so that Father had to keep turning them upside down and then over.

But once he started, he found it was easy.

The story was funny, and the grown-ups had more trouble with it than Owen did. Father kept losing track of which page came next, and Mrs. Taylor got Owen's name mixed up with one of the characters from the story and kept calling him "Dillon" when she asked him the questions about it. The questions were easy--not hard questions about "surmise" or "cordon," but the sorts of questions that Felix could answer about a book.

Owen saw Mother peeking at him from the other side of the room. She was grinning a big grin, and Owen could tell that he had a done a good job.

Mrs. Taylor eventually remembered what Owen's name was, and she kept her promise about showing him her other dog at the end of the test.

Owen the Swimmer

Owen peeked out the bathroom window. His parents had told him not to spy on Ms. Mikole's pool from the bathroom window, but if he moved the heavy brown window curtain aside he could see right down into the pool. Sometimes Ms. Mikole was swimming and he would wave at her, but she usually didn't see him. Sometimes Ms. Mikole's teenaged daughter and her boyfriend were swimming or listening to music on the pool deck, and they never looked back. Father told Owen that most people didn't like to have people spy out of upstairs windows while they went swimming, but Owen was such good friends with Ms. Mikole's family that he didn't think they would mind. He could see even better if he hadn't broken his binoculars.

There was something different in the pool. It was pink, and it was floating. Owen could hardly believe it. It was a huge inflatable pink flamingo. And it was for him! Was it for him? Father was always telling Owen to stop and think a little harder first, so Owen thought now. Ms. Mikole was too big for a pink flamingo toy. Her daughter was too big for a flamingo toy, and so was her boyfriend. Ms. Mikole had a new boyfriend who was very tall and wore dark sunglasses, and he was DEFINITELY too big for a pink flamingo toy. This was a toy for a kid. And Ms. Mikole definitely liked Owen best, because Felix wasn't very helpful when they weeded her garden and James was too quiet to say anything, and Owen told her that he loved her every time that he saw her. (He even shouted it out the windows when she took her trash out.)

That flamingo was going to be a present for Owen. He couldn't believe it.

Owen ran into his Mother and Father's room and threw open the door.

"Mom, Mom, guess what," he yelled "Ms. Mikole has a new toy in her pool and it's a pink flamingo and it's for ME!"

Owen's mother had bolted up in bed and was looking confused. She rubbed her eyes, then looked at the alarm clock by Father's side of the bed.

"Owen...what time is it? Owen, it's 6 in the morning. Go back to bed. You can get up in a bit..."

She called after him as he went back to his room. "And stop spying on the pool through the bathroom window!"

Owen went back to bed, but he was too excited to sleep. He cleared a race track through the piles of comic books that he kept on his bed and started to push his matchbox cars through the course he had made. He kept his engine and crashing noises quiet, because Felix was still asleep in his crib. But after a few minutes he put his cars away and just remembered all of the swimming he had done last week.

The first family swim was with Mother and Father and James and Felix and had been in Ms. Mikole's pool. It was a hot day, but her pool was cold. Owen and Felix had worn green life jackets (they called them "puddle-jumpers") with red crabs on them and bobbed around the edge of the cold pool. James (at Father's insistence) had tried to swim without a puddle-jumper, but couldn't figure out how to float on his back and kept on elbowing Father in the head when he would clutch at his neck instead of doing a doggy-paddle at the same time he kicked his feet. Felix mostly yelled. Owen was a little disappointed that they couldn't bring any pool toys (or bath toys) in with them, but it was glorious to be in the water.

Owen had asked at the end if they could come back and swim again later, or even to swim just once a day, but he ended up waiting until they drove down to Pennsylvania later that week. They went on a visit to Grandma and Grandpa Davis. Usually the best part about visiting Grandma and Grandpa was tractor rides and pounding nails into old tree stumps in Grandpa's wood shop. But in the summer, when it was hot, the boys were allowed to walk down to a neighbor's house and use their pool. The neighbor's name was Ms. Mary, and she had a pool with a shallow end that Owen could touch in. She also had an entire shed full of pool toys--squirt guns, foam noodles, goggles, watering cans, inflatable balls, and whiffle-ball bats.

