Write This Book: My Parents Didn't Steal An Elephant

One of my all-time favorite books is There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom by Louis Sachar. It's the story of a fifth-grader named Bradley Chalkers, who probably started out just a little socially awkward, but who has grown increasingly alienated from his peers and is seen as a lost cause by students and teachers alike. Everything starts to change when two things happen: his school hires a new counselor and a new kid in class wants to be Bradley's friend. It's not easy but Bradley begins to make strides both socially and academically. When he says he can't do a book report because he doesn't have any books and the library won't lend him any, his counselor Carla lends him her favorite book, My Parents Didn't Steal An Elephant.

My Parents Didn't Steal and Elephant my all-time favorite book. It tells the story an unnamed narrator of unknown gender, the child of two former circus workers accused of stealing an elephant. It is smart and funny and bizarre. Sadly, it doesn't actually exist. All we have are a few precious excerpts that Bradley reads aloud to his ceramic animal collection. Seriously. How awesome is that? Anyway, this is the entire known text of Lasso's book:

I hate tomato juice.

Every morning, Aunt Ruth gives me a glass of tomato juice, and every morning I tell her I hate it. "Fine, Dumpling," she always says, "don't drink it."

She calls me Dumpling. Uncle Boris calls me Corn Flake. They're crazy. One of these days I'm afraid they're going to try and eat me.

My parents are in jail. They got arrested for stealing an elephant from the circus. Only they didn't do it. If they stole an elephant I'd know about it, wouldn't I? I mean, if your parents stole an elephant, don't you think you'd know about it?

I think the elephant just ran away. Her master was always mean to her. He whipped her and made her do stupid tricks. My parents used to complain about that a lot. That's why everyone thinks they stole her.

So, anyway, that's why I live with my crazy Aunt Ruth and Uncle Boris. If you ask me, they belong in the circus. They're crazy!

Uncle Boris always smokes a cigar. It just hangs out of the corner of his mouth. Whenever he kisses my aunt, he swings the cigar out of the way with his tongue, and kisses her out of the side of his mouth.

I bet you think Aunt Ruth doesn't like it when he kisses her that way. Wrong. She always laughs when her does it. Sometimes she smokes a cigar, too. I told you they were crazy.

Look! He even smokes his cigar while he's drinking his tomato juice.

Uncle Boris and Aunt Ruth are married. I bet you thought you already knew that, except you're not as smart as you think you are. They were my uncle and aunt even before they got married. Uncle Boris is my mother's brother and Aunt Ruth is my father's sister. They didn't even know each other until my parents got arrested for stealing an elephant. Then they both came here to take care of me. Hah! They fell in love and got married a week later. It was sickening! You're lucky you weren't here.

I've been cheated out of an aunt and uncle. If they had each married somebody else, then I'd have two aunts and two uncles. Now I only have one aunt and one uncle. I wonder what happened to the aunt and uncle I don't have. I wonder if they married each other, too.

I just met Ace. He's my parents lawyer. Guess what? He's crazier than my aunt and uncle put together.

The first thing he said to me was, "Do you like peanuts?"

"They're okay," I answered.

"Good," he said. He gave me a peanut and I ate it.

"Do you want another peanut?" he asked.

I shrugged.

So he gave me another peanut and I ate that one, too. Big deal.

"You must really like peanuts a lot," he said.

I told you he was crazy.

"I want you to remember that, he said. "If anyone asks you, you really like peanuts a lot."

"Okay, I really like peanuts a lot," I said.

Then he gave me three more peanuts! "Eat these!"

I ate them.

"You just ate three peanuts in five seconds," he said. Can you believe it? He had timed me. Tell me he isn't crazy!

So then he asked me, "Are you good at math?"

Well, I don't like to brag but math happens to be my best subject. Big deal.

"Okay, here's a math problem for you," he said. "If you can eat three peanuts in five seconds, how long would it take you to eat fifty thousand peanuts?"

I got out a pencil and paper and figured it out. "About twenty-three hours and nine minutes."

"That's less than a day, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "there are twenty-four hours in a day." He's supposed to be my parents' lawyer and he doesn't even know how many hours there are in a day!

"Remember that," he told me. "If anybody asks you, you can eat fifty thousand peanuts per day."

I laughed. "Who would ask me that?"

"The police."

That's it. That's all we have of this amazing book. A little bit more is revealed in Bradley's book report, but that is such a breathless and joyous delight that I'll leave it for you to discover when you read There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom yourself. In the end, Carla leaves the school, but things work out alright for Bradley. He has friends now, and he got a hundred percent on his math test. It's hanging on a wall in Mrs. Ebbets's class. Still, every now and then, I make a silent wish that Carla will come back and bring a copy of My Parents Didn't Steal and Elephant with her. I'd like to find out if they really did it.

Christmas is coming, I'm trying not to get fat

Today is when I allow the Christmas Season to start. Malls, radio stations, grocery stores, and catalogues may try to push its advent ever sooner, but I refuse to see, hear, smell, taste, or feel the Christmas spirit until December 1. And so, as the frenzied countdown to the greatest of all days begins, I would like to give you a gift. It's called Meet Me in St. Louis.

Meet Me in St. Louis my favorite Christmas movie. Okay, so it's not technically a Christmas movie. Whatevs. The most pivotal moments happen at Christmas, and it gave us "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," the greatest Christmas song Of All Time.*

Early on in the film, the main character, Esther Smith, played by Judy Garland, has the following exchange with her older sister while they get ready for a party they're throwing:

"I'm going to let John Truett kiss me tonight."
"Esther Smith."
"Well, if we're going to get married, I may as well start it."
"Nice girls don't let men kiss them until after they're engaged. Men don't want the bloom rubbed off."
"Personally, I think I have too much bloom. Maybe that's the trouble with me. "

That's my personal diagnosis for everything. Whatever ails me, I just say I have too much bloom. John Truett is their new neighbor, whom she has never met. She tries to lure him into kissing her after the party, but he shakes her hand instead. They do eventually kiss on Halloween, after she beats him up for being mean to her little sister. They're in love and happy, and then her father announces that the family is moving to New York just after Christmas, thereby placing a pall on the celebrations. After rejecting John's plan to drop out of school and get married so that she can stay, Esther sings the truest, most melancholy and hopeful Christmas song of all time.



So, have yourself a merry little Christmas. Here's hoping that next year all our troubles will be out of sight.

*It's also the movie that gave us Liza Minelli, as her parents met on-set.