Don't Call Me Ishmael Read Online Free Page A

pet student, Fish-whale Le Dick!’
    Yes, Barry Bagsley was quite a wordsmith.
    â€˜I always said you were a Fish-whale, but I had no idea you were a famous Fish-whale.’
    Of course, at this point I could have informed Barry Bagsley that whales, since they were warm-blooded and suckled their young, were in fact mammals, not fish; however, this would have been like looking into the jaws of a frenzied shark and pointing out that it had some seaweed stuck between its teeth.
    â€˜Hey guys, look, it’s the famous Fish-whale Le Dick. Hey,Le Dick, was that your girlfriend I saw you with yesterday or was it a white whale?’
    Boom-boom.
    â€˜Girlfriend? Le Sewer Manure wouldn’t have a girlfriend. He’d stink her out.’
    This gem came from Danny Wallace. Barry Bagsley was tutoring him in the traditional art of the creative put-down. He was progressing nicely.
    â€˜Maybe she was after some Moby
Dick
too?’
    I think you could probably guess how the conversation went from there. Barry Bagsley and his scrum of supporters finally drifted off when a teacher appeared on yard duty.
    My next encounter with him that first day of Year Nine was in the lesson before lunch–English with Miss Tarango.
    The class started with Miss Tarango outlining the unit of work for the term and somehow managing to make the assessment and even the poetry unit seem interesting. She talked a lot about the importance of language and how it could empower people. I wondered if that was true. Could language empower me to defeat Barry Bagsley? Perhaps I could drop a massive dictionary on him from a great height. I was enjoying this image when Miss Tarango handed out a sheet of paper to everyone headed
Five Amazing Facts about Me.
    â€˜Write anything you like, but nothing boring. I don’t want “My hair is brown” or “I have two sisters”. Think before you write. Be creative. Your five amazing facts could be serious or funny, important or trivial or whatever, just as long as they’re true. For instance, maybe you’ve won some sort of award.Maybe you found a cockroach in a pie you were eating once or, worse still, half a cockroach. (Groans from the class.) Maybe you know or you’ve met someone famous or maybe you can touch your elbow with your tongue. (Many attempt this. No one succeeds. Bill Kingsley spends the next two weeks dedicated to this quest.) Maybe you have travelled somewhere interesting or maybe you have an unusual talent.’ (Quoc Nguyen twists his double-jointed thumb at right angles then bends it back to touch his wrist. Gary Horsham turns his eyelids inside out. Donny Garbolo starts to belch the national anthem. Miss Tarango turns pale and suggests we all start writing.)
    My list of Five Amazing Things about Me.
    1. My sister is a genius.
    2. My father played in a band called the Dugongs.
    3. My mother is a Councillor.
    4. When I was an altar boy in Year Four I used to faint during the service.
    5. I hate my name.
    Miss Tarango said our answers would help her get to know us more quickly and to learn something about us. I didn’t think she would learn much about me from my list, but I’d like to know what she learnt about Barry Bagsley from his. As the lesson had progressed, Barry was returning to his old confident self. Even though Miss Tarango asked us to work quietly, Barry Bagsley was laughing and showing what he had written to his mates.
    â€˜Barry, if you’re finished, you can hand that in now.’
    He took his sheet to the front, dropped it on Miss Tarango’s desk and returned, grinning, to the back of the room. As the rest of the class completed their lists, I watched as Miss Tarango read five amazing facts about Barry Bagsley. She seemed to study the sheet for a lot longer than it would have taken her to read it. No expression crossed her face. Then she laid the paper slowly on the desk and crossed her hands on top of it. She looked as if she was