The Todd Glass Situation Read Online Free

ask nicely. “What are you?”
    I didn’t know. Neither did my teachers. Their overall strategy was pretty much the same for every kid in the Resource Room: They tried to figure out what underlying emotional problems kept us from keeping up with the rest of the class.
    Sometimes they’d bring in outside therapists. I remember one who had us draw pictures of life at home. Here was this guy who had never met me before, asking in his most pleasantly condescending tone of voice if the boy I’d drawn was happy.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNo?”
    â€œNo. His parents beat him.”
    The therapist paused thoughtfully. “Todd, do your parents beat you?”
    â€œOf course not! You asked me about the kid in the picture. His parents are nuts.”
    Like always I tried to keep my teachers amused. During one of our class trips, I asked Mrs. Biazzi if she wanted to hear a joke.
    â€œI had a dream last night that I was in a room and there were all these clocks . . .” This was a joke I’d heard from my oldest brother, Spencer. I knew from watching him that I should try to keep my delivery natural. “There was this guy there and I asked him what all these clocks were for. He told me that every time a clock’s hands go all the way around, somebody has just jerked off.”
    Mrs. Biazzi’s jaw dropped to the floor, which I took to be agood sign. Time to deliver the punch line—I wanted to tie it to someone we knew, so I chose my classmate Dennis. “So I asked the guy in the dream where Dennis’s clock was, and he told me they kept it in the attic where they used it as a fan.”
    I still can’t believe Mrs. Biazzi let me finish the joke, although, looking back now, I realize that she was just out of college. What twenty-three-year-old isn’t going to let an eight-year-old finish a joke about jerking off?
    I don’t know whether my teachers thought I was “cured” or were just sick of my shtick, but in fourth grade I found myself back in a regular classroom. Once again, my teachers tried desperately to help me, doing everything they could to get me through the year. They used to give out awards to encourage kids to do well in school. It makes me laugh to this day when I think about them, huddling together in the teachers’ lounge, trying to figure out which award to present to me. Least Attentive? Excellence in Window-Gazing? Most Pencils Sharpened?
    My parents had the same problem—whenever they used to brag about their kids they would always struggle to find a way to say something nice about me. “Let’s see . . . Michael got straight A’s, Spencer is joining a fraternity this year, and Corey’s baseball team just won the championship. And look at Todd . . . What an appetite! He ate a whole pizza all by himself!”
    When I failed fourth grade, my teachers weren’t entirely sure what to do with me, but my parents saved them the trouble of having to figure it out by moving again.

CHAPTER 4
LUMPY MASHED POTATOES
Todd learns a few valuable lessons.
    A few years ago my brother Spencer and I drove through Churchville, the neighborhood we moved to when I was eleven. I pointed to a modest mound of dirt that was almost hidden among the houses.
    â€œWow . . . I guess they mowed down the old hill.”
    Spencer squinted at me. “What do you mean?”
    â€œThat mound of dirt. That used to be the hill, that giant hill we used to play on.”
    â€œThe hill hasn’t changed, Todd.”
    â€œNo no no no no . . . They must have . . .”
    Of course Spencer was right. The hill hadn’t changed, I had. My eleven-year-old perception of the world had developed a lotsince then. As it turned out, there were plenty of things that I thought were true back then that turned out to be misconceptions. Like, for example . . .
EVERYBODY’S ON TO ME.
    The house was in