Owen got to swim twice at Ms. Mary's pool--once on Thursday and once on Saturday. On Thursday he paddled all around the pool and visited the deep end lots of times. Ms. Mary's pool was much warmer than Ms. Mikole's, and Owen would have stayed in there all day if his parents had let him. On Saturday the weather was much cooler, but the water was still warm. It felt okay if you kept as much of your body as possible in the water, so Owen had Father take his life jacket off and practiced putting his face under the water. Uncle Tim or Uncle Dan came with them and swam that day. Owen could remember which one was Uncle Time and which one was Uncle Dan when he looked at pictures of them, but he always called them by the wrong name when they were together in person.

Uncle Tim was the one who went swimming with them. He let Owen squirt him with the squirt gun over and over and didn't complain about it at all. Uncle Dan couldn't come swimming because he had a new baby.

But now they were back home, and it was almost time to start another day. Owen knew that he would need to be patient and wouldn't be able to go swimming with his new flamingo toy right away. But, maybe, if he was very good and asked politely, he could do it sooner rather than later.

Preferably before breakfast.

Owen in Trouble

Owen swung the bat. He swung hard. He knew he wasn't aiming at the baseball very well, but he didn't care. He just wanted to swing his bat and hit something. The baseball was balanced on a rubber orange traffic cone that he used as a tee. Owen missed the baseball but hit the traffic cone so hard that the cone and the ball both went flying. The ball only dribbled into the grass a few feet, so Owen set it up on the cone again. This time he got a piece of the ball and it smacked into the side of the house. Good. Owen hoped that he broke a window.

He was in the backyard playing baseball because his bike was taken away. Father hadn't even told him how long it was going to be confiscated. It was just "for a couple of days." Everyone else was miserable too. James was upset because his mouth hurt and because Owen wasn't sharing the baseball equipment. Owen hoped James was miserable. Felix was crying because he didn't like wearing suntan spray. Serves him right too.

It had been a hard few days. Owen still didn't have a dog. Father had found a mole in the basement, and Owen would have gladly taken a mole for a pet instead of a dog, but Father hadn't let him keep it. Owen thought a mole would have been a great pet. He asked Google about moles, and he found out that they could run up to 60 kilometers per hour. This made sense, because Father couldn't catch the mole or hit it with a broomstick. It just ran around and around the basement in circles. Owen was sure it was lonely, but Father wouldn't let him catch it.

Two days ago Mother and Father did something that Owen had always wanted to do--they put a ladder up on the side of the house and climbed into a window through the roof. But they didn't let Owen climb the ladder. They didn't even let him stand under the ladder to watch Father give Mother a boost up to the bathroom window. (His parents had locked the family out of the house by accident.)

But the real reason that Owen was upset--the reason that his bike was taken away--was because of what happened last night. Last night the whole family was biking home after a long ride and a hike in the woods. Father was in the lead with Felix in his bike seat, and James was following behind. James always got to be in front of Owen "for safety's sake" on his green bike, and Owen was following close behind on his yellow, with Mother riding on her black bike last of all.

They were going down the long hill that led past the Primary School and back to their house, and because Father was leading they didn't have to do a full stop at every single stop sign--Father would just slow up a bit and wave them through with an all clear. So they were going fast. Owen didn't even need to peddle, but it felt good to peddle when you were already flying down the hill. James was gliding up in front of him and had drifted over to the right side of the sidewalk.

Instead of braking to slow down to James' speed, Owen decided to pass him. He put on an extra burst of speed and closed on James' left. James started drifting back into the middle of the sidewalk and glanced behind him.

"Owen, hey OWEN, NO PASSING!"

It was too late to stop now, but then Owen realized that James was wobbling from looking behind him. Owen braked as he smashed into the back of James' wheel, and then James fishtailed wildly, slammed into a car that was parked in the driveway, and crashed onto the pavement with a terrible scream.

Owen did feel bad. He apologized right away, but no one listened to him. Mother and Father both went right to James, as did a neighbor who had heard the crash from across the street.

Owen started to insist again that he apologized right away, and then suddenly realized that he had done the thing that Mother and Father had warned him so often against--he had turned the bike ride into a race and tried to pass James.

In the end, James had a chipped front tooth and Father had to ring the doorbell (and then, since no one was was home, walk back up with a note) of the person whose car had been scratched.

When Father told Owen that he was taking his bike away for a few days Owen didn't even blink. He was angry, but he wasn't going to let it show.

"Fine," he answered "I'm just going to use my money to buy myself ANOTHER bike, then."

And he stomped off into the garage. He didn't know how much bikes cost, though, or where he would even buy one. He thought maybe he had seen some in a Target once, but it wasn't the Target where his family usually shopped and he couldn't remember where it was. So he asked his Father how many days "a few days" would be. Would he, for example, be able to have his bike back tomorrow?

Father and Mother were still much too busy with James' mouth to pay much attention to Owen. This hardly helped Owen feel better about the bike.

But hitting the baseball (or, at least, the traffic cone) did help him feel better. Owen wondered how all the bike scabs on his knees would look if he didn't ride his bike for two days. Would they be all gone? Would he get new ones right away? (He had landed on the end of his handelbar the day before and now had a nasty bruise on his stomach as well...would that go away?)

Felix had recovered from being sprayed by the time Owen was done hitting the baseball, so the two of them played football for a bit. James was pretending to be Robin Hood in the back bush, and still stopping every few minutes to rub his mouth.

Owen Gets a Job

Owen was bored. He had asked his father whether he could ride his bike to the playground, whether they could hike to the woods, whether he could play with Felix outside, and whether they could dig for dinosaur bones in the backyard. And the only answer that his father would give him was "Owen, we're working on school right now. Focus on your spelling book."

Owen was homeschooled, and he was almost all the way through Kindergarten. James was finishing up third grade and working on all sorts of hard things like division and Latin and history that Owen didn't have to worry about yet. Grownups often told James how smart he was, and Owen had to remind them to tell him that he was special and important too. After all, Kindergarten wasn't easy.

"Owen. Spelling. You are supposed to be circling words with the short "o" sound."

Owen sighed. He asked his father,"Do grown-ups ever make messes?"

"Sure. Grownups make messes all the time. We have to do the dishes every day, for example."

"So why don't you just not get the dishes dirty?"

"We need to get dishes dirty to prepare the food. And then we get more dishes dirty to eat it."

"But you don't need to eat off of dishes. What if we didn't use dishes for dinner?"

"That wouldn't be sanitary. Or particularly polite."

"Sometimes I catch Mommy eating ice cream right out of the container."

"That's because sometimes it's her turn to do spelling with you. Which words on the page have the short o sound? You need to circle those words."

Owen looked glumly at his spelling worksheet. Then he grinned.

"This is what these words would sound like if Darth Vader was saying them!"

Father didn't think it was as funny as Owen did.

Owen stared off into space.

"Dad?" he asked. "Did you ever think about how every second you get older?"

Owen was, in his opinion, quite a bit older by the time he finished school and was allowed outside. But while he was playing outside something exciting and wonderful happened. Their next-door neighbor Nicoles came over and asked if this would be a good day for James and Owen to help her do some weeding.

Nicoles had spoken to Father a few days before about hiring the Smith boys to weed some of her flower beds, but it had either been too rainy or too cold each day since then. Now it was time for Owen and James to do a real job that they'd get paid for! With real money! Nicoles even had a pool in her yard, and she had told the boys that they could swim in it once she had finished opening it up. Owen and James had been asking every day, but it still wasn't ready.

Father told Nicoles that today was a great day for Owen and James to do some work, and they all went (including Felix, since Mother wasn't home) into side door of the fence that separated their yards. Normally the boys weren't allowed into Nicoles' yard except to retrieve balls that they accidentally threw over the fence, and it was a little bit liking entering a secret treasure chamber.

Owen had taken a good look at the yard (and especially the pool) last week when some workers had come to Nicoles' house to work on fixing her fence. At first he was scared of the workers, so he had climbed a tree and just watched them. But then he decided that they were probably nice and climbed down to talk to them. He told them all about his stuffed animals and how old each of them were and what their names were. Then he told them about each of James' and Felix's stuffed animals and learned the worker's names and told them about his favorite books and then learned the worker's names again since he had forgotten them. Owen talked to them for so long that his Mother brought out cookies as an apology.

The workers had said that they appreciated the company and were amazed at how much Owen knew. Owen grinned from ear to ear.

Apparently these workers had left a pretty big mess of dirt and rocks in the flower beds, and that meant that Owen was going to get to do one of his favorite ever things--to dig with a real shovel. Father didn't allow him to dig for dinosaur bones in their own backyard, so Owen was forced to dig in secret places, like behind the front bush or the air-conditioning unit while his Father wasn't looking. Ms. Nicoles was actually going to pay him money to dig with a shovel! He started digging as soon as he had a shovel in hand. Ms. Nicoles stopped him and brought him over to the dirt mound in the garden bed. That spot would also work well for digging, he decided. He thanked her again.

"Owen," whispered his father "it's Ms. Nicole, not Ms. Nicoles."

"No Dad, it's Ms. Nicoles. You and Mommy are always saying 'don't go in Ms. Nicoles' yard, or don't draw sidewalk chalk in Ms. Nicoles' driveway.'"

"That's true...I'm telling you now that her name is Ms. Nicole."

Owen didn't believe him. She'd been Ms. Nicoles for far too long to change her name now. He continued his hunt for dinosaur bones.

He didn't end up finding any bones, although James did find an interesting rock and piece of red glass. Ms. Nicoles brought them out a bucket filled with bottled waters on crushed ice after they'd been working for about an hour. Father and James drank bottled waters, and Felix and Owen both just picked up pieces of ice and sucked on them. The ice turned brown wherever their hands touched it.

With Father supervising (and helping) and even Felix pitching in (when he wasn't playing with the dog toys in the yard) they managed to fill two big trash cans full of weeds, dirt, and rocks in three hours of work. Owen was sore and dirty, but he'd had a great time. Ms. Nicoles came out to look over what they'd done.

James asked her if she was still really going to pay them, and she said that she would. She and father stepped away and spoke in low voices about "an appropriate rate." From what Owen could overhear his father seemed to be trying to convince Ms. Nicoles to give them LESS money, which was crazy. After all, Father was always telling them that they couldn't order a pizza or go get ice cream or get a horse or a boat because it would be too much money. What was he doing now?

Ms. Nicoles nodded at Father after they were done talking and asked the boys, "What do you think a fair rate would be? Should I pay you three cents an hour? Ten cents an hour? Is that fair?"

Father smiled. "You boys can help decide what a fair amount should be. You worked hard, and you can make a suggestion about what your work is worth."

James and Owen exchanged glances. Father was using his teaching voice and they both had picked up on it right away.

"How about a dollar for each hour we worked?" asked James.

"How about TWENTY dollars for each hour we worked!" shouted Owen.

Ms. Nicoles ended up paying them (despite Father's protests) three dollars per half hour. He made James convert that into hours and then multiply it out before they ended up getting the money. He must have been in a very teachery mood, because he tried to do an experiment where Felix got to bargain for his part of the money when they got home, but Mother stopped him.